From Rubble to Ruins: Post-Earthquake Response and the Reconstruction Process in Mexico City
You can read this post in Spanish here.
September 19, 2017 marked the thirty-second anniversary of the biggest earthquake Mexico City has ever experienced. The 1985 earthquake destroyed 4,000 buildings, killed almost 13,000 people, and left close to 100,000 people homeless. At the time the building codes were revised, and safety protocols instated aiming to prevent future disasters. For example, since then, every year (except this year due to COVID 19) México has had a nationwide drill to commemorate the disaster.
At 11:00 am the seismic alert went off and school kids, office workers, housewives, and bank clerks walked out of their buildings in the fastest and most orderly manner possible. In a few minutes the streets were filled with people. After the drill, everyone went back to business. It seemed like one more uneventful anniversary. However, at 1:14 pm the seismic alert went off again. Everything shook for almost a minute. I was on the sixth floor of a building that was shaking so violently that I could not reach the staircase. The noise of objects falling and glass shattering was deafening; when the earth stopped moving, I was shaking. Within minutes, WhatsApp messages showing images of smoke in the central zones of the city started to circulate. We later learned that the “smoke” was actually dust from fallen buildings. I received a photo of a fallen building two blooks from mine. All of us were scrambling to reach our loved ones, to go back home, to pick up our kids from school, trying to comprehend the severity of the damage.
My neighborhood, La Condesa, located in the central area of the city, was one of those most affected. That afternoon I walked amid piles of rubble. Several eight-to-ten story buildings had totally collapsed, and many more were severely damaged. There was no cellphone signal, no power, no Internet, and the intense smell of propane gas was pervasive. The streets and parks were filled with people fleeing unstable buildings, looking around in disbelief (Figure 1).
Mexican citizens have an intergenerational knowledge about “natural disasters” and civic responses. I grew up hearing how my parents, aunts, uncles and other older people navigated the aftermath of the 1985 earthquake. In the face of the government´s disorganization and neglect, civil society took control of the situation. Guided—as if from this phantom knowledge—neighbors checked on one another, inquiring about the damages to the others apartments and asking about their extended families. Long human chains formed spontaneously as neighbors passed rubble from hand to hand, digging out survivors. We knew it could be us. We also knew that the government´s response was going to be slower than spontaneous collective action. The improvised organization had saved many lives in the past, and the trust in the authorities’ response was at its lowest point. There was no time to be wasted; no time to wait for instructions; no time to doubt citizens’ capacity to organize themselves.
Figure 1. Affected buildings, La Condesa, Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
The events and actions that unfolded in the next hours, weeks, and months changed my understanding of what residents in Mexico City were and are capable of accomplishing. A few hours after the earthquake struck, neighbors brought household tools (hammers, buckets, pliers), water, granola bars, and fruit out onto the street for those who were working on the rescue. Within a few hours the parks were collection centers with people assuming different roles: from sorting out the donations, directing traffic or moving rubble, to contributing something, anything. Before sunset, the army and the navy arrived to join the volunteers. By five o’clock, a state of emergency was declared. Other government agencies—such as the local authorities, the civil protection office and the police—were absent until the following day while grassroots rescue efforts and organizing strategies continued through the night (Figure 2).
“Within minutes, WhatsApp messages showing images of smoke in the central zones of the city started to circulate.”
Figure 2. Collection center in Parque Mexico, La Condesa, Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
Technology facilitated a sophisticated level of coordination and response never before experienced in Mexico City. WhatsApp groups formed, linking the collection centers to one another and with the emergency sites. Kids and adults, hipster students, construction workers, taxi drivers, engineers and the doctors poured in resources. Regardless of class, age, gender or skin color—for once—the people of Mexico City, one of the most socially and economically stratified cites in the world, worked toward the same goal: to help those in need (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Message soliciting help created by Verificado19S with verified information to be distributed in social media (WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.), Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
All aid was based on trust. I was one of the coordinators at the main collection center distributing rescue equipment, tools, and construction machinery such as very large cranes and electric plants that were provided by construction companies and developers. Urban developers are usually perceived to be the “bad guys” in the city’s growth; in this case they made every effort to help. We also assembled brigades of volunteer rescuers providing safety equipment and transportation to the ground zero sites. To make the deliveries we used the help of civilians volunteering their own cars, bikes, and motorcycles.
Figure 4. Sign offering, #endurance for free, #Strength Mexico, Food, Restrooms, Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
Figure 5. Do you want to shower? Call me or WhatsApp me we have towels, shampoo, and 16 hot water showers, Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
Businesses and residents opened their doors. Restaurants served free meals, hotels let people spend the night at no cost, hospitals (public, private, and military) offered free assistance, cell phone and Internet were unrestricted, and doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, veterinarians, psychologists, structural engineers, and architects were some of the people who volunteered their professional skills to help in the recovery effort. In one day, civilians established over a thousand collection centers and close to a hundred clinics. Along the streets, people and business put up signs offering for free whatever they thought could help. The signs read “Ring the bell for free coffee and bread,” “Shelter with medical services,” “We will charge your cell phone,” “Watermelon water, chilaquiles, WC and electricity. For free,” “Take a shower and rest,” “Toilet,” “Clean your teeth, we provide tooth paste and brushes,” “If you help we have food for you,” “Eye drops and eyeglasses cleaning” (Figures 4, 5, 6).
Figure 6. If you help we have food for you, Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
This instantaneous organization had uneven results. While social media networks allowed for specific requests to be delivered to a wide range of places, some remote places were forgotten, and others had two hundred volunteers arrive when only ten had been requested. And yet, thanks to a tireless solidarity, many lives were saved. Stories of joy and sorrow were everywhere in the media. I was left with a profound feeling of loss but also of hope. I experienced something extraordinary: thousands of strangers joining efforts to help other strangers. For a few weeks Mexico City was different. In the streets, people were looking at each other in the eye, with trust, with complicity, knowing what we as a society had accomplished. We are not particularly well-organized and caring most of the time, but in the face of tragedy it was possible to stand together.
“All aid was based on trust.”
Figure 7. Kids writing messages for the victims, Parque Mexico, Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
Figure 8. Altar honoring the victims, Parque Mexico, Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
A couple of weeks after the crisis, new spontaneous modes of help started to emerge. The parks and streets—where neighbors had looked around in disbelief, where chains of people moved rubble—became places for mourning, healing, and remembering. Street concerts, art installations, meditation and yoga, group hugs, and laugh therapy, were rolled out as a second phase of spontaneous organization and activity. Flowers and cards were donated in public spaces, so people could make altars as kids and adults attempted to publicly process pain and provide comfort (Figures 7, 8, 9).
Figure 9. Votive candles for the victims, La Roma, Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
But the rubble also made evident and, in a way, allegorized the total ruination of the local and federal governments, the loss of trust in state institutions. Citizens’ expectations of government service had reached rock bottom. The level of distrust was so high that people wrote encouraging messages on the goods they donated, not only in order to, as it were, feed the souls as well as the bodies of those in need, but to avoid their use for political gain (Figure 10).
Figure 10. Cans labeled with encouraging messages, Mexico City, 2017. Photograph by María Moreno.
The selflessness and solidarity of ordinary citizens in a time of crisis stood in contrast to the corruption of political parties and the government. Trucks delivering help were stopped, goods confiscated and labeled with political parties’ logos. At the level of policy making, three decades after the 1985 earthquake, no real emergency protocol was in place and no official leadership emerged. Once again, society had to take over the state´s role.
Figure 11. Rubble collected from the affected buildings, La Condesa, Mexico City, 2018. Photograph by María Moreno.
Figure 12. Building being demolished three years after the earthquake, La Condesa, Mexico City, 2020. Photograph by María Moreno.
To this day the reconstruction initiatives are a tale of corruption and incompetence, of political compromises without a long-term plan to prevent future disasters. Many of the buildings that collapsed were not code-compliant. Corruption, lack of regulation enforcement, and poor construction standards produced the disaster. It was not, it never is, a natural disaster, but a human made one. And yet no one has been held accountable. Three years have passed and, many damaged structures are awaiting demolition, augmenting the risk for neighboring buildings and passersby. Thousands of people are still homeless and disoriented in a labyrinth of bureaucracy. Not even a third of the housing units lost have been retrofitted or rebuilt. Laws and decrees accumulate but not nearly enough is done to increase the seismic security of the city.
“It was not a natural disaster, but a human made one. And yet no one has been held accountable.”
Figure 13. Empty plot of land three years after the earthquake, La Condesa Mexico City, 2020. Photograph by María Moreno.
Figure 14. Damaged building still waiting to be retrofitted three years after the earthquake, La Condesa, Mexico City, 2020. Photograph by María Moreno.
The struggle of the damnificados—victims—has been largely forgotten even as empty lots and unoccupied damaged buildings act as permanent reminders. Beyond the heroic moment, ongoing efforts to have a safer city are crucial. So, the real question is how do we transform the agency of civil society into political action, into actual long-lasting collective engagement that builds a different kind of society and a better city for all?[1] Even as the rubble is removed little by little, the ruination of the state made evident by the human made disaster persists (Figures 11, 12, 13, 14).
Note
[1] Not all the initiatives dissolved. A few of the spontaneously formed organizations evolved into formally constituted NGOs and continue to offer different kinds of support, such as legal advice to the earthquake victims until this day.
