Breathe
By Yohali Reséndiz
It is no news that in rainy weather the inhabitants of the metropolitan area of Mexico City enter a stage of crisis and anguish and how not, if the probability of losing their patrimony depends on the measurement of cubic meter of water per second that emits minute by minute the state pluviometer.
The authorities should have learned by now that after a torrential downpour what will follow in the State of Mexico to the east of the city is the overflow of sewage water, unjustifiably called Solidarity Collector and after the stinking water floods everything, the indolence of the authorities emerges, which six years after six years floats like waste of all kinds.
And it is the officials on duty who will repeat like parrots that the tragedy was caused by "the sudden and intense rainfall or the unpredictable effects of climate change" nonsense.... behinda flood of sewage by storm will always highlight the same negligence of the authority.
Negligence because in a year they know that there will be at least three possibilities of a tragedy like the one faced today by the inhabitants of the municipality of Chalco. And while the families try to save their patrimony, the authorities, from the comfort of their armchairs or warm beds, find out about the tragedy when the TV newscaster gives the news and the same images appear on the screen that every year the cameramen of all the TV stations record over and over and over again, filling the news space.
There appear the most pitiful images, those that cause sadness... those that astonish and in which the ruin and the collapse of the families is seen more clearly in the image.
And there will come the phrases:
"We have lost everything."
"I can't even cry from the anger, 25 years of my life will go down the drain, here I had my whole life in this album that is now muddy."
"My refrigerator has not yet been paid for and just look at what it looks like."
"This is my car, I wasn't insured and I work as a driver, and now what am I going to do?
"Only when the cameras come, the fucking authorities show up and come to promise that they are going to solve, what do they spend the money on, year after year it's the same thing, I'm a truck driver, I was on a trip when my wife called me and look, look how my children are, everything went to hell."
They are the same phrases as every year but the names and surnames change.
And while those affected closed the road and broke the backbone of the Mexico-Puebla highway, that night the authorities slept peacefully at home with clean sheets and their children safe in contrast to men and women with their pants rolled up and barefoot crying in front of the piles of material things that mean nothing to them but money and work, hours and life invested by all the families who have built their home in a place where after the rain, the stinking black water washed everything away regardless of whether it is a grandmother in a wheelchair who sheds tears of pain or a child with cancer, The stinking black water washed everything away regardless of whether it is a grandmother in a wheelchair who sheds tears of pain or a child with cancer, they all look the same because they all lost the same thing and inside they feel the same frustration, blaming themselves over and over again because they fell asleep and did not feel when the floodwater came through the cracks in their doors and ruined what they had bought with so much sacrifice in monthly installments.
And well...surely this benefactor government is already preparing vouchers to exchange for appliances or mattresses or furniture, but understand that this voucher can never be exchanged for the same refrigerator or a living room or a mattress like the one you lost with the stinking stagnant water because all these things have another value: the history of building a home based on effort and dignified work.
Every year, the state and national authorities know that the water pressure in rainy season that the drainage system receives in that area can break the subway channel. By now they should have inherited to those who arrive and arrive and arrive to replace them that billions in volume of water will fall from the sky and they continue without prevention and without investing.
I am the journalist who made links for Grupo Imagen with the sewage up to my chest, I am the one who while in Valle Dorado hundreds of families were looking for a way out, I carried a little girl in my arms and in each hand two more children and brought them closer to their families.
I am the journalist who took the images of the defeat of men and women who sat crying and screaming because inside their house everything was garbage, mud and feces.....
I am the same one who in a conference confronted the head of Conagua and President Enrique Peña Nieto and those who followed after because, of course, tragedies like these have been repeated every year.
After several years of those links on national chain the authority has been unable to solve definitively a big problem that appears around and inside this great City after the storm.
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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