One year after the mass kidnapping of 43 students from an Ayotzinapa teachers college rocked Mexico, the nation is still searching for answers. In that time, there have been countless protests and street demonstrations, protest art pieces, activist hashtags to organize people, and actions of solidarity from people around the world. Still, the case remains as staggering and tragic as it was last year – as a foreign policy adviser to former President Felipe Calderón described it, “the single most significant crime of the 21st century in Mexico.”
Far from flagging, the movement to demand accountability is alive and well, as captured by Ayotzinapa Vive, an instagram account that chronicles the efforts of activists in Mexico and all over the world to remember the 43 and fight for answers.
Though most of the images featured focus on protest art works, there are also posts dedicated to news and personal stories sourced from as far and wide as Australia and Chicago.
While the world shows the parents of the missing 43 that they haven’t forgotten their children, they continue to demand answers. Two days before the one-year anniversary, they met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who said he was committed to finding the truth. “We are not going to shelve this, the case is still open,” Peña Nieto said, according to El País. “Together we will search for the truth because we are on the same side.”
The parents came with a list of eight demands for EPN and his government. For example, they want EPN to formally announce that the investigation remains open, and they want a definitive answer on what happened to their relatives. Nodal reports that they also want outside investigators to remain in the country for a year, and for the investigation to use the type of equipment recommended by independent experts.
When the parents met with EPN, they had already started a 43-hour hunger strike. On Wednesday, they met in front of the Zócalo square and started their protest at 7 p.m., Tico Times reports. Doctors checked them out and gave them the OK before they spent that night under a tarp on the square. “For 43 hours, we will only drink water and we’ll be fasting when we meet with the president,” Nardo Flores told AFP on Wednesday.
For the parents, the meeting didn’t yield any positive results. According to teleSUR, he didn’t accept any of their eight proposals, leaving them to believe that he was not sincere. “Those people are cold blooded and their eyes say it all,” parent Carmen Mendoza said. “We’ve come out of the meeting immensely angry, truly speaking. We have obtained nothing from the meeting with the president.”