By Lizbeth Diaz for REUTERS
Ten years ago, Edgar Vargas’ life forever changed when he was shot in the face in one of Mexico’s most notorious cases of mass violence in recent memory: the attack and disappearance of 43 students from the rural teacher-training school of Ayotzinapa.
A bullet pierced Vargas’ jaw on the night of Sept. 26, 2014, as he tried to help his classmates trapped in a bus being shot at by gunmen. Vargas, then 19, survived by crawling along the road until he found shelter, though he was left with deep physical and emotional scars.
“I knew that nothing would ever be the same again… I could hardly look at myself in a mirror,” Vargas, who has undergone seven surgeries, said through tears in an interview with Reuters.
“I couldn’t (speak), I saw my body full of tubes inside my mouth, of cables, it was very hard.”
Vargas, now a teacher, is part of a group of survivors who have since scattered across Mexico, many of them saying they have been threatened by organized crime members and government officials, warning them to stop discussing and protesting or face unspecified consequences along with their family members.
Despite fear and trauma, some say they want to continue to seek truth and justice that has eluded them for a decade.
Every anniversary is a painful reminder of the assault on more than 100 student teachers from Ayotzinapa, in the city of Iguala in the violent state of Guerrero, some 220 kilometers (135 miles) south of Mexico City.
The students were traveling in several buses en route to Mexico City to remember the 1968 student massacre there when they were shot at. Forty three of them were then kidnapped by organized crime members who colluded with local police, according to two separate international probes, including one backed by the Organization of American States (OAS).
The motive for the attack remains a mystery.
In its initial findings, the previous government concluded the 43 had been kidnapped by corrupt police in cahoots with a local drug gang who believed the students had been infiltrated by members of a rival outfit. The gang then killed the students and burned their bodies, their report said.
The administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took power in 2018, has described the disappearances as a “state crime” that authorities had tried to cover up. No one has been convicted in relation to the incident and authorities have only managed to identify remains of three of the students.
UNFULFILLED PROMISES
Families of the disappeared are still clamoring for the truth, clinging ever more skeptically to the government’s promises to find the young people or get to the bottom of what happened.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who will take office on Oct. 1, has promised the investigations will continue into the incident that occurred during the mandate of then-President Enrique Peña Nieto, who was criticized by international investigators and victims’ families for bringing about an abrupt closure of the case.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE By Lizbeth Diaz for REUTERS
San Miguel Times
Newsroom
