Xoxocotla, Morelos

Just as we were folding blankets, gathering our stuff and deciding the agenda, we were evacuated from the stadium due to an aftershock coming from the state of Oaxaca.

As we were standing there I started a conversation with a guy that was also, from Mexico City, he told me that if we wanted to go to a place that really needed help, it would be great to join his team's efforts that wanted to leave at 9 am.

We decided to have breakfast in the meantime. Yecapixtla is a municipality of Morelos where a meat (salted and dried) called cecina is famous from, tacos and sopes are topped with it, some chopped, fried and seasoned cactus leaves called nopales added and that carb-protein filled deliciousness was enough to get us pumped up about the work ahead of us.

Cecina and nopales [left], pork sausage [right]

Xocxocotla or Xoxo is 10 or 15 minutes away from Zacatepec, as soon as we arrived, we were informed three houses had fallen down and needed demolition so we started to work on these tasks.

My father was a civil engineer. I was used to construction sites since I was little, playing with mountains of gravel, it's always funny how some places always remind you of where you have been or what some activities connect you towards.

Drinking water, I started looking at some movement on the entrance, one two, fifteen, seventy students from a Anáhuac of Querétaro with tons of tools and will.

In any situation you have to take care of yourself first. As I was taking a break from the heat and looking where I was most useful (once people arrive, they take over some chores and flux of people redistributes chores) I heard some laughter on the back so I went looking for it.

Soon after, the women of the community started preparing food for a hundred of us. A woman needed to chop some avocados and I quickly brought some blocks of the fallen houses and improvised some kind of a table. I can't write about these actions from these women because I choke down and cry. Plates with rice, guac, beans and tuna were handed out. I saw people from the community handing money [120 pesos per woman] towards the preparation of our delicious food.

Preparing Lemonade

Around 7 pm our team and the students gathered to conclude for the day. Some words of healing and closure were provided, pictures taken, hugs and phones exchanged.

On our way back to Zacatepec, we saw other houses and humble funerary houses having a wake, silently lighting candles. Our jubilation was short lived. There is so much to do.

On a Saturday night in Zacatepec people were out, not in celebration but standing firm. Waiting on line of a store to buy a soda, there was a man with a new crucifix under the arm. I felt a certain tenderness towards him, was he replacing the one who fell and broke down in pieces? Was he taking it back to protect his home? To pray?

We started looking for a place to stay. As I went back to use the bathroom at the stadium, I saw thousands of trolleys that could have made our job easier today in Xoxo (we used 4 to their full capacity) and cried of impotence towards a government that refuses to change.

At the stadium, volunteers from different sates were playing a football match, including some of our team members.

That same day, my brother asked me the previous night what was needed in Morelos and how he could help, so I asked one of the people at the stadium to provide me an oral list of medicines. The man who spoke towards the cell phone was exhausted but managed to provide the information.

My nieces attend a german school where they organized the cargo and sent a van the next day. Because I was working on Xoxo, I missed 4 calls from the contact that was supposed to deliver these medications. When I finally got a hold of her, she had delivered the medicines to a group of doctors she found in Zacatepec.

I was frustrated because she had been provided with a contact cell phone and I was fearful that with the lack of organization that has been happening on many places, the effort had been lost. As we were driving at night, looking for a place to stay on the highway, we found some doctors at an hotel drinking a beer by the pool.

Informally, I started conversation with them and they told me about someone who had sent medication from Mexico, a desperate woman in a van was looking for a collection center in Zacatepec and provided me with a name. Turns out, they did receive them and had been using them along the communities. I was static and hugged all of them. It was as if a piece of my brother and my sister-in-law had for an instance, embraced with me externally, aiding others.

We ended up on a cheap motel. The woman thought we were doing a threesome, and gave us the rates "por el rato" which meant two hours for 200 pesos or 300 for the whole night. We laughed long and hard after a great day.