Ayotzinapa Investigations  is a special page dedicated to the work of the National Security Archive and others in documenting and seeking justice for the 43 disappeared students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College. The National Security Archive advocates for the declassification of documentary evidence in fighting impunity amidst the unprecedented crisis of forced disappearance in Mexico.

On the night of September 26 and in the early morning of September 27, 2014, local police in the town of Iguala, Guerrero, attacked a group of students, leaving six people dead, dozens injured, and 43 of the students forcibly disappeared. The violence committed against the unarmed young men by government security forces in collusion with the criminal group Guerreros Unidos sparked mass protests throughout the country.

Then-president Enrique Peña Nieto opened an investigation that would prove deeply inadequate and ultimately fraudulent. Domestic and international criticism over the official investigation led the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to sponsor a group of independent international experts (known as the GIEI) who arrived in Mexico in March of 2015 to work on the case.

Over time, the GIEI produced six reports that documented the Mexican government's falsification of records, destruction of evidence, and systematic use of torture against detainees and suspects throughout the official investigation. The independent experts pursued additional lines of investigation and uncovered new revelations, including the involvement of high-level government officials and the military in the cover-up and the Mexican military's infiltration and surveillance of the Ayotzinapa students before, during, and after the events in Iguala.

On December 4, 2018, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador issued a decree for the creation of the Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case (COVAJ), headed by Deputy Secretary of Human Rights Alejandro Encinas. A special prosecutor’s office, led by human rights lawyer Omar Gómez Trejo, was designed to prosecute those responsible for the crime and the cover-up, and all state agencies were ordered to open their archives to the investigators. It was an era of renewed optimism for the case.

The new investigative bodies spent the next several years pursuing new leads, while also addressing criminal actions that occurred during the former administration’s investigation. The positive identification, in June 2021, of the remains of two Ayotzinapa students -  Christian Alfonso Rodríguez Telumbre and Jhosivani Guerrero - and consistent dialogue between the victims’ families and the government were encouraging signs of progress. 

As time passed, however, President López Obrador began to respond to political pressure and demand results from the investigation. On August 18, 2022, COVAJ released a report calling the Ayotzinapa case a “crime of the State.” The following day, the government announced the detention of former Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam, while special prosecutor Omar Gómez Trejo obtained 83 arrest warrants, including 20 for military personnel. His decision to charge members of the military enraged the president, who had become a close ally and champion of the armed forces during his term in office. The case began to fall apart. Gómez Trejo was forced out of office and in October fled the country in fear for his safety. Months later, in May 2023, the press reported that Alejandro Encinas had been targeted with Pegasus spyware by the Mexican military. Encinas resigned shortly after, leaving a vacuum of authority for the presidentially appointed commission. The last of the GIEI team left the country following the presentation of their sixth and final report in July 2023. The independent experts cited the military’s refusal to grant full access to their archives as the primary impediment to progress in the case.

President López Obrador insists the military has fully complied with his presidential decree and has cooperated with the investigators, despite evidence to the contrary. To date, the officials named to replace Encinas and Gómez Trejo have made so little progress on the case that the victims’ families announced they would no longer meet with officials from López Obrador’s government.

The nature and scale of the crime, the involvement of state actors, and the persistent impunity that has blocked efforts to obtain justice for the students have made the Ayotzinapa case a powerful symbol of state-sponsored criminality in Mexico and emblematic of the pervasive problem of forced disappearance that continues to occur today. The Mexican government’s conspiracy to sabotage its own investigation represents a cruel double disappearance for the families of the students: of their sons and of their hope for justice.

Since 2015, the National Security Archive has filed hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests for U.S. documents related to the case of the 43 students, the “war on drugs” and its consequences, and U.S. security assistance to Mexico. In 2020, Kate Doyle and the National Security Archive partnered with reporter Anayansi Díaz-Cortes and Reveal News from the Center for Investigative Reporting to develop the podcast series, “After Ayotzinapa,” that was released in January 2022. Two months later, the Spanish-language version, “Después de Ayotzinapa,” was released in co-production with Adonde Media. The National Security Archive continues to investigate the case with our partners at Centro Prodh and Reveal.

On the Ayotzinapa Investigations page you will find Electronic Briefing Books, links to the podcasts “After Ayotzinapa” and “Después de Ayotzinapa,” photographs and videos, special interviews, and key reports and publications issued over the years. We hope this page will serve as an ongoing resource for investigators and readers of the case.