Video from Aristeguinoticias
Video interview of Omar Garcia, Iguala massacre survivor. Translated by un vato for Borderland Beat
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Caption: Testimony of Omar Garcia, survivor of
the student massacre in Mexico.
00:00 About 20 or 30 meters away, I found our fellow student Edgar Andres Vargas, who had already been shot in the head. I found him and our friend was walking bent over, very seriously wounded, bleeding profusely.
00:25 We carried him as well as we could, and we kept running, running, running, and we could feel the shots hitting the cars that were on the sides.
00:30We were running behind about three cars, so they would not hit us.
00:42 The afternoon of the 26th, we were at school. We knew that our fellow students hadgone towards Iguala to ask for donations.
00:50 Around 7:30 or 8:00, a fellow student called me on my phone and told me, "Listen, thethe police here in Iguala are shooting at us."
01:00 As soon as he told us that, well, I ran looking for our fellow students, quickly, quickly,and we organized a trip over there, using the school's Suburban.
01:12 So, we were fast, too fast, and we got there as fast as we could, and we went to the place where they told us things were happening.
01:20 We thought that when we got there, if the ones who were firing were policemen, and if they were on one side and the students on the other, well…we were going to calm things down, you know? To ask what’s happening, the reason for the attack, calm down, what’s done is done. Let’s take our fellow students away with us.
01:45 That's basically what we were going there for. More so because a fellow student had already told us a kid had been wounded already, or that he was dead, we were already saying among ourselves that he was dead. (but) he was not dead, it was fellow student Aldo Gutierrez Solano, the one still in the coma, brain dead, the one shot in the head,that is who it was.
02:00 We got there and saw that the buses were totally destroyed from the gunfire, at the level of the side windows, at the windshield level, the lower part, the tires flat.blood inside the buses, coagulated. It was not a few drops, it was great quantities ofblood.
02:20 Suddenly, from the part of the highway that comes from Teloloapan and all those places into Iguala, there was a dark section, we heard the rattle of gunfire again.
02:40 I took advantage of a pause during which, I assumed, they were changing ammunition,their rifle magazines, and that’s when I took advantage, and jumped towards Olivares Street, which runs towards downtown, where the rest of my fellow students were running. 02:58 When we had gone about two or three blocks down, and the Army was also patrolling the streets, the city. Not patrolling the (entire) city, just that place.
03:05 They would tell us, "Shut up, shut up, you guys asked for it. You wanted to take on some real men, well, bring it on, bring it on and take it.
03:18 We were afraid and enraged at the same time, because we could not talk, we could not get phone calls. If anyone called us, a military person would stand right there to listen.They would tell us what to say, that is, basically, to cover up for themselves, becausethey would say, "You can receive phone calls so they won't find out we're holding you but don't tell them you're being held by the military, just tell them you're OK", they toldthe students who were getting phone calls.
03:48 Well, after that, they "called an ambulance". They took photographs of everybody,including the student who was wounded.
04:00 They said, "We're going to take his photograph so that the ambulance can be assessing, more or less (Yeah, right!, student comments) the the severity of the matter". The ambulance never got there.
04:03 So then, from there, the students dispersed and left me and a teacher in charge of the(wounded) student, with the risk that we would get killed on the streets. Because we looked at ourselves, and said, "Two or three less...". And we were able to get to the general hospital around 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. that morning.
04:30 We're another case of disappeared persons. In Mexico and in Guerrero a lot of people are killed in the so-called "collateral damage", in their fucked up politics they use againstdifferent forces, including themselves. 04:39 We don't want to be a part of all that. We want a fair and free Mexico.
Caption: Testimony of Omar Garcia, survivor of
the student massacre in Mexico.
the student massacre in Mexico.
00:00 About 20 or 30 meters away, I found our fellow student Edgar Andres Vargas, who had already been shot in the head. I found him and our friend was walking bent over, very seriously wounded, bleeding profusely.
00:25 We carried him as well as we could, and we kept running, running, running, and we
could feel the shots hitting the cars that were on the sides.
00:30We were running behind about three cars, so they would not hit us.
00:42 The afternoon of the 26th, we were at school. We knew that our fellow students hadgone towards Iguala to ask for donations.
00:50 Around 7:30 or 8:00, a fellow student called me on my phone and told me, "Listen, thethe police here in Iguala are shooting at us."
01:00 As soon as he told us that, well, I ran looking for our fellow students, quickly, quickly,and we organized a trip over there, using the school's Suburban.
01:12 So, we were fast, too fast, and we got there as fast as we could, and we went to the place where they told us things were happening.
01:20 We thought that when we got there, if the ones who were firing were policemen, and if they were on one side and the students on the other, well…we were going to calm things down, you know? To ask what’s happening, the reason for the attack, calm down, what’s done is done. Let’s take our fellow students away with us.
01:45 That's basically what we were going there for. More so because a fellow student had already told us a kid had been wounded already, or that he was dead, we were already saying among ourselves that he was dead. (but) he was not dead, it was fellow student Aldo Gutierrez Solano, the one still in the coma, brain dead, the one shot in the head,that is who it was.
02:00 We got there and saw that the buses were totally destroyed from the gunfire, at the level of the side windows, at the windshield level, the lower part, the tires flat.blood inside the buses, coagulated. It was not a few drops, it was great quantities ofblood.
02:20 Suddenly, from the part of the highway that comes from Teloloapan and all those places into Iguala, there was a dark section, we heard the rattle of gunfire again.
02:40 I took advantage of a pause during which, I assumed, they were changing ammunition,their rifle magazines, and that’s when I took advantage, and jumped towards
Olivares Street, which runs towards downtown, where the rest of my fellow students were running.
02:58 When we had gone about two or three blocks down, and the Army was also patrolling the streets, the city. Not patrolling the (entire) city, just that place.
03:05 They would tell us, "Shut up, shut up, you guys asked for it. You wanted to take on some real men, well, bring it on, bring it on and take it.
03:18 We were afraid and enraged at the same time, because we could not talk, we could not get phone calls. If anyone called us, a military person would stand right there to listen.They would tell us what to say, that is, basically, to cover up for themselves, becausethey would say, "You can receive phone calls so they won't find out we're holding you but don't tell them you're being held by the military, just tell them you're OK", they toldthe students who were getting phone calls.
03:48 Well, after that, they "called an ambulance". They took photographs of everybody,including the student who was wounded.
04:00 They said, "We're going to take his photograph so that the ambulance can be assessing, more or less (Yeah, right!, student comments) the the severity of the matter".
The ambulance never got there.
04:03 So then, from there, the students dispersed and left me and a teacher in charge of the(wounded) student, with the risk that we would get killed on the streets. Because we looked at ourselves, and said, "Two or three less...". And we were able to get to the general hospital around 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. that morning.
04:30 We're another case of disappeared persons. In Mexico and in Guerrero a lot of people are killed in the so-called "collateral damage", in their fucked up politics they use againstdifferent forces, including themselves.
04:39 We don't want to be a part of all that. We want a fair and free Mexico.