Journalist Interviewed Survivors of the Attack on the Ayotzinapa Students
and is Featured in Episode 1 of the Podcast
Episode 2 Comes Out Tomorrow, January 22
Washington, DC, January 21, 2022 – John Gibler is a journalist, author, and activist who writes eloquently and prolifically about Mexico. His collection of testimonies from Ayotzinapa students who survived the tragedy of September 26, 2014 – which he published as a book, I Couldn’t Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us: An Oral History of the Attacks Against the Students of Ayotzinapa (City Lights, 2017) – became and remains the most definitive account of those terrible events from the young men who lived through them.
In Episode 1 of the podcast, John describes being home in Mexico City when he reads about the missing students and decides to pack a bag and go to the teacher training school to investigate. John gave Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and me access to his recordings of students from those early days after the attacks, and once we got permission from the two men featured in the podcast – Nico and Lalo – we were able to include their voices.
On January 19, John and I met on Zoom to talk about his experience reporting on the case in those early days, and his analysis of how government authorities and organized crime colluded to produce one of Mexico’s most shocking human rights atrocities. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.
--Kate Doyle
liThe interview
Doyle: Tell me about your decision to go to Guerrero after hearing about the attacks.
Gibler: I really had no idea of writing a book or writing a certain kind of article. I went there thinking, what happened? And because there was so much confusion in the media, there was so much disinformation on behalf of authorities, and the scale of events was so overwhelming, there hadn't been yet just a simple reconstruction of events, a journalistic reconstruction. So my initial objective was, ok, let's just document the events of that night. Let's just find out what happened.
More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/mexico/2022-01-21/kate-doyle-interviews-journalist-john-gibler-ahead-episode-2-release-after?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=6551e0c8-6418-469b-b6f8-6f38a1b47136
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Excerpt frome one ne of the linked articles offered at this site:
“After Ayotzinapa” Podcast Investigates Horrific Mexican Atrocity
THE “NIGHT OF IGUALA”
On September 26, 2014, police attacked a group of college students as they rode on buses through the town of Iguala in southwestern Mexico; they blocked the buses from moving forward, then they opened fire. For hours, federal security forces and soldiers from a nearby base circulated in and around the chaotic scenes of violence, but never stopped to intervene. The long, harrowing night left six people dead. The police detained 43 of the students and piled them into the backs of their trucks. The young men were never seen again.
The victims were students from a rural teacher-training school called Ayotzinapa, located in an impoverished region in Mexico’s Guerrero state. Although they were attacked in the center of a bustling municipality, taken by local police, and then handed off to drug traffickers – all under the watchful eye of dozens of federal police and military – the government failed to find them, identify who ordered their kidnapping, or explain why they were targeted. Worse, it became clear that President Enrique Peña Nieto's hand-picked investigator, Tomás Zerón, actively obstructed the investigation, destroyed and fabricated evidence, tortured detainees to confess to outlandish versions of what happened, and promoted a false narrative about the crime.
The disappearance of the 43 became a notorious symbol of state-sponsored criminality and impunity, confirming Mexicans’ worst fears that their government was irreversibly brutal and corrupt—at every level.
VOICES IN THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE
Reported and co-produced by National Security Archive senior analyst Kate Doyle and Reveal senior reporter Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, “After Ayotzinapa” reveals the story of what happened in the months and years following that terrible “night of Iguala.” Its focus is not the crime but the investigation: the false starts, the red herrings, the government’s incoherent narrative, and its attacks on the families and human rights investigators. The final episode addresses the efforts being made by a new government to overcome the cover-up and truly advance the cause of truth and justice for the missing 43 students.
More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/mexico/2022-01-10/after-ayotzinapa-podcast-investigates-horrific-mexican-atrocity
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A short news report made a year after the atrocity:
The Search Continues: Mexico's Disappeared Students (Part 2)
An Uncertain Fate: Mexico's Disappeared Students (Part 3)
(Much more information than has been available through corporate media. Very helpful.)