Demonstrators hold signs with images of missing students during a pilgrimage to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City in December 2025. Relatives and classmates of the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa reiterated their demand for truth and justice. File Photo by Sashenka Gutierrez/EPA
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her administration has formally requested support from the United Nations to bring back international experts and resume the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa in September 2014.
Ayotzinapa is a small rural locality in the state of Guerrero and the name of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, which became internationally known the students disappeared.
Sheinbaum said Monday the government asked the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to recommend highly qualified technical experts to validate recent findings and ensure transparency in the case, local outlet Milenio reported.
The announcement comes as authorities revealed a new line of investigation and the discovery of a clandestine crematorium at a funeral home in Iguala, in Guerrero state. Officials said human remains dating to 2014 have been found and are being analyzed using advanced technology.
“There have been very important recent arrests related to the Ayotzinapa case as a result of exhaustive work by the scientific investigation prosecutor, particularly involving phone calls from that night,” Sheinbaum said.
In addition, a federal court recently ordered the Mexican Army to hand over more than 800 pages of intelligence documents that had previously been withheld. Having this information is considered a minimum condition by experts to resume their role assisting in a case the United Nations has described as an “open wound” for Mexico’s justice system.
On the night of Sept. 26, 2014, in Iguala, a group of students from the college seized five buses to travel to a protest in Mexico City. In a coordinated attack, municipal police, allegedly acting in collusion with the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel, opened fire, killing six people and forcibly taking 43 others.
Subsequent investigations suggest the violence may have been triggered after the students unknowingly took one bus carrying heroin, leading to an alleged cover-up involving federal authorities and the military, who monitored events in real time but did not intervene.
A key element in this new phase of the case could be the return of members of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, including Colombian lawyer Ángela Buitrago and Spanish psychologist Carlos Beristáin.
Both left Mexico in 2023, citing “systematic concealment” of information by the Defense Ministry, according to local newspaper El Universal.
The Ayotzinapa case drew international attention for exposing alleged systemic collusion between the Mexican state and organized crime, turning the mass disappearance into what critics have described as a state crime.
The administration of former President Enrique Peña Nieto promoted what became known as the “historical truth,” which held that the students’ bodies were burned in a municipal landfill. More recent hypotheses suggest the victims were divided and taken to different locations, which could explain why they have not been located more than a decade later.
Prosecutors are now using phone metadata analysis and 3D reconstructions to trace the fragmentation of the group.
For the families of the 43 students, the possible return of international oversight has brought cautious optimism.
“We do not blindly trust institutions, but we trust science and the eyes of the world,” a spokesperson for the families said.
While Sheinbaum has said the investigation now follows a different methodology, organizations such as “A Dónde Van los Desaparecidos” and some relatives, cited by Infobae, warn that recent arrests again point to Guerreros Unidos as the sole perpetrators and to the Cocula landfill as disposal site.
