We are not the same anymore

In her splendid work , The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), American writer Joan Didion takes us on an intense journey through her grieving process following the sudden death of her husband. The book begins with the following lines: “Life changes fast . Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner, and life as you know it is over… Life changes in an instant. A moment like any other.”

Robert D. Kaplan, in The Tragic Mind (2023), alludes to Sophocles' idea—in his play Oedipus Rex —that catastrophe can strike the most successful and powerful person at any moment, reducing the most wonderful and privileged life to ashes. *

Life can change for anyone in an instant. We don't know how, we don't know when, and even less why, until that moment arrives and nothing is ever the same. Sadly, in Mexico, this reality is becoming ever more familiar and, above all, ever more violent.

A few days ago, Ximena Guzmán and José Muñoz, the private secretary and chief advisor to the head of the Mexico City government, were killed in a treacherous attack—one that crossed boundaries previously respected by criminals. The public servants were murdered in broad daylight on a major avenue in the nation's capital. The lives of the victims' families and loved ones changed in a second, without them even realizing it. Surely Clara Brugada's life changed as well.

For the inhabitants of this city—and the country—life has long since changed due to violence, crime, and insecurity. We no longer live in peace; there is no longer any confidence that we or our children will return home safely. We can no longer travel peacefully on public transportation, much less travel on highways as we did as children with our parents. Children can no longer go out on their bikes alone to explore their neighborhood; teenagers navigate dangerous terrain, both real and digital, every day. Women must walk the streets without distractions, careful that no one follows or even observes them. We don't know when, in our daily lives, we will be drawn into the lottery of tragedy.

The events of last Tuesday are a stark reminder that here, as José Alfredo Jiménez recounted, life is worthless, or at least, increasingly less. These events fuel society's sense of helplessness. I suspect this sentiment is shared not only by citizens but also by those who govern, at least those who are free of complicity and collusion with criminals. The authorities are beginning to feel overwhelmed.

If, as Oedipus Rex suggested, catastrophe can strike the most successful and powerful person—as we saw with these officials in the inner circle of the man who governs the most important (and heavily monitored) city in the country—what can bureaucrats and ordinary citizens expect? Our lives can be reduced to ashes at any moment. As Didion famously said, life can change in an instant; in an instant like any other. And we can never be the same again.

* Own translation

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