Confronting Mexico's Latest Cruel Massacre

In response to the horrific kidnapping of 43 students from Iguala in Guerrero State, Mexicans, fed up with the country's violence and corruption, took to the streets, including this protest in Mexico City.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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Portraits of the missing students hang in the main square of Chilpancingo de los Bravo, the capital of Guerrero State where the drug cartels operate with impunity.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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At Ayotzinapa University, a memorial to students who died during the recent violence in Iguala.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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Members of a local militia in Guerrero look for the missing students. While searching for the missing students, other mass graves were uncovered, which highlights the pervasive violence in Guerrero State.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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Community police patrol the violent streets of Xaltianguis.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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Cars are searched in the wake of the disappearance of the students and recent drug cartel violence.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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With community police searching the area, Iguala has become a massive crime scene.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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The mountains of Guerrero, where cartels and drug plantations are common.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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During demonstrations, protestors drew chalk outlines to represent the bodies of crime victims. More than 70,000 people have been killed in cartel related violence in the past seven years.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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The main cemetery in Chilpancingo, the capital and second-largest city of the state of Guerrero, Mexico, where many of the victims of Mexico's drug war are buried.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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A bullet-ridden house, a vestige of Mexico's drug war, was damaged during a confrontation between local drug gangsters and the federal police.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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Ayotzinapa University, a rural school founded after the revolution to bring literacy to the countryside, is steeped in a radical leftist tradition, with murals of the revolutionary Che Guevara adorning the campus. On Sept. 26, about 120 of Ayotzinapa’s teacher trainees went to Iguala to hijack buses to travel to Mexico City, where they hoped to commemorate a massacre of students back in 1968. After taking two vehicles, they ran into a blockade of police officers, who began firing at them. The corrupt police and cartel thugs then kidnapped 43 students who are now feared dead.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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A communal room where students sleep in Ayotzinapa University. The university operates on a shoestring, with students often sleeping on floors in dilapidated buildings. Students have been protesting an overhaul of the education system by Mexican President Pena Nieto.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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Margarito Guerrero, father of Jhosvani Guerrero, one of the 43 students who disappeared on Sept. 26 from Ayotzinapa University.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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Cristina Bautista, mother of Benjamín Ascencio Bautista, one of 43 students kidnapped and feared killed.

Sebastian Liste—NOOR for TIME

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November 16, 2014 10:20 AM EST

On Sept. 26, a drug gang, aided by corrupt police officers, allegedly abducted and killed 43 students in Mexico’s Southern Guerrero state. The assassins incinerated their corpses for more than 14 hours before discarding their remains into plastic bags and throwing them in a nearby river.

“Even before I arrived here, I was shocked by this story,” says photographer Sebastian Liste, who was on assignment for TIME. “But it’s only when I got to Mexico that I understood how important this event would be for this country’s contemporary history, so I was very interested and motivated to work on this story.”

Liste first visited the victims’ families. “I knew they were key in understanding the pain that so many Mexican families have been facing for so long,” he says. “All of the families were staying at that Ayotzinapa university where their kids were before they ‘were disappeared’.”

Some parents were sleeping in the same beds that used to be occupied by their children, the photographer tells TIME. “I stayed at the university during el Dia de Muertos, the country’s most important national holiday. Lots of students from all over the country were arriving to support these families and show their respects for the victims.”

Liste spoke with these families for hours as they waited for answers. “[At that time], the government had failed to provide clear information about what had happened that night,” which, he says, used to be an accepted part of life in Mexico – until that night.

“Parents all around the country started to say, ‘Enough’. “ The words “Vivos se los llevaron, vivos los queremos” [“They were taken alive, alive we want them back”] became a national anthem. “That night, the relationship between these [corrupt officials] and drug cartels was [made more evident] than ever before, and Mexican society is tired of the deaths and the disappearances. One thing is sure, it will now be difficult for them to silence an entire country.”

Sebastian Liste is represented by Noor Images. See more of his work here.

Photo essay edited by Alice Gabriner, TIME’s International Photo Editor, and Mikko Takkunen, Associate Photo Editor at TIME.

Olivier Laurent is the editor of TIME LightBox. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @olivierclaurent