Overpasses / Elena Poniatowska

–Dad, you can’t pass!

–Wait, the ladder must be somewhere!

The man and his caravan of children continue walking.

–Dad, dad, there is the staircase, but well rent sotes!

Many poor neighborhoods were cut in half. The viaduct, the overpasses, divided his life in two. They only had the stairs. Old clothes, children going to school, day laborers who have to go over or under the wide road of cars to get to the other side, prefer the elevated staircase. From there you can see the cars, the roofs of the houses, the sun shines, the air blows… Doña Indolina fears the underground passages because gangs of lazy boys make their lair there. Once they even assaulted her. They took away his meager provisions. But, well, what are we going to do? The La Suriana miscellany was left on the other side, and Don Mariano is the only one who trusts Indolina.

The viaducts, the peripheral ring, were made with the motorists in mind and not the gentlemen who live in the neighborhoods. However, while the overpasses were being built, all the motorists were complaining. He brings me the one he brought me! Again there is no passage! This city is a calamity. It looks like Gruyere cheese; hole and hole, pothole and pothole!

A wooden sign appeared everywhere in the city: Please forgive the inconvenience this work causes you.. Today, the General Directorate of Transit continues to distribute its signs, but the fusion of holes and passages has given rise to a construction boa, metallic and undulating, which stretches, forms clovers, curls up, yawns, and, finally, opens its fearsome snout. The cars leave the rib tunnel uncovered heading to Puebla, Cuernavaca, Querétaro. It seems that drivers fear suffocation inside the concentric rings. This thing is poorly carbureted! I hope it doesn’t fail me in here! The peripheral boa crushes the car, breaks the spirit and the blockage becomes permanent. But that does not mean that the inhabitants of San Jerónimo Lídice, those of Barrilaco and Lomas Altas affirm, like snake charmers: It takes 10 minutes from here to the center.

In reality, the pioneer of overpasses is that of San Juan de Letrán and 16 de Septiembre. When they built it, no pedestrian was convinced of its usefulness. Nobody likes going up and down stairs and not even anyone would like to descend to the step built especially for walkers. Fritangas and soft drink stands had been set up in the tunnel; It smelled of overheated oil and the smoke stagnated and blackened. At the risk of dying between the wheels of cars and trucks, pedestrians took to fight bulls fins and bodies. They crossed unscathed. They neither sweat nor were distressed. The Traffic Department put chains on the sidewalks, but even so, those on foot got away with it; They crossed them in one jump, from above, from below, whatever. But this was 20 years ago! Today even dogs have stopped confronting cars; The speed has made them bend their heads. Who can handle an avalanche of engines and wheels, fenders and horns whose mandatory speed is 80 kilometers per hour? And who can handle such a stunning work? Look, engineers say that tunnels and underpasses are very expensive because it is necessary to install a pumping subsystem to prevent them from filling with water.

Some passes even have three pumps and yet there are numerous leaks. On the corner of José T. Cuéllar and Juan de Dios Peza, a pump house and a 440-volt generator pull water from the sump and throw it into the city’s water collector. Every eight hours one guard relieves another to maintain the proper functioning of the machinery. These guardians may well have cultivated chinampas. Today they guard the asphalt, the poles, the electricity and the crust of tar that makes everything uniform (even the children’s playgrounds that appear like patches between the movements of the peripheral ring are made of tar). Today the Indians take care of walls and cables. The garden has been submerged. Tenochtitlan bends and produces aquatic flowers that grow inward. However, sometimes the peripheral ring has river glows. It waves in the wind. Its surface acquires strange shines, deceptive glows. It bristles with tiny, serious blue waves, and the cars rock gently, the sun’s rays crash on the windshield and the driver rubs his eyes that are filled with a thousand little pieces of glass; frozen water.

They say that recently there was a victim of the mirage. A confused young woman jumped off the pedestrian bridge. He fell into a sea of ​​cars; a barrage of wheels covered it. The newspapers did not want to publicize the fact. The peripheral was brand new. But some witnesses claim that the girl’s hand remained extended on the concrete and that on her little finger she was wearing a ring – any trinket – on the periphery of her finger.