43 faces were printed and pasted on a wide cardboard, hung on the fence protecting the local government building. The faces of 43 students that went missing in a faraway town after they confronted what has been told to be a night of violence and terror.
The wide cardboard was hung there after some hundred people marched to show their discontent with that violent act, and the fact that the local and national governments hadn´t been able to respond, and its been more than a month since they went missing.
Day of the death had just passed so in the public park there were some catrinas and altars for the dead decorating the landscape all those 43 faces were looking towards.
Since it was a weekend, passer-bys walked in front of the cardboard and stoped to look at some other signs hanging besides it. Signs speaking of unfairness, tyresome, demands for justice. All those words screaming at them, asking for their attention, for 5minutes of their thoughts.
Amongst those walk-byers there was a little girl, not much older than 10 years old. She stood in front of the faces and with ther arm in the air pointing at the 43 faces counted them, after finishing the count she just stood there looking at them. And then she walked towards the other cardboards and read their words.
All of a suden a woman shouted: Fernanda! a lady that minutes before was offering me handmade earings. No more than 10earings hung from a handkerchief sold at 10 pesos each.
I politelly refused and she walked away, but before she did she called out her little girl who was not that happy to leave that site where she was trying to understand what those 43 faces talked about.
Those 43 faces are the faces of 43 students who were preparing themselves to be teachers, rural teachers. To go out and give young kids in rural Mexico the tools needed to get into university and “prepare” themselves for the future, to overcome poverty and hence have families that are built outside of the poverty lines.
They were chased and killed, for dreaming of another world. Fernanda stood there wondering if that world existed, somewhere, where her mom didn´t sold 10 pesos earings in the plaza for a living.