Family members and friends march in search of justice for the missing 43 Ayotzinapa students in Mexico City, Friday, Aug. 26, 2022. Six of the 43 students Mexican authorities have arrested a retired general and three other members of the military in connection with the disappearance of 43 schoolchildren in southern Mexico in 2014, the government said Thursday. Public Security Assistant Secretary Ricardo Mejia said among those arrested was the former officer who commanded the military base in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state in September 2014 when students from a radical teachers’ college were kidnapped. Mejía said a fourth arrest was expected soon, and later a government official with knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter confirmed that another member of the military had been arrested. Mejía did not name those arrested, but the commander of the Iguala base at the time was José Rodríguez Pérez, then a colonel. Just a year after the students disappeared, and with the families of the missing students already suspecting military involvement and demanding access to the base, Rodríguez was promoted to brigadier general. The government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Rodriguez had been arrested and said he was being held at a military facility. The source would say of the others arrested only that two were officers and the third a soldier. Last month, a government truth commission reinvestigating the case issued a report that cited Rodriguez as allegedly responsible for the disappearance of six of the students. Interior Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas, who led the commission, said last month that six of the missing students were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days and then handed over to Rodríguez, who ordered them killed. The report had called the disappearances a “state crime,” stressing that authorities had been closely monitoring the students from the teachers’ college in Ayutthaya since they left their campus through their abduction by local police in the city of Iguala that night. A soldier who had infiltrated the school was among the abducted students, and Encinas claimed the military did not follow its protocols and did not try to rescue him. “There is also information confirmed by 089 emergency calls where it is alleged that six of the 43 missing students were held for several days and were alive in what they call the old warehouse and from there they were handed over to the colonel,” Encinas said. “Allegedly, the six students were alive for four days after the events and were killed and disappeared on the orders of the colonel, alleged then-Colonel José Rodríguez Pérez.” Multiple government and independent investigations have failed to produce a definitive account of what happened to the 43 students, but it appears that local police pulled the students off several buses in Iguala that night and turned them over to a drug gang. The motive remains unclear. Their bodies were never found, although burned bone fragments have been matched to three of the students. The role of the military in the disappearance of the students has long been a source of tension between the families and the government. From the beginning there were questions about the military’s knowledge of what happened and their possible involvement. The parents of the students have demanded for years that they be allowed to investigate the military base in Iguala. It wasn’t until 2019 that they were given access along with Encinas and the Truth Commission.
