Iquala Doctor; "I saw the injury, but did not treat him because it was not my responsibility."

I am at a loss as to what to say.  As tragic as the happenings in Iguala were, I understand reasons for the actions of most of the players involved.  There was corruption, greed, craving for power, fear, a sense of impunity, indifference, the fervor and intensity of youth trying to right perceived wrongs and seeking a better life, poverty and class (caste) discrimination.  And just plain evil.  

On the night of September 26, Abarca, his wife and their guests danced to the cumbia rhythm of Red Light. They continued to party despite the fact that he was hunting students. By midnight, the teachers college students lay dead on the floor in pools of blood. Others were hiding in terror in the mountains, a few were given refuge in houses. No police went back to take an interest. The military only attended to reports of theft, such as at the Cristina clinic.

Just after half past four in the morning, the first prosecutors arrived to cover the dead with a blanket. The teachers college students laid on the pavement for six hours. Alone. They were of no importance to anyone.  A few of the student injured that escaped and sought medical care.  This is how one Doctor reacted to their pleas for help.

As shameful as the actions of violence were earlier in the evening, we have all seen it become customary and common for authorities to impose cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in order to stifle dissent..  But this is a new low point.  I can only say I am embarrassed for Mexico.

From Mexico Voices

 Iguala, Guerrero: Casually, with a hint of satisfaction at having accomplished the mission of refusing to treat the student with a broken jaw and his face pierced by a bullet, surgeon Ricardo Herrera says

"I saw the injury, but did not treat him because it was not my responsibility."

On the night of September 26, when the doctor found him hiding inside his hospital with twenty student teachers, the student's wounds required urgent attention, but rather than helping him, the doctor spoke to the Municipal Police to take them.

That night the doctor called the same authority that three times had ambushed students from the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa--an hour away--by spraying with bullets the buses that were transporting them. In another still unsolved episode--in which gunmen from the Guerreros Unidos [United Warriors] cartel killed two adults and four students (one of whom appeared skinned: faceless, with eyes pulled out) and detained 43 others who have still not appeared.

For this doctor, the injured had no more than a graze that split the lips, and he walked talking with his peers as if it were nothing. He justifies his neglect:

"'The ayotzinapos are aggressive, violent. They remove patients, they destroy, they are like criminals. If they really are students, they don't do that."

This reaction is similar to that of many residents of Iguala. It is the same with the military, paramedics, government ministries and state police who turned their backs on the students of this rural school where teachers are trained and where being poor is the requirement for enrolling.

When the doctor is reminded that medical students have also disappeared and could have ended up in pits--as the police and cartel members arrested by federal prosecutor have declared--he replies:

"That's what will happen to all the 'ayotzinapos', don't you think?"

Graphic Photos on Next Page

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The father of one of the two wounded students, who remained hospitalized at the Iguala General Hospital until Tuesday, October 7, relates what he knows about his son's fate:

"When I received the call from my son's cell phone at two o'clock in the morning, I thought that it was he, but that's when I learned roughly that he was injured and that they didn't want to care for him at a clinic nor were there taxis to take him. I do not understand how the Navy and the Army arrived, and they did not allow him to be taken [to receive medical treatment]. They also intimidated him."

The boy's father was visited by the teacher who guided the teachers college students to hide in the Cristina clinic. The teacher confirmed that the taxi drivers did not want to take the injured man, and that he and his fellow students tried to staunch the bleeding with a T-shirt. An hour and a half after the shooting, someone shouted that the Army was approaching. Everyone hid. The military, pointing their weapons, drove the 26 out of their hiding places, yelled at them for engaging in "delinquency" and showed signs of detaining them. The teacher recalls:

"They got to a private hospital; that's forced entry. It is a crime. We told them that if they are going to call the municipal police, they are going to deliver us to be killed, because they are the ones who shot everyone."

They were. They assured them that soon an ambulance would pass by for the wounded. They boarded the taxi sent by an acquaintance at the hospital.

The young man had nightmares. They sedated him, says the father. He lost his voice and part of his face. His face is swollen, and he communicates through writing. On Wednesday, October 8, he was moved to Mexico City for surgery.

Next is the brother of another of the wounded, who remains in a coma. He is connected to life support. The little body movement that he has is reflexive. They couldn't move him to a specialty hospital because he needs to be connected and his brain is inflamed.

Normalista student Julio César Mondragón found with eyes removed and face skinned off

DD.  "The concern is not the perversity of the wicked, but the indifference of good." MLK