SAN MIGUEL TECOMATLAN, Mexico —Unlike the families of the 43 students who disappeared a year ago, Julio Cesar Mondragon’s loved ones were left with a body to bury. But there is little comfort in that, because Mondragon’s corpse bore witness to the horror of his final moments.
His autopsy showed several skull fractures, internal bleeding and other injuries consistent with torture. His face had been flayed, a tactic often used by the drug cartels to incite terror. Photos of his bloody skull were uploaded to the Internet.
International attention has been focused on the 43 students who vanished a year ago Saturday, but six others died at the hands of police in those hours, including Mondragon, a 22-year-old father of a girl who is now 1 year old. According to an independent group of experts, the disappearances and the killings were the result of a long, coordinated attack against students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa who had come to the southern city of Iguala to commandeer buses for a protest.
Families say judicial neglect extends to Mondragon and five others killed that night. His fellow students Daniel Solis and Julio Cesar Ramirez were shot dead at close range. Driver Victor Manuel Lugo Ortiz and David Jose Garcia Evangelista, 15, died when police fired at a soccer team bus. Blanca Montiel, 40, was killed by stray gunfire while riding in a taxi.
Mondragon had been on one of the buses when it was attacked, then later showed up at a news conference the students called at 12:30 a.m. amid the mayhem. He fled when police opened fire. Witnesses said shortly after they last saw him, they heard screams from someone they assumed had been detained. About 6 a.m., soldiers found his body less than a mile from where he disappeared.
Mondragon’s case could provide clues to who was behind the attack, according to the commission. But it languishes in three separate court files. Mondragon’s body will be exhumed for a new autopsy.
The former mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, is among 28 people charged with his killing. Authorities say the mayor was the one who ordered the attacks. But Sayuri Herrera, lawyer for the Mondragon family, said it would be easy for any defense attorney to get the charges thrown out because the shabby investigative work and foggy charges filed by prosecutors could weaken the case. Charges have already been dropped against one police officer, who remains jailed for the missing 43.
“There’s not even clarity in the accusations,” said Herrera.
Mondragon’s family gathers most Saturdays at the large table in his uncle Cuitlahuac’s modest concrete home, sometimes to meet with Herrera, sometimes for psychological counseling, always to plot a path to justice.
“Here we all pretend to be strong,” said Lenin Mondragon, 22, who has his brother’s eyes, now filled with sadness.
