Vandals, drug dealers, guerrillas, vagrants, rioters, infiltrators: these are words that have been used for years to denigrate the rural teacher training students of Ayotzinapa, Mexico. A stigma that fell on the 43 young people who disappeared on September 26, 2014 and on those who survived that night.
Ten years later, and despite the fact that the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador described it as a state crime, the case remains unpunished, and the families and companions of the missing still do not know what happened to them.
At BBC Mundo, we spoke to nine of the 21 survivors who have taken part in the legal action against what happened on September 26 about how they have rebuilt their lives and what has happened to them in this decade.
1. ULYSSES
Ukraine and Palestine says the blackboard. The teacher explains that wars affect children and the fourth graders listen attentively.
They write on colored pieces of paper the rights that each one remembers and stick them on, making leaves of a tree.
Ukraine and Palestine says the blackboard. The teacher explains that wars affect children and the fourth graders listen attentively.
They write on colored pieces of paper the rights that each one remembers and stick them on, making leaves of a tree.
It is a cool morning in the state of Mexico, where industrial warehouses are interspersed with small, almost overlapping houses.
The teacher is Ulises Martinez Juarez. Dark skinned, with slanted eyes and a natural smile, El Buki, as his friends call him, has been teaching for seven years. When defining his present, he has no doubts: “Yes, I am happy.”
He was born and raised in Tixtla, a small town nestled among gently sloping green mountains in the state of Guerrero, hundreds of miles from where he works today.
She studied a Bachelor’s degree in primary education at one of the 18 public boarding schools that exist in the country to train rural teachers, the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School.
It is the official name Although it is popularly called Ayotzinapaa word that immediately refers to one of the biggest crimes in recent Mexican history: the disappearance of 43 student teachers, which occurred in the city of Iguala on September 26, 2014.
Ulysses could have been one of them.
He was there when 43 people were disappeared, three were murdered and two were seriously injured by state agents and other armed men.
He was fortunate that they did not take him away in patrol cars like his companions and he emerged unharmed when bursts of high-calibre bullets rained down on them several times.
He survived. He later graduated and began teaching, but he never stopped telling stories about what happened in Iguala.
He has given interviews to the press, participated in demonstrations and has also testified three times already.
He is one of the 21 survivors who have given – and continue to give – testimony before the Mexican justice system, one of the young men who recounted what happened in 2014 and continue to tell it ten years later, even though impunity puts them at greater risk than before, because some of those possibly responsible have been released and everything indicates that others could follow that path. .
–Yes, I am a little scared because I am not a protected witness, I am simply a witness.
His grandfather, his father and several relatives are farmers. He is the only one in his family who has been able to complete a degree; none of his four siblings have managed to do so.
Now he tries to transmit to his students the social awareness that he himself acquired during his education. That is why he talks to them about wars and poverty. He has explained the crime of Ayotzinapa in some classes. Today he feels that justice is still far away.
–There are very big interests, there are politicians involved
Ulises was 22 years old when the attacks occurred and today he is 32. He finishes his class, closes the classroom and walks along a polluted river where his students, now out of uniform, greet him as they pass.
He heads to the room he rents to live in, inside a house with a shared bathroom.
2. MANUEL
–Good afternoon, General. This is Federal Deputy Manuel Vázquez Arellano speaking and I need to resolve a matter for a colleague.
The caller was a student in 2014 and on September 26 of that year was detained by the military in Iguala.
That night he was threatened by Captain José Martínez Crespo and today he is a federal deputy. The situation has turned around.
“Write down their names because if not, you will never find them,” Crespo told them ten years ago while they were being pointed at and cartridges were being cut from their weapons.
“I’ll leave it to you, please. I’ll be waiting,” the deputy told a soldier today in a tone that, beneath his kindness, exudes a whiff of authority; he is demanding that the matter be resolved.
Few may recognize him as Manuel Velázquez, but many people know him as Omar García, the false name assumed for security reasons by the most popular spokesman for Ayotzinapa.
As soon as his companions disappeared and were killed, he joined Twitter, where he became a massive phenomenon with his account @Omarel44. He was the most visible face of the movement after the massacre, probably because of his ease of speech and his poise.
He enjoys arguing, it’s the only time he smiles. He also likes to provoke but he never loses his cool.
A few weeks after the attacks, Omar spoke to a crowd gathered in the Zócalo, the country’s main square with the National Palace behind it.
“So, what are we going to do? What are we going to do now? What’s next?” the young man from Guerrero asked the crowd wearing huaraches, the sandals worn by country people. While many were content with seeing people gathered together, he was already thinking that mobilizations have a limit, that more is needed to change things.
Now, in September 2024, Omar-Manuel has just assumed his second term as a federal deputy for the ruling party, Morena. He has been heavily criticized for joining the political class that he previously questioned so much, but he does not stop there; he says that try to change things from within.
–At 70 or 71 years old, I will continue to talk about Ayotzinapa. However much some and others may try to prohibit me from doing so, I will not stop doing it.
She walks through the immaculate world of marble and glass that is the Senate of the Republic. She arrives at a session wearing tight jeans, sneakers, a white cotton shirt with embroidery and a hat in the style of her town, Tlacotepec. An outfit that contrasts sharply in this place of suits, heels, and makeup.
Deputies and senators greet him. Some with a hug, others with a handshake. Some with affection, others with the unintelligible gesture of political diplomacy.
Manuel was born and raised in a town of 100 inhabitants. He is the son of peasants; there were 13 brothers, although most of them have died – one was killed by drug trafficking – and the rest emigrated to the United States.
He abandoned his teaching career; with a scholarship for good grade point average, he graduated as a lawyer from a private and renowned university, the Claustro de Sor Juana, and then, in 2021, he entered party politics.
In three years as a deputy he has not achieved as much as he would like.
He presented several bills but only one was approved, he says, disillusioned. What he did achieve was that the Iguala crime be included in the free textbooks used in public schools, although in a more abridged version than the one he proposed.
He is not satisfied with what the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, about to end his term, has done regarding the Ayotzinapa case.
–I respect the president a lot, but he has also had to rely on the Mexican Army to do a lot of things; so that prevents him from pursuing a stronger policy against the army, he has to negotiate. I understand that position he is in, I understand it, but I would not support it because the justice that our comrades and many other victims need is at stake.
3. ANGEL AND LUIS URIEL
“We were hoping that the issue would be resolved with President Andrés Manuel, but as the days and years went by, that hope began to diminish,” says Ángel Mundo from a field in the mountains of Guerrero.
His bare feet are covered in mud and his clothes are wet because he has just watered the seeds planted a few days ago.
He is also a survivor of Ayotzinapa. Many know him as Marlboro, his nickname, or Ernesto Guerrero Cano, the name he gave in interviews for security reasons.
He was also one of the main spokespersons, times that he remembers as “exhausting”, because she received threats, calls, and felt afraid for her family.
After graduating, he taught migrant children in the state of Sinaloa for two years, but he left teaching when he became a father and returned to his hometown to take care of his daughter.
He now works in the fields during the hours that the girl is at school. He grows corn, flowers, chili and squash. He excitedly shows off lettuce that is sprouting and a pineapple that has taken root.
He is rushing to water the land because it was missing yesterday on his plot; he went to the city of Toluca to testify again before the court.
–We have declared what happened from the first day. We will continue to participate as many times as they call us. If it is not known, let it not be our responsibility.
An almost identical path has been taken by Luis Uriel Gómez, the young man who in 2014 recorded with his phone the only visual testimony of the Iguala night, the one in which he shouted to the police “we don’t have weapons”, “we are students” while shots are heard and behind there are vehicles and agents moving.
In addition to threatening him, They tried to buy Luis UrielIn the months following the massacre, unknown persons came to her home to offer her a car, a house, money in exchange for her silence. She did not accept and continued to report.
He also qualified as a teacher, but stopped teaching because he never found a permanent job in a primary school. He then returned to his village in the hot mountains of the Costa Chica region to be close to his wife and three children.
He now works as a day laborer in the fields, where he has been paid the same amount for more than a decade: 200 pesos (about ten dollars). He also occasionally works on the team of his friend, Congressman Manuel Vázquez Arellano, and thus manages to support his family in a modest way.
–If I had been involved in organized crime, as we were accused of, I would have had a new car and a house, but no, what the hell, on the contrary, we go around working as laborers.
Güicho, as his friends call him, admits that he is not well. He continues to have nightmares that take him back to the night of September 26th. He feels safe in his community, but outside, he is in danger.
Because he is also a witness in the legal case and has pointed out those responsible who are still unpunished.
–But if I leave and don’t speak, if I don’t do it, who will? I was forced to do it to make known the events that happened to us that night. And because I had promised and sworn to myself that I would do the impossible to ensure that the truth was revealed and that justice was done. for my colleagues.
4. Edgar Andrez Vargas
Eight surgeries. Jaw reconstruction using bones from his leg. Skin grafts taken from various parts of his body. Dental implants. Tracheotomy. Two years without food, feeding on smoothies injected into a tube through a funnel. Relearning to speak. Painful dressings. Time in a wheelchair. Hundreds of doctor’s appointments. Many scars.
Edgar Andrés Vargas has been through hell ever since a bullet ripped off part of his face that night in 2014. Even so, he smiles, all the time with a wide, beautiful smile that fills everything with warmth.
He was not in Iguala when the attacks began. He arrived in a group that went to help his companions after they asked for help. And a bullet hit him in the face.
The effect was devastating, made even worse by the fact that the military held him for almost an hour inside the Cristina Clinic that night and did not allow him to receive the medical attention that could have facilitated his recovery later.
However, there is no bitterness in his words. He recounts details of what he has suffered, but he is more moved when he tells how he stayed afloat: thanks to the love of his family – who moved from Oaxaca to the capital to take care of him – and the solidarity of other people, even strangers, who sent him encouraging messages on Facebook.
While undergoing endless medical treatments, Edgar qualified as a normal school teacher. He then completed a Master’s degree in Pedagogy and began a career in law, although he was unable to continue.
He has been a primary school teacher for three years. He is a patient teacher and his students respect him even when they are in sixth grade, the most rebellious.
As intelligent as he is responsible, it has not cost him his professional career. His fight is rather personal, inside him. Because he feels that he has not yet returned to being who he was.
–I still don’t accept myself. I have physical after-effects. I don’t like looking at myself in the mirror (…)
“But in the classroom they infect you with their joy and their way of being. The children have helped me with that.”
During recess, almost all of his students sit near him. They share lunch, chat, and laugh together.
5. CARMEL
Carmelo Ramírez gets up at 5 in the morning, leaves his house at 6 to go to work and returns at dusk; his workday lasts 12 or 13 hours on average. He is a chirroquero, as they call those who work with drywall or cement panels in Minnesota, United States.
El Negro, as his normalista friends call him, also survived that night when his cousin Carlos Iván Ramírez Villarreal disappeared among the 43.
He repeated his testimony in forums and talks in cities in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and the United States. At the end of 2015, when events were winding down, he began to receive threats and several times noticed that someone was following him.
He decided to leave Mexico. He was the first exile in the Ayotzinapa case.
He arrived in the United States alone, without documents or papers. He asked for political asylum. He worked as a butcher, cooked tacos and then entered the construction world where he has grown. Today he has his own company, Val Draywall, in which he employs six other workers.
In a distant land, full of snow, which bears little resemblance to his hot tropical town and where he planned to spend little time, Carmelo built his life and formed his own family with his wife Keisy and his two children.
He is enjoying an extremely happy present after much effort, although the past continues to haunt him.
–When I arrived asking for asylum, the lawyer sent me to a psychologist to have an exam to see how my mind was. They diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress and recommended therapies and things like that, but there were no resources, they were very expensive and we never went. We rather learned to live with it.
She says she cannot and does not want to forget Ayotzinapa. She has organized protests in Minnesota, shared content on her social networks, testified before the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the early hours and wants to continue collaborating until the truth is found.
He would also like to return to Mexico one day, but not yet.
–It’s not something that motivates you to come back because you see the whole environment and it’s the same. Nothing has changed, everything is still the same.
6. JOSE ARMANDO
Indira and José Armando bought a tricycle. It is a motorcycle with a large box at the back, adapted to carry objects.
In the mornings they go around their village selling natural coconut water and seasonal fruits. In the afternoons and on weekends they carry logs, palm leaves and whatever material they need to continue building a cabin facing the sea.
They named it Kalahari, they are making it with their own hands and it is their family project, the yearning for a heritage.
–This place is dedicated to fishing and the fish is very cheap. The food is very delicious. There are coconuts, mango, soursop…a lot of fruit. I like it a lot.
José Armando Cruz Vázquez looks you in the eye when he speaks. He has dark skin and a coastal cadence that oscillates between bravery and big smiles. He always wears sandals.
Today he is 28 years old, he was 18 when the attacks occurred. He had just entered the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers College as a student. At that time he recounted the events in detail in many interviews. Now, with some weight on his shoulders, he explains that he has supported “as much as he could.”
Years ago, he began to feel unsafe in Guerrero and migrated to the state of Puebla, but things did not go any better for him: he was run over in a confusing incident. He also tried to settle in the United States, but could not stand the cultural change, racism and xenophobia.
7. HENRY
It is dawn when Enrique García Diego leaves his house with a coffee in one hand and a backpack on his shoulder. He is impeccable, freshly showered and combed. He gets into his car. It is Saturday but he does not rest. On weekends he drives almost two hours across the state of Guanajuato to take master’s classes.
From Monday to Friday he teaches at a peripheral primary school. He says he is passionate about being a teacher.
In 2014, Enrique, nicknamed Cartilage by his teammates, revealed that the official version of the attacks omitted an important fact, a big fact, the size of a bus: The authorities described the events as including four trucks, but there was a “fifth” that had not been mentioned, one from the Estrella Roja company in which Enrique and 12 other boys were traveling.
It was the truck that allegedly hid a load of heroin inside – information that the students were unaware of when they took it at the Iguala station – which was never subjected to expert examination, and was not even in the evidence corral. where it was replaced by another vehicle of a different make and number.
–I saw two Federal Highway Police patrol cars arrive and they got us off the bus. They gave us the option of getting off or dying there. So we ran.
Enrique and another student alerted the police about the existence of the vehicle, which was denied in the official version. They also saw in front of the Palace of Justice the abandoned truck where minutes before about 20 of their classmates were traveling, who are still missing today.
Hours later, when they arrived at the police station, the students expected to find their detained companions. However, they were not there and the word “disappeared” began to float around in the air.
They testified before a colluding office because they thought it would help locate those who were missing.
–But when I said I was going in the [autobús] Red Star told me, no, you don’t matter, we’re not going to take your statement. They wanted to hide what had happened.
He is also part of the group of survivors who are still making statements to the authorities in the judicial process. Aware of the danger that being a witness entails, Enrique moved away from his family to protect them.
These ten years have meant an enormous sacrifice for him: living apart from his wife and two children, missing the chance to see them grow day by day. Ten years of their life together have been stolen from them.
8. EDWARD
Eduardo García Maganda sleeps little. His sleep was interrupted forever on the night of September 26, 2014, perhaps because he was caught in the middle of gunfire on the corner of Juan N. Álvarez Street and saw how the police threw his colleagues, who are still missing, to the ground and then took them away.
Or perhaps because he testified at the local police station in the midst of the perpetrators. Or because he recognized the tortured body of his friend Julio César Mondragón Fontes in the morgue. Or because he carried a lot of weight throughout 2015, when he was Secretary General of the Ayotzinapa Student Committee, that is, he was the highest authority of the normalistas.
–The first few days the narrative was that it had been a fight between criminals, that one group had confronted another with gunfire and that it was a local issue, a dispute between groups over the drug trafficking route.
We were the first to say, ‘No, look, it was police in uniform who took our comrades away.’ If we hadn’t spoken out, this case would have been one of many.
Maggie, as he was nicknamed, had increasingly dark circles under his eyes in 2015. He looked sick – and he was – but he continued to lead protests, give lucid speeches, and be the most understanding of the movement of relatives of the 43.
He later earned a teaching degree and found employment in the state of Guanajuato. While teaching, he completed a master’s degree and then a doctorate. He is now Coordinator of Educational Research for the State of Guerrero.
–There were graduates, lawyers, communications specialists, all kinds of professions here, but never a teacher. (…) They were used to the fact that whoever came here was the son of a politician, the brother of a deputy, was a family member of… how quotas are distributed in these types of spaces. I broke the paradigm (…) When they call me, they see my studies and they tell me ‘you qualify for the position’.
Today he runs an office with 30 people under his charge. He trains teachers, encourages them to do research and publishes a specialized magazine. He also continues to participate actively in the Ayotzinapa case: he is the survivor who has given the most statements, six times already, including reconstructions on the ground and confrontations with security agents.
Eduardo is from the coast, born in Coyuca de Benítez. He is attached to his mother and two sisters, who are workers and single mothers. He takes care of his nephews and is attentive to them. And while he works as a civil servant, he finds time to continue studying. He started a degree in Law. He is in his fourth semester.
He no longer has the dark circles he saw in 2015, but he has turned gray and looks with an unconcealable sadness that he can translate into a single phrase: what happened in Iguala cut short his life project. What frustrates him even more is that, despite so many sacrifices from so many people, the aso remains unresolved.
–There are several new details, it must be said, but I think that the central issue, which is the whereabouts of the companions, is pending. Three confirmed remains have been found in different places than those indicated in the narrative. [oficial]but the other 40 comrades unfortunately remain missing, so there is still a lot to do. (…) When a judge issues a sentence with the names and surnames of the people who participated in the disappearance and murder of the comrades, then I will close a cycle. Because 10, 20 or 30 years may pass but if there is no justice, we will be there, right?
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