I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us

by John Gibler

  I heard my husband’s voice telling me to go with him. He pulled me down Álvarez Street, in the direction of the Cristina Clinic. We ran, and the gunshots continued. The shooting didn’t stop. We took cover between the buses and the walls. We lost track of the other reporters and only saw students who were also running in every direction, all confused. When the shots stopped, we turned toward Juárez Street when my husband said:

  “Here they come, here they come!” We saw two large trucks driving by at top speed. My husband pulled me in the other direction, toward Hidalgo Street. As we were crossing Álvarez again we came upon some students helping someone wounded and going toward the clinic. We kept going toward Hidalgo. On the corner of Hidalgo and Pacheco we saw four police officers calmly eating tacos. We stopped a taxi and left the area.

  ERNESTO GUERRERO, 23, FRESHMAN. They shot us again. I was on the opposite corner talking with a friend when all of a sudden it sounded like a bunch of fireworks going off, like someone had thrown a pack of firecrackers into a fire: a horrible racket, a strafing, a rainstorm of bullets coming straight at us. When I looked back, I saw a crowd of people running in my direction. The reporters all came running. I even bumped into the TV reporter and said to him:

  “Film this!” But he said: “No, man, they’ll kill me!” He got in his little car and took off. I was one of the last people to leave the area. There was a teacher standing on the corner. I asked her: “Aren’t you going to leave?” She said: “I can’t find my husband.” She stayed there. I left. Everyone had run down Juan N. Álvarez. I got to a corner and turned with a group of compañeros, two reporters, two teachers, and a man. From there we went to a teacher’s house.

  COYUCO BARRIENTOS, 21, FRESHMAN. I was with my cousin and the other compañero who was killed. He was in the marching band with me. His nickname was Fierro, Iron, but also Pistol. We were there with another compa we call Grande, Big, and a compa we call Sharpa. We were starting to talk about what had just happened, if everyone was okay. What had happened? Next to us some of the compañeros who came from the school to help us were looking at cell phone videos. At that moment the general secretary of the committee was giving an interview, or a statement to the press.

  I stepped away from my friends to turn back a taxi that was about to drive through the area. I saw that a white truck had driven by a number of times. It was a Lobo7 with a radio antenna on the cab and someone riding in the back. They went by three times, more or less. I didn’t see it go by a fourth time. After the third time a black car drove by, an Ikon or a Chevy. It went slowly by in front of us and a compañero saw that they took our photo. He even said:

  “Hey, they took our picture with a flash!”

  The strangest thing about that car was that it didn’t pass by in the correct lane, but was driving really slowly the wrong way in the left-hand lane. After that car drove by the first sicario arrived. He started shooting in the air. Then they started shooting at us. I turned back and clearly saw the sparks of the bullets hitting the pavement, like Christmas firecrackers. The sparks flew from the pavement toward us. It seems like in a movie when they tell you that your life flashes before your eyes.

  So what we did then was run. Then two other people got out of a car and started shooting at us. They were all dressed in black and wearing face masks. They were spraying us with machine-gun fire. They didn’t pause for a moment. One of them was standing right in the middle of the street, another was beside him near the cars, and the other was up on the sidewalk, next to the wall of a building. They were just shooting at those of us in the road and everyone at the press conference. I ran as best as I could. I don’t know how, but I made it over to some parked cars. A lot of students ran with us. Others ran toward the buses, or towards the Aurrera. Everyone ran off in different directions, and we didn’t know where they went.

  I didn’t see where Daniel was. I was trusting, I was certain that he was safe, that he had been able to run. And those fucking assholes kept shooting. They didn’t stop for a moment.

  JORGE HERNÁNDEZ ESPINOSA, 20, FRESHMAN. I turned down the first cross street, and then turned again down the first street I came to; it was an alley, a closed alley. I didn’t know what to do, to go right or left. For a moment it was like I lost the ability to think, my ability to reason got all clouded. I was trying to think where to run: “Well, if I go back up this street then I’ll end up right where. . . .” So I ran down the street. I ran and came to a house with the windows open and the lights on. I knocked on the door a number of times, but they didn’t want to answer me. Then my compañero, the one whose face they cut off, I remember I saw him running and screamed:

  “No, wait! Let’s go inside this house!” He kept running, in total desperation to get away from there, to run far away. He kept running and I didn’t see him again. I told the people in the house, well, I asked if they would please let me stay there. I was begging them, saying that I wouldn’t cause any problems for them, but if they would please let me in. They didn’t answer me. So I jumped the fence, and then they started asking me to please leave. I said:

  “Please let me just explain and then I’ll go.” So I told them what had happened and they asked me if anyone had seen me jump the fence. I said no.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. No one saw me.”

  “No one saw you?”

  “No, no one saw me.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes”

  “Okay. You can stay here.”

  And so I stayed there, alone, inside the house.

  JOSÉ ARMANDO, 20, FRESHMAN. Another five compañeros and me hid under a Tsuru.8 We could all see the sparks of the bullets hitting the pavement. They looked like firecrackers. And we thought: “Not again, this is the end.” Our minds went blank. We said:

  “Okay, well, now we’re really fucked.” And we saw two compañeros get hit and fall. We saw them lying in the street.

  Then we ran about a block to an alleyway. We climbed over a fence that was about three meters high and then jumped down however we could on the other side, because, you know, they were looking for us. There was a bunch of corrugated tin and other stuff on the other side of the fence. After a while, around one in the morning, it started raining. We were hiding there in the rain. There was a house there and the tío told us we could stay there, but not in his house: we could stay outside in the patio. A fence enclosed the patio, and we stayed there, in the rain, getting wet, until about five in the morning. We were scared, because the house was really close to where everything had happened, to where our compañeros were lying in the street. We hid there in the rain and we could see how the police trucks kept driving around looking for us in the streets. They stopped in front of the house a couple of times. We froze, not making a sound.

  PVC, 19, FRESHMAN. Two compañeros went down right there. We all ran, dispersing in different directions, leaving the two compañeros. There was no way to go back for them without getting killed. So we all ran and splintered off in different directions. Five of us made it to an empty plot of land and hid there. We could see that cars kept passing by, cars and motorcycles, driving all around the area. About eight motorcycles went by, and trucks, lots of trucks. We stayed there. It started raining. We heard something, it sounded like screams, like someone being tortured. We heard someone screaming: “Help!” But how could we go try to help with all those people surrounding the whole area?

  MIGUEL ALCOCER, 20, FRESHMAN. I saw it when they got out of their cars. They were wearing face masks. They got out and started shooting at us again. I think they first shot in the air, like giving a warning. Then they shot directly at us. Immediately, with the first shots, I had to cross the avenue toward the buses. With the first shot, I crossed and ran toward the buses. When I was just about to get to the corner, one of my compañeros bumped into me. I bumped into someone else, and we all fell. My legs and knees were all scraped up, and it was like I lost consciousness for a second. But then, instantly, I reacted, and go
t back up. When I looked back I could see the bullets ricocheting. It sounded like they were shooting us with machine guns because the shots were continuous. I think it was like three clips of rounds that they shot at us there. I got up and ran down the street. My compañeros ran down the street as well and I caught up with them and kept running. The gunmen were still shooting.

  We had run about two blocks and could still hear the gunshots. I ran with that group of compañeros but, I don’t know, I left them and crossed the street and ran a bit further. When I realized that I was alone, I got kind of freaked out and went back to look for the group. I saw about five students from the college coming my way.

  “Where are the others?”

  “I don’t know,” I said to them.

  We kept going when we heard that some teachers from the CETEG were running our way. They were three women and they seemed really terrified and out of breath, like they couldn’t run anymore. We helped them and turned down a street but realized it was a dead end. We kept going and the teachers shouted to people in the houses to open up for us, that people were trying to kill us. But none of them opened their doors for us. We went back to the street corner because the teachers said that it was dangerous to stay in that alley with nowhere to run. We were heading back to the street when we heard a bunch of trucks. We came up to the street corner and crossed over to the other corner and saw a truck with some armed men in it. The truck passed by us at full speed and maybe they didn’t see us because instantly we all threw ourselves on the ground behind a car parked on the side of the road. I think that they didn’t see us because they went by so fast.

  When we got to the street we saw a man loading things in his house, like he had just come back from selling things, or something like that. We asked if he would let us into his house, but he didn’t want to; he said no, that he didn’t want any trouble. The teachers, weeping, asked him to please let us in, and so he said yes. We went inside, but only stayed for about two hours. Around three in the morning the man told us to leave his house. He said that this wasn’t his problem, and that we couldn’t stay there anymore. That made my compañeros and me feel hopeless because some compañeros hiding outside could see trucks driving all around looking for us, looking for any compañeros from the school. They told us not to leave the house because the people in those trucks could grab us. That’s what made us feel so desperate about having to leave the house, because we’d been told that there were trucks all over the area looking for us. We told the teachers that the man was kicking us out of his house, and that we’d have to leave. We told them what the man had said to us. But one of the teachers lived nearby.

  “Don’t worry, boys,” she said, “lend me your cell phone and I’ll call two taxis to take me home.”

  She called and the first taxi came. The teacher got in. I also went in that first taxi. We went in groups of three, lying down in the back seat so that the police or gunmen wouldn’t see us. We got to her house, she let us in, and then they went back to get the other compañeros. Then we stayed there.

  COYUCO BARRIENTOS, 21, FRESHMAN. I saw a student, a junior, go down. I went back to try to help him. He was able to stand up and we kept running. There were a lot of us crammed between some parked cars. We were all mashed together. I was stuck between the wall and the edge of one of the cars and couldn’t push myself further behind the car. That’s when I saw where one of the individuals was shooting from the sidewalk. A number of bullets passed close to my body. Maybe they were expanding bullets because a bunch of bullet fragments hit me in the legs and hurt. At that moment I thought that I’d been hit. But I checked my legs and I didn’t have any full bullet wounds. Some of the compañeros crammed between the cars took off running. Those of us who stayed crawled underneath the cars. Another compañero who was also in the marching band stayed with me under the car. And a senior from the college was lying next to me. And another compa from the transportation committee was there with us. There were about eight of us there. The compa from the marching band lying next to me was really scared. He was about to lose it.

  “Calm down,” I told him, “try to calm yourself down. Don’t lose control, we’ll find a way to get out of here.”

  When I started to look all around, to scan the area, I noticed that there was gasoline dripping from the car we were hiding under.

  “Get the fuck out of here!,” I said to all the others, “We’ve got to move!”

  Since they were still shooting, if a bullet struck around the gasoline we’d be screwed. I waited until the others had taken off and then ran after them. We saw an empty plot with some bathrooms toward the back of it. A fence surrounded it with some wire mesh in the corner. We went in there. I didn’t see anyone coming and said: “Everyone, come quick, over here!”

  Another compa was keeping watch. He and I were the last ones to go in. We were climbing the fence one by one while others kept a lookout. We climbed that thing however we could: some compas jumped, others bent down to let another use their back. When it was my turn, I don’t know how, but I jumped. We were able to all get over. It was dark. We fell on top of sheets of corrugated tin. There were a bunch of metal bars and wood. It was a patio, some kind of storage area. We went as far toward the back as we could and came upon two little houses. We saw some other compas who had also run. They had climbed up on the roof of one of the houses. Others jumped over to the other house. They had climbed the fence and asked permission from the owners, the tíos that live there. And yes, they let us stay there, to hide there and wait. We started checking to see who was there, and talking about what had just happened. That was when someone told us that two students had been hit.

  “One of them was Chino,” someone told me. Chino, Curly, was our nickname for Dani. “It was el Chino.”

  I didn’t want to believe that it was Daniel. I wanted to believe that he had been able to run and get to safety. But they started calling other compañeros and they also said that Chino, Coyuco’s cousin, was dead. When we had been under the cars, Daniel’s cousin had called me, asking for Daniel. He wanted to know what was happening. I told him:

  “Listen, man, I can’t talk right now. We’re getting blown to pieces. They’re shooting us, man. Let people know to come and . . . actually no, tell them not to come, tell them to wait, otherwise they’ll get killed too. I can’t talk. I’ll call you when I can. For now we’re going to try to hide.” I hung up on him. That was when we ran and then went over to the houses.

  We were all bunched together in that patio, trying to hide as best we could. We couldn’t make any noise, to avoid being found. Any sound that we heard put us all on alert. We were just trying to figure out where we could jump and run if they came for us. Another compa called one of us there and told him that we need to stay put, that those assholes were still out there looking for us. We didn’t hear any more gunshots, but they were still looking for us. They were driving all around the area. We waited there for more than four hours. It started raining. We tried to take cover beneath the roof of the outdoor bathrooms. The compañeros on the roof wouldn’t come down to try and get out of the rain. They were getting soaked, and freezing cold, but they didn’t want to get down. They said they’d be able to let us know if anyone was coming so that we could all run. The hours went by like that. Almost nobody had any battery power left in their cell phones. We turned them off to try and save the battery for any emergencies, to be able to make a call and let others know if something was happening.

  JUAN PÉREZ, 25, FRESHMAN. I saw a compañero fall down. I thought they had shot him.

  “A compañero fell down,” I said, “I don’t know if they hit him or not, but I saw him go down.” But when I looked back he wasn’t lying in the street anymore. Then, seconds later, he was right in front of me. I don’t know how he did it, but he got up. He was right in front of me, with his lip all destroyed by a bullet. He was bleeding a lot. All of us standing there grabbed him and started to carry him about a block. We went about a block and knocked on
the doors of two houses. We thought the building there was a Red Cross hospital. We knocked and asked for the woman there to help us, because the compañero was losing a lot of blood. The woman thought twice about it.

  She seemed to be thinking: “Should I let them in, or no?”

  She finally opened the door and we all ran in there to hide. The compa was bleeding badly. He was using a T-shirt to stop the blood. The nurse, well, I don’t know if they were nurses, they weren’t wearing uniforms. There were two women there, and a paisa asked them if there was a doctor on duty. They said no, that the place was closed, that it was late and there weren’t any doctors there.

  “Can’t you call a doctor?”

  The woman in charge of the clinic made a call to a cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail. At that moment the paisa said:

  “Everyone upstairs.” He was thinking that they might come shoot us again in the clinic. I asked the paisa:

  “You want us all to go upstairs?”

  “Yes,” he said. So we went upstairs. The wounded compañero was losing it, he couldn’t breathe. He typed on his cell phone:

  “I can’t take this anymore, I can’t take it.”

  While we were carrying him a lot of blood fell all over the stairs, everywhere, splashing all over everything. Upstairs he sat at a table: the table was covered in blood. We thought he’d faint. We took him back downstairs. A compa went back out into the street to look for a taxi, but the drivers didn’t want to help. The taxis were driving around like they were there to keep watch over us. The same taxi drove by again, and once again the compas pleaded:

  “Help us take our compañero; some people hurt us.”

  But no, the taxi driver didn’t care. The compañero couldn’t stand it anymore. We went back upstairs. When I stuck my head out of the upstairs window, the soldiers’ truck was there. I don’t know how they got inside, but they started cocking their guns and everyone went downstairs.