1) The author recalls visiting Ayotzinapa ten years ago when students were occupying the main square in Chilpancingo and reflects on the school's motto of being a "cradle of social consciousness". 2) The author shares stories from their grandfather about witnessing murdered bodies during the 1960s and a history of violence in the state of Guerrero. 3) The author feels a connection to Ayotzinapa despite now living far away in Tijuana and reflects on the school's mission to educate and bring social awareness to rural communities.

1. AYOTZINAPA:
Piece for
Facebook (nation)
Pepe Rojo

2. The first time I visited Ayotzinapa, ten years ago, they didn’t let
me in. They were in “movimiento”, occupying Chilpancingo’s
main square. They weren’t particularly kind.
“Ayotzinapa: cradle of social consciousness”.

3. That time, back in Chilpancingo, my grandfather, a doc-
tor, told us that one night, in the Sixties, he was woken up
by soldiers and asked to go to the Military Camp. When
they arrived, he was told he had to sign several death cer-
tificates. They took him to a pile of murdered bodies, one
over the other. They told him they had all died of cardiac
arrest. My grandfather refused to sign the certificates and
after some discussion, walked out of the camp. He told us
he heard a round being chambered behind his back, and
just kept on walking.

4. I suppose that should have been the slaughter of Chilpancin-
go in 1960, or maybe Iguala, 1962. I suppose.
Acapulco is now the most dangerous city in the country. Life
is cheap in Guerrero. Has always been.

5. -
My grandfather passed away a year ago. Even if I
always thought of him as conservative, I found out that
Lucio Cabañas visited him some nights, after starting the
Party of the Poor. My grandfather was Cabañas mother’s
doctor.
After my grandfather’s death, my grandmother received
a call asking for protection money. She told me it was
not the first time they had gotten those calls, and that he
always hung up on them.

6. “Los Rojos” is one of the organized crime groups working
in Guerrero with “luxurious violence” as the news report it.
Los Rojos extort the Rojo. Mexicans kill Mexicans. Humans
murder humans. Dog eats dog.

7. That time I was in Ayotzinapa doing research for a script.
The story went like this: a bank teller from Mexico City
resigns and moves to his natal Chilpancingo hoping to
do porno and sell it online. He falls in love with a hooker,
who has a brother in Ayotzinapa. To win her over, he
starts doing porno-guerrilla. At the end, he has to escape
out of Chilpancingo.
“For you, the seed of the new men.”

8. That time, I interviewed a young “normalista” who was
part of the Autopista del Sol blockage. She was out of
work: a teacher out of work in the state with the second
worst rates of illiteracy of the country. At night, in a broth-
el, teens sat on private booths, waiting for customers. In
another brothel, there was even a printed catalogue with
photos. Those girls did have a job.
—Autopista del Sol is a highway that connects Mexico
City to Acapulco, a very popular beach resort.—

9. It’s strange to be a writer born in the state with the
second worst rate of illiteracy in the country. I kind of
have a job.

10. The second time I visited Ayotzinapa I had a wonderful time
I went with my pregnant wife and my two-year old daughter
They let us in without questions. Ayotzinapa is particularly
beautiful. Moving. A dignified place to study. But with a
peculiar curriculum.

11. e.
r.
The last time I went to Ayotzinapa I was actually going
to do a reading in Tixtla. A Tixtla without government, a
Tixtla with community police making rounds on the streets.
A Tixtla in which the girl at the grocery store warned
me not to be out on the streets after 10 pm. Will I get
robbed? No. Kidnapped? No. So what? You might get
caught in a shootout.
—Tixtla is 5 minutes away from Ayotzinapa, 15 from
Chilpancingo.—

12. Once, when I was less than 5 and lived in Chilpancingo,
my parents woke my brother and me and told us we had to
go to our grandparent’s house. They told us guerilleros had
occupied the university. Through the window, I could see a
masked man holding a rifle on the roof of a nearby build-
ing. We might get hit by stray bullets, said my parents.

13. Almost forty years after that and living now in Tijuana, I
can see several policemen lying on the roof of a nearby
house, firing their guns. The shooting has lasted more
than three hours. My youngest son is downstairs, but
my daughter is at kindergarten. Her teacher called. She
told us they were safe but they couldn´t get their lunch,
because there might be stray bullets.

14. Education and stray bullets. I’ve got a soft spot for
Ayotzinapa.

15. And that’s why I feel so happy when Tryno
Maldonado shows up at Tixtla. He has been living
for two months in Ayotzinapa, interviewing the 43
kidnapped students’ parents and relatives. I thought I
would not be able to sneak into Ayotzinapa again.
They are in “movement” now more than ever. Tryno
invites us in. I feel deeply thankful.

16. Some writers don’t trust Tryno. They doubt his commit-
ment. They can say whatever they want; he’s been
there for two months, doing the dirty job. That’s how
“Oaxacan anarchists” work, although he is neither
anarchist nor Oaxacan.
—Your consciousness lights the road.—

17. The chancellor of the Normal Rural School Raúl Isidro
Burgos grants interviews to the media right by the
entrance, at the table of a small grocery store. They
won’t allow him into Ayotzinapa. He has been in
dialogue with the government. Rumors state that the
government has offered money to the relatives of the
43, but that they have declined.
How much does a son cost?

18. The government grants three dollars per day for each
student at Ayotzinapa. The students live there, only
admitted if they can prove their poverty. Year after
year, they take Chilpancingo’s main square, and
sometimes block the Autopista del Sol, demanding
money to renovate the infrastructure and a revision of
their assigned diet.
“Future teacher, your wages are taken directly from
the people”.

19. The Escuelas Normales Rurales story starts with vascon-
celist vigour in the twenties, even though all presidents
but Lázaro Cárdenas have tried to make them disappear.
It’s also Cárdenas that favors the socialist tinted educa-
tion. Schools to form social leaders. Schools to grant
social consciousness to the farmers, to educate. We’ve
been choking them little by little, narrowing their money
and submitting them to recursive explosions of violence.
“What does a single man’s life matter when the future of
humankind is endangered?”

20. Guerrero has a history of violence, and guerrilla.
The history of uprisings is long: Vicente Guerrero,
Hermeneglldo Galeana, José María Morelos and
Juan Álvarez in the 19th century, Juan Escudero and
Amadeo Vidales at the beginning of the 20th, and Gé-
naro Vázquez Rojas, Lucio Cabañas y Othón Salazar
in the sixties and seventies, these last three graduates
from Ayotzinapa, one of the reasons why it is thought of
as a seeding ground for guerrilleros.
The people here have been trying to speak for
centuries.
When they try to force us to listen, we shoot them
down.

21. It’s as if the end of ideologies turned guerrillas into
narcos.
“If I advance, follow me. If I stop, push me. If they kill
me, avenge me. If I betray you, kill me”.

22. The organizers of the 27th Altamirano Conference
are not having a good time. They’re nervous, tense.
The negotiations that permitted the Conference to
take place have been difficult. The poster for the
event has no government sponsorship logo. They ask
them not to have any kind of official ceremony, and
not to mention the government in any way.

23. Somebody tells me that this event has been the first
approach between the government and the organi-
zations that run Tixtla. Maybe that’s what literature
and the arts are for. There’s something in me that
feels like a scab. But as Bef tells me, if we don’t
come here, who will?

24. In Ayotzinapa, I approach a man and ask him
what he is doing there. “I’m waiting for my son” he
answers. The impact is there, even if the answer feels
pre-fabricated. Eleucadio lives in the mountains. He is
paid by the day. He works without salary. He’s been
waiting five months for his son.

25. Being in Ayotzinapa this February, five months after the
kidnapping of the students, is not easy. The mood is tense.
No classes: the teachers are occupying Chilpancingo’s
main square. There’s laughter, people, and tension.
Indignation. A sense of despair. Sadness. It’s difficult not
to feel like an intruder.
The initial indignation is dying away. People are tired.
And there’s not enough money. A few days ago, for the
first time, the relatives had to go to the toll booths and
ask for money from passing cars. The initial support is
dwindling away. People are forgetting.

26. How not to forget? Now that the hospital in Cuajimalpa
exploded, and Peña Nieto has once again made an
ass of himself on TV, and my wallet is thinning out and
there’s traffic and my job sucks and my smart phone is
broken and my wall is filled with posts.

27. In Ayotzinapa, I approach a baby, deeply asleep.
I talk for a while with her mom, who seems to be
barely eighteen, maybe even less. Later, I find out the
baby’s father is one of the 43. I feel stupid.

28. So I’ll use that feeling. A friend of mine will be publish-
ing an essay in which he says only half of Mexico is
online, and 92% of that half is on Facebook. On the
other hand, almost half of the country lives in conditions
of poverty. I can’t help thinking those halves do not
coincide. Those that do not live in poverty might as well
be called Facebook Nation

29. Upon entering the dining room, we break rules. One
of us is wearing torn jeans. Four of us have earrings.
One has dyed hair, although we later find out it’s OK for
ladies to wear color in their hair. That’s a relief.

30. Here, students dine daily in front of a canvas,
which explains how to fabricate Molotov bombs
and how to protect yourself from tear gas attacks.

31. The students at Ayotzinapa grow their food and tend to
the cows and pigs in the school, as part of their educa-
tion, because money is never enough.

32. In Ayotzinapa, Raquel points to the different brands of
education. Facebook Nation has been raised on competi-
tion and individual success. Subjectivity is grounded on
those terms. Here, in Ayotzinapa, education tends toward
social conscience and community. That’s why we’ve been
trying to squash them down for so long.

33. In Tixtla, we ask the waiter for a Coke Light. There’s
none. Coke Zero? None either. We bitch about his
lack of initiative, why didn’t he go and buy one for us,
earning some money for the restaurant and a good tip?
It bothers us he doesn’t have that frame of mind. Maybe
he is just dumb.

34. We don’t like that he is not into customer service culture.
Servicing us. We don’t like his lack of effort, that he
doesn’t think like he should, in terms of efficiency and
profit, like we do on Facebook Nation.
We want him to call us “jefe”, or “güero” or “güera”.
We want him to understand.
—”Boss” and “blondie”, which is the usual way street
vendors call their possible customers.—

35. To understand. Because that’s the only thing you can do
if you have a Facebook account. To understand. And to
count.

36. So let’s count: forty three disappeared from here, on
nine twenty six, twenty-two dead on six thirty. And two
on twelve twelve eleven (you failed us, virgencita) and I
am one hundred and thirty two; eighty thousand death
and fifty thousand disappeared during the war on drugs,
and twenty something on six twenty eight ninety five. The
numbers —the bodies— pile up.
We don’t even have reliable numbers from the Guerra
Sucia.
—”I am 132” was a student movement against Peña
Nieto during last presidential elections—

37. How to be people, on Facebook?
“Be the people. Make people. Be with the people”.

38. The citizens of Chilpancingo are usually tired of Ayotzi-
napans and their manifestations, in much the same way
chilangos are tired of popular marches. Can’t they see
we have work to do? That we are busy working? They
should be looking for work. Let them be useful.
“I’ll come back as millions”.

39. Because there’s only one thing we ask from the poor.
We ask them to behave properly. To accept their posi-
tion. To assume it. No guns, manifestations or violence.
Can’t they see we are in this together? And that’s the
way things work?
“My parents told me: go and study, but if there’s trouble,
fight.”

40. Because that’s the way things work. We live in a pyra-
midal and isoscelic system, with a very broad base and
a very thin, almost invisible top angle.
We need the poor. We need to export misery. Success
is only individual. The poor have always been many.
And we need them. Their bodies. Their flesh. But we’re
willing to allow them to wash our dishes, to clean our
drains, to dispose of the garbage. To be of service.

41. Such is Facebook Nation.
And I feel kind of amazed at the iconography of the
protests. The faces of the 43, on walls, in different
versions. Writers writing their profiles. Faces. Walls.
Profiles. Are we inviting them into the book of faces?
Are we opening up posthumous accounts for them? Are
they being included? Will they get a lot of likes, now
that they’re gone?

42. Such is Facebook Nation.
And I feel kind of amazed at the iconography of the
protests. The faces of the 43, on walls, in different ver-
sions. Writers writing their profiles. Faces. Walls. Profiles.
Are we inviting them into the book of faces? Are we
opening up posthumous accounts for them? Are they being
included? Will they get a lot of likes, now that they’re
gone?

43. Ayotzinapa is spattered by ‘freed” buses, almost all of
them grafittied over. Sabritas, Coca-Cola, Lala Milk,
all of them in service of the people, paying an informal
tax for making money in places like Guerrero. I wonder
if this is taken for a fact in their books.
The only photographic prohibition is the “freed” trailers
fleet. there’s quite a lot of them.

44. “Why so much analysis, if there’s just one possible
analysis: we’re getting fucked and it’s time to organize
the people to respond”. Lucio Cabañas.

45. A year ago, the Normal rural Schools seemed to be
a species fighting desperately against extinction. Ten
years ago, I wouldn’t have imagined Ayotzinapa
would be a household name in Mexico, even beyond
its borders.
Today, it is.

46. As a writer, I sometimes get in a science fiction mood.
And I can’t help thinking that all of those outside Facebook
Nation are bio-fuel, now that we are becoming ecologi-
cal, non-anthropocentric. And I can’t help thinking that I
travel in time when I am in Ayotzinapa, to the seventies
and a very particular brand of the Left. And I can’t ignore
that those who study in Ayotzinapa teach people who
live in eighteenth century conditions how to read. Here,
everything’s anachronistic. We are from the future. Intrud-
ers. Tourists.
We have a return ticket. And we use it.