Voices of Mexico no. 105
Our Voice
In a 1919 essay, Sigmund Freud said that individuals experience the uncanny (unheimlich) differently but that it can be defined as something terrifying, long familiar to us. In this short essay, I want to underline not aesthetic examples from fiction, which is what Freud alluded to, but rather the experience of the uncanny, and very especially, déjà vu, the anxiety we feel when confronted with the uncanny evoked by a return to something similar.
That is exactly what happened to us on September 19, 2017. Our memories of how our day-to-day existence was broken apart in the past century, a kind of urban legend for young people who had only heard their elders’ stories, were distant indeed. And every year for decades, we would more and more reluctantly attend earthquake drills, feeling that now what was breaking up our existence were the drills themselves.
The alarm sounds; the drill begins. And we don’t even take a moment to remember what we were doing at 7 in the morning that day in 1985.
Editorial
Our Voice
Graciela Martínez-Zalce Sánchez
Politics
Politics Looks at the Earthquake
Or the Earthquake Looks at Politics?
Looking at 1985 and 2017
Margarita Favela Gavia
Anti-Politics and Post-Truth
Earthquakes and Knowledge
With No Consequences
Jorge Cadena Roa
The Earthquakes’ Social
And Political Rubble
Mistrust of Government Institutions
Laura B. Montes de Oca Barrera
Making Millennials
The Heroes of the Earthquake
Marcela Meneses Reyes
Box
Why Didn’t the Seismic Alarm
Sound before the Quake?
Bertha Serrano Torre
Society
The Role of the Media in the
1985 and 2017 Earthquakes
Leonardo Curzio
In the Media, Tragedy. On the Social
Networks, Confusion and Solidarity
Raúl Trejo Delarbre
Balance Sheet of Post-Quake
Face-to-Face and Online
Social Mobilization
Juan Carlos Barrón Pastor
The Legal Community’s
Reaction to the Earthquake
Natalia Alvarado Vásquez
#Verificado19s
A Citizens’ Experience after the 2017
Mexico City Earthquake
Claudia Campero Arena
Alberto Serdán Rosales
September 19
Youth and National Unity
Natividad Gutiérrez Chong
The Military and the Earthquake
Raúl Benítez Manaut
The September 19, 2017 Quake
In Numbers
Bertha Serrano Torre
History
The Pre-instrumental Seismic
History of Morelos
Virginia García Acosta
Gerardo Suárez
Economy
The Earthquakes Hit
Socio-Economically Vulnerable
Populations the Hardest
Adolfo Sánchez Almanza
The Costs of the Disaster
The Reconstruction Funds
Roberto Herrero Buhler
Testimonies
#FuerzaMéxico (#FortitudeMexico)
Astrid Velasco
Two Earthquakes, One Rescue Worker
Memories from Beneath the Rubble
Enrique Chávez Poupard
Disaster Chronicle
Reflections of a Young Student,
A So-Called “Millennial”
Santiago Domínguez Zermeño
Aftershocks
Hugo José Suárez
The Other Reasons for the Disaster
Interview with A Builder
Diego Ignacio Bugeda Bernal
Literature
El puño en alto / Fist Held High
Juan Villoro
Proper Names in “The Day of the Collapse”
Alberto Vital
Art and Culture
Gone with the Earthquake
Mexico’s Wounded Built Heritage
Gerardo A. Hernández Septién
Damage to the Cultural
Heritage and Community
Life of Hueyapan
Ricardo Claudio Pacheco Bribiesca
Recovering Monastery Murals
On the Slopes of the Popocatépetl Volcano
Elsa Arroyo Lemus
Mexico City, September 19
Fist Held High, Hand in Hand
Sergio Rodríguez Blanco
Rebuilding through Art
Isabel Morales Quezada
Emotions in Color
Armando Fonseca, Hernán Gallo,
Amanda Mijangos, Gala Navarro, and
John Marceline