It was after ten o’clock at night on May 3, 2021, I had barely turned on the computer to start writing, when a call came from an unknown number to the phone that I have used for years to communicate with the public.
-Are you from television, from the radio? The subway has just collapsed, there are many dead, there are no police, no one has arrived- a man told me on the other side of the horn.
I asked for his location and some photos, at that time there was only one post on Twitter with the same story, in an account with few followers and that still hadn’t gotten any kind of attention.
Unlike the 2017 earthquake, the neighbors who surrounded the area watched, while the policemen asked them to move away to avoid putting them at risk in case the rest of the structure collapsed. Medical, military, and police services arrived, and the head of government was soon on the site, answering questions from the press that she had already gathered. Among those who watched, ran from one side to another who were looking for their relatives, and asking for information on those who had been transferred to the hospital.
The tragedy of Line 12 already recalled its conflictive history, that of the trains and the track, that of the long period closed, and the one that leads us to remember that all the people involved with it are still in positions of power today. The tragedy of May 3 also counted as always the worst tragedies fall in the worst of places. The Tláhuac mayor’s office is among those with the largest population living in poverty. (Coneval)
-We, those of us who fill their offices in Insurgentes and Reforma, those of us who use their restaurants, do not live here, we live there in Tláhuac, where the streets are not well paved, where there is no security, where you can take the life of someone for $3,000. -a neighbor from the area told me with whom I was able to talk several days after the accident, and who already did the math of what it now meant for him to get to work without line 12.
Throughout last week we listened to Mexico City government authorities enumerate the millions of pesos received by the victims and relatives of the victims, the multiple attentions, scholarships and psychological care. We also listen to the lawyer of the families who have not accepted the reparation agreement. Money, however much it may be, does not replace the loss of a loved one, medical care is not an act of charity, it is the minimum indispensable response from the authority. And yet, the data, the numbers, the attention, the stories of the victims, everything was buried in one last sentence: “deficient, poorly executed, tendentious and false”. It was Claudia Sheinbaum talking about the third installment of the report from the DNV company to find out the root cause of the accident. The conflict of interest was found in a lawyer who litigated against President López Obrador… in 2012! He also linked him to Mexicans Against Corruption, one of the president’s “favorite villains.” The problem with this discourse is that it is wasted, the problem with this discourse is also that those who planned, built and maintained the line belong to the same group of people, and it was they who dropped it. In what must be one of the worst damage control strategies, what Claudia Sheinbaum achieved, is what is achieved when a book is demonized, that now all of us want to know what the third report on line 12 says.
Mexican journalist, host, broadcaster, writer and communicator
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Mexican journalist, host, announcer, writer and communicator. She hosts the program “A Todo Terreno” on MVS Radio. She has written for various publications and worked in different spaces on radio and television.