An indecisive sun was just peeking out from behind the peaks of Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl, while the placidity of the peaks’ blue shadows spread over the immensity of the Valley of Mexico. The city barely woke up, distracted in the routine of its usual chaos: thousands and thousands of people navigating through the subterranean veins of the subway, crowded on public transport and crowded buses, buying last minute breakfasts on the corner of the Torre Latin American, tamale cakes among the trees of the Alameda, and reading the headlines of the newly printed newspapers at the stalls of the Zócalo. It was Thursday, and the residents of the capital longed for the unbearable routine to end so they could go home and rest in peace before the weekend.
It was 7 am in the country’s capital, on September 19, 1985. Just four days earlier, Miguel de la Madrid had led the Cry for Independence, commemorating the heroes who gave us a country, on the only day year in which since then and forever Mexico is allowed to wear a blindfold to celebrate the glory of a different reality. It was the third year of the six-year term of Miguel de la Madrid, who began in the quicksand of the economic crisis, and whose most outstanding event as president until then had been surviving a hasty attack in 1984, in which a group of radicals threw Molotov cocktails at the presidential balcony during the May 1 parade, injuring everyone present except for de la Madrid.
How big was the 1985 earthquake?
Almost 500 kilometers away from Mexico City, near the mouth of the Balsas River on the Michoacán coast of the Pacific Ocean, an incomprehensible geological disorder irremediably shook the bowels of the earth, with a telluric force equivalent to 1,114 atomic bombs.
Translated into Richter’s logic, it was an 8.1 magnitude earthquake.
It was 07:17:47 on September 19, 1985, and those few seconds were enough for the destruction to be immediate in Mexico City.
How long did the 1985 earthquake in Mexico last?
The capital of Mexico began to shake, to vibrate, to crumble as if the mainland had become a gelatinous mass in which the everyday buildings wobbled as if they were not set in concrete, and were buoys in the water. Throughout an eternity of four minutes, the horrified citizens of the capital ran through the streets in uncontrolled tides of tears and panic while the dust of the fallen buildings bathed the streets, covered the avenues, and ascended to the resplendent firmament where once they could see the volcanoes.
Mexico City was left in chaos. The buildings that did not collapse were left hanging between the imminent cracks of their next fall. Hundreds of people were buried and trapped under the rubble of hospitals, offices, establishments, and housing units. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police patrols traveled through the streets where roads were drivable in a spiral of bewilderment, because as there was no emergency plan to cope with such a situation. Organization was impossible.
Public transportation, including the crowded subway, came to a standstill. Residents of the capital were left wandering in the abyss of uncertainty of the destroyed avenues. Jacobo Zabludovsky, who was surprised by the earthquake in the middle of the street, reported what he saw. “I am sad to say that I am in the presence of one of the greatest disasters that I have seen in the history of Mexico City since I was born in it.”
The slowness of the government to respond effectively led to civil society taking charge of the situation. All government sectors had been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the catastrophe. It was the citizens, thousands of anonymous heroes, thousands of everyday Mexicans, who mobilized in the search and rescue efforts, and to the immediate aid in the form of food that began to arrive from all over the Republic.
Miguel de la Madrid took nearly 36 hours to make his statement before Mexico, and his political stance of denying foreign aid under the pretext that the country could fend for itself unleashed countless criticisms.
The 1985 earthquake brought out the best and worst of Mexico. She once again believed in miracles, like newborn children who survived for days between the cracks in collapsed hospitals, protected by the chrysalis of their incubators. Solidarity, which was infinite, also had its counterpart in plunder, greed, and lack of humanity. Many of the resources that arrived in the capital were never received by the victims. Hundreds of people operating from the shadows became rich at the cost of the suffering of thousands.
Particularly noteworthy is the infamous anecdote of the seamstresses, hundreds of workers who worked in precarious conditions in clandestine workshops, and who were buried under the rubble of the earthquake. They could never be rescued because the businessmen – with the authorities on their side – made it a priority to unearth the safes and material goods before the anonymous women who were dying in the darkness and dust, and who never saw their children again.
The true number of deaths will never be known by anyone. All media, whether government or even academic, differ on death statistics.
The truth is that Mexico City was never the same again, and a fear remained in its streets that has crossed the decades, and that had been experienced before on February 19, 2017, 32 years earlier, as if the earth had memory.
However, this time a stronger society was found, better prepared, and with the awareness that it takes no more than a whim of the earth and a swing of nature to knock down buildings, to knock down skyscrapers, and to erase everything that we believe to be eternal.
September 19th is the day all of Mexico conducts its earthquake preparedness drill – in memory of that day in 1985.