Only José Ángel knew why he killed

Several people light candles outside the Cervantes school in Torreón, in January.DANIEL BECERRIL / Reuters

On the altar of the hospital, Mario left an apple between the stamps, rosaries and photos.

It was January 11 and a day had passed since José Ángel Ramos Betts, 11, had shot him and six other people in the courtyard of the Cervantes de Torreón school in northern Mexico.

He had no other offering on hand.

"So that if he is born again, he will be born into a good baby," he told his father.

After killing the teacher María Assaf Medina and wounding six other people, José Ángel had committed suicide with one of the two weapons that he had obtained from his grandparents' house.

No one but the boy knew why he did it.

Neither the brother of the murdered teacher, nor the students shot in the abdomen, nor the teacher wounded in the arm, nor the experts, nor the governor, nor the psychologists that the journalist Javier Garza Ramos cites in his recent book

(editorial Grijalbo) have the explanation.

They all provide clues that the chronicler weaves together to expose the complexity of a massacre that does not accept unique explanations, much less simple ones.

If the writer had intended to come up with that one answer, he might not have written this book.

Each reader, each reader, will tie the strings to try to understand.

José Ángel grew up in the house of his paternal grandparents, in a house with guns within the reach of an 11-year-old boy.

He grew up without his mother, who had died years before, and with a sporadic father convicted of drug trafficking in the United States.

The boy, a withdrawn student with good grades, talked about guns with his grandfather and kept 30 toys in his room, plus a taser gun that gives electroshock.

He was fascinated by the shooting at Columbine High School in the United States, which had happened in 1999, before he was born, and played video games in which marines and aliens face death.

None of these explanations that Garza Ramos describes in the book is sufficient for the author.

"Not all children who play video games do this, not all orphans, not all who come from a broken family, not all children of drug traffickers," he questioned by phone.

On the Friday of the massacre, Garza Ramos, former director of

and one of the most renowned journalists in Mexico, arrived at the Cervantes school to cover the news for his program on Imagen Radio.

He found what is found when tragedies are still fresh: confusion, lack of explanations, excess of rumors.

The La Laguna community, the metropolitan area to which Torreón belongs, had suffered a wave of violence a decade earlier due to the clashes between Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel, but a shooting at a school was something new.

Although there was a precedent in Mexico, in Monterrey in 2017, school killings were something that happened on the other side of the border.

The explanation that strangely had reassured other times, "they are killing each other", did not apply in this case, says the author.

Why that student, why like this, why that day, why like that.

Dave Cullen, author of a book on the Columbine massacre, finished the definitive reporting on the shooting 10 years after teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher and committed suicide.

Vicente Leñero published in 1985 the non-fiction novel about the assassination of former Nayarit governor Gilberto Flores Muñoz and his wife, the writer Asunción Izquierdo, in Mexico City, six years earlier.

Garza Ramos has pursued that depth in the 169 pages of the book, which since October 23 has been available in digital format.

“In Mexico, that journalistic tradition of making a long and deep narrative about events like this is very missing.

I suspect it has to do with that skeletons in the closet problem.

On many sides there is that resistance to deepen and talk about the issues to reopen them ”, explains the author.

“But if we leave him alone, we will never process him.

We need to talk about it. "

Garza Ramos dissects those days in the book with the rhythm given by the parallel plots.

He makes an effort to clarify the first rumors that circulated - he dedicates a whole chapter to it and makes an undisguised criticism of the misinformation we release on social networks -, shows the context, investigates the financial situation of the attacker's family - the grandfather del Niño is currently under investigation for money laundering and tax fraud — and it focuses on the victims.

Before telling anything, the first chapter is dedicated to the 53-year-old English teacher who approached the boy from behind to try to stop him and was shot in the eye.

Narrating it, says the author, is "a minimal act of justice" for those affected.

In his investigation, the chronicler also reveals information that was not known until now, such as a series of messages between José Ángel and a friend that no one had paid attention to.

The 11-year-olds talked about shotguns, submachine guns, and propane bombs.

“Tomorrow is the day”, José Ángel had anticipated his friend for the third time.

"Didn't any adult see this a bit?" García Ramos wondered when he had access to those talks.

In the book, the writer extends the concern to the readers and opens questions about education, about violence, about children's access to technology.

“There was a key to learning what could have prevented the incomprehensible event, because José Ángel's action did not occur in a vacuum.

He had left footprints that no one saw, ”writes Garza Ramos.

After the massacre, the covid-19 pandemic diluted the discussions.

The children stopped going to school and the conversations turned.

brings January 10, 2020 back into focus.