10 years after the Iguala night, thousands marched to the Zócalo yesterday

So that no one ever forgets their faces, their lives, and the fact that 10 years later impunity prevails in this State crime, yesterday a memorial was unveiled that remembers the 43 normalistas of Ayotzinapa on the most visited avenue in the City of Mexico: on the corner of Paseo de la Reforma and Juárez, just behind the anti-monument +43.

Gallery: They commemorate the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa 43

This memorial was placed by family members and groups in the Reforma median, as part of the activities to remember the absence of the normalistas.

In it, the families detail that “our children were disappeared on the night of the 26th and the early morning of September 27, 2014 in Iguala, Guerrero.

“We installed this memorial to demand truth, justice and the end of impunity in our country. “10 years after the events, our demand is unwavering, so we demand that the government present our children alive.”

The march began minutes before 5 p.m. at the Ángel de la Independencia and concluded in the capital’s Zócalo.

At the forefront were fathers and mothers of the disappeared young people, who since their arrival were supported by thousands of normalistas, human rights defenders, trade unionists and popular organizations who repeated to them over and over again: they are not alone and that they will accompany them until the justice be a reality.

The drizzle did not prevent thousands of people and organizations from participating in the commemoration of the so-called Iguala night.

Among the participating contingents were teachers from different sections of the National Coordinator of Education Workers, Committee 68, students from UNAM, IPN, UAM, UACM, as well as the People’s Front in Defense of the Land of Atenco, and social and human rights movements.

People, listen, the fight is for your children, and may the eyes of the missing pursue them everywhere, and may the cries of their mothers not let them sleep, were some of the slogans of the protesters.

Unlike other occasions, the normalistas did not launch rockets or paint street furniture, out of respect for the memory of their classmates; However, a group of young people dressed in black and with their faces covered infiltrated the peaceful mobilization.

The black bloc committed various misdeeds along the way: they broke windows in shops and banking institutions, hotels, self-service stores, newspaper stands and Metrobús stations, and even managed to destroy some wooden and metal protections that protected some establishments. .

The hooded men burned furniture from cafeterias and banking institutions. On the corner of Isabel la Católica and 5 de Mayo they knocked down the metal curtain of a men’s suit store, where they looted the clothes to give them to people.

They painted shop facades and monuments, vandalized everything that came their way, for which they carried pipes, sticks, stones, axes, hammers and explosive devices.

After more than three hours of walking, in which the three students murdered 10 years ago and the normal student Aldo Gutiérrez – who is still in a coma – were also remembered, the first contingents arrived a few meters from the esplanade of the Plaza de la Constitución, where they found concrete structures and metal fences that prevented the passage of buses and protesters.

That did not prevent their arrival at the esplanade, as mothers and fathers began to pass through a small space that they found between the concrete protections, placed on 5 de Mayo and Palma streets, without ceasing to express their astonishment and denounce that this was not the case. I didn’t even see Peña Nieto.

The rest of the contingents began to trickle into the capital’s Zócalo in dribs and drabs, where the groups set up a pavilion to hold the central rally of the commemoration.

While parents of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa normal school held the rally, groups of hooded men burned banners and papers next to the metal fences that guarded the National Palace and the Metropolitan Cathedral.

They wrote slogans against the government and launched around 20 rockets over the protections. They also hit the metal structures with mallets, machetes and axes, without managing to knock them down or damage them.

Yesterday’s day of struggle included a meeting between fathers and mothers and university students at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM. There, the families assured that the current administration leaves us with a wound that still bleeds.