Two weeks ago, I had the bright idea of venturing into Zócalo, the center square of Mexico City, for a free public concert featuring former Pink Floyd guitarist and lead singer Roger Waters. Everyone told me that it was going to be crowded, but I didn’t really understand what they meant until I was struggling through a mob of 200,000 “wannabe” hippies, teenagers, and nostalgic middle-aged men just to get to a point where I could watch the concert on the jumbotron. While I was trying to find my friends after we got separated, I was swept up in a stampede. When I finally escaped from the chaos, my phone was gone from my pocket.
Reflecting on my misfortune that night, I was reminded of an article published by a Georgetown student in the Hoya back in 2014. The article, “I Was Mugged, and I Understand Why,” was met with brutal criticism from the author’s fellow students, who accused him of “victim-blaming” and perpetuating “liberal idiocy.” At the time, I agreed with many of the things the author was saying. And although my perspective on my own robbery experience is slightly different, it is rooted in the same basic argument. Like him, I was not particularly outraged that my phone was stolen. This is in part because I do understand why it happened: that night, I was a particularly fair-skinned gringo who stood out from the crowd. Looking back, I was stupid to put myself in that vulnerable situation. Yet moreover, I am not outraged about the robbery because, to be frank, it was nothing compared to the crime that Mexicans experience each and every day.
After declining slightly in 2014 and 2015, crime is on the rise again in Mexico. A few months ago, the national murder rate reached 55 per day. Just last week, I was talking to my friend from Colima, a state on the Pacific coast of Mexico, which recently became the most dangerous in the country after its homicide rate increased by 300 percent in a matter of months. He explained to me what a luxury it is to be able to safely go out at night; back in Colima, his parents don’t let him leave the house once the sun goes down. Much of the violence, in Colima and in the rest of Mexico, is due to the growth and increasingly brazen brutality of the drug cartels. Of all murder victims in 2016, a shocking 57 percent were executed in cold blood, a common practice employed by the narcotraficantes. Yet the drug cartels aren’t the only ones to blame; the Mexican government also perpetuates the violence. From 2006, when President Felipe Calderon initiated a zero-tolerance crime policy and authorized the Mexican army to use deadly force against suspected drug dealers, to 2012, when the army stopped publishing its statistics to the public, the Mexican government killed 3,000 people. For average Mexicans, there is nowhere to turn for safety. The government can’t protect them, and sometimes the government targets them.
Such violence puts things in perspective. When I got home the night I was robbed, I told my host brother what had happened. He said what translates roughly to “that sucks” and then immediately moved on, advising me how to get a new phone. My Spanish professor, whose son was tragically killed many years ago, exclaimed, “Well, thank God you are all right!” and then proceeded to give me a lecture on how I must be more careful. Many of my Mexican friends simply remarked, “No pasa nada” (Not a big deal). It’s not that my friends were indifferent to my plight, but rather that they were able to see my experience for what it was: a small thing. And they have seen far too many big things to care about the small things.
I have found the Mexicans that I have met over these past months to be refreshingly positive and upbeat. They are realists, but not cynical. They are frustrated with the crime, but they have not lost hope. Despite the many problems that plague this country, there is an impressive resilience and an unyielding appreciation for life amongst its people. Mexicans know how to live in the moment because they know that they may not have many more moments to live. I am starting to learn as well. So maybe I’ll write my own article in the Hoya: “I Was Robbed, and I Understand That It’s Not a Big Deal.” No pasa nada.
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