PHOTOS: Sara JI
It was a beautiful February afternoon, but despite the beauty of the scenery and the weather, the School Normal Raul Burgos de Ayotzinapa was bathed in solemn and silent cries. In the middle of the basketball court ̶ which had now been converted to an altar, a kitchen, a meeting space, a library and a dispensary ̶ is where I met Margarita. She was sitting by herself next to a plastic table, a middle aged woman with skin the color of cinnamon that seemed to have been made golden by the Guerrero sun, the state in Mexico in which she was born and has lived her entire life. A humble woman with long and straight black hair, which along with her features proudly shows her indigenous roots.
Just like the majority of the parents of the disappeared, Margarita is an indigenous farmer from a nearby small town in Guerrero. Her son, Miguel Angel Mendoza Zacarias, is one of the 43 students who have been disappeared for over four months.
I sat next to her and through her dark eyes I could glimpse the desperate stare of a mother in search of her child. Since the day of the disappearance, Margarita shared, the parents have taken over the school and it is currently on strike. There are no classes, no teachers, nor is there any governmental support to cover any of the basic operations of the school. Margarita, along with her husband and the parents of the other 42 students, live at the Normal school. They hardly ever go back home because seeing the objects that belonged to their children makes the pain too immense to bear.
It is impactful to experience the contrast between what is publicized about Ayotzi and the way life is carried out at the school because despite what in social media appears to be a massive social movement, at the Normal School, days go by slowly and injustice and impotence are the parents’ permanent companions. The reality that the parents are living is harsh and full of danger and a marked lack of financial resources. Living this way, is a great sacrifice for Margarita and her family, “We have more children: they also eat, they also wear clothing, they also get sick, and well we can’t help them either because we don’t work anymore, we don’t have a salary, we have nothing. We are surviving with the little support that they are giving us here at the school but it is not enough to pay for anything,” said Margarita whose eyes filled with tears as she shared her story.
Yet her tenacity and determination shone through the pain as she insisted that despite the danger they were facing, they would not turn back. In her words I could hear the certainty of a struggle that was born out of the love of a mother who does not and will not accept the prefabricated version of the government regarding her son’s disappearance. A government which she sees as corrupt and cruel, “We do not blame anybody else but him [Peña Nieto], we blame him for everything that might happen to us and to our families, we blame him because he is responsible for this.”
Laura J Ramírez
PhD Candidate Educational Policy Studies,
University of Illinois at Chicago
