This photograph was taken at Vassar College which is in Poughkeepsie, upstate New York as a campus vigil. I had to take the Metro North to the last stop which was Poughkeepsie the travel time was 1hr ½ which followed by a $7 cab drive. Vassar College is a private now coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York. The college was originally founded as a women’s college in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, but the school became a coeducational institution in 1969.

This picture captures the 43 Mexican student teachers missing since September 26^th, 2014. The students were from a teacher training college in a town named Ayotzinapa they traveled to Iguala, a city in southern Mexico after participating in a demonstration to promote teachers’ rights seeking to raise funds for education. Iguala’s mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez, and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa were behind the order to local police which had ties to the drug cartel to stop the students; they demanded the police to detain them at all costs and by any means necessary which resulted in six people found shot dead while 43 of the teacher students were never seen again.

This moved me tremendously, mainly because we lost people whom cared to make a difference to the future which are the kids of this world. On November 20^th, 2014 here in NYC protests were made in support for families of these teacher students. Although I could not participate because I had to go to work, I made sure to grab my black eyeliner pen and draw the number 43 on my left side of my face. I walked proudly out of my home that morning; I was also approached by 4 people that asked me what it meant as I proceeded to explain to them the way Mexico was terrorizing its own civilians