INTERVIEW WITH KAPTA A group of photographers slowly walk the length of a destroyed town, San Salvador Atenco. Among them goes Kapta, who turns to see an auditorium in ruins; there is blood on the dirt floor and shoes thrown all over. Some locals on bicycles keep guard. A pair of them approach and say they’d better leave, why must they be there? It’s 2006 in Mexico. The Federal Prevention Police, the State Security Agency, The People’s Front in Defense of Land and the Zapatis-
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tas (EZLN) face violence in Atenco, in the State of Mexico. Sometime later, according to the National Commission on Human Rights in Mexico, excessive force was used in these confrontations. The unofficial version claims sexual abuse against women, besides arbitrary detentions of municipal inhabitants and human-rights observers, perpetrated by an armed group of approximately three thousand security units who took action against three hundred locals.
The photographers advance along the trail, capturing what remains of the town that was wiped out by paramilitary forces the day before. A pickup rapidly overtakes the group, which, with camera in hand, observes some men step out, who are dressed neither as police nor soldiers. “Who are you?,” they demand of the newcomers. “The Press,” respond the photographers. They shove them into the vehicle. They take their cameras, memory cards and clothing. They threaten to kill them. Thrown to the floor, they kick their bodies. The pickup stops. Kapta can see that they’ve arrived at a school. They tell the photographers they’ll do away with them one by one. They open the doors of the truck and take one of them. A shot and a scream are heard a few seconds later. One by one they’re taken away