"Mexican activists speak out about abducted students"

On September 26, a convoy of buses carrying students from Ayotzinapa, a teacher training institute in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero, was shot at by local police agents. The student teachers were returning from protests for rural teachers in the city of Iguala.

According to witnesses, a number of the students were loaded into police vehicles and driven away.

An hour later the convoy came under another attack, this time by members of what survivors say was an organized crime group.

The attacks that day left six dead and 17 wounded in Iguala.

Attention soon turned to the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa, many of whom were seen being driven away in police vehicles after the first attack.

Now, dozens of activists and family members of the missing students are touring North America to speak out about the incident and call for justice for the missing students, whom they believe are still alive somewhere.

The group made a stop at Six Nations on Sunday at the Our Sustenance Greenhouse on Fourth Line imploring Six Nations people to join them in their quest to find the students and speak out against what they say is a corrupt government in Mexico.

"We have been in a struggle to find the 43 people who disappeared and we've been met with a lot of resistance since that time," said one of the school's teachers, Jorge Luis Clemente Balbuena, speaking through translator Mina Ramos. "The police took them and we believe they are still alive. We are still searching for these people. We believe they are alive. We do not believe they are dead."

Hilda Legideno Vargas, mother of one of the missing students, 20-year-old Jorge Antonio Tizapa Legideno, spoke as Ramos translated, about her heartache since her son disappeared last September.

"The lives of the parents and the families of those who have disappeared - our lives have changed completely and it's left a big wound in our hearts and our souls," Vargas said. "We've had to leave the rest of our family at home and we've had to leave our jobs to spend all of our time looking for our family members. We've been searching everywhere. We searched all over the neighbouring communities. After the disappearances, the government told us not to search anymore - that it was over... and there was no point to keep the search on."

The parents of the missing Ayotzinapa students still hold out hope of finding them alive, and have stated that they do not believe the version given by Mexican authorities.

"We don't really believe the government because this is a government that has continually lied to us." Vargas said, "The government continues to say this is an isolated case... the government continues to maintain it was the drug cartels... but everyone knows the police - they were sanctioned by the government to do this and they continue to carry on activities like this on a daily basis."

The government hasn't done any official searches for the missing students, said Vargas.

"We can't give up now because there's no evidence. There's nothing telling us these people are gone or that they've been killed. We've had to go abroad to different places to share our stories about the gross human rights violations that are being carried out by the Mexican government at this time."

"My son is only 20 years old," said Vargas. "He can't have disappeared. He has to work and he has to go to school. He has a long life ahead of him. It's disgusting that the Mexican government... target poor people, indigenous people, working-class people. The Mexican government tries to say this is an isolated case but it's not true."

Right now, there are over 20,000 (missing people) in Mexico, said Vargas.

The majority of the disappearances have happened under rule of current president, the delegation claimed.

"We're not going to give up this struggle," said Vargas.

She and others believe the students are being held in clandestine prisons throughout the country.

"We know this Mexican government at this time has clandestine prisons with people that have disappeared," said Vargas. "We have so much love for our children. We can't just let them go like this. We can't forget about them.

They believe the student-teacher trainees were targeted because "the students in Mexico have always been repressed," said Balbuena through a translator. "They've always been very active against undemocratic Mexican governments. This specific school has a commitment to social justice and speaking out against human rights abuses. They focus on progressive educational movements."

A petition is being circulated to put pressure on the Canadian government to investigate what the group calls "human rights abuses" in Mexico.

And they said Canada needs to change its travel designation on Mexico from safe to unsafe to allow Mexicans to emigrate here.

About 30 Six Nations and area people turned out to hear about the group's struggle, one which Balbuena says has similarities with the struggles of Haudenosaunee people.

"We identify with your struggle here, as well," said Balbuena. "Our women are being exterminated. The struggle of being Indigenous people there is very similar to the struggle of Indigenous people here."

The delegation headed to Ottawa after their stop on Six Nations with hopes the Canadian government will assist them in opening an official investigation to find the missing students.