Ruben Blades dedicated songs to the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students in the closing performance of the 42nd International Cervantino Festival.
Salsa legend Ruben Blades has added his support for justice for the Mexico students from Ayotzinapa who have gone missing since last being seen held by local police.
The salsa artist Ruben Blades had the public swaying and dancing for two and a half hours in the Guanajuato, Mexico, with songs against racism, family violence and state violence.
Early on, hundreds of young people filled the open-air stadium with chants for justice for the teacher training students disappeared a month ago in Iguala, Guerrero.
Blades took up their chants and also called for justice for the missing students, their families, and all the people found in the mass graves near Iguala.
“Love and Control,” he said, is a song that speaks of the family, and it’s impossible not to think of the families who don’t know where the students are…”
To the cheers of the young people, with pictures of the disappeared Ayotzinapa students projected on a screen, he broke into the song Disappeared with the poignant lyrics lyrics “Can anybody tell me if they’ve seen my son? He’s a medicine student. His name’s Agustín. He’s a good boy, kinda stubborn in an argument. They've disappeared him, I don’t know where.”
He roused the crowd of 4,000 people with songs with a strong social message such as They’re Looking For You and The Bells Are Tolling” with its lyrics, “You can kill the people, but you can’t kill their ideas.”
Blades closed the concert with his best known songs, Pedro Navajas, Plastic and Forgetting is Forbidden.
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