by IGNACIO ALVARADO ALVAREZ
A girl arranges photographs of missing people at an altar during an event to commemorate the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances in Saltillo. PHOTO / Daniel Becerril / Reuters / Landov
While the 43 Ayotzinapa students captured headlines around the world, atrocities in Coahuila two years earlier went virtually ignored — confined to oblivion by an information vacuum created by fear, impunity and government intimidation. Like Iguala, the violence in Coahuila is marked by collusion between authorities and criminal groups such that victims and residents are never quite clear who the perpetrators are. They are left with a sense of enormous complicity.
José Willibardo, 20, Anita’s younger son, was violently abducted from their home on March 5, 2012. The gunmen who took him carried high-caliber arms and were guarded by local police. The testimony offered by one of José’s older brothers, Luis Ángel, and two of his sisters-in-law states that José was dragged from his bedroom to a pickup truck that whisked him away.
“He is a good boy. He’s 20 years old but has the body of a 15-year-old,” said Anita. “But he wasn’t a coward like the people who took him.” She said the gunmen were merciless with José, who had no criminal record, because he refused to work for them as a hired assassin or kidnapper. She identified the man who directed the beating as one of José’s childhood friends from Allende, a 20-minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas.
The gunmen also abducted Luis Ángel. His pregnant wife told authorities that the gunmen handcuffed him and beat him unconscious before placing him in a second waiting car. The kidnappers then sped away.
Luis Ángel returned alive. The same police officers who supervised his kidnapping took him home, according to Anita, his legs and torso covered in burns, his ribs broken, his face disfigured. “Instead of tears, he was crying blood,” she said.
His captors covered him in diesel fuel and lit him on fire after torturing him, Luis Ángel told his family. His mother bombarded him with distressed questions. “Please don’t look for Wily any longer,” he told her. “He’s dead.”
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