They lost the bet, those who counted on the movement fizzling out at the end of the year. The government failed in its attempt to bury the case. Efforts to cast the tragedy into the pit of oblivion came up against the persistence of collective memory and shared outrage.

On January 26, for the eighth time since the fateful September 26, tens of thousands of people from various sectors marched through the streets of the capital with a two-pronged demand: to bring back alive the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa and to transform national public life. Nothing less.

Four months after the crime against students of the Raul Isidro Burgos teaching college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, and given the lack of credible results of the investigation by the Mexican government, the movement maintains its capacity to mobilize people and this time managed to achieve a new level of coordination with social movements opposed to the regime of Enrique Peña Nieto.

The VIII Day of Global Action for Ayotzinapa and Mexico consisted of ten hours of marches from the four corners of Mexico City to the Zocalo, in addition to protest activities in more than 40 cities in the country and the world. In the first march of the year, which showed the failure of those who assumed that the December holidays would stop the momentum of the protests, the students’ parents called on all the families of the victims of enforced disappearances in the country to the joint the fight.

Mario Cesar, the father of Manuel who was among the disappeared, initiated the rally with a call for unity in the protests against enforced disappearance in Mexico:

“It’s amazing the pain you feel when you have a missing child. I encourage all parents who have lost sons or daughters to contact us, so we´re in communication, so they too raise their voices because we aren’t the only ones… The bodies found in the clandestine graves also have faces, names, families who are entitled to know who these bodies belong to. To all those people, I invite you to join us so we can find a solution to this problem.”

Several speakers invited the thousands of people present at the rally that closed the day, to the National People’s Convention to be held on Feb. 5 and 6 in Chilpancingo, Guerrero to build strength and create conditions for the installation of a new constitutional assembly. February 5 is the anniversary of the promulgation of the 1917 Mexican Constitution and a national holiday.

Parents of the college students, each carrying a poster of their missing son, marched alongside members of Section XVIII of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE, by its Spanish initials), a member of the democratic current, the National Coalition of Education Workers (CNTE).

A huge praying mantis crafted in wood and cardboard by members of the Mexican Puppet Center bore the phrase “It was the state”. The phrase has become the slogan of protesters to refute the implausible official version of events the night of September 26 in Iguala, Guerrero. It has gained strength now lately with growing accusations that the Mexican army was also involved in the crimes.

Omar Garcia, an Ayotzinapa student and survivor of the attacks, acknowledged the strength and determination of the parents who have continued to demand for more than 120 days that their sons be returned alive. He noted that the government still does not accept its direct participation in the events of September 26 in Iguala, and is doing everything possible to close the case without resolving it.

Government authorities have even sought to deny the forced disappearance of the students of the rural teachers’ school. “In the past few days, in their report on human rights released internationally, they don’t even touch on September 26, and keep talking about the disappeared before that date, although this problem has transcended borders and all Mexicans are talking about it,” he said.

Garcia warned that it is time to do more than marches, and invited “all organized and unorganized members of society to coalesce in a great national movement to deeply transform our country. We cannot walk the same paths as always; we have to dare to do something different and we have to build it ourselves.”

He affirmed that the movement must propose the country’s transformation. “We as Ayotzinapa students and parents want to stick to the main slogan that has reverberated acros the whole world: bring back our students alive, but we also must begin to push for the transformation of Mexico.”

And he issued the invitation that would be repeated throughout the demonstration: “We will be waiting for you on February 5 to open discussion and attempt to forge national unity of Mexicans on a common agenda that will allow us once and for all to transform this country, against these corrupt institutions that are useless and do nothing to help our people.”

Other voices heavy with grief echoed in the historic square. Epifanio Álvarez, another father of one of the 43, said:

“We left our homes, our crops because we are humble peasants, but with a lot of heart and courage. We have suffered so much, but we’re not tired, we’ll keep fighting. A child cannot be forgotten, like the president said that time about it being time to get over it. We will fight to the end, with the support of you who feel what we are going through. Sometimes at two o’clock in the morning we remember and we start to cry. With your support we will continue without stopping. “

The Zócalo shouted in unison, ‘You are not alone! Peña Out!

The diagnosis is raw: governments, clergy, political parties are accomplices of crime. Nobody has done anything to put an end to this situation. The form of politics based on handing out illicit money has allowed crime to become embedded in political parties, which then become murderers of the people.

The neoliberal policies that the government has dogmatically adopted, the document continues, impoverish the majority and enrich a few oligarchs. Extractive companies blatantly steal the natural resources of farmers and indigenous peoples, taking their territories without consultation and with government complicity.

In the case of Ayotzinapa, the government faces its own disgrace, accumulated over the course of several presidential administrations full of lies and policies contrary to the interests of the majority of the population.

“Don’t take my word for it,” said Bardo Flores, another father who spoke at the rally. “It’s what experts from the National University say, that the version of events presented by Murillo Karam (Federal Attorney General) is not credible. He forgot that although we are farmers, although we are workers, low-income people, we are also thinking beings and we will not be deceived.”

The Ayotzinapa movement has propelled the construction of a new national consciousness, weaving the unity of many sectors dissatisfied with the neoliberal model. They see this as an opportunity to forge together a democratic and popular outlet to transform the system political Mexican, plagued by the worst crisis of the last half century.