Voices of Mexico no. 114

Our Voice

It was the Roaring Twenties, and in Europe and the United States, people were listening to jazz and dancing the Charleston and the fox trot. The extravagance, the euphoria, the laugh- ter, and the overflowing champagne glasses filled the cabaret nights in an escape toward the future, attempting to erase the memory of the chilling death toll left by World War I and the Spanish Flu. But very soon, they ran into the Great Depression of 1929.

Given the unprecedented nature of some experiences, like the covid-19 pandemic we’re go- ing through now, it’s inevitable to try to establish parallels with situations we’re familiar with, whether we experienced them ourselves or they’re part of our history. However, when we have to deal with what comes and have to try not to go through a greater crisis, it’s not very important to read the past if we don’t do it with the gaze of people who are aware of what we’ve lost, but that we’ve also won something. That gaze must be that of someone who has decided to not con- tinue with the injustice and inequality among countries and among people, someone who has un- masked the pandemic, someone who has benefitted from technology and uses it to fight people’s unequal access to it; the gaze of someone who, instead of continuing to increase polarization, builds bridges of conciliation.