Following more than five years of mystery, authorities in Mexico have successfully identified the remains of one of the 43 students who vanished in Ayotzinapa, Mexico.
The identified individual, Christian Alfonso Rodríguez Telumbre, was confirmed through DNA testing, marking a significant breakthrough in a case that has perplexed the Mexican populace, as announced by Mexican authorities on Tuesday, July 7.
On September 26, 2014, 43 students from a teacher’s college in Guerrero state disappeared abruptly. Investigations by the former Mexican administration of Enrique Peña Nieto concluded that they were apprehended by the police and handed over to the criminal group Guerreros Unidos.
The investigation suggested that their bodies were incinerated in a landfill and then disposed of in a river in the municipality of Cocula, a theory known as “the historical truth.”
However, findings from a forensic investigation conducted by experts in Argentina contradicted this hypothesis, casting a veil of mystery over the students’ disappearance for years.
Upon assuming the presidency, Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged to uncover the truth. Subsequently, he established a commission to revisit the investigation, effectively starting from scratch.
The Attorney General’s Office of Mexico reported that the newly discovered body stems from six pieces of remains sent to the laboratory at the University of Innsbruck in Vienna, Austria, where they underwent months of analysis.
In a contradiction of the previous administration’s investigation, the attorney general’s office stated that evidence of the body was not found in the landfill or the river. Instead, it was discovered approximately 800 meters from “where the historical truth is created.”
“Without a doubt, this marks the commencement of a new phase in the investigation, not only dismantling the so-called historical truth, but also establishing the conditions for the indications, evidence, and investigations to elucidate the unfortunate events in Ayotzinapa,” stated Mexico’s undersecretary of Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas.
“We have shattered the pact of impunity and silence that shrouded” the case, proclaimed Mr. Omar Gómez Trejo, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, during a news conference.
He added, “today we assure the families and society that the right to the truth will prevail.”