I want to get ahead, be a teacher, have something in life
- Luis Ángel Abarca Carrillo
One day, when Luis Ángel Abarca Carrillo was in his second year of primary school, he told his mother Metodia Carrillo Lino: "I'm going to continue studying, I want to be a teacher to teach the kids in the town." Despite revealing his vocation so early, Luis Ángel did not change his mind, and he never failed a subject in primary school or high school.
Luis Ángel is the eighth of nine siblings and the first to study a career. His family lives in San Antonio, a community of 200 inhabitants in the Cuautepec municipality, in the Costa Chica region of Guerrero. Since he was a child, Luis Ángel helped his father in the countryside, planting corn and sesame seed, grazing the goats and taking care of the cows.
In high school, a teacher who graduated from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College convinced Luis Ángel to try for acceptance in the school. As Luis Ángel is very applied and studious, he passed the academic exams without any problems and afterwards endured his test week. He had joined the Casa Activista, and was happy. Luis Ángel talked to his mother on the phone every week. The last call was three days before the students went to Iguala. Luis Ángel Abarca Carrillo was 17 years old and still a minor when he was forcibly disappeared by municipal and federal police and military on the night of September 26, 2014.
The serious gesture of Luis Ángel in the photo with which his mother continues to look for him does not do justice to his affectionate and cheerful personality.
I don't know what will become of me if I don't find my child. I prefer to give my life for my son, but give him to me because I can't bear this pain any longer.
- Metodia Carrillo Lino
