by John Gibler
Now they are just lying to us. They are driving us parents insane. We don’t even know what to do, we don’t know where to go. Ask me if a single authority has introduced themselves to us, has come up to us to say I am so-and-so and I’m here to help you with anything you need. No one has come to us. We, unfortunately, are not from here and we don’t know anyone. We don’t know whom to ask for help. We don’t know. We are walking with our eyes closed.
“Mr. Governor,” I told him last night, “I’m not here to get involved in politics, I just want my son. I didn’t send my son to rob from anyone. I didn’t send him to become a crook. I sent him to study. And for sending our sons to study, you’re going to give me his dead body? How is that okay? That is not right. I don’t think it’s fair that as a father I didn’t want my son to suffer the same hardships as me and sent him to study, and so you give him to me dead. That is not right. Until the final consequences, wherever life takes me, I have to find my son. I have to take him back to our home state. Because it is not right. It is not just. Unfortunately we have already been here for a week, and I thank the students who gave us a bit of clothing, soap, and food. And it is food that they need, food that they give to us, food that we’re pretty much taking out of their mouths.”
That Friday my son called me at three in the afternoon. I was sick with typhoid. He said:
“Dad, how are you?”
“Fine, fine, son.”
“No, you sound bad. I’m going to ask for permission to go visit. I want to see you.”
“No, son. You went to study. I want you to study hard.”
He said that perhaps he’d come visit me, but I said no, horribly, I told him no. That was the worst mistake of my life, a mistake I cannot forgive myself for. But I told him: “You know what, I sent you off to study, buddy, and I want you to be someone in life.” Yes, it’s really intense. Very, very intense. We don’t know if they went to plant bodies there. I swear, based on the things I’ve come to learn, it’s very likely. That’s what we can expect from the authorities. And that’s what I don’t understand about Mr. Peña Nieto: he said he was going to change the country. And unfortunately, I think everything is the same, the same; we’re still in the same situation. The government says that they found thirteen of them. Lies.
The forty-three disappeared students are still disappeared. Not one of them has come back. So what is this? Are we supposed to just stay here thinking that they’ve already been killed? People are so cowardly now. Why do they burn people? Why do they dismember people? The governor offered a million pesos. That is a mockery. A million pesos gets him drunk. That’s what one of his drinking binges costs.
You look over here, you find dead people. You look over there, you find dead people. Psychologically, they are ruining us. I don’t know if that’s what they want: for us to give in to despair and go home. They’re mistaken. In my case, I won’t let my guard down until I find my son and take him home. And I mean walking.
MOTHER OF ONE OF THE FORTY-THREE DISAPPEARED STUDENTS DURING A PROTEST IN FRONT OF THE 27TH BATALLION ARMY BASE IN IGUALA, 18 DECEMBER 2014. Give us back our sons! That is our only demand. We want our sons alive. Just like you took them, that’s how we want them back. Remember that you too have children. If your son were disappeared, what would you do? Would you be calm? Would your home be peaceful? Do you want us to get over this pain? How can you want us to go home if our homes are not calm, not peaceful? We are outraged because we don’t know where our sons are. Give us back our sons! They’re the ones who have them. The government has them. They’re the ones who took them, who disappeared them. They’re the ones holding them. We want our sons!
FROM AN ARGENTINE FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY TEAM (EAAF) PRESS RELEASE DATED 7 DECEMBER 2014, MEXICO CITY. During a press conference on October 31, 2014, the PGR [Mexican federal attorney general’s office] shared testimony of arrested suspects indicating that they had burned the students’ remains at the Cocula trash dump, placing in plastic bags the ash and bone fragments recovered from said remains.
According to those same testimonies, the suspects would have thrown the bags into the San Juan River in Cocula. According to what the PGR told EAAF, federal police divers recovered the bone fragment in question from a plastic bag found in the San Juan River, which the federal police divers subsequently handed over to PGR investigators. The EAAF was not present at the moment the divers and investigators recovered said bag; the EAAF neither participated in nor witnessed the discovery of said fragment. The PGR called the EAAF to the location once the bag of remains was already open and the sample in question was already placed with other samples on a clean surface. The EAAF participated in other findings of remains on the shore of said river with PGR investigators.
The EAAF wishes to state that this does not affect the identification [of a sample] but considers that it is important to clarify that the EAAF was not witness to the discovery of the fragment that led to the indentification.
Lastly, it is the EAAF’s opinion at this moment that there is not sufficient scientific certainty or physical evidence to conclude that the remains recovered from the San Juan River by PGR investigators, and in part by the EAAF, correspond to remains recovered from the Cocula trash dump in the manner described by the suspects. Burned and incinerated remains were recovered both from the San Juan River and the Cocula trash dump. The evidence that links the two locations is, for the moment, essentially testimonial; that is, for the moment it stems from the suspects’ testimonies. In the EAAF’s opinion, greater physical evidence joining the discoveries from both locations is needed and the examination of the remains as well as the search operations for the disappeared should continue.
FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH A MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEE OF THE COCULA TRASH DUMP, 16 JUNE 2015.
“After that day, did you continue working at the trash dump?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t notice anything. . . .”
“No. Nothing, nothing.”
“. . . strange? A large fire, or. . . .”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“About what time was it when you all went to the dump?”
“It was around noon when we went to dump the trash.”
“Did you notice anything strange?”
“No. In all truth we didn’t notice anything.”
“On the day of the twenty-seventh?”
“Yes, on the twenty-seventh.”
“And there was nothing there?”
“No, there was nothing there.”
“Had it rained that night?”
“It rained.”
“Did it rain hard?”
“It rained more or less hard. It was coming down all night, so it was raining. It didn’t stop until around six-thirty or seven in the morning.”
FORMER MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEE OF THE COCULA TRASH DUMP, 16 JUNE 2015. We went up to the dump that day, September 27; it was our turn to work the weekend. Like normal, that day it was our turn to work the weekend. We also went to dump the trash there on Sunday the twenty-eighth. We went a bit later than normal because it had rained. It’s just up that way. We got there, dumped the trash; that’s the job we do. We got to the dump more or less around one in the afternoon. Around then. I think so, because we left around noon. So somewhere around one or two we got there. But we didn’t see anything. Everything was normal. We didn’t go earlier because when it rains the road can get muddy. And that’s it: we got there, dumped the trash, and came back. The twenty-sixth we didn’t go up there. Nor on the twenty-fifth. There’s another trash dump over on this side in Apipilulco. But when it rains the road out there gets really bad and we can’t get through. On Saturdays and Sundays the trash collection route goes through this area: the market, the zócalo, and San Miguel on Saturdays; on Sundays we pick up through the outlying neighborhood. We pick up the trash wherever, the zócalo, wherever. And then we go through the outlying neighborhood, and since it is closer, from there we head out toward the dump. It’s on the way. W
hen we pick up trash here in Cocula, sometimes we go and dump over here, because it’s a bit closer. The truth is we went and dumped the trash and everything was normal. Green, green, everything the same as always. The same, normal. We just went to do our job: dump the trash. And we didn’t see anything: not this, nor that. Normal.
But, well, they also want to give us a fright. So now we don’t know anything. They came to get us. . . . The PGR came to give us a scare. That we don’t know anything, that what the fuck, we didn’t see anything. Really, who knows? We do our jobs, our work.
Honestly: I don’t know anything, I didn’t see anything.
“No, but did you work?”
Well, yes, we worked. We have to work. Not like we could leave our work just like that, I told him. Now it’s over. But. . . . It was on November 2. We went; they came for us. I was working.
“You all are going to give your testimony,” they said.
“Well, I don’t know anything,” I said. “Take me wherever you want. Who owes nothing fears nothing.” They wanted to scare us. Or, who knows? I really don’t know. But, well, we went.
Well, honestly, I don’t know how to read. And, well, once we got there they separated us: one over here, the other over there. And they said:
“Right now you both are going to Nayarit.” It was something I never imagined. And, how to tell you, they held us there. We didn’t see anything. And, how do they want us to say something if we didn’t. . . ? They had us there without food. We went at around two in the afternoon.
We put down our fingerprints. They made us put our fingerprints and sign. What can I tell you? We signed so many pieces of paper that they made for us. I told them that I don’t know how to read. I couldn’t read it. I can barely scribble my name. And they made so many. . . . Honestly, I never in my life thought something like this would happen. They made us read I don’t know what. And I, like I tell you, I told them right away that I don’t know how to read. Why did they give me all that stuff? They put so many pieces of paper in front of me.
FROM THE INTERDISCIPLINARY INDEPENDENT EXPERT GROUP (GIEI) REPORT, PAGE 156. [The] expert analysis shows that there is no existing evidence to support the hypothesis posited in testimonies that forty-three bodies were cremated in the Cocula trash dump on September 27, 2014.
BLANCA NAVA VÉLEZ, MOTHER OF JORGE ÁLVAREZ NAVA, 19, FRESHMAN, DURING A PRESS CONFERENCE IN MEXICO CITY, 6 SEPTEMBER 2015. We mothers and fathers were right. We were always right! Our sons were not burned. That is the truth. We knew that what the government said was a lie. Another lie. And now we stand here to tell whoever framed all that, they were wrong. They couldn’t deceive us. I said that to Murillo Karam: not even he believed his lies. And now we’ve shown it to them with proof. Not like him, with lies. We have scientific proof that our children are alive. And we are going to find them. The state is guilty. Because three levels of government participated. And who is going to guarantee to us that from here on they won’t come out with another lie? Because we won’t believe it. They couldn’t deceive us with that lie, now even less so. We will continue pushing forward for our sons! We will keep fighting, and we will keep shouting. I told the government once, and I’ll say it again: we are poor, but we’re not stupid. We’re not going to believe this. And a mother’s heart can’t be wrong. Our sons were not burned there! And we’re proving it. I hope that from now on they only tell the truth. We don’t want any more lies. As mothers and fathers here today: we want the truth. We don’t want any more lies. We will not accept another lie from the government. Because the government has dedicated itself to torturing us, to destroying out hearts. Did they think that with that lie we didn’t feel wretched? We said to him: don’t you have children? And look what he did. And now we’re showing him that the theatre he built has crumbled to ruins. His “historical truth” is a historical lie! And we will keep going until we find our children; we will fight until we find them!
MIGUEL ALCOCER, 20, FRESHMAN. I had nightmares. I dreamt that the police were shooting at us again and woke up afraid. I didn’t even want to sleep. Once, I dreamt that I was in my house with my parents and some men arrived. At first they came up to us all friendly and cool, but I already felt something. I told my parents that the men were bad, but they said no they weren’t. And one day we came home, me, my mom and dad, and my brothers, we came home and saw the man that my parents trusted. And I saw that he was cutting someone into pieces. I was fucking terrified and saw that my parents were also afraid. That day I felt like shit all day. I felt my whole body nervous, terrible. But nowadays I haven’t dreamt like that.
EDGAR YAIR, 18, FRESHMAN. I feel sad because we had deep friendships with all my compañeros who are disappeared. More than friendship, we had a kind of brotherhood. Because we spent a lot of time together. We were together every day. We shared sadness, joy, laughter. Sometimes anger. I had a really deep friendship with a compañero who is disappeared. I didn’t feel like he was a friend anymore, I felt like he was a brother. Now it hurts me that those compañeros can’t be found.
JORGE HERNÁNDEZ ESPINOSA, 20, FRESHMAN. I want to graduate from the college and become a teacher. I want to tell my children and grandchildren one day that I studied in the Raúl Isidro Burgos Teachers College at Ayotzinapa. When I do, I will feel proud about saying that I was there during the massacre of September 26, when the whole country, the whole world heard the news and supported us. Some people criticized us, but everyone heard the news from Ayotzinapa about how we were attacked.
I am proud to say that I am part of the freshman class; I am an Ayotzinapa Teachers College student.
COYUCO BARRIENTOS, 21, FRESHMAN. There is a phrase that many people here say: Whoever sees an act of injustice and does not combat it, commits it.
1. On October 2, 1968, on the eve of the Olympic games to be held in Mexico City, Mexican President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz ordered the army to crush the student protest movement. Soldiers ambushed and massacred hundreds of students during a protest in the Tlatelolco Plaza in Mexico City. The government denied that the massacre had taken place, called it a “confrontation,” disappeared many of the dead, and conducted mass arrests of student leaders. The massacre left a profound mark on Mexican society and is commemorated every year with a large march from Tlatelolco to the Zócalo in Mexico City.
2. Comité de Organización Política e Ideológica (Political and Ideological Organizing Committee).
3. A Mexican supermarket chain.
4. The Sistema Nacional para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (DIF) is a federal social services program.
5. A Nissan van common in Mexico.
6. Handmade sandals
7. A Ford truck model.
8. A Nissan car common in Mexico.
9. Pedro Cruz Mendoza refers here to one of the first articles citing eyewitness testimony to an army massacre of 22 civilians in Tlatlaya, State of Mexico, on June 30, 2014. Pablo Ferri Tórtola, “Veintiuno de los ‘delincuentes’ abatidos en Tlatlaya fueron ‘fusilados’ por el Ejército,” Proceso, September 17, 2014.
AFTERWORD
BY THE FIRST DAYS OF OCTOBER 2014, the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College basketball court had become a kind of open-air waiting room of despair. Pain emanated like heat. Under the court’s high, corrugated tin roof, 43 families gathered to face the hours between search expeditions, protests, and meetings with government officials, human rights workers, and forensic anthropologists. Gathered in clumps at the court’s edges, sitting on the concrete floor or in plastic folding chairs formed in semicircles, they spoke in hushed tones and kept mostly to themselves. Most had traveled from small indigenous and campesino communities in Guerrero’s mountainsides. Many had arrived without a change of clothes. They had all come to look for their sons.
News of the police attacks was initially met with muted outrage. Six people killed and dozens of students disappeared by the police in the middle of Iguala? It didn’t seem possible. The first list of missing students had 57 names on it. With
in a day or two many students had seen their names included among the disappeared and had called the school to let student organizers know that they were safe, that they had escaped from the shootings in Iguala that night and gone home rather than back to the school. The list quickly went from 57 to 43 names. Guerrero state officials told the press not to worry, that surely the other 43 students had also gone home, or were hiding in the hillsides and would be calling in soon. Never mind that the students were last seen being forced into the backs of municipal police trucks. Still, 213 it wasn’t until a week later, on October 4, 2014, when state prosecutors uncovered the first of a series of mass graves on the outskirts of Iguala, that the sense of disbelief eroded, and the national and international media descended on the region. When it became clear that the charred remains of 28 people found in those graves did not belong to any of the missing students, the core of collective anger began to crystallize. Mass marches took place in cities across the country. In Guerrero, Ayotzinapa students—with the 43 families looking on—smashed windows and set government buildings on fire. In Iguala, protesters sacked and burned the municipal palace.