AYOTZINAPA,
Mexico — In their first week of school, the new students eat and drink
nothing but beans and cold coffee, and spend sleepless days cleaning up
the buildings and planting crops.
It
is a “boot camp” to foster a sense of community and prove that they
really want to be here at the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos.
The small teachers’ college in southern Mexico
has been at the center of a national crisis since 43 of its students
disappeared in September after a violent confrontation with the local
police force, which has been infiltrated by a drug gang.
The
school’s students read books on Marxism, have weekly discussions on
political documentaries championing leftist causes and try to adhere to
the social justice ideals underpinning the school since its founding in
1926 after the Mexican Revolution, one of several such schools begun to
keep alive its fires of social transformation.
“It
was not only about the academic stuff but the political side of it, the
risk of the activities they did and the sense of belonging,” said
Ricardo Jacinto, a student there, explaining why he and his brother
Israel, 19, as well as two uncles have attended the school.
Now, Ricardo and his family are awaiting word of Israel, one of the students missing since Sept. 26.
Israel
was part of a large group of students who went to the industrial city
of Iguala, about two hours away and 120 miles south of Mexico City, to
collect money for school activities and to steal two buses to help
transport them to demonstrations on Oct. 2 commemorating a 1968 student
massacre in Mexico City.
The
appropriation of the buses — routine and temporary, students here say —
was a function of the threadbare life and revolutionary ferment running
through the school, where portraits of Che Guevara and other socialist
figures line the walls and students are taught to push the boundaries in
their protests.
They
have routinely blocked highways and these days have regularly taken
over tollbooths on superhighways in southern Mexico, asking for
donations while federal police officers sit nearby, apparently unwilling
to risk a confrontation.
Such
tactics have often put them at odds with the local authorities, who
have viewed them suspiciously and question their ties to leftist
guerrilla and political groups in the state, Guerrero, one of the most
violent and prone to social and criminal upheaval. In the search for the
students, the authorities have uncovered several mass graves containing
a total of 38 bodies, though initial tests indicate that none are the
missing students.
The
school’s students, in turn, often rage over what they consider to be
shortfalls in state financing, job placement and other support for the
school, 70 miles northeast of the resort city of Acapulco.
In
2011, during a protest blocking the main highway between Mexico City
and Acapulco, the police shot and killed two students from the school in
the state capital, Chilpancingo, just to the west of here.
“We
have a popular saying here that goes, ‘If you found the door slightly
open, try to open it a bit more, never close it,’ ” said a student
leader who wanted to be identified by his nickname, Acapulco, out of
fear that gangs may target him or his family.
The
Jacinto family knew well the school’s history but, like other families,
viewed the school as one of the few viable options for a life outside
farming and other lower-wage jobs.
In
some cases, generations of families, drawn largely from rural hamlets
across the state and some neighboring ones, attend the school, which is
named after the poet and educator who helped build it.
The
latest in the Jacinto family to attend was Israel. His family described
him as a smiley but timid boy known as Gordito because he was chubby.
With a deep interest in cars, he initially thought of becoming a
mechanic.
“I
told him he would always be covered in oil, that he should study
something else like medicine or law,” his father, Israel Sr., who lives
in San Jose, Calif., said the other day by phone. “He came to me a week
later and said he would become a teacher.”
The
free tuition and room and board made the school more attractive. He
passed the required entrance exam, paid the $40 fee for cleaning
materials and enrolled in June, taking the indoctrination in stride,
though he complained to his father of the physical demands of cleaning
and maintenance duties. He sent a picture of himself with his hair
shorn.
Like
other new students, he threw himself into growing chickpeas, coriander
and flowers on the school property, some of which are sold to help
support the school, which has 520 students.
The students live in crowded dorms. Laundry hangs on lines outside classrooms, and stray dogs roam about.
They
try to abide by the slogans strewn across almost every wall, like “The
student life is a deep stamp we will carry like a shield.”
“Before
coming here, I had a blindfold, I couldn’t see many things,” said one
19-year-old student leader, Ulises. Like Acapulco, he would allow only
his nickname to be used. “Here you become much more analytical, you
develop a real conscience.”
Still, the Jacintos never expected life-threatening turmoil for their sons.
The
authorities now believe that the mayor of Iguala had close ties to the
drug gang and ordered the police to round up the students before they
interrupted a speech his wife, a social services official in town, was
giving. In the confusion and chaos, the police opened fire, killing six
people, including three students, and detained several others, who were
turned over to the gang, federal officials have said.
The
students here flatly deny any connection to drug or organized crime
gangs and dismiss reports in some local news media that they may have
gotten confused with a rival gang operating in the area. They say they
have no formal ties to armed guerrilla movements in the state, other
than sharing their socialist principles.
But
they do admit to employing radical tactics, including throwing rocks at
the police, blocking roads and stealing buses. Their extreme protests
are the only way to draw attention to the school’s needs, including
class materials and transportation, they say.
“This
has always been a combative and militant school, no doubt,” Ricardo
Jacinto said. “We fight for our rights, and this is often considered
‘guerrilla’ in this country.”
Israel’s
last contact was with his brother Ricardo, who received a text from
Israel saying the police had surrounded the bus he was on with their
guns pointed at it but that “he was O.K. and not to worry,” Ricardo
said. Ricardo reached him by phone and told him to stay calm, but when
he tried to call the phone again shortly afterward there was no answer.
Last
week, Ernestina and Ricardo Jacinto were among the family members of
the missing students who met for hours with President Enrique Peña Nieto
in Mexico City.
He
greeted all of them personally. Some wept, and a few barely concealed
their anger, with one stating that he regretted having voted for the
president.
But most came away frustrated and angry.
“It
was practically like any of the other meetings with high-level public
officials we have had, where they don’t say anything new,” Ricardo
Jacinto said.
He
and his mother sat the other day in an empty classroom; the students
said classes had been suspended since their peers disappeared.
“How
is it possible that my poor Gordito had such bad luck?” she said
through tears. “How is it possible that we have such misfortune?”