Chilpancingo, Guerrero - The Normal School Students of Ayotzinapa did not go to Iguala to botear ['pass the hat', ask the public for donations]. They went to take buses, because the state police and the Army prevented them from doing it in Chilpancingo [Guerrero state capital].
The oft-cited headline in the Daily in Guerrero newspaper, "Finally, Order Restored", does not refer to the barbarity in Iguala, but to the fact that Chilpancingo was "spared" from Ayotzinapa students taking buses again in this city. The aforementioned article, published on September 27, reads:
"The mere presence of state and federal Army forces deterred the students in their umpteenth attempt to steal buses at the entrance of the bus station in this capital."So the students went to Iguala, where, after taking two buses at the terminal of the cradle of Independence, nine blocks from City Hall, they traveled along Juan Álvarez Street, leading to the Periférico [Beltway].
So they passed along one side of the Plaza of the Three Guarantees, one block long, the place where José Luis Abarca Velázquez and his wife "were at a dance," but they never got out and tried to disrupt the event. They went on ahead, and urgently so, because the driver of the bus they had boarded resisted the decision and called his colleagues. Then the police would end up disappearing 43 youths.
So began the story on the evening of September 26, just one month ago, when the first-year students were found working on the plot [school gardens, where they grow food]. One relates:
"They came to tell us that we had to leave the work and go to a committee meeting."The plan was to get buses to transport fourth-year students who would go to events on the Guerrero Coast and, then, take the buses to travel to the October 2nd commemorative march [marking 1968 Tlatelolco Student Massacre] in Mexico City.
Somehow the state police found out and blocked the Chilpancingo bus terminal. A military patrol arrived soon after. The presence of both forces made the students drop their plan. They decided to go to Iguala in two buses previously taken. About 80 young people traveled, but we don't know the exact number because the students don't often make exact counts of who participates in each "operation".
At the intersection leading to Huitzuco, the buses halted. At that point, passengers on one of them were let off to take another bus. They made one stop and got off. The other bus went straight to the toll booth.
At the Iguala bus terminal, the driver resisted the taking, emboldened by the presence of other drivers and by a line of buses. The students called for reinforcements and with everyone, they managed to get two more buses.
From there, municipal police began to fire into the air, but they only stopped the buses 19 blocks later, when a pickup truck stopped cross-ways in the road.
Several students got off the first two buses and tried to push the pickup truck out of the way. The police came and fought them. Aldo Gutiérrez Solano, a student from Ayutla de los Libres, struggled with a policeman, who was able to subdue him. He was the first to fall. According to testimony by one of his classmates, a female police officer shot him. Aldo is still in the hospital, brain dead.
When Aldo fell, the shooting began. The students who had managed to get off the bus fled into the gap between the first and second bus. Thus, their testimonies are fragmented, bits of an episode that lasted an hour and a half without the military, who are based less than 500 meters [547 yards; one-third of a mile] from the place, ever showing up.
Abel Barrera, director of the Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights, believes that many of the disappeared students were traveling on the third bus in the convoy, because students who were on board were not able to get off quickly. Barrera, who has heard many times fragments of the story narrated by the Ayotzinapos (the term is used pejoratively in Guerrero, but after the worldwide reaction, it's time to claim it as a note of pride):
"Finally, the Federal Police appeared, but not to help the students. Instead, they came to subjugate them and to accuse them of being the ones making the trouble."The Iguala municipal police was a government entity in the service of organized crime. It is doubtful, say members of the Iguala municipal council, journalists, teachers' leaders and ordinary citizens, that the mayor would have given more than an order "that [we] not be bothered [at the party in progress]."
If they shot, subjugated and snatched the students, Barrera believes, it was because they didn't know that they were dealing with Ayotzinapa students, because:
"They didn't act under police logic, but under criminal logic: 'If you are all youths with shaved heads [normal school tradition is to shave heads of first-year students], then you are coming to dispute the territory' [i.e., turf battle between cartels]."Rescuing the Fallen
The news arrived quickly at the Ayotzinapa normal school. Several students who had not gone to the "committee" were told:
"They killed a classmate."In several pickup trucks they hightailed it to Iguala. Jesús, one of those who traveled to the rescue, has an additional reason for not giving his name: he is related to a normal school student killed "in the repression of previous years."
MV Note: In December of 2011, in order to draw attention to several issues, the Ayotzinapa students had set up a roadblock of the Mexico City-Acapulco Highway of the Sun. Two students were killed when police fired their guns. No one has been convicted for those killings.
At the Santa Teresa intersection, where the Hornets soccer team was attacked, the new group of students came across
"a vehicle parked across both lanes and men with goat horns [slang for AK-47's]."The men shouted at them:
"Stop, sons of bitches!"But, instead, the guy driving stepped on the gas. Jesús doesn't even know why the men didn't shoot at them.
Later, "under a bridge", they came upon a bus that had been shot. They went down to see. There was no one. They didn't know it, but their classmates, who had been riding in this bus which had split off from the group attacked in the vicinity of the military zone, had scattered into the nearby hills.
None of the students were familiar with the streets of Iguala. They asked several taxi drivers to guide them to the scene of the shooting, but no one wanted to help them. It took some time, but after 11:00 p.m. they finally reached the bus terminal.
Finally, a woman gave them directions, and they were able to get to where their classmates had been attacked by municipal police, and where others had been snatched. ...
Reporters had arrived and were speaking with students and teachers of CETEG (State Coordinating Committee of Education Workers of Guerrero), who came to help the normal school students.
Jesús tells that he saw a gray Lobo pickup truck stop, and three men got out:
Jesús tells that he saw a gray Lobo pickup truck stop, and three men got out:
"First, they fired into the air, but the first to get out, crouched down and began to shoot to kill."Daniel García Solís, a 19 year-old student from Zihuatanejo, fell beside Jesús.
"He asked for help. I wanted to go back, but I wasn't able to.
"I think they reloaded, because they began to shoot again. We left after awhile, because a driver told us we should leave because they could return. The classmate was no longer screaming. He had died."Jesús and some of his classmates climbed to the roof of a house and estimated that they were there for about five hours in the rain. He came down limping because a wild bullet was buried in his leg. When they reached
"our classmates, they were with some ministerial police [investigative police with the Public Ministry], and they took us to make formal statements."As they were leaving, they were counting the dead and wounded.
Jesús falls silent.
"It was about three in the afternoon. They told us that a dog was eating a classmate."It was Julio César Mondragón, El Chilango, who was still alive when they gouged out his eyes and tore off his face.
Jesús knows that no one has been imprisoned in his relative's case. So now he says:
"Justice is not going to arrive, although we might seek it."The Intelligence of La Maña [Guerrero slang for narco-gangs]
On October 16 a narco-banner appeared in the city of Iguala. El Choky signed it. The banner, promptly removed by federal authorities, points the finger at those responsible for the attack on normal school students: the Casarrubias Salgado brothers and the Benítez Palacios brothers, followed by a list of names and nicknames.
Next it points a finger at the mayors and directors of Public Security in Taxco, Ixtapan de la Sal, Iguala, Tepecoacuilco, Cocula Teloloapan and Apaxtla. Together with all the police, the message continues,
"they are the group that makes up Guerreros Unidos [Warriors United]."
The day after the banner appeared, Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado was arrested and identified by the Attorney General's Office (PGR) as the big boss of the Guerreros Unidos cartel.
On October 19, the federal government announced that it was taking control of the above-mentioned municipalities--with the exception of Tepecoacuilco--and of some others, adding up to 13 in all.
El Choky's message also implicated Héctor Vicario Castrejón, identified in Guerrero as "second in command" of the political group surrounding former Governor Rubén Figueroa Alcocer.
On October 19, the federal government announced that it was taking control of the above-mentioned municipalities--with the exception of Tepecoacuilco--and of some others, adding up to 13 in all.
El Choky's message also implicated Héctor Vicario Castrejón, identified in Guerrero as "second in command" of the political group surrounding former Governor Rubén Figueroa Alcocer.
During the Figueroa administration, Vicario, current representative of the federal Secretariat of Agricultural, Regional and Urban Development, performing the role now played by Ernesto Aguirre, nephew of the governor [Ángel Aguirre, now on leave of absence].
As proof that he has no connection to organized crime, Vicario spent several hours on October 17, saying on local radio that he had to get his family out of Huitzuco, since in 2000 they abducted his father and destroyed their properties in this municipality and in Iguala.
By the way, about five years ago, Vicario was godfather to a class of Ayotzinapa students.
This fact must be added for those who believe that Ayotzinapa students act under orders from the guerrillas: The class of Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, killed by a shot to the head in 2011 on the Highway of the Sun, had as it godmother Silvia Romero, Secretary of Education for Ángel Aguirre. As it is, she is a native of Iguala.
A member of the current committee says:
"What happens is that each class has a committee that organizes the graduation celebrations, but we don't know why these classmates chose whom they did."Ordeal
The first-year student who serves as a guide in the school, says:
"In Ayotzinapa, our real names are known only when we knew someone before. Here my nickname is Relax, for my calm demeanor."
Still looking bald, he points out in the barnyard:
"I brought that chicken."Relax says that he wasn't in the attack because he was "on another bus" that pulled away from the convoy. In the same way, they got away from three police cars. The police stopped them at gunpoint:
"We shouted at them to leave us in peace. At the same time, we heard how they were calling for reinforcements on the radio."
The students ran to the nearby hills. When they returned, the bus was full of bullet holes and flat tires.
Although Relax didn't know it at the time, an ordeal had begun for 43 families. Also the collapse of the political class: it is the stuff novels are made of. Spanish original
Although Relax didn't know it at the time, an ordeal had begun for 43 families. Also the collapse of the political class: it is the stuff novels are made of. Spanish original