Aunt Bertha is known to many for the colorful bow she always wears in her hair. She assures that with this she removes the hair from a face in which the years looking for justice for the murder of his son Julio César, who was killed that night of September 26, 2014, in which three students were killed and another 43 remain unaccounted for.
Julius Caesar is one of the forgotten of the Ayotzinapa tragedy, which celebrates its eighth anniversary this week.
“What use is it to me to know where my son is buried? Is my son going to come out of that grave and tell me ‘mommy, I’m here, don’t cry anymore, I’m with you’?”, he expresses in an interview with Efe Bertha Nava.
Aunt Bertha receives Efe at the house where she lives with her daughter and granddaughter, in the municipality of Tixtla (state of Guerrero), which is reached by following a road that is not recommended to be crossed at night due to its danger.
The narco is present in almost every corner of the area, where the vegetation is lush and very intense green. Just as intense as the colors of the bow that Aunt Bertha wears whenever she speaks publicly and that has become for many a symbol of struggle.
Julio César’s mother recounts with surprising stoicism -although with moments of break- what she remembers of the night in which her son and dozens of students were mercilessly attacked by police and military.
He has three other children, but he assures that with the death of Julius Caesar he lost a part of his heart forever.
“As parents we cannot forget (what happened) because we need them at home, we need them at our table, in our lives. (…) My other three children are my children, but I lack that little bit of heart that was taken from me,” says the woman, sitting in a garden full of plants and flowers, next to a poster with the face of her son and his murdered companions, Daniel Solís Gallardo and César Mondragón Fontes.
THE TRAGIC DAY
Fifteen minutes before midnight that day, Bertha received the last call from her son in which he told her that he was in Iguala supporting his companions in the hijacking of buses to go to the capital in the next few days to commemorate the 2nd of October 1968, when the government militarily crushed the student movement in Tlatelolco, in Mexico City.
Several dozen students were in Iguala that afternoon when a patrol crossed one of the vehicles and the driver got out and left, recalls Fred Sabino de la Cruz in an interview with Efe on the esplanade of the rural normal school of Ayotzinapawhere he was able to finish his studies.
“We got out to try to push the patrol to continue but we didn’t realize that more police (state and federal) were coming from behind,” he says, detailing how they started shooting at them.
At that moment they injured Aldo Gutiérrez Solano, who remains in a coma to date. They also shot at a bus wheel and thus the students could not leave the place.
There they waited to receive medical attention. But shortly after, a truck appeared in which two men were traveling and began shooting: first, killing Julio César Nava with three shots to the head and face, and then Solís Gallardo.
Mondragón Fontes, as it was later learned, was arrested, tortured and executed right there by the municipal police, who abandoned his body with his face and eyes gouged out, on a street in Iguala.
After the shooting, the students ran wherever they could, hiding in vacant lots, in neighbors’ houses, under cars and some in teachers’ houses.
TRY TO GO BACK TO OLD LIFE
“It was very difficult to return to the classrooms. (…) Every day that passed, we were also losing hope, but as long as we did not see the bodies of our comrades… and that was the slogan that I know was taken and that it continues to this day,” shares Fred.
Another of the survivors of that night, Francisco Echeverría de Jesús -who was shot in the leg-, is also the brother of Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, murdered along with his partner Alexis Herrera Pino on December 12, 2012 by police agents during a blockade by students on the highway between Chilpancingo and Acapulco.
Francisco clearly remembers the conversation with his brother a few days before the attack.
“About five meters from my mom he still tells her ‘mom, you know I don’t know what could happen, I can either come back or I can’t come back, but if I don’t come back we’ll see each other in the other world,'” says Francisco.
They were the first students from the rural school in Ayotzinapa to be killed by agents. Both this and the case of the students murdered in 2014 remain unsolved. There are no culprits and no sentence.
For this reason, Bertha, Fred, Francisco and several direct or indirect victims came together and formed the Los Olvidados de Ayotzinapa collectivewith which, although they have not yet obtained justice, they have finally managed to be heard.
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