One of the 43 missing Mexico students IDed, confirmed dead by DNA tests

DNA tests have confirmed that the remains of one of the missing of the 43 missing Mexican students were among the ashes and charred pieces of bone found near a trash dump in southern Mexico.

A team of Argentine forensic scientists, who have been investigating the missing students since September, have told the parents of Ayotzinapa student Alexander Mora that they have identified their son by using DNA tests on a small bone fragment.

A spokesperson for the parents of the missing students told Fusion that they have accepted the finding, but would not stop pressuring the government to find the remaining 42 students.

“If they think that the fact that they have managed to identity one of the students with a DNA test will make us stop and cry, they are wrong,” the spokesperson, Felipe de la Cruz , said during a rally attended by thousands of people in Mexico City.  “We are going to fight to find the other 42 students alive.”

De la Cruz also said that protests over the missing students will continue, and hinted that Ayotzinapa leaders and their allies will continue to stage road blocks, and find other means of pressuring the Mexican government.

“For us, there is no rest, and if there is no rest for us, there won’t be rest for this damn government,” de la Cruz added.

Saturday’s findings appear to partly confirm the government’s own account of what happened to the 43 students, who went missing on Sept. 26 after they were attacked by police in the city of Iguala.

In November, Mexican authorities reported that three incarcerated members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang confessed to the killing of the 43 students. The students were shot to death and incinerated in a 14-hour bonfire. Their remains were then crushed and stuffed into plastic trash bags, some of which were throw in a river and others tossed in a trash dump, according to the gruesome confessions.

Manuel Rueda is a correspondent for Fusion, covering Mexico and South America. He travels from donkey festivals, to salsa clubs to steamy places with cartel activity.