I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us. John Gibler

But in that moment we all took off running. And they had us chanting. Truth be told, it was tiring running up stairs, doing all that exercise, I wasn’t really used to all that. They made us run all through Tixtla. We went almost as far as the OXXO convenience store at the edge of town, and then they brought us back, running. They gave us a few minutes to rest and then, around eight or nine, they took us out to do shifts as lookouts, to sweep the school grounds, to clear weeds with a machete and all that.

      The hard thing was that they didn’t give us any water to drink. There was very little water, and they didn’t give us water to drink. So, to be out there cutting weeds with a machete, thirsty, you get exhausted. But I didn’t give up. And then the meals were just some tortillas and a tiny spoonful of beans. Tough luck. You were hungry and you had to eat it and you couldn’t ask for more, because if you did they would fill every inch of your plate with beans, they’d give you bread and tortillas, but a lot of them, and you had to eat it all. So you had to settle for what they gave you. I think they gave us breakfast around ten or eleven and then a few minutes to rest, and then back to work: work, work, work. Then it wasn’t until around four or five that they fed us again. And those were the only two meals. They talked to us about the college, about its creation and everything, and then around eight at night they took us to the study groups and gave us political orientation. They talked about the essence of the teachers colleges, the founding of the teachers colleges, about the social movements there have been in the country, and about the bad governments.

      Sometimes they showed us videos, films, but always related to, you could say, left politics. We would get out of there really late, around two or three in the morning. I remember that twice they took me out of the movies because I had fallen asleep. That was during the last days of the trial week. The students’ committee took me out of the movie because I had fallen asleep and they made me do exercises there in front of the auditorium. The first time they made me exercise, they told me to climb up all these stairs to see what was written on a cross. It was night. I didn’t go all the way, because I saw another guy coming down, I think they sent him up there to do the same thing, and so I just asked him what was written on the cross and then we sat there talking for a bit. Then we went back and they asked us what was written on the cross, we told them, and they sent us back into the auditorium until the study group was over.

      The other time they took me out was also because I had fallen asleep; I was so tired I just couldn’t stay awake. But that time they made me eat an onion. They asked you if you wanted an apple or a pear. I remember that I said an apple and the apple was an onion, the pear was a habanero chili pepper. I chose the apple. And they told me I had to eat it, and I ate it. Afterward I couldn’t sleep. The smell was everywhere. It made your eyes cry. I had that taste in my mouth for three or four days.

      And I made my way through the trial week. It was tough. A bunch of applicants couldn’t take the exhaustion or the hunger, and they left. Once they took us out to cut all the weeds from the cornfields. We went in a bus and got off on the shoulder of the highway and had to climb up the mountain. We arrived around noon I think, and in the sun began to cut the weeds. By around two, I couldn’t stand the thirst. I was so thirsty, my whole body felt weak. When I went to the trial week I didn’t take anything, just a couple of changes of clothes and a backpack. I didn’t take a blanket, just a towel. At night it would get cold and what I would do was lay out a change of clothes on the floor—the concrete floor would get really cold—and I’d lie down and cover myself with the towel. But after a while I struck up a friendship with the guy next to me: he had brought sheets and he shared his mattress with me.

      I made it through a lot. It was kind of messed up, because they would take us out to clear weeds when it was raining, with thunder, and they wouldn’t let us take cover. The trial week was tough, but I was able to make it through.

      ÓSCAR LÓPEZ HERNÁNDEZ, 18, FRESHMAN. In all honesty, they treated us pretty badly when we showed up here that first week. But even so, with what happened to us on the twenty-sixth, it all was useful. Here at the college, during trial week, they have us run, jump into the pool early in the morning, and that came in handy for real, because on the night of the twenty-sixth with the rain, me and several other compañeros spent some eight hours wet. And, yes, here at the college they do that to us, they make us jump in the pool and then go running all wet, and do exercise in the morning. And seriously, on that day, everything they had done to us during the trial week was really fucking useful because out there you really needed it, you had no idea where to run, and here at the college they had taught us to run and seek shelter, and to be in shape.

      MIGUEL ALCOCER, 20, FRESHMAN. It’s a week when you’re here and you go out and do all the things that a campesino does: clear the weeds with a machete, feed the livestock, plant, feed the pigs and the hens. All that is what we do during adjustment week, as they also call it, to see if we are really the sons of campesinos. The truth is, for me it was easy because it was all things I’ve done with my parents. We’ve worked the land, we have some land and livestock. For me, I didn’t think it was hard because, you know, it’s stuff I do at home with my parents and my brother.

      CARLOS MARTÍNEZ, 21, SOPHOMORE. I had finished my freshman year and was eager to start classes and keep studying. We even had plans in my sophomore class to take a study trip; we were planning on going to Chiapas. I felt a bit more relaxed, because the freshman year here is really intense. You show up and you have to adapt to life here at the school, to the academics, the way of life here, the context, the government harassment and persecution that’s always present, I mean it never dissipates, and you have to start, little by little, getting used to the idea that this school isn’t just any school, this school is very different.

      When I was a freshman there was a flood here in Tixtla. This whole area down here flooded. Just about half of the municipality of Tixtla flooded. Many people lost everything: their houses, their belongings, and their work. The rains started on September 13, I still recall that day well, and it kept raining without a break for several days. All of Tixtla flooded, and almost immediately a bunch of people came here to ask us for help getting their things, their belongings out of their houses. There were sick people who couldn’t walk, the elderly, and they needed our help. And there we went when I was a freshman, in September, with the rains, with the water up to our necks, taking things out of the houses and cars, and helping people with any number of things. And that was where they taught us not only to look out for ourselves, but for everyone. It was a fast reaction. I’ll admit that maybe it wasn’t organized, but it did meet the need of helping the people of Tixtla out.

      Later, the federal government designated all sorts of resources, hundreds of thousands of pesos to help this area recover. And to this day, many of the people affected haven’t received a thing. In fact, one time the army made a video where they paid some people to pretend to be wounded or something, and the soldiers were carrying them in the water. And they splashed water on their faces... well, they were actors, they were basically actors for the army. And the people here were so outraged when they saw that the only thing the army had come to do was pretend, precisely when people needed help. Because the soldiers didn’t get in the water, they didn’t go into the flooded houses to remove people’s things. They didn’t go in the water to rescue people. We did that. And the people were so outraged when they found out that the army was making that video that they went out to where the soldiers were, they encircled the soldiers and wouldn’t let them leave until they made a public apology.

      I was also there on January 7, when two compañeros were run over in Atoyac de Álvarez. It was an accident, a hit and run. We were out [on the roadside] asking for donations, when a truck pulling some kind of heavy machinery—I don’t know what it’s called, maybe an excavator, it had like a shovel on it—and even though we were out in the road, the truck came through really fast and some compañeros weren’t able to move fast enough, to get out of the road. Three compañeros made it out alive, two others died there. Eugenio Tamari Huerta and Freddy Fernando Vázquez Crispín were the two who died there. We went after the person who had crashed into the compañeros. We followed him and were able to capture him about three towns down the highway, a place called El Cayaco. We held him there until the police arrived and took him away. That guy is in prison now for the murder of the two compañeros.