TZOMPAXTLE: LA FUGA DE UN GUERRILLERO

by John Gibler

Andres Tzompaxtle Tecpile was torn from the world. Abducted off the street, blindfolded and beaten, he was brought to a Mexican military facility and "disappeared."

Tzompaxtle, a young indigenous man and member of an insurgent guerrilla movement, was subjected to months of interrogation and torture as the military tried to extract information from him. In an effort to buy time to protect his family and comrades, and to keep himself alive, he lead his captors on fruitless journeys to abandoned safe-houses and false rendezvous locations for four months. Finally, faced with imminent execution, he decided to make what he thought was a suicidal attempt at escape; when he miraculously survived, he was able to return underground.

Gleaned from years of clandestine interviews, Tzompaxtle's story offers a rare glimpse into chronic injustice, underground resistance movements, and the practice of forced disappearance and torture in contemporary Mexico.

Praise for Torn from the World

"Once in a long while a brilliant writer happens on a story he was born to tell--a story that in its stark and unremitting horror gives us a glimpse of the world as it is, unvarnished and unredeemed. John Gibler is such a writer and Torn From the World is such a story. A wrenching, astonishing tale, brilliantly told."--Mark Danner, author of The Massacre at El Mozote

"Torn from the World is the product of a thorough investigation and it is written with rage and humility at the same time. This is the work of one of the most important journalists of our time."--Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World

"John Gibler's powerful recounting of the forced disappearance of Andres Tzompaxtle Tecpile unearths the brutal machinery of state-sanctioned torture and terrorism in Mexico today. It is also a deeply lyrical story of survival against the odds, enabled by communities of resistance and solidarity. This book must provoke an outcry. We cannot know this story and see the world in the same way."--Sujatha Fernandes, author of Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling

"Not since Rodolfo Walsh's classic Operation Massacrehave I read a work of political and literary journalism as inventive and urgent as John Gibler's Torn from the World With courage, empathy, and clear-sightedness, Gibler tackles questions most journalists won't go near. How to capture in language and via memory practices--torture and disappearance--designed to destroy meaning and erase the past? How to write without complicity or exploitation? How to listen, and to fight? How to take sides with truth? Torn from the World is at once gripping and profound. It is, to borrow Gibler's phrase, an 'insurgent embrace, ' hopeful and defiant, a work of outrage and of love."--Ben Ehrenreich, author of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine

"The North American journalist John Gibler not only presents here the guerrilla combatant's story, but also contextualized it within the broader, very troubled history of class relations in Guerrero and the contemporary proliferation of human rights abuses in Mexico, from Ayotzinapa to Ciudad."--Jesse Lerner, author of The Shock of Modernity"In these times when truth is relativized for the sake of political expediency, Gibler's is a sobering account that provides readers with the materials from which he elaborates his story of Tzompaxtle. This book offers an implicit response to the denigration of journalism, hence of truth-telling."--Jose Rabasa, author of Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier

"John Gibler has produced a giant of a book."--Joseph Nevins, author of Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid

Genres: Nonfiction

212 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

John Gibler is a writer based in Mexico and California, the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt (City Lights Books, 2009), and a contributor to País de muertos: Crónicas contra la impunidad (Random House Mondadori, 2011). He is a correspondent for KPFA in San Francisco and has published in magazines in the United States and Mexico, including Left Turn, Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, ColorLines, Race, Poverty, and the Environment, Fifth Estate, New Politics, In These Times, Yes! Magazine, Contralínea, and Milenio Semanal.

Reviews

[Bryce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book to a really unexpected degree. It's worth the price of admission just for the chapter dealing with the ethics of journalistic representation, a contextualizing essay that almost any journalist could learn from. I read this book as a kind of experiment in narrative journalism, and exploration of what is possible using this form, and without exploiting the subject. Gibler follows the story of a single disappeared militant in Mexico, including long unedited interviews and primary documents, as well as further writing about disappearances, to tell a story that ends up being much larger and more important than just one person.

[Daniela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maravilloso libro que retoma la experiencia de un guerrillero que logró escaparse de la Guerra Sucia iniciada por el Estado mexicano en los años setentas. El relato es apasionante y escalofriante. El autor logra transmitir las emociones vividas por el protagonista y el lector se vuelve cómplice de su sufrimiento.

[René · Rating 3 out of 5]

Casos no. No son casos. Son personas. Los números, si nos van a servir de algo, nos tienen que doler.

[Clara · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

As someone with no real knowledge of the events described in this book or their context, I found the first chapter a little confusing. But as the book progressed, I understood better what Gibler was doing. As gripping as the content of TORN FROM THE WORLD is, it's the structure of the narrative that sets it apart, along with Gibler's interventions to discuss the many ways in which traditional journalism is ill-equipped to tell this kind of story. That is what makes this book a triumph.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/4

[Lily McDonnell]

---read for class---

[David Eugenio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vivimos en un Estado donde la justicia no existe.

[Asher Garvens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall good, I think its a really easy read and exposes you to a lot of stuff that you would never really get from just the news.