Disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa Students

On the night of September 26, 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Iguala, Guerrero, were forcibly disappeared. Local police, acting in coordination with the Guerreros Unidos cartel (a Beltrán Leyva successor group), intercepted buses carrying the students, attacked them (killing six people), and handed the surviving 43 over to the cartel. They have never been found.

The case became a defining moment of the Mexican security crisis — exposing the fusion of state institutions and organized crime at the local level. The government’s initial investigation (the “historical truth” that students were burned at a garbage dump) was widely discredited. Subsequent investigations revealed military involvement and extensive cover-ups. The case remains a symbol of impunity and state-cartel collusion.