Around the red metal sculpture which reads "+43", in the La Reforma median [main boulevard], at the corner with Bucareli Avenue [near the offices of the Secretariat of Government Relations] in Mexico City, parents of the disappeared Ayotzinapa normal school students planted "forget-me-nots", the flower that represents a reminder of faithfulness, in this case the promise not to abandon the struggle to recover their children.
For them there is no possibility of repairing the damage, as suggested by the Undersecretary for Human Rights of the Secretariat of Government Relations, Roberto Campa. Firmly, they say they will not accept a penny from the federal government and just want them to return their children. They believe that "the government knows where they are".
MV Note: The General Victims Law, passed in 2013 as a result of pressure by victims of the drug war, provides for financial "reparation of damages" to victims and their families. As it is, the Executive Commission for Attention to Victims doesn't function.Eighteen months have passed since the disappearance of the young men, and Maria de Jesus Tlatempa Bello, mother of Jose Eduardo Bartolo Tlatempa, sends a message to students: "have lots of encouragement, God willing, you will come out alive".
The lady took a while, as she sowed flowers, to recall that mother love is infinite, and on behalf of the parents of the 43, she demanded that the lives of their children be respected.
"Roberto Campa is talking about reparations for the damage. I ask him whether he would sell his son or his loved one, because for us our love our children is without price," she said.Beginning about three in the afternoon, many people who attended the event dedicated themselves to preparing the land around the "anti-monument", so that parents could plant the "forget-me-nots". They also planted other plants donated by the Council of Original Peoples and Barrios of Xochimilco [borough of Mexico City where flowers and plants are grown on "floating gardens" of the remnants of a lake], while the Chapingo [agriculture] University gave them the compost to fertilize the soil.
...Epifanio Alvarez said the parents of the students
"are standing together, with a lot of anger and a lot of courage to keep fighting."Meanwhile, the group's spokesman, Felipe de la Cruz, said that they are not stopping looking for the youths or requiring that the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts proceed with the investigation.
"Today we are doing a symbolic task, because we know that plants give life, and like the lives that were taken away, we will make these plants flourish and return our children to the school," he said.Spanish original