Antonio Tizapa crossed the finish line of the New York City Marathon Sunday holding a poster of his son's face. Tizapa's son, Jorge Antonio Tizapa Legideño, is one of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa rural teachers' college missing from the Mexican state of Guerrero since the night of September 26, 2014, when they were attacked by local police. The Mexican government has claimed the students were killed and incinerated by a local drug gang. But Mexican news reports and an independent investigation have cast doubt on the Mexican government's account and pointed to the role of the Mexican military and federal police in the students' disappearance. Amid international protest, the Mexican government has reopened the investigation, and the United States has cut off $5 million in drug war aid to Mexico, a tiny fraction of the billions it has provided.
Along the route of the New York City Marathon, supporters of Antonio Tizapa lined up with posters showing the faces of the 43 missing students and continued to demand they be returned alive. Others ran the marathon alongside Tizapa, including Amado Tlatempa, a cousin of two of the 43 missing students. At the end of the race, Tizapa delivered a message to his son. "I want him to know that I am far away, but I have been fighting to find him," Tizapa said. "I hope that it's not too far from now that they return them—that they return him and his fellow students."
Special thanks to Igor Moreno, Juan Carlos Dávila, Clara Ibarra, Linda Artola, Clàudia Prat, Elia Gran, Rachael Bongiorno and Hugo Rojas for their work on this report.
Click here to see our previous interview with Antonio Tizapa and Amado Tlatempa.