The 43 Disappeared: Mexico’s Legacy of Impunity, with John Gibler [] i3: ideas that inform and inspire

On the night of September 26, 2014, in the town of Iguala in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero, 43 students disappeared. This is their story, with implications for governance in Mexico and other opaque regimes around the world …

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After more than 100 police, soldiers and hitmen collaborated to attack Ayotzinapa students in Iguala, Guerrero on the night of September 26-27, 2014, wounding scores, killing 6 people and forcibly disappearing 43 Ayotzinapa students, two successive administrations have promised and failed to find the disappeared and document the full truth of what happened that night in Iguala. While the brazen cover-up of the Peña Nieto PRI administration (2012-2018) has been exhaustively documented, the current López Obrador administration’s (2018-2024) sabotage of the investigation is still ongoing and more difficult to parse. John will delve into the mechanics of building impunity in the case of the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa, and its implications for other authoritarian regimes worldwide.

John Gibler, is a journalist and author who lives and writes in Mexico. He is the author of I Couldn’t Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us: An Oral History of the Attacks Against the Students of Ayotzinapa (City Lights, 2017), To Die in Mexico: Dispatches From Inside the Drug War (City Lights, 2011), and Torn from the World: A Guerrilla’s Escape from a Secret Prison in Mexico (City Lights, 2018), among other books. In addition to his continued reporting on the Ayotzinapa investigation, he has reported on the murder of activist Berta Cáceres in Honduras and the “regime of exception” in El Salvador.

i3: ideas that inform and inspire

CONVERSATIONS WITH BIG THINKERS

Join us in greeting distinguished thought leaders—from the sciences and humanities alike—as they share with us the latest advances in their respective fields, through a year-round calendar of presentations and related event, right here in San Miguel de Allende. What will color our future, enhance our knowledge, deepen our grasp of what it means to be human? From the clockwork of the cosmos to the inner workings of the mind, exponential advances in our understanding of the world—and ourselves—pose a constant challenge to “conventional wisdom.” i³ rises to this challenge through in-person conversation with some of the leading thinkers of our time.