As part of an on-site visit to Mexico, a delegation of the IACHR visited the Normal Rural School of Ayotzinapa, in Iguala, Guerrero State. Photo: IACHR (Flickr). Some rights reserved.
In Latin America, constantly worrying about the safety of one’s growing children is second nature. First nature, I’d say, as evidenced by the first words my father pronounced as he hugged my mother after a burglar broke into our home in Brazil with her inside: “What if the kids had been home?”
I was only a kid – 9 or 10 and my brother two years younger. This fear only worsens as Latin American children get older and begin to venture into the world on their own. So when 43 teenagers and young adults on a trip to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre vanished, every Latin American parent at one point must have thought: “It could have been my son.” I know my mother did.
