On September 26th 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college in the Guerrero coastal state of Mexico were abducted by municipal police, in the rural town of Iguala, while en route to a protest. Their disappearance and subsequent government handling of the case led to vast numbers of people demonstrating; demanding answers, resignations and an end to collusion between drug cartels and government officials. Knoll, A., (December 2014) "YOU TOOK THEM ALIVE, WE WANT THEM ALIVE!" New Internationalist
Rosa’s response is through textile: “…I can’t stop thinking …about the young students and their parents, the pain they feel because their sons were taken away, the lack of justice, the lies that the government has told. They are still missing, but we will not forget them”.
Her image is universal, embracing “the loss of the students” and signifying growth “a seed from which grows a number of branches full of leaves, representing the idea that this terrible event was the ground for social movements and consciousness about the situation of violence we are living in my country.”
She laboured long on this piece: "… it was a very thorough process… [and] very painful to make. …I put it away for several months, until I decided to finish it for the third anniversary of the disappearance, in September 2017.
Rosa is hopeful that: “people [will] connect with [this piece] ...at an emotional and intuitive level and feel empathy for the students and their families”. Her ultimate aim is that: “it keeps our memory alive and helps to prevent something like this happening again”
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