Breathe
By Begoña Sieiro
It was almost 6 am when I noticed that the fan went off. Immediately after, the cell phone charger started making an intermittent noise so I unplugged it. I lay there for a moment and heard a strange noise: a mountain washing away, an avalanche of rocks, something coming down hard. I told my husband and he said: it must be a transformer. But I felt it was something big. A strange glow came through the cracks in the curtains.
Minutes later, a message arrived from a neighbor: "Good morning! There was an explosion at the electrical substation near UVM. We probably won't have electricity all day".
Explosion, that's what I heard. An explosion. How fortunate I am not to know how to name it, you mean I had never heard one before. I thought of the people who have lived through war; of the children who know how to identify the type of noise generated by each type of bomb. I shuddered with sadness.
I wished this didn't go beyond a power outage.
Messages began to pour in with photos, tweets and videos of how the CFE substation, which is next to federal highway 57 and provides electrical service to the entire northern area of Querétaro city, had burst into flames and many had seen it rumble up to their windows. The official report announces that it was caused by vandalism, in an attempt to steal some cables.
The streets of Juriquilla were deserted. It looked like Sunday. Except outside the new mega-supermarket La Comer, which opened, coincidentally, this very day at almost the same time. Everything else felt unpopulated... with businesses closed, except for those with a power plant and homeofficers fleeing in search of internet to other areas of the city.
Later, at the parenting school, we talked about the difference between evolution and progress. Very ad hoc. This addiction (disguised as connection) to the Internet, to being permanently "online", could be disguised as progress. But if we analyze it a little more, doesn't it seem rather unhealthy? Robotic? Worrying? To say the least.
What would happen if we were not available all the time today? If we called work and said there was no power, that we would not be able to connect. If we left the cell phone forgotten all morning and started reading or knitting or baking. The old-fashioned way. If we let the kids play outside and read books for a few hours. And if you hurry... What would happen if we did it even if there was internet?
Having to force ourselves - pulling ourselves like a toddler from his mother's lap on the first day of kindergarten - to disconnect from a screen is neither progress nor evolution: it is a distraction from ourselves and a detour from everything important. Let's go back to having conversations with only the people sitting in front of us and in our bodies.
Complaints prevailed today, invoking all kinds of powerful beings to help us get the electricity back and with it the internet. Most of us were not so lucky, and some areas were even without water. There was talk of madness, of terror, of annoyance. It was uncomfortable, a very uncomfortable day; having to run to the next neighborhood in search of a contact and internet; making lunches in the dark or cold; not being able to withdraw money at the ATM; not being able to bathe; having food in the fridge that could spoil. This is the daily bread in many Latin American communities.
But have food. To have a fridge. To have a roof and a house and a computer and a cell phone.
Are we already so blind that we no longer see the privilege?
None of these "discomforts" compares or comes remotely close to the atrocities we read about every day. Acapulco. The wars. The numbers are growing. And yet we have the gall to believe that "something bad is happening to us." Instead of lifting our eyes from the screen for a moment.
That was the glow, the explosion, 12 hours and counting without electricity: a call to look up.
Today I wish us all a little less progress and a little more light that illuminates empathy and awareness. Even when there is no "network".
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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