Today I woke up not feeling like working that much, so I will do what some experienced columnists often do: to have another writer do my job, even better now, that I found someone who says what I want, but, even better. The author, whom I quote, in the relative part, starts like this: “Last summer, there was a formidable flood causing damage like every year, and by reasons easily explicable, to rivers that cross our great cities…” (Isn’t this what happens to us, and by the same reasons, each raining season?). And he continues: “let’s listen what the weekly times from Manchester has to say (July 20th, 1872)”:
“The hardship that has fallen over the population in the Medlock river’s low valley last Saturday is expected to end up happily: to draw the public attention over the evident mocking about hygiene laws, which has been tolerated for a long time before the government clerks’ noses…in one of our articles from our daily edition (the one from yesterday) it was revealed, although not as vigorous as it should be, the ignominious situation of some basement-homes, flooded by the water on Charles Street and Brook Street. A meticulous poll, made in one of the yards mentioned in such article, authorizes us to confirm what was said in it and to declare that these basement-homes should have been closed up since a long time ago…”
“Better said, these places should have never been tolerated as human residences. Squire’s Court is formed by seven or eight houses, located on Charles Street and Brook Street. The passer-by… may walk across this place day by day without suspecting that, under his feet, in some caves, human beings live. The yard escapes from the public sight and it isn’t accessible for nobody but to those whom misery obliges to look for a shelter in that burial isolation. Even when Medlock’s water, often contained by the dams, doesn’t surpass its normal limit, any downpour forces this water, horribly putrid; to go back to drains flooding the housing with foul gases, track left by all floods…”
“Squire’s Court is in an even lower level than the basements on Brook Street… the stinky water that rose on Saturday through the drains has reached the ceilings. We knew it and expected it since we found the yard alone or partially occupied by cleaning workers in charge of cleaning the stinky walls. Instead of it, we saw in a barber shop basement a man busy in… loading a wheelbarrow with a bunch of putrid trash. The barber guy, whose basement was more or less clean, sent us even lower, to a series of houses which, he said, if he could write, he would demand their closing to the newspaper. So we finally arrived to Squire’s Court, where we found a pretty Irish woman washing clothes. She and her husband, a nocturnal guard, had lived in the yard for six years and had a numerous family… In their house, water had reached the ceiling, the windows were busted and their furniture wasn’t anything but a bunch of ruins. According to what the man said, the only way to make his house tolerable, speaking of the odor, was spreading lime each two months… In the in-yard, the editor found three houses contiguous to the house previously described. Two of them were inhabited. The bad odor was so strong that not even the most resistant man could avoid feeling like vomiting after a few minutes being there… this repellent hole was inhabited by a family made up of seven persons that, by Thursday night (first day of the flood), had slept in the house. Or even more exactly, as the woman rectified, they didn’t sleep because she and her husband couldn’t stop vomiting during most of the night due to the bad odor. On Saturday, when water rose high enough until their breasts, they had to take their children outside. The woman agreed with the opinion that not even the pigs could live in that place, but due to the cheap rent… they had rented it, because by those days her husband, sick, couldn’t work”.
The horrifying story goes on, but for me, this is enough. Now, I ask: doesn’t this story ring the bell? Doesn’t this look like, as when comparing two eggs, what we suffer throughout the country, but with a particular sharpness and frequency in Mexico City and other capitals like Villahermosa, each raining season? Isn’t this, c for b, what just happened to the Chalco Valley’s inhabitants, State of Mexico? I repeat that this story was published on July 20th, 1872, in other words, a little bit over 138 years ago. And that is, then, the size of our residue in matter of housing. That’s why; the national “antorchista” movement has been leading thousands of victims of such residue and has displayed before the Secretaria de “Desarrollo” (?) Social -Sedesol- (Secretary of Social Development), with a plan of measurements to improve the housing that is not even close to the solution of the problem. Nevertheless, the only thing we have received (even from the person in charge of that Secretary) has been, first, deceits and postponements; then, an offer ridiculously low, previously well calculated to be rejected, to blame the demanders; and, at last, the classic phrase “I don’t see them, nor hear them” accompanied by vulgar slanders to justify the incredible silliness and official insensibility. There’s no other way, then, than the social fight and public protest. And behold those paladins of the free car transit and of the sacred right of free commerce! You are on time to impede the irritation that makes you feel so bothered, demanding justice to the responsible ones for the needed people. If not, blame them, and not to the antorchistas, for the hardships which, according to you, are not compared to what the homeless suffer.
