Mexico City, or Mexico DF as it is still often called, operates on Central Standard Time (CST), which is generally equivalent to GMT-6. But for many residents, especially those deeply affected by the city’s frequent earthquakes, time in Mexico City takes on a much deeper, more unsettling dimension. This is a city built on unstable ground, a place where geological time constantly intrudes into the rhythms of daily life, and for some, this intrusion becomes a palpable, even debilitating, reality.
In 2018, just months after Mexico City was shaken by another significant earthquake, Elena* found herself trapped in a cycle of insomnia. The 7.1 magnitude tremor, while not the strongest the city had experienced, was centrally located and deeply impactful. Though her apartment building seemed structurally sound initially, subtle yet alarming cracks began to emerge in her walls, spreading like silent tendrils through the building. The creeping disintegration of her living space became so unnerving that Elena resorted to seeking refuge in her office at night, finding sleep only at her desk, waiting for the workday to begin.
Elena, by her own admission, considers herself “tocada,” a term that translates to “touched” but carries the connotation of being “crazy” or “touched in the head.” A lifelong resident of Mexico City in her fifties, she had weathered numerous earthquakes before. However, the 40 seconds she spent huddled on her floor during that September 19th quake irrevocably altered her perception of time and her own well-being. Since then, she has endured unexplained weight loss, persistent dizziness, and chronic insomnia. For Elena, and many others like her, the earthquake’s immediate physical shaking was just the beginning of a prolonged, ongoing experience. In her words, “the earthquake never really ended.”
My ethnographic research over the past four years in Mexico City has brought me into contact with many individuals like Elena, people grappling with the earthquake’s aftermath in profound and often unseen ways. They present a spectrum of symptoms: sleeplessness, panic attacks, apathy, wasting, appetite loss, vertigo, diarrhea, and altered behaviors, such as an inability to be alone at home or the need to sleep fully clothed. The common thread connecting these “tocado” individuals is the undeniable link between the earthquake and their subsequent illnesses.
It’s a common refrain in Mexico City after a tremor: “Un bolillo pal susto” – “a bread roll for the fright.” This piece of folk wisdom suggests that carbohydrates are essential to recalibrate the body after a scare, a remedy for “susto,” or “fright sickness,” prevalent throughout Mexico and the Americas. This belief highlights a crucial understanding: acute shock, like experiencing an earthquake, can trigger chronic negative health consequences. Fear itself, in this context, can manifest as physical illness.
“As time passed, cracks began appearing in the walls of her apartment, deep, alarming fissures that wrapped silently around the room.”
While “susto” is recognized as a “cultural concept of distress” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, its varied symptoms complicate diagnosis within Western biomedical frameworks that often separate mind and body. Medical anthropology, however, explores how sociocultural and economic factors shape health perceptions. Within this field, susto is often considered a “culture-bound syndrome,” an illness specific to a particular cultural context. Interpretations vary, ranging from susto as a cultural expression of social distress to a folk label for universal biomedical conditions or a culturally inflected maladaptive psychology. “Tocado,” in this light, might be seen as a related phenomenon, perhaps earthquake-induced post-traumatic stress with a distinctly local flavor.
However, by moving beyond the limitations of universal biomedicine, we can explore “local biologies” and how unique environments shape biological differences. This perspective allows us to consider the impact of local geologies and the Earth itself on a city, its infrastructure, and the physical and mental well-being of its inhabitants. Perhaps, in this context, Elena’s explanation of her condition gains resonance: she is ill because she is trapped in “geological time.”
“Geological time,” or “deep time,” as eloquently described by Robert MacFarlane in “Underland,” refers to the immense scale of planetary history that dwarfs human timescales. James Hutton first conceptualized this vastness in 1788, and John McPhee later popularized the term “deep time,” illustrating its scale by comparing Earth’s history to the length of an English yard, human history being a mere nail file stroke on the king’s middle finger.
Despite this vastness seemingly rendering human existence insignificant, climate change has thrust deep time into contemporary political discourse. It has become a contested analytical framework, with some advocating for its adoption to combat short-sightedness, while others caution against its use due to concerns about flattening historical nuances or inflating the present’s importance, and some questioning its ontological limitations.
In his book “Annals of the Former World,” McPhee recounts his travels across America with geologists, fascinated by their unique perspectives and their ability to see the ancient world embedded within the present. He notes their distracted driving habits, explaining, “When a roadcut presents itself, they tend to lurch and weave. To them, the roadcut is a portal.”
This notion of “portals” or “encounters” with deep time continues to intrigue me, especially within my research in Mexico City and among individuals who identify as tocado. I am drawn to the profound question: Can deep time truly “happen,” intrude, and become tangible in our everyday lives?
A cracked building in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City. (Lachlan Summers)
Mexico City’s location, while currently elevated at 7,349 feet above sea level, belies its history as a submerged landscape. Until the end of the Tertiary Period, the area lay beneath the sea. Around 30 million years ago, the subduction of the Cocos tectonic plate under the North American plate initiated the region’s gradual uplift, causing fractures in the continental crust of present-day Mexico. Magma surged through these fissures, forming the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, a 620-mile east-west arc across Mexico.
The Valley of Mexico at this stage was still a valley, bordered by mountains and drained by the Rio Balsas. However, starting in the Late Pliocene, approximately 2 million years ago, volcanic eruptions sealed off the valley’s southern outlets, creating a 3,700 square mile basin. Meltwater and rainfall accumulated, forming a network of five interconnected lakes, saltwater in the north and freshwater in the south. Attracted by this secure environment, the Mexica people arrived in the 14th century and engineered an intricate system of dikes and dams to manage the waters. They also developed “chinampas,” floating agricultural islands, and established their capital, Tenochtitlan.
When Hernán Cortés arrived in the 16th century, he marveled at Tenochtitlan, describing it as a magnificent city “built on a salt lake” that “rises and falls with its tides as does the sea.” Yet, he promptly set about destroying it. The Spanish colonists, unsettled by the unfamiliar environment, dismantled the water management systems, draining the valley and inadvertently laying the foundation for one of the world’s most populous cities on the precarious, soft soil of a former lakebed.
“Though the lakes are gone, the city still floats. Sort of.”
Mexican soil scientist Carmen Gutiérrez-Castorena and her colleagues conducted a revealing thought experiment in 2005, highlighting Mexico City’s improbable urban existence. Imagine a 70-meter deep column of soil, one meter by one meter in width and length, representing the clay layer beneath the city. After oven-drying this soil sample at 105 degrees Celsius for four days to evaporate the water, less than seven cubic meters of solid soil would remain. Once the air pockets vacated by the evaporated water collapsed, only slightly more than half a cubic meter of solid material would be left.
Despite the lakes’ disappearance, Mexico City, in a sense, continues to float. Most rainwater is now channeled out of the valley, forcing the city to rely heavily on the underlying aquifer. This extraction causes the city to sink further into the compressible earth below. The iconic Angel of Independence monument on Avenue Reforma, erected in 1910 with nine steps, now requires 23 steps as the surrounding land has subsided due to aquifer depletion.
The subterranean soil composition of Mexico City, a mix of clay, debris, Mexica ruins, and volcanic rock, results in uneven subsidence rates across the city. Particularly in eastern areas like Tláhuac and Iztapalapa, the land sinks by almost a foot annually. Where areas with differing subsidence rates meet, “grietas,” or fissures, form. These are prevalent in central and eastern Mexico City, fracturing roads and undermining building foundations. During earthquakes, these grietas violently rupture, while the loose soil elsewhere undergoes liquefaction, amplifying seismic waves and exacerbating the tremor’s impact along ancient waterways.
The devastating Mexico City earthquakes of 1985 and 2017, both occurring on September 19th, were catastrophic events resulting from a confluence of factors: soft soils, lax building codes, structurally unsound buildings, and the enduring legacy of colonial disruption. While earthquakes are products of tectonic plate movements, the historical decision to drain the lakes significantly increased the city’s vulnerability, allowing geological forces to penetrate urban life with greater intensity.
“Footpaths undulate. Potholes suddenly appear in the street and begin consuming the road. A fissure slyly burrows under a building to do unseen work to its foundations.”
Philosopher Manuel DeLanda, a Mexico City native, described cities as the “mineralization of humanity.” He argued that after early invertebrates developed internal skeletons, “human populations began mineralizing again when they developed an urban exoskeleton.” Cities, therefore, are not simply collections of buildings and people but complex geosocial formations, inextricably linked to the earth beneath them.
Mexico City’s urban fabric reflects the peculiar nature of its geological foundation. Sidewalks ripple and buckle. Potholes materialize and expand, swallowing roads. Fissures creep beneath buildings, silently weakening their foundations. Like the Angel of Independence, many buildings require constant repairs at their entrances as the ground gives way, hindering access for vehicles and pedestrians.
The term “concrete,” as anthropologist Cristián Simonetti points out, derives from the Latin “concrescence,” meaning “an unfinished gathering of forces and materials.” This etymological root aptly describes the material attempts to re-anchor Mexico City to its volatile base.
By perceiving Mexico City as a geophysical entity, rather than a structure imposed upon a geological substrate, we begin to see a continuum between the imperceptible movement of tectonic plates and the gradual deterioration of buildings and lives.
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A Google Earth plot of buildings damaged and destroyed in the 2017 earthquake, with the extent of the former lakes superimposed. (Jascha Polet)
Mexico City is subtly marked by its seismic history for those who know where to look. Abandoned buildings stand as stark reminders, and neglected potted plants outside homes hint at vacancy. Many parking lots, particularly outside tourist zones, occupy the footprints of demolished structures.
Beyond these obvious signs, there are indicators of ongoing seismic activity, of geological time unfolding beyond singular earthquake events. “Tocado” individuals develop a heightened sensitivity to these subtle shifts. They notice cracks in walls, ground deformations, and the precarious angles of leaning buildings, becoming living geological sensors attuned to the city’s continuous, albeit slow, collapse.
This heightened awareness, however, is often disorienting. Alongside symptoms like appetite loss and wasting, “tocado” individuals experience sudden dizziness, fainting spells, and vertigo, even on stable ground. It’s a form of terrestrial seasickness, induced by the subtle but pervasive geophysical instability of their city, making its residents physically ill.
While Elena observed the cracks snaking through her apartment building, I walked with another woman, Ana, in Tlalpan, southern Mexico City. She pointed out a building she passed daily on her commute. As we turned onto the street, she grasped my arm, exclaiming, “Ay it gives me vertigo, even from here.”
Ana described experiencing two types of vertigo since the 2017 earthquake: the common dizziness associated with heights and a pressure-like vertigo triggered by proximity to certain buildings.
“It makes me dizzy when I’m underneath it,” she explained. “It’s as if I feel it pressing onto me.”
The leaning buildings that Ana passes every day. (Lachlan Summers)
Only upon reaching the building’s base did I understand Ana’s sensation. I felt it too – a sense of the upper stories of this building and its neighbor bearing down. At ground level, the gap between the two was minimal, perhaps millimeters. However, five stories above, I estimated the gap to be around two feet. Despite their obvious structural issues, the buildings were not condemned and appeared occupied, seemingly held upright only by the support of adjacent structures.
“Every day I pass it and it looks bigger,” Ana said. “Something underneath must have given way. How long until they come down?”
Mexico City’s building code specifies a maximum lean of 0.43% of a building’s height. Assuming these buildings were approximately 60 feet tall, the allowable lean would be about three inches. But how perceptible is a three-inch deviation from 60 feet below? Would even a two-inch lean be truly safe? And if the lean was still under the limit, how long until it exceeded it?
Such regulations offer little reassurance in a city where building codes have historically been compromised by corruption. While architectural standards were strengthened after the 1985 earthquake, loopholes and bribery persisted. Stories circulate about architects who gained notoriety during that period for ignoring regulations and constructing substandard buildings, yet were subsequently appointed to powerful governmental positions responsible for building safety inspections.
Developers often prioritize cost savings over safety, routinely dismissing architects and engineers who insist on more durable (and expensive) materials. This has fostered a market for “firmones” (“signers”) – architects willing to provide official approvals for construction plans without proper verification. A particularly tragic example involved a school where a secret fourth story, added to an entry wing, collapsed during the 2017 earthquake, killing 19 children and seven staff members. The architect who signed off on the building’s integrity received a staggering 208-year prison sentence.
Across Mexico City, buildings often collapse years, even decades, after sustaining earthquake damage. Gloria, a retired teacher, moved into her building a few years after the 1985 earthquake. She and her neighbors had paid for reinforcement beams on the ground floor to address minor damage. Reassured, she later recounted becoming accustomed to the cracks that appeared and spread through the stairwell and the occasional chunks of wall that crumbled and fell.
“Like an earthly seasickness induced by geophysical motion, the kinesthetics of this unstable city can make residents ill.”
However, the 2017 earthquake intensified these cracks, making them appear far more ominous. Following a city inspection, Gloria and her neighbors were forced to evacuate. It was discovered that the reinforcements installed after the 1985 earthquake had actually weakened the building, and the recent tremor had exacerbated the existing damage. The building’s decay had been a long, ongoing process, unfolding in deep time. As Gloria explained, “It wasn’t just the earthquake. It’s that we were so lucky. It was falling the whole time and we had no idea. The earthquake just aggravated what was always happening there. It was happening all the time, all the time, all the time.”
In Mexico City, destruction is rarely a singular event for buildings; it’s a continuous process. Residents, especially those who are tocado, become attuned to the subtle cues of ongoing collapse – cracks, gaps, fissures – inhabiting a gray area between complete ruin and slow decay. This geophysical awareness prompts temporal anxieties: “Is this new?” “How long has it been like that?” “How long do we have left?” “When can we be certain of safety?”
These were the questions, I believe, that preoccupied Fernanda, another self-identified tocada, as she gazed blankly out her window at an adjacent abandoned building. “Se acerca el dia en el que se cae encima de mi,” she said to me. “The day is coming in which it falls on top of me.” Her phrasing – “se acerca el día,” “the day approaches” – was striking. She wasn’t approaching the day; the day, the day of the building’s collapse, was approaching her.
Time, in her perception, wasn’t centered on her experience; it was happening to her, manifesting as the slow, inevitable collapse of the neighboring building. Both the building and Fernanda were suspended in earthquake time.
This pervasive sense of time keeps Elena awake at night. Months after the earthquake, she noticed the cracks in her building seemed to be expanding. She took a pencil and, “as if it were a growing child,” marked the crack’s edge and noted the date. Weeks later, she observed the crack had extended beyond her mark.
Increasingly concerned, she began to regularly date and mark cracks throughout her apartment. Her neighbors followed suit, confirming the building’s ongoing movement. By the time I visited, the cracks were marked with multiple dates, chronicling their slow progression. Elena’s fear, I believe, wasn’t solely about the cracks themselves, but about their temporal dimension, their rate of change, highlighting a continuous process of decay taking root within the building’s structure.
Cracks in Elena’s apartment. (Lachlan Summers)
Deep time is often perceived as the antithesis of immediacy, separate from both everyday experience and historical time. However, we may be living in an era where experiential time, historical time, and deep time are converging. Which of these temporal scales are being inscribed on the walls of Mexico City apartments?
The Anthropocene, a concept famously coined by Paul Crutzen in Mexico in 2000, posits an epoch where human actions have geological-scale impacts. It suggests that capitalism and colonialism should be recognized as forces comparable to tectonic plates. The Anthropocene concept not only acknowledges human impact on geological scales but also reveals how human history makes geological processes present in everyday life. In Mexico City, this history has allowed geological time to infiltrate people’s homes, becoming a constant companion.
If we understand Mexico City as a geophysical entity, being tocado emerges as a uniquely historical way of relating to the Earth. Elena’s condition, and that of others like her, may not stem solely from earthquake trauma or fear of future events. Instead, their anxieties are rooted in the ongoing processes initiated by earthquakes: the fissures, slumps, leans, and the delayed building collapses.
In “The Book of Unconformities,” Hugh Raffles describes the temporal rupture of earthquakes: “Time breaks, it suspends in two senses of the English word: slowing to almost zero and leaving you actually hanging, like particulate spun out of liquid.” “Tocado” individuals in Mexico City inhabit a similar state of suspension, where human time seems to yield to something more expansive. Paraphrasing Roberto Bolaño, this time is not a steady flow but a series of jolting, nearby explosions, some perceptible, others not.
This “seismic time” is not solely defined by seismic events. It begins with an earthquake but persists through continuous geophysical and political processes. Rather than viewing “tocado” as a pathological condition or a culture-bound expression, it can be understood as an emerging mode of relating to the world, where bodies, histories, regulations, and the Earth itself intertwine. Deep time in Mexico City is undeniably present for those compelled to notice it.
Deep time offers a valuable framework for contemporary analysis, a temporal literacy that situates the long-term consequences of the present within a deeper historical context. However, these vast scales also risk subsuming deep time entirely into the present moment.
Mexico City suggests a more physical understanding of time, one that neither collapses human and geological time nor rigidly separates them. In their embodied awareness of earthly processes, “tocado” individuals reveal that deep time is not merely an analytical problem of scale but a peculiar temporal geometry, where homes are simultaneously havens and indifferent geological entities. Deep time portals open in the city’s myriad cracks, slumps, and fissures, unveiling an immense, ever-advancing horizon.
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