Achtli by Mario Duarte Inc.

'They wanted to bury us, but they did not know that we were seeds'

In September 2014, 43 students from Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College disappeared after clashes with police. The policemen are believed to have handed the students over to drug cartels who are then believed to have executed them and burned the corpses in a junkyard in the outskirts of Cocula, Guerrero.

Achtli means seed in náhuatl (an ancient Mexican language). I wrote this piece as a protest demanding action for the missing students. The work was created feeding a MAX/MSP patch with the names of the 43 students in order to transform the characters into musical parameters as timbre, pitch, duration, intensity and gesture.

This piece is a cry for justice and it is part of the global action for Ayotzinapa.