From #YoSoy132 to #Ayotzinapa: The Criminalization of Youth Under Enrique Pena Nieto Nidia Bautista - CIP Americas
go to original October 6, 2015

Protesters carry a banner which reads "Ayotzinapa is Mexico" in reference to forced disappearances. (EFE)

The march in commemoration and protest of the disappearances of the 43 students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa brought thousands of protestors to the streets of downtown Mexico City this past Saturday, Sept. 25, 2015. The march was alive with music, performances, banners and chants in an act of memory and resistance in movement.

The collective demand: Justice. After a year of seeking their children, the parents expect results in the investigations and Mexican society has once again affirmed that it’s forbidden to forget the 43.

Thousands of young people marched, mostly university students but also from high school and junior high and even children. Mexican youth has born the brunt of state violence and over the past three years hundreds have been arbitrarily arrested, assassinated and, like in the case of the students from Ayotzinapa, disappeared.

Under Felipe Calderon, the militarization of Mexican cities and countryside with the deployment of thousands of armed forces led to a rapid deterioration in public safety. The country saw a rise in arrests and violence against youth. Many of them were criminalized and wrongly identified as members of organized crime, a tactic to legitimize use of unwarranted public force against them.

Only three months before the attacks in Iguala, Guerrero last year, 22 young people were shot and killed in Tlatlaya in the State of Mexico by an Army unit. They were attacked under the allegations that they belonged to a gang that crossed over the border from Guerrero. According to reports, weapons appear to have been placed on the corpses in positions to simulate a battle. Then-Attorney General Murillo Karam, now infamous throughout the world for his mishandling of the Ayotzinapa case, reported that rogue soldiers killed 8 of the youth and all the others died in a shootout. Witnesses dispute this version and the case is still under investigation.

The Tlatlaya executions are just one example of how the legacy of violence of the Calderon term continues under the Peña Nieto administration. These cases of disappearances and assassinations are extreme expressions of a general assault on youth seen in recent years.

The criminalization of social protest has greatly affected the wellbeing of youth and has had a negative impact on democratic freedoms in Mexico. According to the Front for Freedom of Expression and Social Protest’s report on Control of Public Space, violence against youth has increased under Peña Nieto since December 2012. This includes the criminalization of protest, arbitrary detention and attacks on journalists and human rights defenders.

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