The students, from a rural teachers college in the southern state of Guerrero, disappeared after they were attacked by local police in the city of Iguala on September 26, 2014.

The parents, who began a 43-hour fast on Wednesday, are due to lead a major demonstration in Mexico City on the anniversary itself this Saturday. It reinforced a widespread perception of official collusion with the cartels and anger over the staggering scale of disappearances in Mexico – 25,000 people in the last eight years, according to government figures.

The report, along with the anniversary of the disappearances, comes as Peña Nieto faces a record low approval rating of 35% for his failure to effectively manage the drug violence and corruption that has devastated Mexico in recent years. They also will encourage the public to write letters to the governments of Mexico and the United States. But more than that, it has peeled the mask off the Mexican government opening a Pandora’s Box of crime, negligence and a political cover-up that seems to run up to the highest levels of power. It reveals the levels of corruptibility and criminal complicity that exist within different levels of government. The first meeting, last October, ended with the parents complaining that Peña Nieto did not appear to understand the depth of their pain.

“He was here working with me”. Police and state authority collusion with cartels is largely acknowledged.The events in Iguala have shed light on a long-denied aspect of daily life in Mexico: the country’s crisis of enforced disappearance.

The authorities presented a bone fragment found near a trash dump outside Iguala matched the DNA of one of the 43 students. The first crucial step to rebuilding this trust lies in answering a simple question – where are the 43 Ayotzinapa students?

But the parents of the missing students and their supporters reject that account, which has also been criticized by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and other worldwide organizations.

The parents asked that the unit be placed under global supervision, but Sanchez said it was up to the foreign ministry to look into it. There is a military base not far from where the students were killed. They claim his conclusions were “a historical farce” rather than a historical truth and were meant to deceive them. Nevertheless, in practice, the investigation process has lacked both transparency and efficacy.

Vidulfo Rosales, a lawyer for the parents, said the president had not yet “committed to fulfilling any” of the demands and that the promises made by Pena Nieto were not new.

Ayotzinapa has brought the worst of Mexico into the limelight for all to see.

He said that the bus may have been one laden with opium, which is trafficked out of Guerrero by drug gangs. This would give new meaning to the Ayotzinapa protesters’ constant chant: Fue el estado, (The State did it).

Their mission was to commandeer buses to take them to Mexico City for the commemoration of the October 2, 1968, student massacre days before the Olympic games.