Solidarity with the Students and Parents of Ayotzinapa

by the International Committee of the Fourth International

March 5, 2015

Five months ago 43 students from the rural teacher’s college in Ayotzinapa in Mexico’s Guerrero state disappeared. The Mexican state bears responsibility for these disappearances. The Fourth International expresses its full solidarity with the parents and friends of the Mexican students as well as with the tens of thousands of persons who have mobilized throughout the country, thus avoiding the case being closed by the authorities under the pretext of a purported definitive “historic truth.” The official version seeks in reality to hide a state crime and convince public opinion that the students were killed and incinerated by killers hired by organized crime.

Since September 26, 2014 the demand has been the same: “They were taken away alive! We want them back alive!” We denounce the clear participation and responsibility of the state at all levels and in particular the involvement of the 27th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army in the disappearance of our comrades.

Parents of the missing students, with thousands of other demonstrators, march in Mexico City.

The government of Peña Nieto has not only given no response to the demand of the social movement in Mexico, but has also attempted to hide the deep social crisis the country is going through. Ayotzinapa features in this crisis, not as an isolated deed, but as the consequence of a deliberate state strategy which has militarized the country and unleashed a wave of violence which can only lead to tragedies of this type. To this type of drama, we should add the increase in killings of women and violence against women in general, the dozens of journalists assassinated in recent years, and the growing violence of criminal groups against immigrants and national or central American immigrants, to complete the panorama of a country in full social decomposition.

Parallel to this, this government has liquidated the final social conquests that the Mexican revolution of 1910 had bequeathed in a political Constitution which is now dead. Simultaneously, Peña Nieto as well as the leading figures of his government has been implicated in scandals of corruption and conflicts of interest.

That is why the social movement of solidarity with the students of Ayotzinapa rejects the narrative of the government, which attempts to make this a “local” affair, and rejects any return to the institutional road and participation in the intermediary parliamentary elections in June. These elections will take place in the midst of a crisis of legitimacy of the electoral and political institutions of the country and when the movement points clearly to the responsibility of the state and demands the departure of Peña Nieto.

The defiance towards all parties and political-electoral institutions has reached an unprecedented level. We call on all the left, trade union forces, social movements in our country to pursue actions of solidarity with the Mexican social and popular movement and to maintain world pressure on the government of Peña Nieto whose international credibility is at its lowest.

We hail with enthusiasm the mass demonstrations and multiple forms of mobilization, struggle, and expressions of solidarity developing in Mexico.

We support the demands for the reappearance of the students alive, the punishment of those responsible both intellectually and materially for these deeds, as well as the growing demand for the resignation of Peña Nieto.

The state is responsible!

They took them away alive, we want them back alive!

This statement was drafted and adopted at the February, 2015 meeting of the International Committee of the Fourth International, with primary input from comrades from Mexico. It was drafted in Spanish and previously published in English translation by International Viewpoint.