Accelerates the suburban train from south to north in Mexico City, any Wednesday of the summer spring capital. On line 3, always full, spilled, makes a heat of sauna, hard, immobilizer. They slip the caradraeras of the car, the sweat of so many people, the lotions, a damp contrast with environmental dryness. The stations occur, Zapata, Norte Division, until the train reaches the Medical Center. Many travelers go up and down, there are transford to line 9. Fast looks are stopped for an extra second in one, in another. Nobody says anything, but if the gestures spoke, the eyes of thousands, their mouths, their legs, would draw the same word: punctures.
You don’t think about anything other these days on the underground highways of the capital. Since mid -March, the authorities have received dozens of reports for alleged punctures against subway users, unleashing a certain paranoia among passengers and in society in general. A week ago, the city prosecutor, Bertha Mayor, pointed out that, until the beginning of the month, the agency had opened 41 investigations for punctures in public transport, the vast majority in the subway, confirming “puncture injury” in 15, and “presence of narcotic” in four.
Few groups are mistreated with the regularity and constancy of the Chilango subway passengers. When they are not breakdowns, they are accidents, shocks, attacks on machetes, constant harassment situations in the case of women … This week, with the cardinals gathered in the Vatican City to choose a new Pope, the joke in line 3 was the white smoking that suddenly began to flow from one of the wagons. “Habemus fault!” He shouted more than one. Nothing serious, luckily. In the suburban, the disaster is always just around the corner, stalking, and resignation is, by force, religion.
The alarm with the case of punctures seems more than justified. Not so much because of its incidence, less if one takes into account that the Metro moves more than three million people every day, but terrible because of the possibilities it suggests. Mexico lives a stationary insecurity crisis, with hundreds of massacres every year, tens of thousands of murders and thousands of cases of missing persons. The crisis of the punctures also occurs when the issue of the Rancho de Teuchitlán, a property in central Mexico where criminals led young recruits, forced in many cases, to integrate them into their organization.
As in Teuchitlán, in the subway it is not so much confirmed, but the possibilities of horror. The idea that someone goes with a syringe, injecting some narcotic in order, feeds the fantasies of a country fed up with violence. Until now, the authorities have made arrests in three punctures. In some, they were able to prove that the detainees had stolen belongings to the victims. In others, nothing. There was one, even that the punctures were the product of the shock of the victims with the backpack of another passenger, which transported some wooden sticks.
In the Medical Center station, the space is shrinking. Dozens of people go up and lower stairs, enter and leave cars. It is easy to understand why puncturers have chosen on many occasions stations of this line to attack their prey: hide is easy. Momentary agglomerations, dense knots that are undone after two or three minutes. One of the attacks was here, in a medical center. Another, along the same lines, between Guerrero and Balderas, another in Hidalgo, also in the three, another in green Indians, the final stop, one more at a stop of distance, on the blue line, in Fine Arts …
These little agglomerations involve ideal situations for attackers, difficult in addition to detecting. What does someone look like a syringe with ketamine – or the drug that is – in the bag? Some of the victims have pointed to their possible attackers. One said he observed a woman who pushed him and subsequently lost sight of the concurrence waiting for the convoy. Another described the probable aggressor as a elderly man, with average stature and white complexion, who wore a pictures. The City Police informed this newspaper this week that to date it has made 1,600 reviews at the stations. Look for a needle in a haystack.
A few days ago, at the end of April, a woman denounced a possible puncture, precisely here, at the Medical Center station. Scared, the woman, identified as Cecilia in the notes published by the press later, said: “Going down the stairs I started feeling bad, I had not felt any puncture, I did not feel anything until I started to burn my arm. When it came to check, I had a picket, I felt burning and I started to pinch, I was walking and my reaction was going to the store. aid”. Most of the complainant victims these two months have been women.
Stories like yours abound these days. One of the last ones has been Anaid Martínez, who denounced an attack in Metro consulate, at the crossroads of lines four and five, in the north of the city, this week. Martínez, who shared his case on social networks, explained that suddenly he began to feel bad. I felt “the entumida mouth, the loose legs, tingling in hands and feet.” The woman managed to get out of the train. In the halls of the station, an officer attended it. From there he went to the hospital, where a doctor told him that he had surely injected Ketamina.
Part of fear has to do with the disruptive sensation of discomfort, the fear of fainting in the car, for the attacker to take advantage of the situation. At the moment, the only thing detected has been robberies, somewhat lower, given the circumstances. The Prosecutor’s Office has promised to inform all novelty and reach the end of the matter, adjustable promise depending on the new emergencies that mitigate the health of the urban monster. This Saturday, the alarm was activated in Monterrey, in the north. A case of puncture. People look sideways, make their transfers, grabs their backpack. Fear commands.
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