Remembering Mexico City, 1985: “It was like second nature to make the inconvenient dead vanish”
October 12, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Carrying a body bag from the rubble of Mexico City's Nuevo Leon apartments, more than a week after the earthquake, September 1985.
Woman searching for her 1 1/2-year-old daughter outside the rubble of Benito Juarez Hospital, which collapsed during the 1985 earthquake. AP photos
Letter from a reader:
Thirty years ago I was in Mexico City after the devastating magnitude 8 earthquake of September 19, 1985. Recently memories of what I saw have come back to me after seeing a bunch of articles in the U.S. press about the lingering effects of the historic quake. But what strikes me is the nonchalance with which the U.S. press reports that the Mexican government claims that 5,000 people died, but that activists and non-governmental organizations claim that at least 30,000 died.
Wait... what?
You just reported a “minor” discrepancy of 25,000 human beings without a second thought.
In fact, the National Seismological Service estimated the number of dead at 45,000.
When I walked through the streets of the Distrito Federal (Mexico City) in October 1985, there was barely a wall or fence I passed which was not covered with photos of missing people, with heartbreaking handwritten messages like “Have you seen my daughter... my brother... my father....”
So how did at least 25,000 bodies just disappear?
At the end of one street I saw what looked from afar like a ragged mountain. Getting closer, I found that it was a multi-story garment factory which had collapsed like a stack of pancakes because the building was not built for heavy garment industry equipment. In front of the building there was an encampment of women garment workers who had survived and who were staying there day and night to try to prevent the government from simply sweeping away the rubble along with the bodies of many of their coworkers like so much garbage. One woman, who was cooking a meal for the camp over a fire in street, told me, most of us are single mothers, nobody up there cares what happens to us. They want us to disappear so that no one questions who allowed these buildings to be built so crappy and these sweatshops to operate here.
This was one of more than 1,000 collapsed workshops in the garment district alone. How many bodies were simply scooped up and dumped with the mountains of rubble?
It was like second nature for the Mexican government to just make the inconvenient dead vanish.
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