by John Gibler
How could it be possible that there was this enormous fire and yet afterward they found little chicken bones there? How is a little chicken bone going to survive that fire, survive a temperature supposedly so high that it completely incinerated the bones of the boys? For us, what they are saying is completely false.
There are many things that don’t make sense. Supposedly they found forty-two bullet shells from a twenty-two-caliber pistol, and one nine-millimeter shell. And yet in the testimony of this Mr. Cepillo, he says that fifteen of the boys arrived suffocated to death. So they decided to kill them again? Why did they find exactly forty-three bullet shells?
The government wants to wash its hands of this and blame other people. We definitely think that it was the government that went back that night, without uniforms, returned with face masks and without uniforms to shoot at the students again. For us, this is all a bunch of lies. And believe me, it makes me mad as a father, as a simple, working person: we know the truth!
We know the truth, but who is going to help us face down this piece-of-shit government? We thought that when the federal government got involved we’d have positive results—that is, that we’d receive the support we needed so badly. But now I realize that we came to stand face to face with the enemy. Why? Because the government has been cruel to us, the parents, with the pure idiocies that old, bald Murillo Karam, the Attorney General, was spouting.
We still demand they bring us back our boys alive, because the police took them alive. They are alive, and darn it, I say we can come to an understanding as human beings through dialogue, but apparently this government has no human feelings. It has no feelings. The way this government has walked all over us is clear for all to see. I would never have thought that this government would be such a liar! I have never met people with such a capacity to lie so cruelly and still go around the world with their heads held high, visiting other countries like this president does, like nothing were happening in his country.
As parents what can we do? Horribly, they have our sons in their hands and we don’t know how they are treating them. Because, believe me, this is painful, to think how they are treating them. I’m out here. I can drink water. I can eat. I can do whatever I like. But my son? And that knocks me flat; thinking about that sends me to the floor.
Dear God, why does such evil exist in the adult human? And your own government! Your own country!
We will keep struggling, demanding that they give us back our sons alive. I will always demand that the government give me my son. I want him back home because it hurts me to see his two siblings waiting for him. During that whole time I would get home at night, and I didn’t want to go inside. I tried to get back after two in the morning so my other kids would be asleep and not see me. But believe me, my poor children were awake at two in the morning waiting for me: it hurt me to see them! It hurt me to see and know that another day had passed, and they were waiting for me to bring them good news about their brother, that I had found him. Believe me, it’s a heavy pain that clamps down on your heart. You feel powerless. You feel alone. At times you want to fall. This government doesn’t just hurt you as a father or mother, it hurts your whole family, all your children. It sends your life into a tailspin. You abandon everything to hold onto the one hope that we find our sons. But the worthless government has never wanted to give us serious answers. Quite the opposite: it has treated us very badly, as if we were face-to-face with an enemy.
We will keep struggling, demanding they give us back our sons, with the help now of the experts. I think the experts represent a high card, the last card for me that we can play legally. After this there won’t be any more. And believe me, I will not stop until they give me my son.
This government will have to pay for what it has done.
LUZ MARÍA TELUMBRE CASARRUBIAS, MOTHER OF CHRISTIAN ALFONSO RODRÍGUEZ TELUMBRE, 19, FRESHMAN. More than anything, you should know that this boy doesn’t have an ounce of meanness in him. His dream is to pursue his studies and be able to help others. We are a very humble family, we struggle day by day to make ends meet. And he really loves his sisters, his three sisters. My four children have always worked hard. They are all studying. And I think that he, even though he’s missing—but I know he is okay—has continued to motivate his sisters; and I know he is going to come back and keep fighting for his dreams, to become what he’s always wanted to be.
He is a very easygoing child. He has always worked to do good, he’s always been like that. He really likes dance. He actually didn’t want to be a teacher. But considering our financial situation, well, he decided to study here at the college to be able to help us out. But he wanted to be an agricultural engineer. But without the resources and money, he couldn’t be what he wanted to be. He really likes dance.
“I’m going straight to Bellas Artes, mom. I think I can make it,” he’d say. “I like to hear the audience’s applause. I like people to admire me when I get up on stage.”
He is like that. He always liked things like that, sharing his joy with people; he was always like that. He started developing his passion for dance when he started middle school. His dance group is called Xóchitl. And he has performed all over. He even went to Mexico City to perform. And around here they’ve gone everywhere, during all kinds of events. Here in Tixtla whenever there are meetings for the various saint’s days, he always goes to the meetings. He really likes dancing. Nothing else.
“Hey son,” his father would say every once in a while, “would you like to play some sport like basketball or soccer?”
“No, dad,” he would answer, “I don’t like that stuff. I like dance. I feel like that’s why my feet are here, to dance.”
And even when he’s home he practices with his sisters; they also know how to dance really well. You know, even little kids in the neighborhood would come by and say:
“Hey everyone, come over here, Christian is dancing.”
Christian would put on his dancing boots and dance with his sisters and he would start up a fandango right there with his sisters. Sometimes even women here from the neighborhood would come by and follow his steps. And he will keep dancing, because some day he’ll come and accomplish his dreams.
He has really agile feet. He doesn’t listen to any music other than zapateado, dance music for tap dancing–like steps. His sisters also know how to dance that music because they have studied it too. Especially the youngest, who’s now in middle school, she’s the one who dances the most.
Christian said that he felt really happy because, well, we don’t have much money. One time I paid three hundred pesos so that my youngest daughter could rent the costumes she needed for the school’s anniversary. Christian told me, that it was all worth what we paid.
“Mom,” he said to me, “your effort was worth it; my little sister dances with such elegance, I really admire her. I like how she dances, her flow. . . . I think she was the best one out there. My little sister really knows how to dance that music, mom.”
Sometimes they would have fandangos in the house with a little music player. He’d ask me if he could turn on some music.
“Yes,” I’d say, “but not too loud.” He always liked to turn the music as high as it would go. He also liked to shout, and you could hear him way out on the street corner. And that’s how a lot of people would realize that he was starting to dance, and they’d come and lean in the doorway to watch.
“Come on in! If you like, dance with me,” he’d say.
He is an easygoing kid. He doesn’t start trouble with anyone. Everyone on our street loves him, and we love him. He really liked to go to the river, to the pools. He enjoyed playing in the mud. He liked being in the country more than in the city. He was raising pigs, rabbits, and hens, he really liked that. He has a guinea pig that looks like a big mouse; I call it Rat. It’s still there, really fat. It’s female. After Christian started here at the college he couldn’t keep going out to feed his animals; now they’re gone. But he’s always really liked
all that, animals.
We have a plot of land, but we only use it for some fruit trees. We have some limes, guavas, and plums. And we have some pigs out there that we’ve had for a long time. We only have a few trees; they’re just for our consumption. I sell tortillas I make by hand. And sometimes we have tortillas left over, and so at least not to lose that investment of the tortillas, we use them to feed the pigs that we have. That’s why we have the pigs.
Before that happened, the night of the twenty-sixth, we worked every day, including Sundays. It takes a lot to provide for my four children. I had to work every day of the week including Sundays. But now, since that happened on the twenty-sixth up to today, I haven’t worked. I’ve been here at the school, in the marches, wherever they send me I’ve gone.
My husband, my daughter and my sister come with me. Only the two youngest stay home. I don’t want to put them at risk, since we sometimes travel to other regions, or we travel at night. The last thing I’d want is for something to happen to them. Sometimes we get back late at night. Sometimes they don’t tell us where we’re going, we just show up somewhere where we find a lot of bad things. And the last thing I want is for something else to happen to my daughters.
My husband sells jugs of potable water. He makes very little. The minimum. He goes to the purification plant and buys the water jugs there for five pesos. Then he sells them for ten or twelve pesos, depending. When people have paid deposits on the jugs, then he sells it cheaper. But he has to earn at least a little bit. Sometimes business goes well, and sometimes the water is expensive and it goes poorly.
On the twenty-fifth, my son went to spend a little bit of time with us at the house. They had just started giving the students permission to leave the campus. He came home and told us that he might get permission to leave that Friday, the twenty-sixth. They were going to let them go home that Friday. We took him back to the school at around six-thirty on the evening of the twenty-fifth.
Around ten o’clock at night on the twenty-sixth they told us that there were some problems at the school and that the parents needed to go to campus. It was urgent. So we had to come. Well, we were hoping they could have hidden in the hillsides, or in someone’s house, someone who offered them help. All day Saturday and Sunday we waited for them. By Monday we were still, I was still terribly sad because they still had not identified the young man who by Monday was still at the morgue. They called that boy’s mother asking for her to come identify him. It wasn’t until Monday that they ruled out the possibility of that boy being the son of the other mothers.
Well, I’ve had a bad experience with the authorities. Up to now they have not answered our requests. I don’t know if it’s because we’re poor, or because they simply haven’t done anything yet. Because I think that if it were their children, they’d already be back home with them. In less than a day they’d be back with their parents. And we’ve already been waiting . . . and without any answers from the authorities. And what’s more, they haven’t investigated Aguirre. For example, we went to Mexico City to speak with President Enrique Peña Nieto, but he hasn’t responded to any of the things we asked him. Supposedly we signed an agreement, but it hasn’t been honored. That agreement we signed has never meant anything for us. If it had meant something, he would have taken action and would have responded to the things we asked him.
For example, they supposedly detained twenty-something police officers. They took them all away from here to Nayarit, I don’t know where, somewhere else, to another jail, to do their investigation. You’d think that if they commited the crime here, they should be judged here. There’s no reason to take those police somewhere else, especially out of state. They should be judged here. Like we said one day to the Attorney General, Murillo Karam, let us talk to them for at least an hour, let’s see what we can find out, if we can’t get the truth out of them.
It isn’t fair that we parents are the only ones suffering so much with the uncertainty of not knowing where our sons are, not knowing if they’ve eaten, if they get to sleep, if they’ve had a bath. All of that ruins us as parents. It ruins us because we don’t know what’s happening with our sons. And more than anything, for me, even though our family is humble . . . he’s a boy dedicated to his family, to doing good. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.
I, as a mother, know my son, and it’s not okay that this is happening here in this country. There is no justice in it. Taking away a piece of the path my son has to walk. I feel like his steps are still incomplete. . . . I can’t find a way to explain how I feel as a mother.
Yes, I’ve dreamt of him. At first I dreamt that he arrived, that he was at his aunt’s house and I went by to whisper in his ear for him to pray a lot, that prayer would help him. And then I came back and went to the market. And every little while I told him:
“Pray a lot, it will help you, you know how to pray.”
After that I dreamt of him again, but that he was already dead. I didn’t see him, but someone told me I had to go claim him at the morgue. And I went through a door and came through to some kind of big trailer, and then I came out the trailer’s door. I screamed desperately, asking for help, that it was not him, that they were lying to me telling me he was at the morgue. That’s how I dreamed of him.
I feel that he is going to come home, and we are waiting for him here. I don’t feel like he isn’t alive anymore. I feel that he is alive and is going to show up any minute.
MARIO CÉSAR GONZÁLEZ CONTRERAS, FATHER OF CÉSAR MANUEL GONZÁLEZ HERNÁNDEZ, 19, FRESHMAN, IN FRONT OF THE GOVERNOR’S OFFICE, CHILPANCINGO, 4 OCTOBER 2014. A million pesos are what our sons’ lives are worth? That’s what he spends on a drinking binge. That fucking pig. That wretch. We have an incompetent as governor.
“I can’t answer you,” Governor Ángel Aguirre said, and got up to leave.
“Are you at a loss for words, to answer me?”
We are exhausted. We are parents. We are already exhausted. We don’t know what to do or whom to ask for help. And they send us that. . . . Well, I don’t know how they could bring us all together to come here, and we are still idiotic enough to come for an audience with the governor. I don’t know. Supposedly Peña Nieto wanted to change this country and who knows what else. . . . Why isn’t he here now? Why is he not here? They are forty-three. They are students. And, unfortunately, like I said to the governor, lucky it’s not his son, because in half an hour they would have found him. And without a scratch.
Our only crime is being poor and looking for a school where we can support our children. It’s horrible, but that’s how things are.
My son is César Manuel González Hernández. But I’m not here just for him. I’m here for all of them, because they were his compañeros. I don’t know why people talk so badly about Ayotzinapa. I’ve been living at the school for a week and they are some beautiful boys, people who take the bread from their mouths to give it to the parents, kids who go without eating so that the parents can have a meal. I am from Tlaxcala. I am from Tlaxcala, señores. I’ve come to find out about all the filth they have here.
They let us into the meeting, señores, and they make us, the parents, go through a metal detector. How is it possible that they make us go through a metal detector? Make your system, your police, your killers go through the metal detector. What can we do to him? No, I didn’t just take it, señores, not this time, I didn’t take it. I don’t know if that dog will have me killed. Let him do it. Here I am. But give me back my son. Nothing else. And the other forty-two students. That is all I ask.
I don’t know why they kicked me out of the meeting. I am from Huamantla, Tlaxcala. We are good people. People who won’t just sit and take it. People with enough balls . . . those sons of bitches. I told him that to his face, that son of a bitch, and I shut him up. He couldn’t say a word to answer me, the idiot. What wretched people, truly. What fucking cowards, using guns. I wish one of those pimp sons of fucking bitches would say to me:
“You know what, l
et’s go at it, you and me, son of a bitch, with our bare hands.” I don’t give a fuck. And still with his little smirk and “good evening.” I just looked at him. He looked back at me.
“Yes? Tell me.”
“What do you want me to tell you? Good evening? For you. For us with our guts tied in knots, with our guts a fucking wreck. . . . Our only fucking crime is being too poor to send our kids to a private school. Lucky it’s not your son. They’d find your son in less than half an hour, you asshole, and without a fucking scratch. Or your car. Let’s not talk about your son, let’s talk about your goddamned car. If someone were to steal it, in less than half an hour they’d bring it right back to you. And these sons of bitches, asslicking sons of dogs, standing there protecting you with their earphones, sons of fucking bitches, ball-licking motherfuckers. They do that because they don’t know how to work, the assholes.”
Does he want to kill me? Let him do it. He wants to kill me? Let him do it. I don’t care. I care more about my son’s life.
MARIO CÉSAR GONZÁLEZ CONTRERAS, FATHER OF CÉSAR MANUEL GONZÁLEZ HERNÁNDEZ, 19, FRESHMAN, HIGHWAY BLOCKADE PROTEST, CHILPANCINGO, 5 OCTOBER 2014. He is a cynical person. I asked him a lot of questions, and do you know what he said to me:
“Okay, so I’ll get up and leave?”
“So you, sir, are standing up because you don’t have any answers? You’re incapable of providing us with answers? Why didn’t you start the searches on Sunday, or Monday? Why?”
“Weren’t we searching?”
“Lies. I left Tlaxcala at one-thirty in the morning, alone. And I don’t care if they could have killed me. If they want to kill me, they can give me back my son, kill me and there’s no problem. It is unjust that his forty-two compañeros are disappeared. You don’t know the pain we feel. You don’t know that we are physically, morally, and economically destroyed. Unfortunately, we don’t have any money.”
We want some certainty. They’re telling us there are ten dead bodies in Taxco, there are twelve bodies over there. Now they’ve found two mass graves. And so now you’re going to give us those bodies, all charred, all foul? I say, no sir. You all took them alive, and alive you have to bring them back to us. It wasn’t some criminal organization that took them, and we’re supposed to think they’ve already been killed. It was the police who took them! So, precisely what kind of security do they have here in Guerrero? You’d think the police follow the orders of their superiors, meaning they don’t act on their own. I’ve been living here at the school for a week, during which time I’ve come to learn about all kinds of corruption here in Guerrero. And I say, how is it possible that the citizens—I’m not talking about the representatives of the law, but the citizens—how is it possible that as citizens people allow this kind of a situation? I mean, if people know perfectly well what is happening, damn it! Act!
