43 Mexican Students Vanished

On September 26th, 2014, forty-three students from a teachers' college in the town of Ayotzinapa, in Guerrero State suddenly disappeared. The students were in Iguala to commandeer more buses to travel the next week to Mexico City for a yearly tradition that commemorated the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. 

Tlatelolco Massacre was a horrific killing of unarmed students and protesters by the armed forces of Mexico. over 300 people were killed and around 1,000 injured.

Since the group of students split up in two different directions, the buses were intercepted at two different road blocks. The buses were fired upon, some people were killed and 43 students were taken. Surviving students and witnesses testified that they were attacked by local police. The surviving students were told that their classmates had been taken under municipal police's custody, so when their parents came to pick them up in Iguala, they went to their headquarters to bail them out. When they arrived at the police station, they were told that their missing classmates were not there. They searched all the other local stations with no luck.

Months after the incident, it was discovered that the students were kidnapped in a scheme that allegedly involved local officials. Allegedly they were later handed over to the criminal group Guerreros Unidos. Confessions procured from members of the gang claimed they burned all 43 bodies in a dumpster after being instructed by the police to murder the students. The whole investigation was highly questioned due to an abundance of discrepancies. 

In November 7, 2014, a press conference was given in which it was announced that several plastic bags had been found by a river in Cocula, Guerrero containing human remains, possibly those of the missing students. Two of the missing students were confirmed dead after their remains were identified.

At least 80 suspects have been arrested in the case, more than half of them were police officers.

To this date, only the remains of the two students have been found.

Mexico's current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has created a new commission to reopen the investigation.

There are more than more than 40,000 people registered missing in Mexico.