Breathe
By Sandra Romandía
"The Metro employee waited for me at a station near the maintenance shop located in Zaragoza, in Mexico City. The instructions were clear: we would enter there stealthily, at the moment he knew there were no supervisors or "ears" of the union, and I would pass without presenting my IDs directly to the warehouse first, in order to verify the non-existent inventory, and then to the workshops where I would talk to the mechanics who have known the system for years... I felt like an aspiring fugitive from Lecumberri, but in reverse: trying to enter undetected, to the bowels of the bases that operate the monster that is the capital's subway". This is the beginning of the chapter Viajamos sobre rieles de una mafia included in the book Las 7 mafias chilangas (Pengüin Random House, Grijalbo) of which I am the coordinator and author of this special section. I bring it up because this scene reveals part of the situation that prevails in the Mexico City Metro, which today celebrates its 54th anniversary, where its rank and file employees try to denounce the corruption that has generated the decline of the monster on rails for decades. The denunciations are made in fear of being fired, either by the capital authority or by the union.
