The rain soaks the wound from the collapse of line 12 of the subway. It falls on the rubble of the two split cars like a broken toy on the floor. Five days after the tragedy that claimed the lives of 26 passengers and left almost 80 injured, a daily and indifferent rain seeps into the patios of humble houses in the south and southeast of the city, in the halls turned into dark wakes where Nobody still understands what happened and a few meters from the sinkhole, in the coldness of the huge Tezonco cemetery without mariachis or food - and only 10 people due to the pandemic - where the pain has been installed forever. Rage also grows on him these days. How is it possible that something like this happened to a person returning from work?
They are left alone. The political crossing of reproaches has captured all eyes. And the collapse of the subway has blown up an electoral campaign that squeezes more than ever the unbeatable party of López Obrador, Morena, represented in the city by Claudia Sheinbaum. But Immer del Águila's brother will not change his life if the person responsible was Miguel Ángel Mancera (PRD) or Marcelo Ebrard (Foreign Secretary) or Sheinbaum, because the foundations of the house that Immer was building for his family are still there, reminding them that no one is going to continue it; to Christian López's best friend, the only thing that worries him is what his wife and young daughters will do now to survive in this hell. And at the doors of the funerals couples of sinister lawyers meet who seek how to get a cut for themselves,and for the family members, of a clearly winning case. "Nobody believes that there was no corruption or negligence," one of them repeats to Immer's broken parents. Given the lack of political empathy, they explain, probably the only thing left for them is to get a good compensation.
Flowers and protest posters placed at Olivos station.
On video, funerals of the victims.
PHOTO: HECTOR GUERRERO |
VIDEO: EPV
EL PAÍS takes a tour of some of the farewells to the 26 dead from the accident.
The last trip of the passengers of the train number 19.
Mixtec lawyer and covid warrior
Christian López Santiago was 41 years old and came, like almost everyone, from work.
At 22:22 on Monday, López was traveling in one of the wagons that rushed suddenly on one of the main avenues on the southern outskirts of the city.
He still had more than half the way to go home: another four stops and a bus ride to complete an hour and a half journey.
Like most of his neighbors, every day he crossed the monstrous Mexican capital almost from end to end to get from his work office to the Chalco Valley, where his wife and two daughters, aged 13 and 6, were waiting for him.
López's body was crushed in the middle of the journey.
Friends and relatives of the victims place a wreath at the Olivos station.
Hector Guerrero
López was part of that migrant mass fleeing the poverty of the countryside. He came to the city from the Sierra de Oaxaca when he was only 14 years old, with his wife Claudia. They barely spoke Spanish, their mother tongue is Mixtec. And she spent years cleaning houses so that he could study law and break with the Mexican logic of who is born poor, dies poor. He got a position as a federal employee in the administrative body of the Secretariat for Citizen Protection. A job for which he did not charge more than 12,000 pesos, less than $ 600 a month. He didn't have a car, his only viable means of transportation was the Mexico City subway.
The family had spent all their savings to face the covid that bankrupted López just a few weeks ago.
He fell ill and got serious very quickly.
They hired oxygen, internists and he was more than two months without being able to work, this was his second week back to his normal life.
His salary was the only sustenance for his family.
“It is incredible that a working person has his life taken from him due to ineptitude,” says his best friend, Marisela Alvarado.
Las Antenas Park
Nancy Lezama, 23, received her last salary on Monday, May 3.
For about a month I had been working in a clothing store in Parque Las Antenas, a shopping center a few subway stations from home.
He knew that place well, the job in the store was the second he had chained there, after working for more than a year at McDonalds.
In fact, it had been there, at the burger joint, where she met her boyfriend.
Friends of Nancy Lezama Salgado cry in front of the place where the accident on line 12 of the subway occurred in Mexico City.Hector Guerrero
On Monday morning, Nancy went to work.
Tanya, her little sister, had her birthday on April 29.
With the salary she was going to receive, Nancy wanted to buy her a gift, so the sisters agreed that they would meet at Las Antenas in the afternoon, after work.
Tanya arrived after dark.
The two of them looked for a gift.
Her mother, Bernarda, does not know what it was: "Everything was lost in the accident," she says.
The sisters had dinner with Nancy's boyfriend and then he walked them to the subway.
They parted.
Nancy spoke to Bernarda and told her that they were going home.
That was the last time he heard his voice before the subway collapsed.
Only Tanya survived.
The tinsmith who didn't make it to dinner
For 30 years, José Luis Hernández Martínez, 62, had worked as a tinsmith in the same place. Every day since Metro Line 12 was inaugurated, less than a decade ago, he made the same journey to and from his home. 12 stops separated the section. On Monday night he left the workshop and took the train, but only managed to make it halfway. His wife, with whom he had been married for 34 years, was waiting for him, like every night, to have dinner together.
José Luis never arrived. Instead, the most dreaded call sounded and that dinner was left intact on the table. "That they tell my mother right away that my father was already dead is not easy," Luis, one of the sons, 31 years old, tells this newspaper. José Luis was one of the first to be identified among those killed in the tragedy. Father of three children, his salary in the body shop was the only sustenance in the house, where his wife, his youngest daughter and the only grandson he had live.
This man, originally from Orizaba (Veracruz) had come to the capital decades ago, in search of a better life.
This Wednesday, between indignation and pain, his family claimed the carelessness of the authorities at the funeral.
They felt that the south of the city "does not matter to anyone."
The negligence that killed José Luis, they say, could have been prevented.
"They did nothing, and right now my husband died," the woman lamented.
One last cheer for Toluca
In one of those rural and poor municipalities in Mexico City, which seems impossible to continue being part of the capital, San Andrés Mixquic, 40 kilometers from the center, several people wait in line to be sprayed with disinfectant before entering the patio of a house and say goodbye forever to Immer del Águila Pineda, 29 years old.
The town, emblematic for the celebration of the Day of the Dead, dressed in black ahead of schedule.
Andrea Pineda, Immer's sister, leads the procession to reach the pantheon where her brother will be buried on May 6. Aurea Del Rosario
Immer had studied Systems Engineering and had been working at Benito Juárez airport customs for about seven years. That morning, his little brother, Jair, had accompanied him to the Tláhuac subway stop, the first of a trip of more than two hours to get to his job. "He did not have to be on that train, he left before work and a colleague drove him to the Tezonco stop, that was what they told us yesterday," explains Jair next to his brother's coffin. Tezonco was the last station that train number 19 stepped on before collapsing just as it reached the next one, Olivos.
The patio of the Del Águila house has been filled with relatives and brothers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, to which they have belonged for generations. A group of uniformed youths in headscarves eat a pork stew in sauce with rice that some women from the same community have prepared early for the funeral.
Hallelujah
sounds in the background
. Immer was also the director of one of the Phoenix Master Guides congregations in Mixquic, a religious association similar to the
boy scouts
.
But above all, says Jair, his brother "was a great fan of Toluca."
The Los Diablos de Toluca club learned through social networks that Immer was a great fan of his father's team, originally from this city, capital of the State of Mexico.
And on the day of his funeral they sent a wreath of flowers and an official T-shirt with the number 10 stamped and the name of Immer del Águila.
"We don't know why 10, but just that number was worn by one of his favorite players, Sinha [Antonio Naelson Sinha]," says Jair.
Behind the makeshift chapel, to the left of the coffin, you can see the concrete blocks and rods of the house that Immer was building for his parents: “That was his dream right now.
It hurts to look over there and remember that it is gone ”.
Rodeo clown
When there was a party, Angélica Segura, 43, would make Oaxacan tamales for everyone.
And it seems that they came out very good, because his brother Jesús remembers them without difficulty, as if the word party was associated with that image, that smell.
“We didn't talk too much the last time I saw her, but we saw each other frequently,” says Jesús.
The Segura family celebrates with some regularity.
They like to meet and grill meat in any of their houses, in Valle de Chalco.
Angelica's cousin remembers the last one, fifteen days ago.
“We were dancing
Rodeo Clown
”, she says, that song about dancing cowboys that speeds up and speeds up… “I was happy, because I had almost just paid for a piece of land that had been bought”.
Family members of Angélica Segura say goodbye to her in the municipal cemetery of Valle de Chalco, State of Mexico, on May 6 Nayeli Cruz
Angélica had worked in a shoe store downtown for 15 years.
Mother of two children, her two brothers talk about her as the first would: she was the person who raised them.
"He married young and made his living," says Jesus.
On May 9, Angelica's youngest son turns 18.
They planned to get together and celebrate the next day, May 10, Mother's Day.
A great celebration.
With dance.
History repeats itself for the Diaz
The 39-year-old family of Juan Luis Díaz Galicia, could not avoid the tragedy, which occurred more than once.
He and his brother were orphaned as children.
His father passed away unexpectedly when he was only 26 years old.
His mother, barely a widow, had to go out to ask for a job at a textile company to support her truncated family.
Juan Luis married Juliana 18 years ago, a woman he met in his neighborhood on the outskirts of Tláhuac, in some narrow streets that almost fall outside the city limits.
A year after the marriage they had a child.
As he learned from his mother, Juan Luis got a job as a driver in a soft drink company and became the family's breadwinner.
Juan Luis Díaz Galicia's family says goodbye to him in San Pedro Tláhuac, Mexico City, on May 5.Nayeli Cruz
The tragedy of Line 12 has made history repeat itself for the Diaz.
The death of Juan Luis leaves a widow and a 17-year-old son immersed in grief and an uncertain economic future.
"We still don't know what's going to happen to them," says the uncle.
The concern does not sink, really, because the family has survived a similar blow and knows that it will do it again this time.
"But it is very hard," he adds.
The misfortune does not take away from the Díaz Galicia the attitude.
On Wednesday they decided to say goodbye to Juan Luis between tears and songs, trying to remember him as a salsa lover and crazy about Chivas, whose colors paint the walls of his house.
“The day I die, I am not going to take anything with me.
You have to indulge your taste, life is soon over ”, sang a group of mariachis at the gates of the pantheon.
The
geek
who wanted to know the world
As a child, Mario Alberto Bautista Sánchez, 25, used to take apart his father's electronic devices to see what was inside.
"I said I was going to fix them, but instead I was breaking them down," says José María with a sad smile.
Upon arriving at university, Mario decided to study Computer Engineering.
It was his passion, and he took the time to share it with his family, to whom he taught everything they know about technology.
José María Bautista, in front of the altar dedicated to his son Mario Alberto Bautista Sánchez at his home in Mexico City.
Nayeli Cruz
He got his first job at a technical support company in the Polanco neighborhood. After a year as an irregular, they had warned him a few days ago that finally in May they were going to give him his first contract. What he had waited for had come: he wanted to raise money to buy a bigger house with his parents. They celebrated the news on May 1, his birthday, as a family. They ate cake, sang the mañanitas and danced with their mother until they were exhausted.
Two days after the party, Mario Alberto returned home from the office.
He had a two-hour drive, and halfway there he sent a message to his parents to let him know that he was on his way back.
He took the train of tragedy, the one that truncated his dream of opening a technology startup.
To have his first contract, to buy a house and go to live for a time outside of Mexico, to see the world.
A few minutes from home
Liliana López García, 37, was killed by a few meters. It had less than two stops to go: Olivos, Nopalera. Shortly before reaching the penultimate station, the car in which he was traveling split in two. His sister-in-law Guadalupe could not understand why he was on Tuesday in front of the doors of the makeshift morgue in a public prosecutor's office in Iztapalapa (southeast of the capital) waiting for the body of his brother's wife to be handed over to them. Only a few hours ago I was convinced that it would appear in some hospitals on the list.
Liliana was a manager in a clothing store in a commercial plaza in Aragon, Guadalupe tells this newspaper, and like every day, she crossed the damn
Golden Line
- that's also what Line 12 is known - to get to dinner with her husband and his 15-year-old son. She had a schedule from 10 in the morning to 9 at night, as she was in charge of opening and closing the establishment. “He had nothing left to get home. We are talking about, what do you like, a few minutes? ”, Guadalupe tells appalled.
Liliana's husband had to recognize the body of his wife in one of the ambulances installed at the Prosecutor's Office to identify the bodies.
The night of the accident, he was in Monterrey for a work trip.
His cell phone started ringing shortly before midnight.
The videos of the collapse of the subway and the possibility that Liliana was in that car precipitated her return at dawn by plane in the hope of finding her injured and that all this was just a terrible nightmare.
It was not like that, at 6 in the morning they confirmed that Liliana's body had been one of the 26.
Cruz Azul and a cigar
For 35 years, Lorenzo Islas, 60, had worked in the same company, a cleaning products factory in Iztapalapa.
As head of the bottle filling area, he entered at 1:00 p.m. and left at 9:30 p.m.
Then he would come home.
So when his children heard that the subway had crashed, they thought their father might be in trouble.
Family members of Lorenzo Islas lower the coffin in the municipal cemetery of Valle de Chalco, State of Mexico.Nayeli Cruz
Lorenzo was a man of routines.
In the mornings, before going to the factory, he worked as a bricklayer.
At night, when he got home, he went straight to the bathroom, smoked a cigar in there, took a shower, got dressed, had dinner and sat on the bed to watch one of those narco novels that helped him sleep.
His son Juan José reminds him of thin and short, always clean-shaven, with flared shoes.
And very much from Cruz Azul, the team of workers from the capital.
His daughter Nayeli recalls his last days, when at last, after a life of intense work, he had time and money to invite his wife to breakfast on Sundays.
Nayeli says her father was proud of it.
"What he couldn't do when he was young, he was doing when he was old," he says.
The song that will never sound
The dream of Alejandro Mendoza Vega, 53, was to learn to play the drums.
He had made one of his sons, a musician, promise that one day he would teach him to play
Paranoid
, the song from Black Sabbath.
A bet that did not intimidate the lover of rock and roll.
"He had the illusion and the desire, and that is all that is needed, but there will no longer be a chance," says his youngest son.
Alejandro, a cheerful and very nice man, as his children remind him, worked as a public accountant in the Attorney General's Office.
But what he really liked were pets.
He used to set up a shelter in his house for animals that he found abandoned on the street.
He rescued and fed them until he found someone who could adopt them.
A single father, he had raised his children, Alejandro and Kevin, among music records and animals everywhere.
As children he took them every weekend to the charreadas, a show that combined his two passions.
The two dogs and seven adopted cats who do not understand realities are still waiting for their return home.
A place where music will take time to play again.
The greed of a few
Late at night, the subway lines become the way home for thousands of workers from the capital.
For them there is no pandemic that keeps them at home.
Not going to work is not an alternative, simply because someone has to pay for food.
That was the case of Santos Reyes Pérez, 31 years old.
The night of the tragedy, he was returning from his job as a bricklayer on a construction site.
It wasn't the job of her dreams, but it was what brought food to the table.
Burial of Santos Reyes in the municipal cemetery of Valle de Chalco.
Nayeli Cruz
With the humble salary that he earned, sometimes more, sometimes less, he supported his wife and children.
He was born in San Luis Potosí and the need for a more stable job dragged him to Mexico City several years ago.
The covid put obstacles to his precarious economy, but at no time did he stop fighting it, says his cousin Jessie Jazmín.
"Despite the situation of the pandemic, I was struggling to get ahead," he says.
On Monday, May 3, he left his house and never returned.
"It is sad and we feel very helpless, because of the greed of some, not only a good father, husband and cousin lost their lives, but also an excellent human being," says her cousin.
The demand for justice for that stolen life, as in many of the families of the fatal victims of the tragedy, is raised with dignity.
"Not just for him, but for all the people who lost their lives that night."
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