THE 43 DISAPPEARED MEXICAN YOUTH REMEMBERED OUTSIDE DUBLIN MEXICAN EMBASSY

Diarmuid Breatnach

People outside the Mexican Embassy in Dublin on Wednesday evening remember the 43 students and call for justice.

Names of the Disappeared being laid outside the Mexican Embassy
(Photo: D.Breatnach)

A short but moving event was held in Dublin yesterday evening (Thursday 26^th September) to remember the 43 Mexican students made to “disappear” in Mexico by the authorities or in collusion with them on 26^th September 2014. The students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College were kidnapped while they were taking part in an annual commemoration of the Tlatelolco Massacre (of 300-400 students and other civilians by police and military on 2^nd October 1968, less than a fortnight before the opening of the Olympics in the city that year). They are widely believed to have been murdered and a supposed investigation by Mexican State authorities petered out without a result.

Some staff leaving the Mexican Embassy in Dublin
(Photo: D.Breatnach)

The event last night was organised by the Mexico Ireland Solidarity Collective (MISC) and Latin America Solidarity Centre (LASC). Sunflowers as a symbol of hope were placed in the railing of the Mexican Embassy in Raglan Road, Dublin and ribbons in the Mexican colours of green, white and red were also tied there. The names of the 43 “disappeared” students were laid on the pavement in front of the Embassy which, like the embassies of a number of other states, is located in a quiet upper-middle class area south of the Grand Canal. Few people passed the remembrance event and staff leaving the Embassy did not stop to talk to the gathering except for the last two who greeted them politely and took a photo of the display.

A spokesperson for MISC said that the event is organised every year so that the people are not forgotten.

People took turns to read the name of each of the 43 from their cards and the traditional “Presente!” was called out after each one, signifying that alive or dead, they are present with us, remembered.

A statement was read and some verses from Woody Guthries’s Plane Crash at Los Gatos were sung and then a long silence was observed, which ended with a call for “Justicia!”

end.