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

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СКАЧАТЬ shooting lasted a long time, so, so, so much time before they brought an ambulance. The ambulance took some twenty or twenty-five minutes to arrive. It took so long to arrive, but that was when they took the compa. We were there, shouting that we would turn ourselves in and the police ignored us. You looked around the edge of the bus and they shot at you. You held out your hand and they shot at you. One compa who stepped out from the buses, a bullet cut right here across his chest, the bullet sliced right across.

      JORGE, 20, FRESHMAN. They were shooting at us all down the street, they were chasing us up to this intersection, I don’t know what it’s called. That’s where the police truck cut us off. The police got out and left the truck there. Since we wanted to keep going, with a number of compañeros, we got off the bus to move the truck. When we were moving the truck, the police ran back to take cover and from there they began to shoot at us. We were trying to quickly move the truck when they started shooting at us. And almost immediately a compañero fell when they shot him in the head. Well, I got scared and, you know, seeing how he fell, the majority of us ran and hid behind the first bus. Some of us jumped quickly aboard the first bus. From there we could see that the compañero who got shot was still alive, he was still moving. The bus driver told us to go get him out of the street but when we tried to get off the bus again, the police shot at us. We couldn’t get back off the bus. There were about ten of us who got back on the bus. So we went to the back of the bus and took cover there while the police were shooting at us. They didn’t stop shooting. We shouted out to them, but they ignored us.

      IVÁN CISNEROS, 19, SOPHOMORE. We were coming to the intersection of Juan N. Álvarez and Periférico to head out toward Chilpo when police truck 002 came out of nowhere and cut us off. We got off the bus and went to move the truck. The police officers all got out of the truck and ran. When we tried to move the truck we heard the police shooting at us. That was when they hit Aldo, who was beside me. I ducked down and grabbed the truck to push it from the bottom and start to move it, lift it, push it and that was when they hit the compañero Aldo. He went down. When we saw that he fell we all froze, as they say, and we got scared for real then. We saw that this had gotten real serious. When we had heard the gunshots we said, “Those are shots in the air,” but who knew?

      When we saw that the compañero went down, that was when the fear hit. We started to shout to the compañeros on the bus: “Compas, get down here!” We screamed to the police that they had killed a compañero, because we thought that the guy was dead. With a bullet to the head, you’d think that someone would die instantly. But he was just bleeding. We ran to the back of the first bus. We tried to take Aldo with us, but the bullets were flying by so close, we couldn’t do anything. We left the compañero there and went to the space behind the bus. We shouted to the compañeros on the second bus to come down, and we wanted to shout the same to those on the third bus, but the police were already machine-gunning that bus. We couldn’t see it, we just heard the shots. We shouted out to the police that they had already killed one of us, that what more did they want, that they had already fulfilled their mission. We shouted out to them, sarcastically: “You should act so tough with the narcos!” We didn’t know that they were also the narcos. We tried to help the compañeros on the third bus, but as soon as we peeked around the edge of the bus, as soon as we tried to do anything, the police fired at us and the bullets flew over the concrete. We couldn’t leave from behind that part of the bus, between the first and second buses.

      When they shot the compañero, we started making calls to the students back here on campus. We called David, the student president. We called the other compañeros to tell them we were being shot at. I started to post about it on the social networks, that we were being shot at, that people should call the press or any media, that we were in Iguala, and they had killed one compañero. I started to post photos of the compañero who had been shot. I called my dad and told him what was happening. He told me to stay calm, and that the most that they could do was arrest us and beat the crap out of everyone. He thought that they would have to eventually let us all go.

      At that point I was thinking: “Okay, well, fuck it, they’re going to grab us.” When we saw that more squad trucks were arriving, we thought: “They’re going to corral us, they’re going to come at us from both sides, and they’re going to arrest us.” But that’s what we were thinking, you know, that they were just going to arrest us. This is what we thought: “Yes, they’re going to beat the shit out of us, but we’ll be okay when it’s all over.”

      JUAN PÉREZ, 25, FRESHMAN. Once we could see the highway just up ahead, a police truck shut us off; it pulled in front of us, the driver jumped out and ran, leaving the squad truck there in the road. The bus stopped. The bus following us also stopped. A bunch of us compañeros got off the first bus and tried to move the truck out of the way. About fifteen compañeros were at the front of the truck to push it. My compañero—we called him Garra, The Claw—and I were in the back of the truck. There were just two of us there. In a matter of seconds the cops shot at us, and in that instant a bullet hit his head. He went down, falling slowly. We screamed:

      “A compañero is down!”

      In that moment all of the compañeros that were at the front of the truck ran; they all ran. I was about two meters from the bus. There were about ten of us that ran to the bus and I was able to jump inside the door at the very end, landing on top of the other compañeros. I don’t even know where the cop came from, but he shot me in my left knee. I don’t know if it hurt or didn’t hurt. I just jumped inside the bus. Then, I went to the first seat and lay down and said to a compañero:

      “I think they got me.”

      “Really?”

      “Yeah, they got me,” I said and grabbed my leg and just saw blood. I dragged myself toward the back of the bus, to the last seat at the back. Compañeros asked me:

      “Camarada, are you okay?”

      “I’m okay,” I said, “don’t worry about me, but if the police come inside the bus we can’t give up, if they take anyone, they’ll have to take us all.”

      JOSÉ ARMANDO, 20, FRESHMAN. About five of us went out to put a T-shirt under the compañero Aldo’s head because he was still moving, we could see him move and we went to put something under his head because he had already lost so much blood. That was when they shot at us more intensely, and we took cover behind the squad truck. Aldo had fallen behind the truck. We took cover behind the wheel, all of us pressed together, and then we ran back to the space behind the first bus. The police had been coming closer to us. They were coming to take us away. Everyone was erasing all their contacts form their cell phones because we thought they were coming to take us—like they always do when they repress us—off to jail or the police station where they go through our cell phones. So, that’s why we were erasing all our contacts. That’s what we thought would happen. That or that they’d kill us all right there.

      During the time we were in between the two buses another compañero started dying. He fell to the ground because he already had some kind of a lung illness. He fell, he was having trouble breathing, and we shouted out to the police for them to call an ambulance, but no. So we called the ambulance and we explained to them where we were and why we needed an ambulance. We told them that we were being shot at, that they should send the ambulance as fast as possible because otherwise the compañero would die, and that they needed to take Aldo as well.

      EDGAR YAIR, 18, FRESHMAN. Like I told you, we had thought that they wouldn’t shoot directly at us. I mean, we thought they were shooting at the ground or something like that. But then we saw the compañero hit with a bullet to the head, and he fell to the ground. СКАЧАТЬ