Breathe
By Pamela Cerdeira
On February 6, 2023, Turkey and Syria experienced one of the most devastating earthquakes on record. The international community showed its solidarity and among them was Mexico, always empathetic to a tragedy we know firsthand.
The Mexico City government set up a collection center to receive supplies. Everything was a little strange because it was announced before it was operating and even though the media was already giving information on how and what to bring, the center was not open. Finally the collection center was installed.
I wondered, as I'm sure many people who donate groceries do, would they make it to Turkey? Mainly because it seemed to me that buying any basic necessities and sending them to Turkey was an absurd effort, being much more efficient to donate to an organization that was on site, but I could not stay with the doubt, so I decided to donate a bag of rice and a pack of toilet paper. Only my groceries were going to tell me a story, the story of the road they would take. I installed an Airtag on each of the items which allowed me to monitor them from the start, the Airtag battery lasts for a year and sends a signal with its location whenever it has an Apple device nearby. I also opened a Twitter account to keep track of their movement. I did this work for four months. The collection center was quickly closed and although the Turkish Embassy and the Ministry of Defense showed off the planes that were leaving with the aid, my articles were still in Mexico.
The toilet paper was most of the time in the offices of the Secretariat of Government of Mexico City and the bag of rice in a warehouse of the Secretariat of Finance, also of the Government of Mexico City. Why were they separated?
I asked through the National Transparency Platform (you see what we need INAI and local transparency agencies for!) how much food they had received and what they had done with it. I attach the answer, but to summarize: they received 30 tons of aid and all of it was sent to Turkey. By the way, the photographic memory attached to the answer is of the Collection Center, not of the supplies being delivered.
It was several weeks before my items changed location again. The rice seemed to be in a residential building and the paper in a market. Finding the rice has been complicated because I have not been allowed access to the possible locations: a library of the SEP and a school, curiously in that same address the Morena deputy Oscar Gutierrez Camacho held his food bank to help the population, by the way, I looked for him to interview him but I had no answer.
As for the toilet paper, I have made three visits to the market to find the exact location. How did it get there? It's a question with a very complicated answer and one that in part requires additional research, but for now you can watch this part of the story today starting at 3 p.m. on my Youtube channel.
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The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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