Ayotzinapa Students Fight Extreme Poverty, Government Neglect, Pain of Disappearances Sanjuana Martinez - La Jornada
go to original November 4, 2014

Video of Missing Ayotzinapa Students Before Their Disappearance (Fusion)

AYOTZINAPA, Guerrero - The marigolds stalks are a meter [39 inches] tall; the coxcomb flowers reach 80 centimeters [32 inches]. Both are ready to be cut and sold today for Day of the Dead, but the first-year students with shaved heads at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School, with machetes in hand, postpone the harvest. They stretch out this moment of harvest. Luis Flores Garcia, 20, puts it like this: "It feels awful. These flowers were planted by our disappeared classmates."

At this time, the meaning of the flowers of the dead* causes melancholy. The harvest, which should be a sign of joy, has turned into heartbreak, despair, depression, devastation over the 43 disappeared, a grief that doesn't cease either coming or going, an interminable, agonizing suspense.

*MV Note: In the Day of the Dead tradition, orange marigold petals mark the traditional path that guides the Souls of the Dead. Purple coxcomb represents mourning and cleanses the place of evil spirits.

In the five acres of cultivated fields, the first year students also planted corn, which has not yet ripened. The furrows are perfectly delineated. They were handmade by the normal school students. The two tractors are broken, and there is no money to buy parts. They have only one wheelbarrow and barely half a dozen tools. The little bit of fertilizer they used isn't enough. The hoses are borrowed from the neighbors.

The government withdrew its financial support when the normal school students began to protest the forced disappearance [i.e., involving the government] of their 43 classmates. The recent food shortages have forced them to slaughter the few animals that they have.

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