I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us. John Gibler
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in Iguala. Ten compañeros got on the bus. About ten minutes went by and they hadn’t come back, so the guy from the committee said to call those compañeros, because a lot of time had passed. We tried to reach the compañeros. Then one of them called us and said: “Compas, we’ve got a problem here with security, the bus driver won’t let us out, he locked us in the bus.”
URIEL ALONSO SOLÍS, 19, SOPHOMORE. First we went to the Huitzuco stop and the first bus arrived. We spoke with the driver and he said yes. There were about five of us who got on the bus. We arrived at the bus station and that’s when he said, “No, can’t do it, nope. . . .” He had changed his mind and said no, not anymore. And since we were already there and we didn’t have any money with us to get back, we called the compañeros.
“You know what, come get us,” we said. “We’re in the bus station. The driver changed his mind. We’re trapped on board the bus, the driver already got off. He locked us in.”
“Hold tight,” they said, “we’re on our way.” And that’s when they came.
EDGAR YAIR, 18, FRESHMAN. We left around five-thirty, I think. We left in two buses from the parking lot here. I was in the second bus. The bus was sort of packed, there were a bunch of us. We arrived at the entrance to Iguala. We got out where we were going to do the action. It was around six or seven at night. Around eight o’clock a bus drove by. The driver was going to help us out, you know, getting to the march. But he had passengers. So the driver needed to drop off his passengers at their destination, which was the bus station in Iguala.
Ten of our compañeros, about ten, got on the bus. They left with the bus and we stayed back in the same place where we’d been. Well, we’d been out there for about another hour and we saw that our compañeros didn’t return. It was night at that point, it was already dark. Then we got a call from a compañero who said they’d been held at the bus station. We had to go and set them free. So we went. We got there and we all covered our faces with our T-shirts, so they couldn’t identify us, to protect our identities. We were there demanding that they let our compañeros out. At last they let them go, but we were angry by that point, and we grabbed three buses from the station there. We forced the drivers to take us in the buses. Two buses went a different way out of the station and the other three buses went out toward Avenue Juan N. Álvarez.
ALEX ROJAS, FRESHMAN. The two buses stopped near Huitzuco along a part of the highway that’s really straight. There’s a restaurant near there; I think it’s called La Palma. We stopped there by the restaurant. There’s a little chapel there where a number of us who are believers went to pray and make the sign of the cross. The first bus left. I don’t know exactly where it went, but it took off toward Iguala and I think they went to the tollbooth. I think they were going to do the action there. We stayed there, near the restaurant, where the highway is really straight, to avoid any accidents.
We started to do the action, and sure enough, a bus passed by, which we stopped and commandeered. The bus had passengers on board. So as not to affect the bus riders, we decided to take them to the station. I got on that bus with another seven compañeros and a member of the committee. We boarded the bus and left. I was talking with some of the passengers on their way to Iguala. They said to me that they were afraid and asked us not to do anything to them. I told them not to worry, that we never did anything to citizens, to the people, that we only did this action because it was necessary since we don’t have any vehicles at the school to use for transportation to our actions, whether it’s going to the march to commemorate the student massacre, or fundraising activities, or the classroom observations and exercises that the sophomores, juniors, and seniors all do.
I was talking with a woman and some other people in that part of the bus, telling them not to worry, that we never mean to inconvenience them, much less harm them, that we were just kids who were at the college to study, but that it was necessary to do this to be able to carry out our activities and attend some events at the other rural teachers colleges. That’s what I was talking with them about. A number of passengers were talking with us, and we were all getting along well.
“Yes, guys, we understand, but we still got scared when you all stopped the bus.”
“Don’t worry,” I said to them, “we’re going to the bus station, we’ll let you all off there without any problems and we’ll then continue with our action like we do every year, totally normal.”
We arrived at the bus station and yeah, all the passengers got off. We stayed on board the bus and told the driver that we had to get back. The driver agreed and asked us to wait a moment. But after about fifteen minutes, we got nervous that he wouldn’t want to come back. We told him:
“Let’s go now, driver!”
But the driver said no, that he had to get authorization, and well, he was just stalling. That’s when we called our compañeros so they would come help us. We were just eight kids, with the guy from the committee, nine, I think. So we called the ones who were out on the fundraising action.
ERICK SANTIAGO LÓPEZ, 22, SOPHOMORE. During that time a number of strange things started to happen. We were already out by the Iguala tollbooth. A red motorcycle started driving by. And a bit later a Policía Federal truck passed. . . . That truck went through the tollbooth to the other side and started to stop all the buses. The police started to make the passengers get off of all the buses that arrived—Estrella, Futura, Costa Line, Diamante, any bus that approached. They started to stop them. So they weren’t going to let us grab any buses. After a bit, my compañero, a guy who was in the committee and had stayed back around Huitzuco, he called my friend telling him that the compas had grabbed a bus out by Huitzuco, it was a Costa Line, but that when they got to the bus station they had been detained. They were being held there.
SANTIAGO FLORES, 24, FRESHMAN. We went to the Iguala tollbooth. We were hanging out with Churro, joking around. But at that time there were some police cars patrolling there, they were driving around and you know, I get a little scared just seeing them. What I did was look around to see where I’d run, thinking: “Okay, if they come after us, I’m going to run that way, head over that way, and grab rocks over there.”
Behind us there was a fence and on the other side there was some construction, there were a bunch of rocks over there, like bricks that were already broken up. I thought: “Okay, there are rocks over there.” But no, nothing happened. In fact, at the tollbooth, when the buses came up, they didn’t pass through the tollbooth. They turned around and went back because the police were making the passengers get off and the bus didn’t come through the tollbooth. We asked the passengers why the buses weren’t driving through, and they told us because the bus had broken down. We were there for a while. After a time the committee told us to get back on the bus, that we were going to the bus station.
CARLOS MARTÍNEZ, 21, SOPHOMORE. After night fell a number of federal police squad cars started driving by. They went by and what they did was to stop the buses before the tollbooth and make everyone get off. The people came through the tollbooth on foot and the police sent the buses back. The police did that with at least three buses. And we asked the people that were walking through:
“Hey, why did they make you all get off the bus?”
“The feds told us to get off and walk.”
We were on the Iguala side of the tollbooth and the feds were stopping the buses that were arriving in Iguala from Acapulco, from that direction, Tierra Colorada. The police stopped all the buses that came from that direction. The passengers all got out and walked, and the buses turned around and left. So we said:
“You know what? We need to go, because we’re not going to be able to get anything here. We’ll come back tomorrow, or we’ll come up with something later.”
We were making that decision to leave when a compañero who had stayed with the other bus out by Huitzuco called Bernardo and said:
“Hey, I’m here at the bus station, they’ve got me.” We told him: