MEXICO CITY, Mexico: Protesters stormed the doors of Mexico’s presidential palace on Wednesday to demand justice for the 43 students whose mysterious disappearance shocked the nation nearly a decade ago.
Television footage showed dozens of demonstrators entering the palace in vans as President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador held a press conference inside the palace.
Calm returned after several hooded protesters were seen entering the building and security officers used what appeared to be pepper spray to repel them.
Presidential spokesman Jesus Ramirez said the protesters had only reached the entrance area and not the main building.
Lopez Obrador termed the incident as a “very clear plan of provocation.”
“They would like us to respond violently. We’re not going to do it. We’re not repressors,” said the spokesman.
“The door will be fixed and there’s no problem,” the president added calmly, shortly before concluding his news conference at the usual time.
The wooden doors of the Spanish colonial-era National Palace have been targeted by other demonstrators in the past, but this is believed to be the first time in years that they have been forced open.
Miguel Hernandez, 52, who witnessed the incident, said the demonstrators were able to break the door with a truck.
Relatives and supporters of the missing students have staged various protests in Mexico City, including a sit-in outside the palace, to demand access to Lopez Obrador, who lives and works in the city.
The president said that senior officials of the Ministry of Interior would welcome them instead.
The 2014 attack on students at a teacher training college in the violent southern state of Guerrero is considered one of the country’s worst human rights crimes.
They commandeered a bus to take them to a demonstration in Mexico City and then disappeared.
Investigators believe they were kidnapped by a drug cartel in collusion with corrupt police, but it is unclear what happened to them.
In 2022, a government-run fact-finding commission called the incident a “state crime” and said the military shared responsibility, directly or through negligence.
One theory advanced by the group was that cartel members targeted the students because they unknowingly boarded the bus with hidden drugs.
Arrest warrants have been issued for dozens of suspects, including military personnel and the former attorney general who led the investigation into the controversial mass disappearances.
Last year, the commission found that the military was aware of what was going on and had up-to-date information on kidnappings and disappearances.
So far, only the bodies of three victims have been identified.
More than 100,000 people have disappeared in Mexico, most since 2006, when the government of then-President Felipe Calderon sent troops to fight drug cartels.
Since then, nearly 450,000 people have died in the cycle of violence.
