Parent of Ayotzinapa Normal School students describe EPN; "He's tiny, like someone no one pays attention to."

EPN is usually photographed sitting, behind a podium, or standing alone.  This photo of him with Obama and Canadian PM gives a perspective on his height.

 La Jornada: Gloria Muñoz Ramírez

Translated by Jane Brundage Mexico Voices

"He's tiny, like someone no one pays attention to."

So says one of the 86 parents of Ayotzinapa Normal School students who attended the meeting with the President in describing Enrique Peña Nieto:

"I pictured a strong man. I imagined that the President was big, but he isn't," remarks a man who snapped at the Chief Executive:

"The first (Iguala Mayor, Abarca) ran away, the second as well (Guerrero Governor, Aguirre), and are you, too, also going to run away?"

The Guerrero father perfectly captures the dwarfed and weak presidential figure:

"It's as if he doesn't command." 

So says the father whom someone charged 1,200 pesos [US$90] to take him to a place where he was assured he would find his son alive. He handed over the money and nothing. Already, along with other relatives, he has spent thirty-five days touring churches, vacant lots, graves, store rooms and whatever other place they are told about. There is no life for them. And they do not accept, in any way, any version that gives their children up for dead.

During the meeting at the presidential residence [Los Pinos, The Pines], mothers of the disappeared, from whom little has been heard in these days of anxiety, also spoke.

Parents of missing students holding pictures of the missing, attend the press conference after a meeting with Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico, City, Wednesday Oct. 29, 2014. President Enrique Pena Nieto met with parents of 43 teachers college students Wednesday for the first time since they disappeared over a month ago

 "The mothers told the President that it is impossible that they remain confined at home, that the government wants to set them against the Ayotzinapa Normal School, against their own children. 

When one mother went to collect her son's body from SEMEFO [the morgue], prosecutors tried to get her to testify against the normal school. And the mom told him to go to hell," says another witness.

The criminalization of the Normal School, and, in particular, of the 43 disappeared students, was a government strategy that, after a few days, turned to the graves. They are neither thugs nor vandals, neither guerrillas nor drug traffickers. They are only students.

Fed up with the stigmas of social status and ideology, the students released video images of their colleagues working, cheerfully, one morning in August, nearly two months before being arrested and subsequently disappeared by police in Iguala. In all the scenes, they are laughing.

"These are the companions we want delivered to us alive."  (DD. video below with translation by Lala on the Forum)

So said the students when they came to Mexico City to give their version to the media. They, along with the parents on Wednesday in Los Pinos, are exhausted, but they know that this is just the beginning. They emphasized that they do not trust Peña Nieto, so the answer will come from pressure applied from below. parents of the missing students who sized up their impressions of the President.

Video of the Students Working The fields

Translation by Lala

" - This is the job of our missing mates, it´s the job they´ve been doing since early August, and we can see the results now.

- Hey! Say hello to the camera!

- They were very joyful at work, they would joke around among them to make the day go by, it was a very united and very hardworking school.

- They are "paisa" Benito, Canelo, Comadre, Chucky (who didn´t want to say hello to the camera because he was busy working), the "paisa" who was killed used to work over there, he was skinned, we called him "paisa" Chilango. I wanted to record this video because I wanted to see how work was going, whether I worked well or not, and we also have fun while at work, one moment we are working and the next one a mate starts throwing us dirt or anything.

- We made the video so people can see what we really do. The money our mates were collecting (in Iguala) was going to be destined in part to what they were doing here, so this work, these crops, would prosper.

- There are many misconceptions about this school, like how at Ayotzinapa we don´t work, we are always involved in protests, but, as you know, we have 5 specialities in here, and one of them is "production modules".

- We are peasants, we come from the countryside, this reminds us exactly where we come from, our origins, our identity. And it reminds us that here, at Ayotzinapa, we don´t strip people of their identity, we root it even more.

- I don´t cry, but I do miss my comrades. We won´t rest until we find them, and if we have to sacrifice our own lives, we will do it, but we will find them. In the end it´s our brothers who are missing. "