Mexico marks four months since 43 Ayotzinapa students disappeared

Marking four months since 43 students went missing in Mexico's Guerrero state, supporters demanded the students' return during mass demonstrations in Mexico and abroad.

Thousands of protesters attended marches across Mexico on Monday, according to local media, with many blaming the state for the students' disappearance. In Mexico City, protesters converged from four directions for a rally in Zócalo, the main square. 

As the protesters marched, they chanted, "Careful with Guerrero, a guerrilla state" and held banners that read, "They took them alive, we want them back alive!"

At marches in other states — including Chiapas, Veracruz and Guerrero, where the students attended a rural teachers' training college — protesters held photographs of the missing students and stood in front of government buildings, reported SinEmbargo, a local news website. Thousands have demonstrated in Mexico and major U.S. cities since the students disappeared on Sept. 26.

Family members and classmates of the missing students released a video on Sunday, urging people to attend the Monday protests to put pressure on the government, which has made little progress in the case. The remains of one student, Alexander Mora, have been identified, but the others are still missing.

"Our children were massacred and kidnapped by the government," Berta Ramirez Nava, the mother of missing student Julius Rairez Nava, said in the video. She said the aim of Monday's actions was "the government will see that we are not few, we are the majority and we are not going to shut up."

A student who survived the violent events of Sept. 26, also blamed the state for the students' disappearance. "They make us invisible, discredit us, because they are afraid of the organizing of the people," Omar Garcia said in the video.

Four months ago, police opened fire on students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, a teachers' training college for poor students, killing three students and three bystanders. Police then abducted 43 of the students and handed them over to a drug cartel to be executed. The killings were allegedly ordered by Iguala Mayor José Luis Abarca, according to a series of confessions.

The students were in Iguala in Guerrero trying to raise money to attend an annual protest in Mexico City on Oct. 2 to commemorate the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968, when hundreds of students were killed there for protesting state repression and violence.

Students at Ayotzinapa are known for their socialist ideals, and the normal schools, which offer free education to the rural poor, were a product of Mexico's leftist revolution. Classmates of the missing students have said the government sees the schools as an unnecessary expense and a threat because of their tendency to protest what they see as oppressive government policies.