Four Dreams from the Meanwhile of Mexican History

Abstract

When Mexico City was struck by the second most destructive earthquake in its history, residents of the city responded spontaneously, rescuing people from fallen buildings, administering aid, and transporting goods. This was referred to as “solidarity.” Solidarity has been the term used to describe post-disaster civilian responses in Mexico since 1985, when the most destructive earthquake in Mexican history devastated Mexico City. A dominant narrative in Mexican historiography is that solidarity demonstrated after the 1985 earthquake turned Mexico into a democracy in 2000. But after the 2017 earthquake, participants in the civil response were wracked with recurring nightmares—dreams not of the earthquake but of an impossible rescue in its aftermath. Through thirty months’ ethnographic research among civil responders in Mexico City, and sustained conversations with people affected by recurring dreams—all men, in their late thirties and early forties—I suggest that these recurring dreams were caused by the practice of historicizing the solidarity of the 1985 earthquake. The recurring dreams of solidarity emerged from the historiographical operation that separated Mexico's democratic present from its authoritarian past, revealing the force of the act of historicizing itself.