TIXTLA, Mexico – Numerous bus drivers are being held hostage at the Raul Isidro Burgos teachers college by students protesting the September disappearance of 43 of their classmates in Iguala.

About three dozen bus drivers are being held at the college’s soccer field and forced to chauffeur the protestors after the students commandeered the buses as they traveled through the Guerrero state, the Associated Press reports.

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“They say we aren’t kidnapped because we can get out and walk around, or swim in the (campus) pool,” one of the drivers, who did not want to be identified, told the news service. “But a prison inmate can also go out to the exercise yard or the gym, and that doesn’t mean they’re free.”

The bus drivers, some of which have been held captive for a month by armed students, have resorted to sleeping in the cargo holds of the busses and hand washing their one and only set of clothes. The student hijackers told the AP they’re holding the drivers because they don’t know how to drive or maintain the buses. The drivers, meanwhile, aren’t being paid while they’re held hostage, and feel compelled to stay with the vehicles because their employers hold them financially responsible for the expensive busses.

“The police … are not taking action at this moment to avoid giving the appearance of acts of repression,” said Jorge Valdez, a spokesman for the Guerrero state prosecutor. “It is the concept of not trying to put out a fire by pouring more gasoline on it.”

The student protestors have also taken control of gas tankers, food delivery trucks and other vehicles to transport supplies to the school’s soccer field to support their efforts. One of the bus drivers, who was hijacked Oct. 24 while talking tourists to Acapulco, said students threatened to bash the bus with rocks if he didn’t comply. He has been held at the soccer field compound since, the driver told the AP.

Some of the drivers have begged their employers to negotiate a way to rotate drivers in captivity so they can return to their families, but it’s unclear whether they’ve made any progress.

Students are feeding the drivers “simple meals,” according to the AP, and offered to pay their salaries once they’re released, but the drivers are skeptical they’ll receive the $1,500 a month they normally earn, if anything.

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“I haven’t had a check in a month. I have to ask for a line of credit I can’t pay,” one of the drivers said. “I’m being ruined.”

The bus driver hostage situation stems from the Sept. 26 kidnapping of 43 male students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College of Ayotzinapa. Those students had commandeered several busses and were chased down by authorities, who reportedly turned the students over to a local crime syndicate called Guerreros Unidos, according to media reports.

In November, Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam held a press conference announcing that several plastic bags containing human remains believed to be of the students were found by a river in Cocula, Guerrero.

The students were reportedly protesting the government’s allegedly discriminatory hiring and firing practices, which they contend favor urban student-colleges over rural colleges.