Sense of unity follows Mexican tragedy

Press, 14 October 1985, Page 32

Sense of unity follows Mexican tragedy

By

CARL MANNING

of Associated Press

(through NZPA) Mexico City A fashion model, a student, and a street kid organise shelter for hundreds of homeless people. A taxi-driver gives, a free ride to a family that has lost everything, and a woman offers to share her limited water supply. A powerful sense of unity has emerged from the tragedy of Mexico’s killer earthquakes. Mexicans have extended a hand to help each other recover.

“We are a generous people. We like to come together and help each other in difficult times,” said a presidential spokesman, Manuel Alonso. Mexican “fraternidad,” or brotherhood, has been praised extensively by politicians since the earth-

quakes last month that shook the metropolis of 18 million people, killing more than 4500. A walk in the streets of the capital reveals scores of examples. In one neighbourhood dotted with piles of twisted metal and broken bricks, a grey-haired woman with a dazed expression walks with her hand extended as if in a trance.

A vendor cries out: “Mamacita” (“little mother”) and hands her a sandwich, perhaps the first food she has had in days.

Nearby, a taxi-driver pulls up in a cloud of dust alongside a forlorn looking family and tells them he will give them a free ride.

“The duty now is to the living,” he said softly to a reporter. A woman with some running water sees a neighbour

standing in line with a plastic bucket. Without hesitation she motions to the needy woman to come to her home and share whatever there is. Another woman, told that rescue workers had been given only sandwiches and soft-drinks for days, organises a volunteer brigade that takes hot hotel-pre-pared meals to more than 300 workers. Claudio, a fashion model, Julio, a student, and Ricardo, who calls himself a street kid, organise a makeshift camp in a park near the devastated Roma neighbourhood. They do it by stretching plastic tarps to shelter scores of homeless. Residents less affected by the quakes come by daily to watch children and distribute food and medicine. Ricardo, while criticising the lack of Government help, boasts that the people provide everything. Mexican pride flared in the adversity. “None of you foreigners have ever seen the kind of humanity and unity that we have here,” said Jorge Lopez Covarrubias, a vendor who had spent weeks travelling through the city dispensing soft-drinks for free.

“We Mexicans can survive anything.” Perhaps the most dramatic examples of. generosity were found at dozens of collapsed buildings, where volunteers slid gingerly through narrow tunnels, risking their lives to find survivors. Even after foreign rescue teams withdrew, Mexican volunteers continued the search at some sites, ignoring the minuscule odds of finding survivors. “We know there are people still alive in there,” said Aida Briseno, who went to the rubble of the 12storey Juarez Hospital to search for her brother. But the spirit of help has come home to most earthquake survivors in the simplest way — a hug. In the normally bustling city of overcrowded slums, crime and bustle, people have taken time for each other again, much as they used to do in the country villages many came from. The most frequent form of earthquake relief is simply one person consoling another who has seen top much, felt too much and can no longer cope with the reality of battered buildings and crushed bodies.