Caravan from Mexico seeks return of missing 43 students

The faces of students Tuesday at Sonoma State University and Santa Rosa Junior College reminded Ángel Neri de la Cruz Ayala of the three dead and 43 missing classmates lost during a bloody massacre last fall in the Mexican state of Guerrero.

De la Cruz, part of a U.S. “caravan” tour of family and friends of the 43 missing students, is a survivor of the Sept. 26 attack. During a Tuesday visit to both campuses, he tearfully described his school “brothers” being shot by Mexican police officers.

One, he said, was shot in the head and remains in a coma, while another was shot in the jaw.

“There are a lot of brothers who have disappeared,” de la Cruz said, speaking in Spanish to about 200 hundred people gathered inside a ballroom at the Sonoma State University Student Center.

“We thought that was the worst of it,” he said, adding that three of his fellow students died during what he described as an ambush by police forces.

The next day, he said, he and other students who had escaped the barrage of bullets went looking for dozens of students that went missing the night before. The police told them they didn’t have them.

That was the start of a political crisis that has rocked Mexico for months and brought global criticism down on the Mexican government and its reported ties to violent drug cartels.

According to the Mexican government, the 43 missing students were taken by municipal police officers that night and handed over to drug cartel members. Mexican officials say drug gang members killed the students and burned their bodies.

Many of the parents of the missing students refuse to accept that account. They say the government has presented no conclusive forensic evidence that the students were in fact killed and their bodies burned.

The tour, which will ultimately make stops in 43 U.S. cities, is aimed at bringing attention to the plight of the missing students and their families.

The tour consists of three separate caravans making their way up the East Coast, the central United States and the West Coast.

As part of the West Coast contingent, de la Cruz was joined by his brother Josimar de la Cruz; Estanislao Mendoza Chocolate, the father of missing student Miguel Ángel Mendoza Zacarías; and Blanca Luz Nava Vélez, the mother of missing student Jorge Alvarez Nava.

The group arrived first at Santa Rosa Junior College at 10 a.m. Tuesday and briefly addressed a crowd of more than 200 students and faculty at the school’s Girvin Family Student Activities Center.

The caravan was hosted at the junior college by M.E.Ch.A and the Black Students Union. Portraits and brief biographies of the 43 missing students were hung throughout the student center.

Later, the caravan visited students at Sonoma State University, where during a forum the visitors recounted in detail the painful odyssey since the violent attack six months ago.

The missing students are from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College of Ayotzinapa, a school that serves mainly impoverished students and has a tradition of social activism. Graduates, who come from farmworker backgrounds, are usually sent to some of the poorest, most remote corners of Guerrero, one of the poorest states in Mexico.

De la Cruz explained that on Sept. 26, as is the tradition for the school, the students commandeered commercial buses for a trip to Mexico City where they were to meet with other activists to commemorate Mexico’s infamous Oct. 2, 1968 massacre in Tlatelolco.

De la Cruz said they peacefully took three buses but were soon attacked by police. He said that night Mexican soldiers told them they got what they deserved.

“Police, soldiers were all involved that night,” he told students at Sonoma State. “We didn’t ask for Sept. 26.”

The visitors drew parallels between themselves, their friends and children and the students in the audiences at both campuses.

“I am a farmworker, like many of your parents,” Mendoza told students at SRJC.

Mendoza, wearing a “Cal” sweater and cap he received from a recent visit with students at UC Berkeley, said he had once been an immigrant in the United States but returned to Mexico. “I know how people suffer over here,” he said, referring to the hard life experienced by migrant workers in the U.S.

“I told myself, I’m not going back. I’m going to stay with my family in Mexico,” he said, adding that he never imagined what would happen next.

The caravan participants said the U.S. tour is aimed at putting international pressure on the Mexican government to return the missing students alive. They said the visit is also aimed at bringing light to the U.S. foreign military aid and weapons sales under a security agreement between the United States and Mexico and Central American governments known as “Merida Initiative.”

The initiative is aimed at combating organized crime, but Tuesday’s visitors claim that weapons sold to Mexico are used to repress and put down social activism rather than for fighting drug cartels.

“These weapons are not used to protect us,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza and the other visitors called on the local students to join the campaign against the injustices and impunity in Mexico.

Griselda Madrigal, a Sonoma State student in the Chicano Latino Studies Department who helped organize the SSU event, said the visit helped local students understand first-hand what’s happening in Mexico.

“It was very important for them to come here and hear for themselves what we’re able to do to help,” she said.

The caravan contingent also held a public forum Tuesday night at the Carpenter’s Labor Center in Santa Rosa, hosted by KBBF bilingual radio station.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at (707) 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.