I am standing in the evening sunlight, overlooking the site of one of the most deadly political massacres in Mexico’s history. On October 2, 1968, Mexican soldiers opened fire on unarmed students gathered in this same plaza, here to protest corruption. No one knows how many were killed. Now, it is just my friend Carolina and me here. Two boys play fronton against a concrete wall nearby. The sound of an accordion waltzes in the distance. 

It has been eleven years since I last lived in Mexico, and 57 years since the Tlatelolco Massacre. But its significance lingers—both in Mexico’s present-day pluralistic democracy, something that was then unimaginable, and in the unexpected quiet that now envelops the city. 

When I came to Mexico as a student in 2014, it was impossible to ignore the sense of fear and mistrust. It was like living in a haze of suspicion and violence, where the real threat was not the cartel but the police and politicians who protected and enabled them. 

Mistrust in the state ran deep—so deep that when planning authorities began building works on apartment blocks, families camped outside with a foot in the door and one eye open —unconvinced that the property would be returned to them once the “works” were complete. Their fear was not unfounded. Back then, it was commonplace for the government to seize homes from right beneath people’s feet under the guise of renovations. 

And then came September 26, 2014—Ayotzinapa. Forty-three students from the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos in Guerrero were travelling to Mexico City to participate in a march commemorating the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, the very site where Carolina and I now stood in the fading light. The students never reached their destination. To this day, only the remains of three have been conclusively identified; the others remain missing. After eight years, an independent investigation concluded that those responsible were local police, federal agents, the military, and a local cartel. The government then abruptly cut it short. 

The forty-three disappeared students were not just a tragedy—they were a national outcry of pain, grief, and rage that had been building over years of corruption beneath the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Ayotzinapa exposed the little regard the state had for people's lives. The high-level officials involved in their disappearances and the cover-up attempts made by then-president Enrique Peña Nieto himself showed how politicians and state security really were as culpable as the cartel themselves. 

The nationwide demonstrations that followed showed an immense level of solidarity that, ultimately, stemmed from collective pain. That feeling of solidarity was how I came to understand Mexico. But, back then, I did not understand that a moment in time is not the same as a place itself. 

Fast forward to 2025. Mexico City has become synonymous with gentrification. The number of residency permits here increased by 135% during the pandemic, rising from 20,293 to 47,669 between 2020-2023. 

Just across the street from where the Tlatelolco massacre took place, a chaotic antiques market illustrates how radically the city has changed. In recent years, the market has evolved to keep up with the tastes of foreign visitors, now boasting Frida Kahlo hoodies and ex-votos of Lucha Libre wrestlers in the place of second-hand homeware.

But breakthrough La Lagunilla’s edge and you enter Tepito – a blackmarket still run by a cartel where passports and even people are allegedly lost in the continuous cycle of buying and selling that defines so much of daily survival. 

It is now possible to go about day-to-day life in the capital, enjoying the scenery, without needing to acknowledge the everyday violence and corruption taking place on the very same streets reinventing themselves to keep up with international crowds. 

But, has anything really changed? And, if so, for whom? In early March, a collective searching for Mexico’s missing people received a tip-off from a cartel insider recommending that they try Rancho Izaguirre —a nondescript horse ranch that stands alone in the middle of sun-scorched fields, enclosed within high walls, just outside of Guadalajara, one of Mexico’s wealthiest cities. 

Within days, the collective, the Guerreros Buscadores de Jalisco, were at the site. Inside, they found a bloodied gown, piles and piles of worn men’s shoes, and charred skeletal remains —all the warning signs of a cartel training centre. 

Such training centres are routinely used to strip away the fear and humanity a person has upon entering. Recruits are forced to watch as rival cartel members are killed in front of them and are, allegedly, even forced to fight to their death. 

No one knows exactly what happened at this particular ranch, not even who the owner is. What has been confirmed, though, is that the men who arrived here were lured in by fake recruitment advertisements, believing they had landed new jobs in security. 

Even as the grim reality of what happened there begins to surface, one mother commented beneath photos of the found items on Facebook, saying: "I wish my son were there. He disappeared 14 years ago." This time, evidence of state involvement is less damning than in the case of Ayotzinapa. At best, police handling suggests incompetence – at worst, complicity. 

It recently emerged that local officers raided the very same ranch last September. Ten people were arrested, two hostages were rescued, and a body was found. Yet, many months later, the ranch was still littered with personal items when the buscadores first entered, implying the police never properly investigated what could be hundreds of pieces of evidence related to unsolved missing person cases. 

When the collective returned a second time, the evidence had vanished, meaning police could either be protecting cartel interests or covering up their own incompetence. 

When I ask Carolina if she thinks anything has changed in Mexico since we first met as students, she does not hesitate. “The deep wounds of this country are still open,” she says. “If you look like you —maybe. If you look like me, no.” 

The ranch is far from an isolated case of recent violence and corruption in Mexico. Last month, an abandoned car was found on the side of a highway in the touristic state of Oaxaca with nine bodies inside.

Eleven years later, people still face having their homes taken from beneath their feet — like in the notorious case of Puebla 261 in Roma Norte — only now, buildings are seized and residents evicted with the support of police forces, often under fabricated criminal charges, and later handed over to banks or real estate interests looking to capitalise on Mexico City’s booming property market. 

In 2014, there were 22,000 disappeared people in the country. Today, there are 127,000. And yet, in the midst of ongoing violence and corruption, President Claudia Sheinbaum currently holds the highest approval rating of any president worldwide, at 85%. A number unseen in Mexico for three decades. 

Some say her popularity comes down to her deft handling of US President Donald Trump, or the fact that she extradited 29 cartel leaders, or that homicide rates really have gone down under her rule. 

Walking around Mexico City now, the real difference I notice is not the gentrification — it is a quietness, an ease, that was not here before. It is the growing trust between people and the state, a trust that has been paid for by the lives of so many people over the years. 

But I still do not know whether that quietness means old wounds are healing, or whether people have just stopped looking, for now. 

All I know is that, before, it was not possible to look the other way.

Frankie Mills is a freelance photojournalist and bne Intellinews' Mexico City correspondent.