by John Gibler
After Rafael’s testimony was published, I was invited to an interview with the EPR leadership at a safe house they have somewhere here in the Valley of Mexico. The meeting place was here in the Federal District. They give you a password and a response and then they send you off for hours in public transit and taxis all over the city until you meet the last contact, after which they have you get in a vehicle and ask you to close your eyes. They don’t blindfold you in case the police stop them.
And then there’s another hours-long trip until you are taken inside a house that is completely covered with paper: the walls, the floor; even the doorknobs are covered with masking tape.
And, well, there he was. I’m trying to remember . . . Rafael was there, but I think it was Antonio—Antonio or Arturo, one of them—read the EPR’s statement about the Mexican State’s strategies. They introduced Rafael and denounced what had happened. And then Rafael gives us his testimony again. This is his direct testimony about what he had suffered. I don’t remember if it was weeks or months that they had him in a house where they tortured him. They beat him and asked him for information about the EPR commanders. I don’t remember specifically if they asked him for information about Arturo and about Antonio, because they were the leaders at the time.
The interview is more a kind of press conference that takes place in a room with nothing in it besides a table where they sit with two flags behind them—one for the EPR and the other for Mexico. Two armed guards are also present, as is a video camera that records everything, which is the EPR’s way to be sure that what gets published corresponds to what really happened there.
So it was really . . . he described really well how the Mexican State at that time was carrying out the same kinds of strategies as in the 1970s. These were, in part, illegal detentions, forced disappearances and executions. It was the first testimony—I mean, real testimony at that time—from a member of an armed movement, an insurgent, guerrilla movement, about how he had been abducted.
And this case was emblematic, I think, because it was through this case that we came to know that the Mexican State was carrying out the same strategies that it used during the Dirty War of the 1970s, those things I already described, but also the infiltration of the movements themselves. And through such infiltration, forced disappearances, and torture of the people they took, the State possessed firsthand information.
And Rafael. What I more or less remember about what he said then was that the government had people specialized in this. People who knew exactly what they were doing. But they were not police, but soldiers. So it all seemed to indicate that the Army had developed its own strategic counterinsurgency units. In the 1970s, those who did that were the political police from Gobernación (the Interior Ministry). Now it was the Army itself doing these things. And it used infiltration not only for information, but also to divide the armed movements, provoking mutual accusations amongst the groups.
And that was precisely one of the problems with Rafael’s case, because a part of the EPR itself and other groups didn’t believe Rafael’s version. They said that it wasn’t possible to escape in such an easy way. That if it was an Army safe house, surely they would have had it surrounded, guarded. That if they had had him handcuffed, then it would have been practically impossible to remove them. Above all, they didn’t believe how he could have left the house so easily.
But that was what Rafael said: Since his captors had him so well handcuffed, they had been confident that nothing could happen. The other thing he said was that as a result of the bad state he was in, he had lost a lot of weight. He had gotten a lot thinner, and that helped him slip out of the handcuffs and escape through the space he had made in the bathroom window.
So his story seems improbable, no? I mean, it didn’t appear realistic to some people. Rafael said that the first thing he took on as a responsibility was to appear publicly and give his statement. That way he was showing that he didn’t have anything to hide. I think it was Antonio who said that they were appearing with Rafael to demonstrate complete trust and confidence in the testimony of a compañero who continued to be an integral part of the EPR. They did not doubt him. They had no suspicion that he could be an infiltrator now, or that the Army might have let him go so he could be a double agent.
The EPR leadership said that they had investigated Rafael’s story, that they had located the safe house, they had found it, and that Rafael’s testimony was completely truthful.
José Gil spoke briefly about hidden prisons and then went back to the story of the interview.
So, after the interview/press conference, we didn’t hear anything more about Rafael. But what was really proven with all this was that the State was carrying out forced disappearances, that the State had a special intelligence unit for this, and it had all kinds of infrastructure with these kinds of safe houses where they held people captive for extended periods of time. I mean, we’re talking about weeks, months, I don’t know if years, but . . . Because, beyond proving the existence of these kind of undisclosed detention houses, we don’t know what happens to the people who are taken there. There is no information about the people held in these places.
Rafael was thus the clearest and most convincing proof of these strategies of the Mexican State that were thought to have been left behind after most of the insurgent or guerrilla groups had been dismembered in the 1970s and ’80s. And then later you saw the EZLN’s uprising on January 1, 1994, and in May 1994 with the formation of the EPR, from I think fourteen different organizations. After that, the Mexican State once again takes up the same strategies, the same mechanisms and forms of counterinsurgency.
I think that this is really what happened with Rafael, and that was why it was so important for the EPR to dedicate a press conference specifically to it. Usually, in the EPR press conferences that I went to, their aim was for the commanders to make a statement about something specific. In this case, it was exclusively for us to meet Rafael and hear his story directly from him. It was for that reason, to show Rafael as proof of what was happening.
I asked him what reaction there was to his story.
You know, the story didn’t have much of an impact, except in a few media outlets that took it up. La Jornada. But others didn’t follow the story. I think that during those years when it happened, many of the media outlets were once again bound by government and State authority. So they didn’t give these kinds of testimonies sufficient space. Why? Because the denunciation went against the State, against the federal government. And in this case, even more specifically, against the Army. There were already denunciations that the Army maintained secret prisons, but inside military installations. They didn’t have safe houses beyond the bases. The safe house in question here is also interesting because it is close to the Santa Lucia air base. It is very, very likely then that the Army has secret prisons near their bases, like the air base here in Mexico State.
This is the other issue, no? To remove suspicions from the EPR itself. Because if we look at the dates, there were already internal differences in the EPR at that time that would finally lead to a split and the creation of the ERPI [Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent Peoples]. They wanted everything to get cleared up. And the media mostly didn’t follow the story. The columnists who did follow it, I don’t remember who now, but they pursued the story precisely to create doubts. They said: “No, it is not possible. It isn’t possible that he could have escaped.” They even commented that a solider was making all this up, as part of a counter-information job. The State very clearly does carry out those kinds of counter-information strategies.
I asked him about the other reporters who were there during the interview. He told me that Claudia Fernández from El Universal was there, but that he didn’t recall anyone else. Then he told me:
I remember that the interview was delayed for quite a while. They took a long time to begin because, yes, I remember this clearly now: Antonio and Aurora were giving the press conference, if I’m not mista
ken. And when Antonio was three or four hours late, they explained to us that they had detected an Army operation. The Army had put a checkpoint in Tepoztlán, on the highway, knowing that the guerrillas would pass by there. So they had to do a series of maneuvers and follow another plan to avoid that checkpoint, and that took several hours.
I remember we asked them about what was going on inside the organization. They said they knew that information about their movements was leaking out. So they had to be very careful.
I remember well that I asked them: “Hey, um, what about us? If there were a military operation and the soldiers were to arrive here, what should we do?” And they just answered us, laughing a bit, “Well, duck.”
I spoke with Gloria Arenas Agís in Mexico City. Arenas joined the PROCUP toward the end of the 1980s.1 In 1996, when Tzompaxtle was disappeared, Arenas held the rank of colonel and participated in the Guerrero state command. Around the end of 1997 and early 1998, the majority of EPR guerrillas in Guerrero state left that organization and founded the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent Peoples (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente, ERPI). In October 1999, Arenas was abducted, disappeared for several days, tortured, and then arrested and jailed. After a ten-year legal battle she waged with her compañero Jacobo Silva Nogales—Guerrero state commander of the EPR and later co-founder of the ERPI, who was also disappeared, tortured, and jailed in October 1999—Arenas achieved her freedom. She now studies, writes poetry, and participates in social movements.
About Tzompaxtle’s case, she told me this: “I don’t know if Rafa escaped or not. It is possible, and I lean toward believing that it’s true. But that is not important. For me what matters the most is what he did afterward: He did not betray us. He did not reveal the identities of guerrilla fighters. That I know.”
She told me that during the guerrilla struggles of the 1990s it was common for combatants, while being tortured, to falsely agree to be a double agent for the Army so that they could save themselves from the torment and disappearance. “Some people got out that way,” she told me, “otherwise they would be dead now. It is completely valid. What matters is what they do after they get out: They came and told us frankly what had happened.”
Tzompaxtle’s case was similar, she said. After leaving the Army base, he sought contact with the organization and then continued participating, and the people he knew were never detained or disappeared.
“He didn’t turn over the house, for example,” she said. “He knew people, knew where they lived, where their rooms were located. Those people never fell. During an Army operation he recognized some compañeros and didn’t signal them. And it wasn’t a short while. It was a long time that he was disappeared. That tells you something.”
I asked her about the house in Acapulco. “A group went to remove everything from the house,” she told me:
But they did a bad job of it. I don’t recall, but perhaps it was a month after his disappearance. The group went to take everything out of the house and make sure it wasn’t being staked out. Do people want proof? That is proof: The house was not under government watch. The compas went and they made a mistake. They took out some appliances, but they left the things that showed that it was a guerrilla house. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had left a camera, a television, or a bicycle. Even though I understand what they were going through. I didn’t go on that mission, for example, and did not have to face all the fear and nervousness that it would have involved.
Some time passed, and the EPR members in Guerrero were surprised when they saw the news about the house, the police, and the Army operation in Acapulco. “I found out later through others that when the house was found, Tzompaxtle went through some of the hardest times. It was the organization’s mistake. But he paid the price, and it must have cost him quite a lot. But even after that mistake, his attitude was admirable, I think. Even though he did have an understandable critique, he didn’t turn out resentful or become a traitor.”
That critique was one of the points of discord between Tzompaxtle and his commanders. “Those of us in the Guerrero state command structure didn’t care so much about probing all the particulars. That was not important to us. At that time the government was killing and capturing compañeros in Guerrero, and that was what mattered to us: what Tzompaxtle did afterward. Because not a single compañero fell due to him.”
A PIECE OF BEING
A SOLDIER SHOUTS, “HEY!” BUT then he doesn’t do anything, as if this happens every day, a common routine whereby neighbors cut through the military sports fields, just one more annoyance. But you walk without looking back, with your hands up, behind your head, a gesture somewhere between fear and trying to look like you’re stretching, out for a morning run. And with every step, every breath, you wait for the gunshot. The end. You chose this and here it is. It is as if you were already hearing the sound of the explosion that will knock you to the ground, dead. As if sounds carried shadows that could fall forward in time, an echo that precedes its sound. It is as if you could already hear it, feel the burn of the bullet before it penetrates the skin. As if death were already walking beside you. You feel it close. You wait for it with every step.
But it doesn’t come. In this lapse of time your emotions swell, your veins dilate, and you keep going, you continue walking. You think, I will not go back. Another internal voice wants to prepare you for being recaptured: Well, and if I tell them that I made a mistake . . . But you snap out of it in an instant: No, fuck that! This is combat. You grab the back of your head waiting for the shot. You’ve walked about eighty meters, and the shot that comes is inside you: Now you have to defecate. Now. The adrenaline reproduces the effect of the electrical shocks. You know how to recognize unstoppable powers, and this is one of them. Either you find someplace behind a tree or bush, or you’ll shit your pants. You go behind some short shrubs and try to squat, but your legs are too weak and you fall. After you pull out some thorns, defecate, and clean yourself with leaves, you keep walking.
You come upon a man who has taken his sheep out to pasture. You approach. You pretend to be drunk and say:
“Where am I? I don’t . . . I drank last night . . . Where am I?”
“You’re in Teotihuacán.”
“And the shared taxis to Mexico City?”
“They pass by here, but on the other side.”
“Ah, okay.”
You walk toward the street without looking back. With every step you think: Surely they’ve realized by now. A collective taxi drives by. You stop it and ask the driver:
“How much do you charge to Mexico City?”
“I’m not going into the city, those cars pass on the other side of the road. I’m just getting back.”
You get back off about a hundred meters down the road. A hundred meters farther away. You can’t travel on the highway, you think. At any moment they will notify the police and start setting up checkpoints. You walk into the neighborhood by the road without knowing where you are going, but moving away from the road and away from the base. You have lost more than thirty pounds. You’re skeletal, skin sucked to the bone. Your face has aged as if they had torn your youth off you like flesh. Your laceless shoes look like pieces of some thick cloth wrapped around your feet. Your clothes—the same clothes you wore the day they abducted you four months ago—are little more than rags. They were never washed, only rinsed the few times you bathed with your clothes on. Your beard is months long. Your hair, which they would cut randomly with scissors, tells, as does your entire appearance, that you are not walking out to greet the day from a normal situation.
You see another man walking and you approach him. You tell him that you were kidnapped in Mexico City, that you were beaten. You tell him that your captors threatened to accuse you of crimes you didn’t commit. You say that you don’t have any money to get home and that you are afraid they will find you again and kill you. I’m lost. I don’t have anything. They are looking for me and they want to hurt me. You ask the man to h
elp you with some old clothes, that you can pay him by doing some work. He tells you that his house is far. He looks at you from head to toe. Then he takes off his old, half-torn jacket and gives it to you. You thank him and ask him that if anyone asks about you to say that he hasn’t seen you. He says don’t worry, he won’t say anything. You put on the jacket. It disguises you a little. Very little.
You keep walking and asking people to help you with a little change for the collective taxi fare. Two women give you four pesos. You wait next to a large truck hoping that the driver will return and give you a ride. But the driver doesn’t appear and you get nervous standing there. You walk up to a collective taxi station. You ask one of the drivers if he can take you a bit down the road. You tell him that you don’t have any money. He looks at you, annoyed, perhaps suspicious, and tells you that he’s waiting for more passengers to arrive before leaving. You wait. When two people arrive the driver tells you, “Get in.” After about twenty minutes on the road, the driver gives you two pesos and fifty cents and points out the collective taxis that go to the next town.
You walk up to one of the vans and ask the driver how much the fare is. He tells you, somewhat aggressively, seven pesos. You don’t have enough. You walk away and head into the town until you see a construction worker on a street corner. You walk up, say hello, and ask him for work. You tell him that you were robbed and beaten and that you need money to get back to Mexico City. He asks you to help him mix some concrete and you earn five pesos. In a corner store you buy a soda, a piece of bread and some cookies. You walk to a tree next to an empty field to eat, rest, and think. It must be about eleven in the morning. Several hours have passed since you jumped over the fence at the edge of the Army base. You cannot travel to Mexico City on the highway now, and you haven’t had the best of luck with rides. You don’t trust the roads. If only there were dark, underground roads.