I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us

by John Gibler

  “Run! Run! The army is coming!” Since I had read in Proceso about the Tlatlaya case,9 the first thing I thought was: “These fuckers are going to blow us to pieces.” And I said to the boys: “Run, run!” We all ran.

  The compas grabbed the wounded guy and carried him upstairs. Since everyone had run upstairs and the clinic has a long hallway, I ran down to the end of the hallway and went into a bathroom on the left-hand side. I didn’t have anything at all to protect myself with. I bent down and thought: “Well, fuck it, I’ll wait for the gunshots here.” Then I heard the soldiers’ insults.

  “Okay, everyone downstairs,” said the soldiers, “sons of who-knows-what, everyone downstairs!”

  I thought: “They’re going to kill us all here, I just hope they kill me with everyone else, because if they kill me back here no one will find me.” I left the bathroom. The soldiers saw me and shouted:

  “Hands in the air! Hands in the air!”

  I raised my hands and walked toward them with my hands in the air. They had all the boys gathered there in the little waiting room. Others were still coming downstairs.

  “Lift up your shirts!”

  We lifted up our shirts, but they didn’t stop aiming their guns at us.

  “I want all your cell phones and wallets on the table!” And we took out our cell phones and wallets and took them over to the table.

  “I want your complete and real names, otherwise they’ll never find you. Do you have ID cards?” Some said that they didn’t have theirs and I said:

  “I have my ID.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m a teacher.”

  “And this is what you teach?”

  “No, no, no, no. Listen, sir, I came to help them because they were attacked, they were hurt. We’re here together but I didn’t teach them any of this.”

  “Alright, take down all their names, names!”

  Some of the phones started ringing and the soldiers said: “Answer, answer; put the phones on speakerphone!” They let us answer our phones, but using speakerphone. My compañero from Tixtla called me, the one I had told that they were shooting at us, but I wasn’t able to answer. The commander in charge said to us:

  “There are two guys dead in the street out there and my guess is that they’re two of yours. But you all have busted into a private hospital, it’s called breaking and entering, we’re going to call the municipal police so they can arrest you all.” And there I had to say something because the truth is, we were scared, all the boys were scared, but because I’m older and from Iguala, I felt a moral obligation to speak out. I said:

  “Listen, sir, the municipal police will kill us, they’ll turn us over to . . . they were the ones shooting at us.”

  “What do you mean, it was them?”

  “Yes,” and the students started speaking up: “Yes sir, it was them!”

  “Okay then, we’re going to investigate, we’ll ask around.”

  And the commander stepped outside with his bodyguards, but left us inside with soldiers aiming at us. They never stopped aiming at us; they never lowered their guns. And there we were with our shirts pulled up and our hands in the air. We stayed like that the whole time. They came back in and I said:

  “Excuse me, sir, we need an ambulance, this boy is dying.”

  “It’s on its way,” he said. “I called one, it’ll be right here!” He said it like that, in an insulting, commanding tone. “Everyone come over here!” He called the boys over to the hallway and bunched them all together, leaving me alone; they didn’t call me over. They were all bunched together in the hall but only about two meters away from me. I could hear everything they were saying.

  Some of the boys squatted down, others were sitting down and the commander started to lecture them:

  “This is why you come here? This is why you ask your parents to give you money? This is why you are studying, to do things like this? This is what they teach you at that school? No, no, boys; think about it.” And then he gave them a litany of advice. The guy with the gunshot wound was asking for oxygen, and the soldiers screamed:

  “Sit him down! Sit him down!”

  “He’s dying on us; he wants to breathe, we can’t sit him down,” we said.

  When I saw that the soldiers were leaving, I said a second time: “Excuse me, sir, we need an ambulance, this boy is dying.”

  “I already called! It’s on the way! Alright, you all can stay here, the area is now under the army’s control, there won’t be any problems.”

  “Sir,” I asked for the third time, “and the ambulance?”

  “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I ALREADY CALLED FOR IT! You all can stay here, nothing is going to happen.” And they went; they left us there. I told the students:

  “Boys, don’t go, there are a bunch of houses of teachers from the CETEG, I’m from the CETEG, don’t be afraid, we can help to hide you all.” But one of them said:

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here; they’re going to kill us here.” They were very scared.

  One of them, I think whoever was in charge, said to me: “Prof, will you stay with the wounded guy?” There was no way I’d say no.

  “Sure, don’t worry,” I said.

  “Let’s go, now,” someone else said, “they’re going to come back, they’ll come back; let’s hide under a bridge, let’s go.” And they all took off running. That’s when Omar came back. He ran about halfway down the street and then came back and said:

  “Prof, I’ll stay with you.” Another one came back and said:

  “I’ll stay too.”

  “No,” Omar said, “you’re not staying, you’re going, go with them.” So Omar and I stayed with the wounded guy. That was when I met Omar. I went back to call my compañeros. That was when Doctor Herrera arrived. The door wasn’t closed and he came inside. I introduced myself:

  “Doctor, look, I’m a teacher, they attacked us, this boy is wounded.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I already know what happened. There are two young men dead out there in the street and no one has come for them.”

  “Don’t tell me that, Doctor, really?”

  “Yeah, I just came from over there and no one is taking them away, there they are, dead in the street.”

  “Look, as you can see, this boy is wounded, no one wants to give us a ride, would you be able to take us to the hospital?”

  “Damn, kid, they hit you good, you’ll need surgery. Yeah, I’ll help you.”

  But all that he cared about was walking through his clinic and making sure nothing had been stolen. The doctor even said: “Listen, teacher, you all came right to organized crime’s front door, those dudes live right there, they are from Teloloapan, I know them.” He was referring to a mafia gang called Los Peques, The Little Ones, because they live around there. I remember that perfectly.

  Since the doctor wasn’t helping us, I called my compañeros again, but right then a taxi pulled up in front of the clinic. I told the taxi driver: “Hey, there’s a boy whose been hurt, could you give us a ride?”

  “Sure, sure, get in,” he said.

  When the doctor came back out we were getting in the taxi. He, in all honesty, didn’t help us in any way, not even to help get the wounded boy inside the cab. Before the taxi came I asked him nicely: “Doctor, could you help us? Because no one wants to pick us up, no taxis.” He said yes, but then went about surveying his clinic. I told both of the students:

  “Don’t say anything, nothing at all.” I told Omar: “Get in the back with him, don’t say anything, I’ll talk to the driver.” It was still drizzling. We had put a shirt up to Edgar’s face to . . . I don’t know . . . to slow the bleeding.

  “What happened? Are there a bunch of patients there?” “Yes, the hospital is full. I think they’ve got several surgeries scheduled. Can you believe it? Please, if you don’t mind, would you take us to the hospital?”

  “Yes, sure, of course. What happened to your compañero?”

  “We got into a fight
at a bar and they hit him with a bottle in the mouth. Can you believe it?”

  “Damn, that sucks. Did you all hear about the shooting?”

  “No, no, in the bar you can’t hear anything with all that noise, we didn’t hear anything. Really, there was a shooting?”

  “Yeah, there was a shooting around here, that’s what we were told.”

  “No, we had no idea.”

  And so we talked on the drive about insecurity and all that. When we arrived I stayed with the taxi. Omar took Edgar inside and stayed with him.

  EDGAR ANDRÉS VARGAS, 20, JUNIOR. I started going around; I took some photos. Some guys were placing rocks around the bullet shells. There was blood in the bus, by the door, and by the entrance. I took photos of all that. I went to look for a friend from my hometown who had gone on the action. I don’t know what time it was when I found him. That guy is from my town. I asked him how he was. The guy was scared, for real. I asked about the others and he said:

  “The cops took them; they took them away.”

  I talked to him for a while and then went to look around some more. I ran into a guy from my study group and asked him:

  “And your brother?” He told me that he couldn’t find his brother, that he wasn’t there. I said:

  “Maybe he’s with the other guys that the police took.”

  He said maybe so. In that moment we never even thought about our compas being disappeared. I thought it would be like always: the police take you, they hold you for a while, ask you questions, and then they let you go. But no.

  After a bit my girlfriend called me and asked me where I was. I told her:

  “I’m here where everything went down. I’m here.”

  She asked me if it was still a good idea for her to visit me at the school. Since I didn’t know about the disappearance, I thought that it wouldn’t go on much longer, that it wasn’t going to be such a problem. So I told her:

  “No, don’t worry, come.”

  She said okay and told me she’d get in around five, five in the morning. After that I went to talk to the guy from my hometown and he was telling me about everything that had happened. Three of us were standing there together. There were others nearby and all around. Everything was calm, when out of nowhere we heard gunshots.

  I don’t know what I did in that moment. I was the last person of the three standing there. I don’t know where the guy from my hometown went, I lost sight of him instantly. I lost track of everyone and threw myself down on the ground. Honestly, I don’t know when exactly the bullet hit me; I didn’t feel it. But the gunshots were sounding when I heard a whizzing sound in this ear, a whizzing sound. I was already down on the ground at that point. I went to the ground and in that moment heard the whizzing sound and started to see blood falling. I think that when I heard the whizzing sound is when they hit me. I lost all of this part, what they call the upper maxillary. I didn’t know what to do in that moment and I stayed there in the middle of the street. I stayed lying down with my hands up by my face. I saw the bullets hitting the pavement. The machine-gun bursts didn’t stop. Bullets were hitting near my body. I lifted my head and looked back. I didn’t see anyone there and looked to my right side and the only thing I could see were something like sparks from where the shots were coming. And I stayed there, I don’t know, like I was paralyzed for a moment. And when I saw the blood I couldn’t believe it.

  “No,” I said to myself. I couldn’t believe they had hit me. At that moment I started crawling. When I arrived at the first bus, the first of the three buses, I stayed there for about five minutes.

  I didn’t see anyone in those five minutes.

  When the shooting paused, there were moments when the shots paused, I saw when some people—and I don’t know from where they came—started running. I was there up against the bus. I don’t think anyone saw me. I had my hand like this trying to. . . . I saw the blood that fell all over my hand and I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe that they had shot me. I thought: “No, no, no.” I looked back to where I was before, to where I had been standing before and I was able to see the guys, the ones who were killed. One of them I think was already dead because there was a pool of blood around him. The other one was screaming. I started walking away, but the shooting went on and on.

  I kept walking. A bit farther ahead, near the second bus, I ran into Omar, I think. No, it wasn’t him. It was another compañero who was with several others, but he was the only one who saw me. He shouted out to his compas to wait because he had seen me. My nickname at the school is el Oaxaco, the Oaxacan, so he shouted:

  “Oaxaco is hurt, we’ve got to help him!” Something like that. They all came back and tried to carry me. Well, they did carry me for a bit. The shooting had stopped.

  I saw a woman open her front door and shout to us: “Bring him in here, hide in here!” She shouted something like that.

  “No,” the guys shouted back, “he’s wounded, we’re going to take him to a clinic near here!”

  They had already seen the clinic. At that moment I told them to let me down, that I could walk, and I did walk. We went up to the clinic’s door. I think it was a nurse, or someone in charge of the place who came to the door. They asked her if the doctor was there and she said no, that the doctor wasn’t there, that no one was there. We asked her, well, they asked her—more guys had arrived—to let us hide there. And so we all went inside the clinic. The nurse didn’t want to let us in at first, but then we all went inside and then I think the nurses left. I don’t know what they went to do, but I didn’t see them anymore. And there we were, freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. In fact, the student secretary was there, and so were a number of students from my group.

  I sat down on the couch. I don’t remember if it was Omar, I don’t remember at what point Omar came up to me, but first I sat down in a chair, there were several chairs there, and had my head bowed. A number of compañeros came up to me and told me to hold on. And there was a teacher there. I’d seen that teacher before. I recognized his face because I’d seen him in a march in December, I recognized him. I didn’t know who he was or anything, but his face was really familiar to me. Then the secretary, I think, told us to go upstairs; the clinic had two or three stories. We went upstairs. I couldn’t speak. I wrote using my cell phone to Parca, the secretary and a compañero of mine, telling him to find a way to get me out of there, to take me to a hospital because the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Then I sat down at a desk in a hallway and stayed there for a while. I told the guys up there, well, I wrote to them in my cell phone, to find a way to get me out of there. I don’t know how much time I was there, to be honest, it was like I lost all notion of time. So many things came into my head: mainly my family, my mom, my dad, they came to mind and I thought about how, when my mom found out about this, well, she would cry. I didn’t want to tell her.

  I don’t know how they contacted the clinic’s doctor and asked him to come. One guy told me to hold on, that the doctor was on the way. But before that, a nurse had told me that they couldn’t help me because the doctor wasn’t there. I think she was the one who called him. And the doctor arrived and said:

  “This is serious, we can’t help him here, we don’t have the tools.” And that was the only thing he said. I didn’t see where he went after that.

  I think I then went back upstairs, but the thing is that when the soldiers arrived a bunch of us were upstairs. We were hiding when the soldiers came in and told us all to come down. I didn’t go downstairs and stayed on the second floor a little while. The students told the soldiers that someone was wounded.

  “Make him come downstairs too,” said the soldier. They told me to come downstairs and I did. So at some point I told my parents. I don’t know if it was before the soldiers came or after. I can’t remember. I think it was afterward because they came, they told me to come downstairs, I did, and there were I don’t know how many soliders there. They were like six, seven, eight, and there were more of them outside. Thos
e idiots said a shitload of stuff like:

  “You all thought you were tough guys, so take it, you came looking for it.” They asked for our names. One guy said his name and then a soldier said:

  “Tell us your real names, your true names and ages.” And so everyone started saying their names, and I think the soldiers were taking notes.

  They told the soldiers my name. I was sitting on a couch and Omar was next to me. He was telling me to hold on and he said, I’m not sure he’s the one who asked the soldiers to take me to the hospital. They took pictures of me, and pictures of the place. They told us all to put our cell phones on the table. I think one guy’s phone rang. He asked for permission to answer it and they said no, they told him not to answer. The phones all stayed there on the table. They started taking pictures, and one soldier said that there were two guys lying dead outside. I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to what the soldiers were saying. I think they left after that. They said they’d called the hospital, asking them to send an ambulance that never arrived. The teacher was there. In fact, the soldiers asked the teacher what he was doing there, what he was doing with the students, what his job was. He said he was a teacher and that he had come to help after the police had attacked the students. Something like that. The soldiers didn’t arrest anyone there.

  At some point I asked Omar to call my parents to let them know. I found their number and then he called them. He said that there was a problem, that I was hurt. Omar told them that I was wounded, that I’d been hit by a bullet. My dad asked where I’d been shot and Omar said in the face, near the mouth. My dad at that moment thought that it was this part of my face, the lower jaw. The only thing my dad said to Omar was for him to please stay with me, not to leave me alone. Then he asked to speak to me. Omar told him that I couldn’t speak. Then he just held the phone between us. My dad said, crying I think, for me to hold on, to hold on a bit, and that he was on his way. And I heard my mom’s voice. When my dad said “my son” into the phone, my mom quickly got out of bed and screamed, asking what had happened to me. My dad didn’t tell me right then, but my mom—I don’t know, I guess it is a mother’s instinct—my mom screamed, almost in tears. I heard that through the phone. My dad was telling me to hold on, that he was on his way, telling me not to give up, to have faith in God, because we are, we belong to a religion.