Jorge Álvarez-Nava

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## Jorge Álvarez-Nava

### Classification

Suspected homicide

**Jorge Álvarez-Nava** was a young man who is among forty-three Mexican students kidnapped on September 26, 2014, in Iguala, Mexico by local police and cartel members.

## Early Life

Jorge Álvarez-Nava was born to Epifanio Álvarez and Blanca Luz Nava and raised in La Palma, Guerrero, Mexico. At age six, he developed typhoid fever and throughout his life he had sinusitis. His health problems prevented him from working the land with his father, so he read books. He often told his mother what he learned from reading, including about history and space. He also spent hours in front of the computer, connected to the Wi-Fi network he shared with a neighbor, and every question that entered his mind lead him to the internet to find the answer.

At the age of seventeen, Álvarez-Nava discovered his love for music and with the help of the internet, he was able to interpret and master complex songs. His parents were impressed and proud with his accomplishment that they bought him a guitar. After graduating high school, he wanted to study medicine in college. To fund his tuition, Epifanio went to the United States to work in restaurants in California and Pennsylvania, but was arrested and deported when crossing the border illegally.

Regardless of the profession, Álvarez-Nava wanted to study. He attempted to enroll in the tuition-free Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa. Although he passed the admissions exam, he was unable to endure the physical endurance tests. So he returned home and began walking two to three hours with his father to sow corn. He worked up to what his health problems allowed him. When they returned home, he often played the guitar when they relaxed at the patio.

In 2014, Álvarez-Nava reapplied to the school and passed both the admissions and physical endurance exams. After settling in, his colleagues remembered that he taught some of them how to play music and it was common to see him play the guitar under a guava tree.

## Kidnapping

Álvarez-Nava was among a hundred students who commandeered several buses at 6:00 PM in order to travel to Mexico City to commemorate the 1968 Tlateleco massacre. They were stopped by Iguala municipal police force at around 9:30 PM reportedly on the orders of the mayor José Luis Abarca-Velázquez by using gunfire and roadblocks. A chase between the buses and police ensued in which six people were killed, three of which were civilians in unrelated buses or taxis. After the shootings, Álvarez-Nava and forty-two students, were arrested by the police and turned in to the police in Cocula. It is then believed the students were killed by Guerreros Unidos, a criminal gang that splintered from the now-defunct Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, either due to mistaken identity of being a rival gang or Abarca-Velázquez, who has ties to the gang, being mad that they were going to disrupt a speech he was to present.

## Investigation

In January 2015, former Attorney General Jesus Murrillo-Karam said it was the "historic truth" that the bodies of the students, had been incinerated in a huge fire at a garbage dump in Cocula and their ashes were tossed into the San Juan River. However, this version of events has not been accepted by experts and the families of the students.

Since the mass kidnapping, dozens of gang members and police officers, as well as Abarca-Velázquez and his wife and José Ángel Casarrubias-Salgadoalias who is the leader of Guerreros Unidos. No convictions have been made in the case, however. It has been speculated that the members of the Mexican Federal Police and 27th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army were involved, but this has not been proven. Additionally, others believe the students are still alive, forced to work as laborers.

The mass kidnapping and the lack of answers to what happened drew international condemnation and protests, many organized by the families of the students. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights assembled a panel of experts who conducted a six-month investigation who concluded in 2015 that the government's claims on the matter were "scientifically impossible."

The remains of three students have been identified. However, Jorge Álvarez-Nava and thirty-nine other students remain missing.

## Gallery

Portrait by Glasgow based artist and filmmaker Jan Nimmo, created between October 2014 and September 2015. The portraits include imagery unique to each student, based on biographical information compiled by activist Alma Eréndira Sandoval Carrillo.
## Sources

* Amnesty International
* *Running for Ayotzinapa 43*
* 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping on Wikipedia