Ayotzinapa: 6 months on and still waiting for answers.

I am still less than half way through making the portraits of the 43 Normalista students from the “Raúl Isidro Burgos” Rural School, who were forcibly disappeared in Iguala on the 26th September 2014. 43 is a big number. We are still waiting for answers about the fate of the students, with the exception of Alexander Venancio Mora who was identified from small fragments of bone and tooth, which were found in a rubbish dump in Cocula.

The families and friends of these young men, who were training to be teachers in the under resourced schools scattered throughout rural Guerrero, are still waiting for answers. Mexico too.

I have blogged about each portrait of the students as I’ve made them The posts can be seen here. Meantime here are all  the portraits I’ve made to date in the one place. I’ll be keeping working to make new ones and holding out for news. For the sake of the parents I hope that there will be something to give them some kind of closure but in a context of indifference and impunity I doubt that, sadly, it will be anytime soon.

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Saúl Bruno García. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Luis Angel Abarca Carillo. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Mauricio Ortega Valerio. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Martín Getsemany Sánchez García. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Jesus Jovany Rodriguez Tlatempa. Digital Collage: © Jan Nimmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow,Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Jorge Alvarez Nava. Digital Collage: © Jan Nimmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Felipe Arnulfo Rosa. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

 

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Magdaleno Rubén Lauro Villegas. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

 

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Marcial Baranda Pablo. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

 

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está José Eduardo Bartolo Tlatempa. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

 

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Everardo Rodríguez Bello. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

 

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Leonel Castro Abarca. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

 

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Carlos Lorenzo Hernández Muñoz. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quería saber dónde estaba Alexander. Venancio Mora. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Abel García Hernández. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Jorge Luis Gonzalez Parral. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Jorge Aníbal Cruz Mendoza. Digital Collage: © Jan NImmo

 

 

 

 

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Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz. Digital Collage: Jan Nimmo ©

This is a tribute to Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz. His mother says he was mischievous as a young boy and that he liked to play with toy cars; he’d dismantle them and put them back together again or use the bits to invent something new. Later, as he grew older, he started to like baseball and football. He helped his parents out with chores such as looking after the hens or pigs and just before he disappeared his parents came home to find that he had cut the grass back. He wants to be a teacher because of the poverty that surrounds him. He wants to help his community. He’d say “I don’t want to be a campesino, I want to study, to get ahead so that I could look after you, Mum”. He wants to study chemistry. He is from Omeapa and is 20 years old.

His nickname is The Korean ( El Coreano) because of his almond eyes.

His sister describes his disappearance as a nightmare and says that the family just want to get back to normal.

Martina, his mother says “I feel bad, not having my son near to me, I love him so much, he knew that and wherever he is, I’m going to search for him. I want him back with me. They took him alive and I want him back alive”.

 

 

 

Saúl Bruno García

Of the 43 students who were disappeared in Iguala on 26th September 2014, 8 were from Tecoanapa in the Costa Chica region of Guerrero. Saúl Bruno García was amongst them. Ever since he was a young boy he’d help about the house, in the kitchen and also in the countryside. Of all the children in the family he is the only one to have gone on to study. He wants to help his mum because he sees how hard she works. He wants to get a teaching qualification and to study graphic design to support his family. The other students in Ayotzinapa call him Chicharrón.

Tecoanapa means Tigre en la barranca in Nauatl, or River of the Jaguars. In this piece I have quoted a chilena “Tigre en La Barranca”…

Tecoanapa mi querido Tigre en Barranca/ Tecoanapa, my dear River of the Jaguars,

Donde los amantes cantan/ where lovers sing,

Cuando empieza a amanecer/as day dawns,

Tecoanapa, a mi gente este le dije/ Tecoanapa, this is what I have said to my kin,

Si me muero en la distancia/ If I were to die far away,

Mis restos traigan aquí/ bring my remains here.

(from a recording of Tigre en Barranca sung by Hector Morales).

His family and friends want him to come home to Tecoanapa alive. So do I.

 

 

Martín Getsemany Sánchez García

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, quiero saber dónde está Martín Getsemany Sánchez García. Digital Collage: Jan Nimmo

I am slowing progressing through my portraits of each of the Normalista students who were forcibly disappeared in Iguala last September. The students at the school “Raul Isidro Burgos” in Ayotzinapa come from all over the state of Guerrero and many of them are bilingual. Martín comes from Zumpango del Río, not terribly far from Chilpancingo.

In this piece I wanted to combine imagery from the region’s pre-Columbian past and Martín’s passion for the football team he supported, Deportivo Cruz Azul – “Los Azules”. I have used marigolds or cempazuchitl to decorate the piece because they are used to adorn the hats of the Tlacololeros so typical of his home town. The Tlacololeros or farmers perform a dance where 14 dancers hunt  two other dancers “piteros” dressed as jaguars or Tigres… the story goes that the farmers hunt and kill a jaguar who has been terrorising the community. The dance is performed in honour of Tlaloc, the God of Fertility and water so that he will provide rain to water the farmers’ crops. The dancers are accompanied by a reed flute and drums which to me seems reminiscent of the music of the tambolineros I hear at romerías in the Sierra de Huelva , in Southern Spain. I have  included some lyrics from a son de tarima tlacololeros in this collage.

Traditions such as these are what first attracted me to Guerrero.  The Tigre mask in this collage is one which I took home with me to Scotland and will be familiar to anyone who has visited my home. The mask has eyes made from mirrors so that the enemy would see their own fear reflected back at them. Now when I see the mask I still remember the wonderful masked dances, traditions and music of Guerrero, but the eyes reflect my own fears for the students and their families, whose questions go unanswered.

 

 

 

 

Luis Angel Abarca Carillo

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, Escocia, quiero saber dónde está Luis Angel Abarca Carillo. Digital Collage: Jan Nimmo ©

I have recycled a painting I made of Mexico many moons ago (happier days) as part of this collage of Luis Angel Abarca Carillo, the latest in the ongoing series of portraits of the 43 students from the “Raul Isidro Burgos” Rural School, Ayotzinapa, who were forcibly disappeared last September.

Vivos los queremos.

 

Mauricio Ortega Valerio

Yo, Jan Nimmo, Glasgow, quiero saber dónde está Mauricio Ortega Valerio. Digital collage: Jan Nimmo ©