43 haunting portraits of Mexico's missing students
In Iguala, a city in Mexico, it's impossible to forget what's happened. Everywhere, there are reminders of Sept. 26, the day when local police and drug cartel gunmen killed six people and kidnapped 43 students at La Escuela Normal Rural Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa. The 43 are still missing — presumed dead and buried in a mass grave somewhere in the state of Guerrero.
Reminders like this sign.
And demonstrations.
And memorials.
For those of us who live far from Iguala, there are fewer reminders, except for news headlines about the disappeared '43.'
43
The number has already become iconic — two digits that now represent the indescribable harm that Mexico's drug war has inflicted on the country, its institutions, and its people.
But '43' doesn't tell the stories of these missing young students. And so Mexican artists are doing something that headlines and this single, weighty number can't do: Force us to recognize each and ever missing student as an individual. As part of a project they call #IlustradoresConAyotzinapa, they've taken deconstructed missing posters like the one above, that show the students as a single mass of faces, and created individual portraits for every one of the 43. The results are haunting, beautiful, and enraging.
43 young people are missing. Here are their faces.
1) Abel García Hernández
2) Abelardo Vázquez Periten
3) Adán Abraján de la Cruz
4) Alexander Mora Venancio
5) Antonio Santana Maestro
6) Benjamín Ascencio Bautista
7) Carlos Iván Ramírez Villarreal
8) Carlos Lorenzo Hernández Muñoz
9) César Manuel González Hernández
10) Christian Alfonso Rodríguez Telumbre
11) Christian Tomás Colón Garnica
12) Cutberto Ortiz Ramos
13) Dorian González Parral
14) Emiliano Alen Gaspar de la Cruz
15) Everardo Rodríguez Bello
16) Felipe Arnulfo Rosa
17) Giovanni Galindes Guerrero
18) Israel Caballero Sánchez
19) Israel Jacinto Lugardo
20) Jesús Jovany Rodríguez Tlatempa
21) Jonás Trujillo González
22) Jorge Álvarez Nava
23) Jorge Aníbal Cruz Mendoza
24) Jorge Antonio Tizapa Lecineno
25) Jorge Luis González Parral
26) José Ángel Campos Cantor
27) José Ángel Navarrete González
28) José Eduardo Bartolo Tlatempa
29) José Luis Luna Torres
30) Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz
31) Julio César López Patolzin
32) Bernardo Flores Alcaráz
33) Leonel Castro Abarca
34) Luis Ángel Abarca Carrillo
35) Luis Ángel Francisco Arzola
36) Magdaleno Rubén Lauro Villegas
37) Marcial Pablo Baranda
38) Marco Antonio Gómez Molina
39) Martín Getsemany Sánchez García
40) Mauricio Ortega Valerio
41) Miguel Ángel Hernández Martínez
42) Miguel Ángel Mendoza Zacarías
43) Saúl Bruno García
h/t @ErinSiegal
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.