Swine Flu

I'm back in Tucson for the week since schools are closed to help contain the Swine Flu epidemic. Upon arriving to the Phoenix airport this afternoon, I was interviewed about my experiences. I'll blog soon about what it's like in Mexico City.

Here's the link:

Collective Action/Inaction

The other day I was faced with a minor moral dilemma that I would like to discuss. At around 5:00 am, I was awoken to the sound of someone yelling outside my apartment. My initial reaction was, “holy shit, someone broke into my place and somehow tripped and broke their leg because they’re making way too much noise to be a sly burglar!” Because of my tile floors and lack of abundant furniture, any sound coming from nearby intensifies, causing me to believe that the source of the clamor is inside my living room. Realizing that this could not really be the case, I went to the kitchen where I have a good view of the street behind my apartment. I discovered that the screaming was coming from that direction. Although I could not see the actual man in distress, I could hear him yelling, “auxilio, me roban! Auxilio, me están robando!” He was crying for help because he was being robbed. My first thought was to get my cell phone and call the police. Remembering my college sociology class and the story of the woman who was murdered outside of an apartment building full of onlookers who all assumed that someone else would call the police, I headed to my bedroom for my phone. While I made the trip, I was going over the emergency numbers in my head. Is it 0-6-6 or 0-6-0. Is that for “seguridad publica” or for all emergencies!? I returned to the kitchen, cell phone in hand, and took one more careful look out the window to see if I could catch a glimpse of the victim. It was then that I knew I couldn’t make the call.

Across from where I heard the screams, on the wall of the shadowed building opposite the man in distress, I saw red, white, and blue flashing lights. It was a police car, already having arrived at the scene! How great! Someone already called. Oh how great humankind can be! Relieved to see that the police were there, I headed back to my bedroom to catch a few more minutes of sleep when I heard the same cry as before, “help, I’m being robbed! Help, I’m being robbed!” Remembering uncommon stories of police corruption I have heard during my time in Mexico, and thinking about my close friend Sergio’s experience a month earlier of discovering that the policemen that held his stolen car in custody had taken his valuables from the trunk, I realized that the police officers themselves were robbing this man. I looked at my phone and thought, “what do I do? I’ve got to do something but who the hell do I call now!” I felt horrible. At that moment, hated how helpless I felt. There I was, ready to break the societal tendency of collective inaction, but had no one to call.