The Monster

One week has passed since a massive 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck Central Mexico on September 19, destroying building and taking lives in the states of Puebla and Morelos, and parts of Mexico City. At publication, the New York Times cites at least 326 people killed – 186 in Mexico City – and some 50 collapsed buildings. Two weeks earlier, parts of southern Mexico and Guatemala were hit by an 8.2 magnitude quake - the largest in over a century.

Cellphone footage from the 19th shows the unfolding disaster, as office workers rush out of buildings and into crowded city streets, while buildings sway, small fires catch, and waves rock tourist-packed gondolas at the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco.

Incredibly, this latest quake happened 32 years to the day of the infamous 1985 Mexico City earthquake - a massive 8.0 magnitude tremor that, along with several aftershocks in the proceeding days, killed some 10,000 people and ruined nearly one third of all the city’s buildings. Since, Greater Mexico City - a Federal entity and not a state under the Mexican Constitution - has become home for some 21 million people, making it the largest metropolitan area in the Western hemisphere, the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world, and generator of almost a quarter of the country’s entire GDP.

This massive city, literally built on top off the capital city of the Aztec empire (and the bodies of it’s slaughtered inhabitants), is also home to incredible inequality born of the capitalist market. Still, “El Monstruo” - a nickname given by Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation - is only a microcosm for Mexico as a whole, which stands behind only Chile as the world’s most unequal developed country. (The United States is third).

Inequality in Mexico is extreme, with half of the population living in poverty. Nearly one-third of public schools lack access to potable water. Meanwhile, Carlos Slim alone (net worth $60 billion) accounts for nearly 6% of the country's entire GDP.

---

Most of the earthquake rescue efforts have ended. But while Carlos Slim and the rest of Mexico’s capitalist class are safe, the lives of many working class Mexicans in the area are still threatened, as some 360 buildings and homes are in danger of collapse. In addition, some 8,000 schools in Mexico City remain closed. Government aid - mirroring the reality in Houston, Florida, and perhaps most egregiously in Puerto Rico - has been slow at best (and nonexistent at worst) in reaching the needy.

Yet, alongside disaster stand acts of solidarity and mutual aid that bode well for a socialist future. In Mexico, volunteers turned out en mass to provide immediate and long term care for otherwise complete strangers. No matter the country, while corporate controlled governments prove inept, it is the working class that looks after its own. From the rubble-strewn streets of Mexico up to the flooded freeways of Houston, workers are proving that the greedy, individualized world of the capitalist market is not a reflection of human nature.

The dust is still settling and already social unrest is rising in Mexico. The fact that so many buildings fell easily during the quake is further proof of a corrupt state, in which the construction and housing industries (to name only a few) hold leverage over politicians. After all, this is the same state responsible for the murder and disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College on September 28, 2014; that massacred 400 on October 2, 1968; that colludes with the United States in a false war on drugs for corporate profit; and oversees the immense social inequality detailed above.

The government stands exposed. What remains to be seen is how the popular opposition towards the state will manifest in the weeks, months, and years to come. Will strikes erupt? Can organizations of workers power be created? Or will anger be corralled into the ruling capitalist parties. This is certainly not the last earthquake that Mexico will face.

Like an earthquake, Mexico’s working class - lock-step with workers in the United States and across the world - has the power to shake foundations, crumble the old, and give rise to something new.

---

For more on Mexico and Mexico City, the author recommends:

John Ross, “El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City”

Francisco Goldman, “The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle”

Dawn Paley, “Drug War Capitalism”