#FUEELESTADO Favorite 

“Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” Mahatma Gandhi

#FUEELESTADO is a project about the lack of social justice and the gross human rights violations in Mexico. It examines the conflict between state power and personal autonomy and responsibility, a conflict that, in Mexico, involves missing persons and unidentified bodies and that can’t be silenced anymore.

On Friday 26 September 2014, dozens of students from the rural school “Raúl Isidro Burgos” of Ayotzinapa (Guerrero, Mexico) went to Iguala to hold a protest against what they considered to be discriminatory hiring and funding practices by the Mexican government that is considered to be discriminating against teachers from rural areas. During the journey they have been intercepted by local police. A conflict broke out and by the end of the night, 6 people, 3 of which were students, had been shot dead, 17 have been wounded and 43 students went missing while they were in custody of Iguala’s police and they where allegedly been handed over to the criminal group Guerreros Unidos and presumably killed. Early the next morning a student’s body was later found with his face skinned and his eyes gouged out.

Founded in 1926 to offer children of farm workers access to education, the rural school “Raúl Isidro Burgos” where the 43 missing students are studying is an iconic school for elementary rural teachers in Ayotzinapa (Guerrero, Mexico). The school and its students are well known for their activism and for being a bastion of the leftist ideology of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century.

They are the most promising pupils of their communities and out of 600 who requested to be admitted in the school, only 140 were accepted, including the 43 that are now missing.

The generation of the first year had 140 pupils.
140 – 43 missing = 97
97 – 3 dead = 94
94 – 2 serious injured in hospitals =92

Of this 92 students more then 67 have already moved back with their families and they will probably never go back to that school.

This events and numbers have been the focus of my solo exhibition at Flux Factory in New York.