I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us. John Gibler
depiction of a “corrupt” mayor and his “mafia” wife who ordered their “gangster” police to prevent the Ayotzinapa students from protesting a political event that night, when in fact there was no such protest, nor even a plan to conduct such a protest. In reality, the students had no idea that said event was taking place, and the event concluded without the slightest interruption long before the students entered Iguala that night. Only a few days after the attacks, when it became clear that police had forcibly disappeared the 43 students, and upon observing the government’s initial response (lies, rumors, trivializing the attacks, ignoring the parents), it also seemed clear that the government would do everything in its power to make it impossible to find the 43 students, and equally impossible to know what happened that night in Iguala. Almost three years later, as I write these words, the 43 families are still looking for their sons.
On October 3, 2014, I traveled from my room in Mexico City to Guerrero and spent most of the following nine months accompanying the families and students during their protests and mobilizations, interviewing survivors and witnesses of the attacks in Iguala. As the first anniversary of the attacks approached, I wanted to share the results of my reporting with the families of the disappeared, murdered, and wounded, with the many survivors of the attacks, as well as with those mobilizing alongside them across the country. I asked myself: How can I write about this? How can I best share what I have learned? What narrative form will best convey the stories that the survivors shared with me? And I thought to myself: This is not the time for me to write. What needs to be shared, urgently, are both the words and the storytelling of the people who lived through the attacks.
This book is composed with interviews with survivors of the attacks against the students of the the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College in Ayotzinapa during the night and predawn hours of September 26–27, 2014. I conducted the interviews between October 4, 2014, and June 19, 2015. The majority of survivors requested that I protect their identities with the use of pseudonyms; I have respected that request.
I have kept a few important words in Spanish. A compañero (or compa) is a companion in struggle and friend. A paisa (short for paisano) is a person from the same region or country, though the Ayotzinapa students also use it to refer to each other regardless of the region of the country they are from. A campesino is someone who lives in the countryside and works the land. A zócalo is a central plaza in a town or city. The students often use the words tío and tía (uncle and aunt) to refer in a respectful and tender way to adults. I have kept those words in Spanish when they are used in that way and translated them into English when the speaker is talking about an aunt or uncle.
Every year Ayotzinapa students elect a student governing committee with a secretary general and several sub-committees tasked with overseeing political organizing, cleaning, cooking and other activities. In what follows the students often refer to these various committees and to the “secretary” meaning the student governing committee’s secretary general.
This book is an oral history of one night: a night of state terror. For the first edition, published in Mexico, in Spanish, in April 2016, I did not write an essay to accompany the oral history. I wanted my listening to act as accompaniment. I hoped that readers would do something similar: accompany, listen to the stories shared here, stories that describe a night of chaos and horror, erratic communications, confusion, shock and disbelief. For the English translation I have included this short prologue and an afterword providing some historical and political context on the region, the school, and the students’ particular mode of organizing (including the “commandeering” of commercial buses, a practice mostly, if bitterly, tolerated by the bus companies and drivers), and discussion of the aftermath of the attacks, particularly the legal and administrative continuation of the atrocity.
Before the police attacks in Iguala, inspired by the Zapatista idea of “to lead by obeying” or “mandar obedeciendo” and reflecting upon years of reporting on social struggles and state violence, I had begun to ask myself questions like these: What would it mean to write by listening, to escribir escuchando? What form would a writing that listens take? What would a politics of listening entail? I held these questions to myself as I began to work. The book you now hold in your hands is an attempt to write by listening.
An Oral History of Infamy
CARLOS MARTÍNEZ, 21, SOPHOMORE. I’m from a municipality in the region of the Costa Grande in Guerrero that is similar to Tixtla. It’s a very pretty place, with rivers and lakes. Starting some time ago it began to urbanize, which has led to some problems. But even so, the essence of the place and the people remains. I’m the second of three siblings. I have an older sister and a younger sister. I am the middle child. I live with my mother. My father left years ago, so, it was really quite difficult to aspire to a different career.
I started working afternoons when I was in junior high school. I started working first at a mechanic’s shop, then a hardware store, and then a taco stand. I did all that to try and support my studies, since it was hard on my mother, alone, having to provide for three kids. After much work, I was able to get a scholarship to study in Acapulco after finishing high school. I stayed there for a year studying accounting, but it was very expensive. I had to pay for inscription fees, books, rent, food, public transit, school projects, and all sorts of things. It was too much to cover with just the scholarship. After a while, I heard about the school here, Ayotzinapa, and I came here. I came hoping to be able to study, which is what I’ve always wanted.
I have a compañero, a friend who studied here and is now a teacher. I met him when I was working for a time in Atoyac de Álvarez. I met him there and he told me about this school, about it being a boarding school, about the classes, the cultural and athletic clubs, a bunch of things. But in the end what really grabbed my attention was that the school is truly free: a school where you can really study and follow your path, that is free. That struck me, and that’s why I came here.
SANTIAGO FLORES, 24, FRESHMAN. Many of my friends said that we should all go to study in Acapulco or at the college for physical education teachers in Michoacán. But I wasn’t really into that idea because it’s hard for me to be far from home. A cousin of mine graduated from here and said that I should come here, that all the expenses are covered—the school covers everything—and for that reason, really, the economics, that’s why I came.
JORGE HERNÁNDEZ ESPINOSA, 20, FRESHMAN. My brother graduated from the college here in 2011. He came in 2007 without knowing anything about this place or what he was getting into. He had heard that there is a teachers college, a boarding college, near Chilpancingo, it’s called Ayotzinapa; all you have to do is take an exam, pass it, and pass a trial week and that’s it. That’s all he knew, so he arrived here without a clue. He passed the trial week, and he graduated. He told me: “I want you to go study there.”
To begin with, we didn’t have money. My father had abandoned us. We are five children, four brothers and one sister. My brother was in his last year [at the college] when my father left us. My mother took care of us. One of my brothers and my sister were in high school with me. One of my brothers was in junior high, and my other brother is both hearing- and speech-impaired and wasn’t in school. So my older brother graduated from Ayotzinapa.
“If you want to study,” he said to me, “you don’t really have a choice, go there, you’ll learn a lot.” And he explained to me more or less how things operate at the college.
“Sure, I’ll go,” I said to him. I didn’t think twice about it. I arrived here at the college and in all honesty I felt strange, uncomfortable for