are times when we don’t drink water, when we don’t eat. It’s true and it’s hard. But at the same time, once you’ve been there at the college for two or three days during the trial week, you say to yourself: “I made it two days, just five more to go. I’m going to stick it out.” And you do.
SANTIAGO FLORES, 24, FRESHMAN. The trial week is tough. It was really kind of grueling. But, you know, that’s how it is here, that’s how they do it every year. They have you doing exercise, doing farm work, clearing brush and weeds from the fields, going out to help los tíos in their fields. It’s pretty exhausting, and only those who make it through the trial week get admitted. We helped each other out, though. If some of us couldn’t run anymore, the organizers would encourage us.
“Help each other out,” they would say, “help each other; never leave a compa alone, no one should ever get left behind; when you’re finished running, there should be no one left behind.”
If one of us couldn’t go on, we all had to stop and wait, or try to help him out by carrying him, but no one could be left on their own. That’s where we start building a sense of being compañeros within the group, always staying together, never leaving anyone behind, helping each other out. That’s where the compañerismo begins. We make deep friendships during the trial week. We become best friends during that experience with compañeros we didn’t know before.
EDGAR ANDRÉS VARGAS, 20, JUNIOR. On the first day they took us all into the auditorium. The students from the committee welcomed us, more or less, told us some stuff and then let us out early. We went to rest. Around four in the morning some of the students from the sports club showed up kicking our doors, shouting. In that situation, you wake up in a flash. They told us to be out on the soccer field in five minutes, or like two minutes. Since we had heard a bit about the trial week, we had an idea of what was about to happen. They made us do exercises and then run. They took us running. This was kind of complicated for me since I used to have asthma and always used an inhaler. I still was afraid I’d have an asthma attack, that’s why I hardly ever played soccer anymore. But in that moment we all took off running. And they had us chanting. Truth be told, it was tiring running up stairs, doing all that exercise, I wasn’t really used to all that. They made us run all through Tixtla. We went almost as far as the OXXO convenience store at the edge of town, and then they brought us back, running. They gave us a few minutes to rest and then, around eight or nine, they took us out to do shifts as lookouts, to sweep the school grounds, to clear weeds with a machete and all that.
The hard thing was that they didn’t give us any water to drink. There was very little water, and they didn’t give us water to drink. So, to be out there cutting weeds with a machete, thirsty, you get exhausted. But I didn’t give up. And then the meals were just some tortillas and a tiny spoonful of beans. Tough luck. You were hungry and you had to eat it and you couldn’t ask for more, because if you did they would fill every inch of your plate with beans, they’d give you bread and tortillas, but a lot of them, and you had to eat it all. So you had to settle for what they gave you. I think they gave us breakfast around ten or eleven and then a few minutes to rest, and then back to work: work, work, work. Then it wasn’t until around four or five that they fed us again. And those were the only two meals. They talked to us about the college, about its creation and everything, and then around eight at night they took us to the study groups and gave us political orientation. They talked about the essence of the teachers colleges, the founding of the teachers colleges, about the social movements there have been in the country, and about the bad governments.
Sometimes they showed us videos, films, but always related to, you could say, left politics. We would get out of there really late, around two or three in the morning. I remember that twice they took me out of the movies because I had fallen asleep. That was during the last days of the trial week. The students’ committee took me out of the movie because I had fallen asleep and they made me do exercises there in front of the auditorium. The first time they made me exercise, they told me to climb up all these stairs to see what was written on a cross. It was night. I didn’t go all the way, because I saw another guy coming down, I think they sent him up there to do the same thing, and so I just asked him what was written on the cross and then we sat there talking for a bit. Then we went back and they asked us what was written on the cross, we told them, and they sent us back into the auditorium until the study group was over.
The other time they took me out was also because I had fallen asleep; I was so tired I just couldn’t stay awake. But that time they made me eat an onion. They asked you if you wanted an apple or a pear. I remember that I said an apple and the apple was an onion, the pear was a habanero chili pepper. I chose the apple. And they told me I had to eat it, and I ate it. Afterward I couldn’t sleep. The smell was everywhere. It made your eyes cry. I had that taste in my mouth for three or four days.
And I made my way through the trial week. It was tough. A bunch of applicants couldn’t take the exhaustion or the hunger, and they left. Once they took us out to cut all the weeds from the cornfields. We went in a bus and got off on the shoulder of the highway and had to climb up the mountain. We arrived around noon I think, and in the sun began to cut the weeds. By around two, I couldn’t stand the thirst. I was so thirsty, my whole body felt weak. When I went to the trial week I didn’t take anything, just a couple of changes of clothes and a backpack. I didn’t take a blanket, just a towel. At night it would get cold and what I would do was lay out a change of clothes on the floor—the concrete floor would get really cold—and I’d lie down and cover myself with the towel. But after a while I struck up a friendship with the guy next to me: he had brought sheets and he shared his mattress with me.
I made it through a lot. It was kind of messed up, because they would take us out to clear weeds when it was raining, with thunder, and they wouldn’t let us take cover. The trial week was tough, but I was able to make it through.
ÓSCAR LÓPEZ HERNÁNDEZ, 18, FRESHMAN. In all honesty, they treated us pretty badly when we showed up here that first week. But even so, with what happened to us on the twenty-sixth, it all was useful. Here at the college, during trial week, they have us run, jump into the pool early in the morning, and that came in handy for real, because on the night of the twenty-sixth with the rain, me and several other compañeros spent some eight hours wet. And, yes, here at the college they do that to us, they make us jump in the pool and then go running all wet, and do exercise in the morning. And seriously, on that day, everything they had done to us during the trial week was really fucking useful because out there you really needed it, you had no idea where to run, and here at the college they had taught us to run and seek shelter, and to be in shape.
MIGUEL ALCOCER, 20, FRESHMAN. It’s a week when you’re here and you go out and do all the things that a campesino does: clear the weeds with a machete, feed the livestock, plant, feed the pigs and the hens. All that is what we do during adjustment week, as they also call it, to see if we are really the sons of campesinos. The truth is, for me it was easy because it was all things I’ve done with my parents. We’ve worked the land, we have some land and livestock. For me, I didn’t think it was hard because, you know, it’s stuff I do at home with my parents and my brother.
CARLOS MARTÍNEZ, 21, SOPHOMORE. I had finished my freshman year and was eager to start classes and keep studying. We even had plans in my sophomore class to take a study trip; we were planning on going to Chiapas. I felt a bit more relaxed, because the freshman year here is really intense. You show up and you have to adapt to life here at the school, to the academics, the way of life here, the context, the government harassment and persecution that’s always present, I mean it never dissipates, and you have to start, little by little, getting used to the idea that this school isn’t just any school, this school is very different.
When I was a freshman there was a flood here in Tixtla. This whole area down here flooded. Just about half of the municipality of Tixtla flooded. Many people lost everything: their houses, their
