Family members of the 43 missing Mexican students gathered Tuesday in front of the White House to draw public attention to their plight.
Part of the Caravana 43 project traveling to cities around the U.S., their goal was to draw public attention to Mexico’s domestic violence and shed light on U.S foreign policy.
Suspicious of the Mexican government’s explanations about the fate of the students, relatives argued that the U.S. should halt assistance to Mexico because of alleged human rights violations by the Mexican military and police.
On Sept. 26, 2014, a group of unarmed students and teachers from an Ayotzinapa teacher training college who were on their way to a protest were attacked, leaving six dead, 25 wounded and 43 missing.
Official statements by the Mexican federal government said the mayor of Iguala and his wife ordered the police and a gang to kill students and bury them alive. Mexico’s state attorney declared that all 43 students were dead in late January. But parents of those students insisted that those students were kidnapped and should be brought back alive.
“It was lie after lie from the very beginning what the government has been telling us,” said Anayeli Guerrero de la Cruz, whose 20-year-old brother, Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz, is among the missing.
She said the government gave the families 28 bodies from a mass grave, claiming those were the missing students, and refused to do further investigations or DNA tests.
“One of our biggest demands is to have independent investigations by the Organization of American States and United Nations,” Guerrero de la Cruz said.
Under the Merida initiative, the U.S. Congress has appropriated $2.3 billion since 2008 to provide the Mexican military with training, equipment, and advisory services to fight domestic drug trafficking problems. Congress said in a report that 15 percent of such assistance would be subject to Mexico’s human rights conditions.