I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us. John Gibler
it out of the way. This time the cop left the truck there in the middle of the road. And so we got off the bus. I, Aldo, Malboro, a number of us got off the bus and tried to move the police truck. Imagine that this is the truck, here is the hood, and here is the back of the truck. I was here at the back trying to move the truck and Aldo was in front of me. We tried to move the truck out of the way. And then I heard when the shots began, loud. I ducked like this and when I looked at the ground that was when Aldo fell with a shot to the head and there was so much blood coming from the wound, too much blood, too much. I went into shock looking at his body for about three seconds; the shots were still ringing out and I just stood there, looking. Luckily, I wasn’t hit.
“Run,” we shouted, “run!”
We went to the space between the first and second buses. We stayed there throughout the shooting. Only those of us who were riding on the first and second buses took shelter there. We were about twenty compañeros between the two buses and there were police in front of us and police behind us shutting off any escape. They shot at us like you wouldn’t believe, there were so many gunshots, it was intense. At first I couldn’t imagine that they were shooting at us, I couldn’t even imagine that they would kill us. I thought the sounds were, who knows, bottle rockets or some kind of firecracker like that. But when I started seeing the bullets, the bullet shells, I realized they were going to kill us, I realized that they wanted to kill every single one of us.
Aldo was lying in the street for a long time. We started to call ambulances. We called 066 so they’d send ambulances. The number 066 is a federal number. It’s impossible for the federal government to say that they didn’t know what was happening, that the federal police didn’t know, because 066 channels information to the local branch of the federal police that is next to an army base.
SANTIAGO FLORES, 24, FRESHMAN. Farther down the road the police started coming out from the street corners. They started shooting at us again, and when we came up to a mini-Aurrera that was where a police truck shut us off. We got off the buses. We threw rocks at them, but the police got out of the truck and left it there in the middle of the street. We couldn’t keep driving, we were stuck. Other students told us to move the truck. I got off the bus, others got off the bus too. I don’t know if it was from fear or desperation, but we couldn’t move the truck. I remember that Aldo, the student who is brain dead, was there with us. I was in the front, at one of the headlights, pushing toward the back. There were about four of us there. Others were in back of the truck pushing it forward. I mean, I don’t know if it was because we were so scared or desperate, but some compas were pushing from behind and we were pushing from the front and none of us had a clue: they were pushing this way and we were pushing that way. We didn’t coordinate, you know, we didn’t know what to do. And another student was in the driver’s seat steering the wheel this way and that, but no way, we couldn’t move it. And that was when they started shooting at us, firing at us. More police trucks were arriving. And so what I did was put my hands behind my head like this, duck down and run. I wanted to throw myself to the ground because of all the shooting. You could hear the bullets whizzing by.
When we were getting to the space between the first and second buses I heard that the compas were shouting that one of us had been shot. “You shot one of us!” But the police didn’t pay any attention to them. They kept shooting and shooting. “You killed another one of us, you killed another, stop shooting!” But the police didn’t care. We raised our hands in the air to show that we weren’t going to do anything to them, that we surrendered, but the cops didn’t care. We asked them for help, saying: “Help us, he’s still alive!” Because a couple of compas said that they saw that Aldo was raising his hand, they said he was still alive. They screamed: “Help us, don’t be assholes, he’s still alive!” But the cops ignored them.
The shooting lasted a long time, so, so, so much time before they brought an ambulance. The ambulance took some twenty or twenty-five minutes to arrive. It took so long to arrive, but that was when they took the compa. We were there, shouting that we would turn ourselves in and the police ignored us. You looked around the edge of the bus and they shot at you. You held out your hand and they shot at you. One compa who stepped out from the buses, a bullet cut right here across his chest, the bullet sliced right across.
JORGE, 20, FRESHMAN. They were shooting at us all down the street, they were chasing us up to this intersection, I don’t know what it’s called. That’s where the police truck cut us off. The police got out and left the truck there. Since we wanted to keep going, with a number of compañeros, we got off the bus to move the truck. When we were moving the truck, the police ran back to take cover and from there they began to shoot at us. We were trying to quickly move the truck when they started shooting at us. And almost immediately a compañero fell when they shot him in the head. Well, I got scared and, you know, seeing how he fell, the majority of us ran and hid behind the first bus. Some of us jumped quickly aboard the first bus. From there we could see that the compañero who got shot was still alive, he was still moving. The bus driver told us to go get him out of the street but when we tried to get off the bus again, the police shot at us. We couldn’t get back off the bus. There were about ten of us who got back on the bus. So we went to the back of the bus and took cover there while the police were shooting at us. They didn’t stop shooting. We shouted out to them, but they ignored us.
IVÁN CISNEROS, 19, SOPHOMORE. We were coming to the intersection of Juan N. Álvarez and Periférico to head out toward Chilpo when police truck 002 came out of nowhere and cut us off. We got off the bus and went to move the truck. The police officers all got out of the truck and ran. When we tried to move the truck we heard the police shooting at us. That was when they hit Aldo, who was beside me. I ducked down and grabbed the truck to push it from the bottom and start to move it, lift it, push it and that was when they hit the compañero Aldo. He went down. When we saw that he fell we all froze, as they say, and we got scared for real then. We saw that this had gotten real serious. When we had heard the gunshots we said, “Those are shots in the air,” but who knew?
When we saw that the compañero went down, that was when the fear hit. We started to shout to the compañeros on the bus: “Compas, get down here!” We screamed to the police that they had killed a compañero, because we thought that the guy was dead. With a bullet to the head, you’d think that someone would die instantly. But he was just bleeding. We ran to the back of the first bus. We tried to take Aldo with us, but the bullets were flying by so close, we couldn’t do anything. We left the compañero there and went to the space behind the bus. We shouted to the compañeros on the second bus to come down, and we wanted to shout the same to those on the third bus, but the police were already machine-gunning that bus. We couldn’t see it, we just heard the shots. We shouted out to the police that they had already killed one of us, that what more did they want, that they had already fulfilled their mission. We shouted out to them, sarcastically: “You should act so tough with the narcos!” We didn’t know that they were also the narcos. We tried to help the compañeros on the third bus, but as soon as we peeked around the edge of the bus, as soon as we tried to do anything, the police fired at us and the bullets flew over the concrete. We couldn’t leave from behind that part of the bus, between the first and second buses.
When they shot the compañero, we started making calls to the students back here on campus. We called David, the student president. We called the other compañeros to tell them we were being shot at. I started to post about it on the social networks, that we were being shot at, that people should call the press or any media, that we were in Iguala, and they had killed one compañero. I started to post photos of the compañero who had been shot. I called my dad and told him what was happening. He told me to stay calm, and that the most that they could do was arrest us and beat the crap out of everyone. He thought that they would have to eventually let us all go.
At that point I was thinking: “Okay, well, fuck it, they’re going to grab us.” When we saw that more squad trucks were arriving, we thought: “They’re going to corral us, they’re going to come at us from both sides, and they’re going to arrest us.” But that’s what we were thinking, you know, that they were just going to arrest us.