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| Ceremony of Remembrance of Ayotzinapa |
Milenio: Adriana Esthela Flores and Rogelio Augustín Esteban
Chilpancingo, Guerrero • It was the same place, almost the same hour and with the same slogans, but the atmosphere on the first anniversary of the removal of the students from the Ayotzinapa [Teachers College] was very different from what was experienced a year ago at the Marquis roadside inn, south of Chilpancingo, Guerrero.
With memories still heated of the confrontation that provoked the death of two students and the employee of a gas station, the government of Guerrero did not want to repeat the episode and did not send any patrols to guard closely the ceremony at which more than five thousand people remembered the three absent ones.
The faces of the students Gabriel Echeverria de Jesús and Alexis Herrera Pino, 20 years old when they died, were there, portraits on a cloth banner and printed on dozens of T-shirts that read "12 December is not forgotten."
"This is a year of great sadness, of remembering him and of not having him present, of wanting to hug him and not seeing him. He and Alexis had an unfair end because they did not deserve to die like this. We know that if they do not want to do justice, nothing is going to happen, but we definitely want to tell them that nobody escapes divine justice. They roam free, they walk as they want, they laugh while we carry our sadness in our hearts," said Gabriel's sister Martha.
"I have a year without your love, without your hugs," said his mother, María Amadea de Jesús.But it was Evelia, Alexis's aunt, who turned from the religious ceremony to the political:
"There was no justice for Alexis because he is not related to the governor. It is unfair that someone we chose could treat us like this."Tot invited to the march were the attendants at the Eva II Gas Station, where a year ago the worker Gonzalo Miguel Rivas Cámara died. However, they observed the day by placing a banner on the pump where their fellow worker died; the banner read, "Thank you: We recognize a dead man."
Contingents of teachers from sixteen rural normal schools blocked the Autopista del Sol [Highway of the Sun] with a march. The same as last year.
Here were lined up students from the normal [teacher's] schools in Tirepetío (Michoacán), Saucillo (Chihuahua), Cañada Wave (Aguascalientes), Atequiza (Jalisco), Tannery (State of Mexico), Panitla (Tlaxcala), Amilcingo (Morelos), Mactumaza (Chiapas), Tamazolapa (Oaxaca) and Durango.
They were ready, but first they had something to do. Gabriel's mother, Amadea, took the time to leave an offering of flowers at the site, now filled with earth and stones, where her son died. Spanish original