It's been a decade since 43 students disappeared in Mexico. Their parents still fight for answers

TIXTLA, México (AP) — Clemente Rodríguez has been documenting the long search for his missing son with tattoos.

First, it was an ink drawing of a turtle — a symbol of 19-year-old Christian Rodríguez's school — with a smaller turtle on its shell. Then, an image of Mexico's patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, accompanied by the number 43. Later, a tiger for strength and a dove for hope.

“How else is my son going to know that I have been looking for him?” asked Rodríguez. To the heartbroken father, the body art is evidence that he never stopped searching — proof he could perhaps one day show to his boy.

On Sept. 26, 2014, Christian Rodríguez, a tall boy who loved to folk dance and had just enrolled in a teachers college in the southern state of Guerrero, disappeared along with 42 classmates. Every year since, on the 26th of each month, Clemente Rodríguez, his wife, Luz María Telumbre, and other families meet at the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa and take a long bus ride to the capital, Mexico City, to demand answers.

They will do so again next week, on the 10th anniversary of their sons’ disappearance.

“It is hard, very hard,” Clemente Rodríguez said.

Rodríguez and the other parents are not alone. The 43 students are among more than 115,000 people still reported as missing in Mexico, a reflection of numerous unresolved crimes in a country where human rights activists say violence, corruption and impunity have long been the norm.

Over the years, authorities have offered different explanations. The previous administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto said that the students were attacked by security forces linked to a local drug cartel, and that the bodies were then turned over to organized crime figures, who burned their bodies in a dump and threw their ashes in a river. A bone fragment of one of the students was later found in the river.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's administration confirmed the source of the attack. But the current justice department — along with the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights and a Truth Commission formed specifically to investigate the students’ disappearance — refuted the story about the incineration of the bodies in a dump. They accused top former officials of planting the bone fragment in the river to suit their narrative. They also unearthed clues in a different location, including bone fragments from one of Christian's feet.

But the families still don't have any solid answers about what happened to the students. For his part, Clemente Rodríguez is far from convinced that his son is dead.

Not long after the students disappeared, parents took matters into their own hands, charging into remote, often gang-controlled mountain towns to search for their children. They encountered others who had been displaced by violence. Fear was everywhere.

“When I left the house, I never knew if I would come back alive,” Rodríguez said.

During the search, Christina Bautista, the 49-year-old mother of missing student Benjamin Ascencio, says strangers told her they'd been searching for a son for three years or a daughter for five. She had thought it would be a matter of weeks.

“I couldn’t take it, I took off running,” she said. “How could there be so many disappeared?”

Dozens of bodies were found, but not those of their children.

A decade of fighting to keep the case alive has turned the parents’ lives inside out. Before his son’s disappearance, Rodríguez sold jugs of water from the back of his pickup and tended a small menagerie of animals in the town of Tixtla, not far from the school. Telumbre sold handmade tortillas cooked over a wood fire.

When the students vanished, however, they dropped everything. Parents sold or abandoned their animals, left fields untended and entrusted grandparents with the care of other children.

Rodríguez, 56, has since managed to partially reassemble his clutch of livestock and has planted some corn on the family's plot of land. The family's main income, however, comes from homemade crafts sold on trips to Mexico City: mats woven from reeds; bottles of an uncle's locally brewed mezcal decorated with twine and colorful tiger faces; and cloth napkins embroidered by Telumbre.

Sometimes the stocky, soft-spoken Rodríguez visits his land to think or to release his anger and sadness. “I start to cry, let it all go,” he said.

Parents also find solace at the Rural Normal School at Ayotzinapa.

The school, which trains students to teach in poor remote villages, is part of a network of rural educational facilities with a long history of radical activism. School walls painted with slogans demanding justice for the missing students also display murals honoring Che Guevara and Karl Marx.

For the poorest families, Ayotzinapa offers a way out: Students receive free room, board and an education. In exchange, they work.

The atmosphere has militaristic undertones: New students’ heads are shaved and the first year is about discipline and survival. They are tasked with tending cattle, planting fields and commandeering buses to drive to protests in the capital. The students who disappeared in 2014 were abducted from five buses they had taken over in the city of Iguala, 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the school.

Parents arrived at Ayotzinapa little by little from villages deep in the mountains. They gathered on the school’s basketball court, a concrete pad under a pavilion where 43 chairs still hold photos of each of the missing students.

In the years since, a certain codependency has developed. The school's fight for justice is fueled by the parents' grief and anger. The school's students, meanwhile, “are our strong arm,” Bautista says. “Here is where the movement started.”

Students treat the parents respectfully and affectionately, greeting them as “aunt” or “uncle” as they pass through the guarded gates.

In late August, Rodríguez and other parents met for the last time with López Obrador, who leaves office at the end of this month.

The exchange was a grave disappointment.

“Right now, this administration is just like that of Enrique Peña Nieto,” Rodríguez said. “He’s tried to mock us” by hiding information, protecting the Army and insulting the families' lawyers, he said.

López Obrador continues to insist that his government has done its best to find answers. He cites dozens of arrests, including that of a former attorney general charged with obstructing justice. He has downplayed the role of the military, however. Years ago, López Obrador declared the students’ abduction a “state crime,” pointing to the involvement of local, state and federal authorities, including the Army.

The families met in July with López Obrador’s successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will take office Oct. 1, but she made no promises or commitments.

After the August meeting, Rodríguez posed for a portrait in the National Palace, his gaze firm and his fist raised.

Like other parents, he vows to keep fighting.

“During these 10 years, we have learned a lot about obfuscation ... lies,” Rodríguez said. Top military and government authorities “have the answers,” he added.

“They can reveal them."

Luz María Telumbre, whose son Christian is one of 43 missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School, protests for justice in the 10-year case in Mexico City, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Jesus Castro Rafaela, a first-year student at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School protests for justice in the 10-year case of 43 missing classmates, in Mexico City, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Indigenous women protest for justice in the 10-year case of 43 missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Mexico City, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Posters of the 43 missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School hang on the roadside, seen from the bus of their families who are traveling from Tixtla, Guerrero state, to the capital to protest for justice 10 years since their disappearance, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Christian Rodríguez's sister Carmen busses to the capital to protest for justice in the 10-year case of 43 missing students, including her brother, after departing Tixtla, Guerrero state, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. The missing students were all from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

First-year students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School bus from Tixtla, Guerrero state, to the capital to protest for justice in the 10-year case of their 43 missing classmates, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

A religious altar that reads in Spanish "We are missing 43!" stands inside the home of Cristina Bautista in Tixtla, Guerrero state, Mexico, Friday, Aug. 23, 2024. Bautista is the mother of Benjamin Ascencio, one of the 43 missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Cristina Bautista, whose son Benjamin Ascencio is one of 43 missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School who went missing 10 years prior, embroiders her son's name at home in Tixtla, Guerrero state, Mexico, Friday, Aug. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Mayrani Ascencio, whose brother Benjamin is one of 43 missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School stands at home in Tixtla, Guerrero state, Mexico, late Friday, Aug. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Clemente Rodriguez, whose son Christian is one of 43 missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School attends his corn crop in Tixtla, Guerrero state, Mexico, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Clemente Rodríguez and Luz María Telumbre, whose son Christian is one of 43 missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School bottle mezcal at home in Tixtla, Guerrero state, Mexico, to sell in the capital, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

A student walks at the dormitory of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

A student plays with a dog outside his dormitory at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Erick de la Cruz jokes around on the first day of class at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

First-year students line up before starting cleanup work at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

A student walks on the campus of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, late Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

First-year students gather in the dining hall at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Murals and the number 43 decorate the dormitory area at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School, the teachers' college from where 43 students went missing 10 years ago, in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Students cut each other's hair at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Political posters and stickers hang inside the print shop at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

First-year students at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School sweep the parking lot of their school in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

A mural covers the dormitories of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Students leave the dormitory area of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

First-year student Jesus Castro Rafaela walks inside the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School where a sign memorializes Julio Cesar Mondragon Fontes, a student who died on the night that 43 fellow students went missing, in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

First-year students walk by a mural featuring some of their 43 missing classmates at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Students check their schedules on the first day of classes at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, state, Mexico, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Students' clothes hang to dry in a field at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

The entrance of the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School features a turtle and the words "We want the 43," referring to the number of students who went missing 10 years ago, in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. Ayotzinapa means "The place of the turtles" in the Nahuatl Indigenous language. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

The Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School stands in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Photos of 43 students who have been missing for 10 years cover the stairs at their former Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Going into November's election, neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump has a decisive edge with the public on the economy, turning an issue that was once a clear strength for Trump into the equivalent of a political jump ball.

About 4 in 10 registered voters say Republican Trump would do a better job handling the economy, while a similar number say that about the Democratic vice president, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About 1 in 10 voters don’t trust either candidate, and a similar share has equal faith in them.

The finding is a warning sign for Trump, who has tried to link Harris to President Joe Biden’s economic track record. The new poll suggests that Harris may be escaping some of the president’s baggage on the issue, undercutting what was previously one of Trump’s major advantages.

The economy has long been a weak issue for Biden: A separate AP-NORC poll conducted in late June, before Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump, found that about 6 in 10 Americans disapproved of his handling of the economy. Earlier this year, Americans were much more likely to say that Trump's presidency helped the country on cost of living and job creation, compared to Biden's.

The new poll found that the economy is one of the most important issues for about 8 in 10 voters as they consider which candidate to support, dwarfing other top issues like health care and crime.

The aftermath of inflation's spike in 2022 to a four-decade high has pervaded this year's presidential contest. Shoppers are upset over their grocery bills. Higher interest rates are financially squeezing the buyers of homes and motor vehicles. All that has appeared to matter more to the public than the low 4.2% unemployment rate and stock market gains.

According to the AP-NORC poll, only about one-third of voters say the state of the national economy is somewhat or very good, although they're more optimistic about their own situation, with about 6 in 10 voters saying their household's finances are somewhat or very good. Both of those numbers have remained steady over the course of the year, despite falling inflation.

The candidates have clashing ideas about how best to straighten out the economy, giving voters a stark choice that might hint at how partisan identity increasingly informs views of the economy and policy. But neither campaign has fully explained how its plans would be implemented. Harris insists her plans would be fully funded and not add to the deficit, while Trump's team assumes — in defiance of most economic models — that growth will be high enough to offset the cost.

Mark Carlough, 33, who works on medical records in Philadelphia, plans to vote for Harris and says he believes that the taxes on imports proposed by Trump would hurt most consumers.

“The tariffs would be horrible for the economy," he said.

Richard Tunnell, 32, of Huntsville, Texas, plans to vote for Trump, just as he did in 2020. He’s not sure if the Republican has an advantage over Harris on the economy, but he noted that Trump has been a great businessman who remains one of the “richest men on the planet” even after filing for bankruptcy multiple times.

”I believe this country needs someone to reach their hand in it and work it like a game of Monopoly and that person is Donald Trump,” said Tunnell, a military veteran on disability.

Chantelle Breaux, 38, a stay-at-home parent from Lafayette, Louisiana, feels neither candidate has much to offer on the economy. She doesn't plan to vote — unless a candidate more to her liking enters the race.

“Kamala wants to put a Band-Aid where major surgery needs to be done on this economy,” said Breaux. “Trump wants to run the country as if it’s a business, but it isn’t a business that is going to support all of the people."

Former President Trump suggests growth would come from tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy leading to more investment, while a universal tariff of as much as 20% would direct that investment to building U.S. factories.

Harris has campaigned on more benefits for the middle class to be funded by higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, saying that would help to contain costs and deliver growth. Her team has warned that Trump's tariffs would lead to higher prices and worsen underlying inflation challenges.

The economy is one of many issues shaping public sentiment as the campaigns seek to turn out their voters. More than half of voters said health care was a top concern, while roughly half said that about crime, immigration, abortion policy and gun policy. Only about one-third called climate change one of the most important issues for their vote, and about one-quarter said that about the war between Israel and Hamas.

Trump and Harris are evenly matched in the poll on who would better handle crime and the war in Gaza. But the issues soon splinter in ways that reflect the distinct priorities of Republicans and Democrats.

Trump has an advantage over Harris on whom voters trust to better handle immigration. This issue was a problem for Biden, as well: Illegal immigration and crossings at the U.S. border with Mexico have been a challenge during much of his administration. Republicans are more likely to care about immigration, the issue where Trump has a clear upper hand.

Harris fares better than Trump when it comes to issues that Democrats care more about, including gun policy, health care, abortion policy and climate change.

Rosamaria Nunez, a 68-year-old retiree in San Antonio, Texas, identified gun violence as the most important issue facing the country, saying it became personal when her grandson called her last year to be picked up because of a school lockdown.

Nunez said she plans to vote for Harris, saying: "First of all, she’s a gun owner, so she can relate to the safety issue. She seems like she’s more in tune with a real person than Trump is.”

Overall, voters see high stakes for the presidential election’s impact on the country’s future, the economy, and the future of democracy in the U.S., but they’re less likely to think the election will have an impact on them personally. About 8 in 10 voters say the election will have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of impact on the country’s future. About three-quarters say the election will have a similar impact on the nation’s economy and the future of democracy in the U.S.

By contrast, half of voters say the election will have at least “quite a bit” of impact on them personally.

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The poll of 1,771 registered voters was conducted September 12-16, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for registered voters is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at the Israeli American Council National Summit, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris listens to a parent's survivor story as she joins Oprah Winfrey at Oprah's Unite for America Live Streaming event Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 in Farmington Hills, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)