Last September Mexico was shocked with the news of the kidnapping of 43 rural students of the Ayotzinapa Rural School in Guerrero, one of the poorest states in the country. Unfortunately hearing of disappearances, kidnapping, shootings and violence in the country has been something “normal” for the last years, with the “drug on wars” since 2006 the violence has scaled. But even in a country where we left counting gun shoots, the disappearance of 43 students was something to take in account, it wasn’t just a news, it was a scandal and the spark to go out to the streets and to the net.

During the first days of the news the people went out to the streets, there were demonstrations in all the mayor cities in Mexico, after some weeks the movement went further, there weren’t only cities in Mexico, there were demonstrations all over the world, from Mexico to Argentina to Boston, to Paris to New Delhi and so on. To accomplish this the use of social media played a key role, the use of hashtags in twitter as #AyotzinapaSomosTodos (We are all Ayotzinapa) or #AccionGlobalAyotzinapa (Global Action Ayotzinapa) was useful to spread the word in the first days.

There were also some key events that prompted the use of new hashtags as when the former Mexico’s General Attorney said that he has had enough in a press conference, talking about the reporters that where asking questions, but the phrase was taken by the social movement as a new flagship to say that the people is also tired from the politicians, as the graph shows the hashtag explode the same day.

Volume of tweets related to #YaMeCanse, #Ayotzinapa, @EPN Source: Topsy.com

The organisation of the movement was articulated by social media, groups were formed in facebook, whatsapp was useful to organise the people in the street, twitter was a one to many channel of communication, streams of the demonstrations and photos in instagram were key part to keep the conversation alive. And now more than six months since the kidnap of the students and with different versions of what could happened to them, the networks are still active, the next image shows the network that has been build in Facebook related to xForAyotzinapa, there are groups as BostonForAyotzinapa, HelsinkiForAyotzinapa, etc.

Facebook network for BostonForAyotzinapa, ITESOconAyotzinapa, HelsinkiForAyotzinapa.

The situation in Mexico hasn’t change a lot from six months to now, but one of the main changes that the Ayotzinapa tragedy bring to the country was the construction of networks, they are still active organising forums, rallys, demonstrations and some other actions to put some pressure to the government and try to change Mexico. They are still connected by groups in facebook and twitter, the BostonForAyotzinapa Group is active organising forums in Harvard to rethink the violence and society in Mexico, there are groups working in NY to get the attention of the UN, in Europe to create awareness of what’s going on in Mexico. Even inside Mexico the networks are active, they could been not to mainstream and covered by the press, but the people are still going out to the streets, talking with each other and using social networks to push for a change.