From Ayotzinapa we were headed toward Iguala to say to the mayor that we wanted funds for our rural
school for teachers it was a protest for our school that is all rural teachers nothing more nothing less we
were protesting for funds that is all we were surrounded by police and their cronies they fired their guns
they burned us they dismembered us in trash bags they threw us into the river yet we continue yet we
march from here from the bowels of Mexico this river that floods all the schools and all the universities and
all the floors of the emperors’ palaces we continue at twenty-four years of age we make way through the
massacre here from where we were born and from where we died toward all the cities in the world toward
all the students and teachers in the world demonstrating on all the streets sprung open incandescent
no one knew it no one saw it
we are leaving this number
43 for you because
there were 43 of us
we are
not disposable
Juan Felipe Herrera, a Chicano performer and activist, is currently serving his second term as United States Poet Laureate. Previously, he was poet laureate of California. He is the author of thirty books, most recently Notes on the Assemblage (2015), where “ayotzinapa” first appeared, reprinted here with permission from City Lights Books
