Earth Fair and September 19

Last week we celebrated the Planet Earth's Fair in the high school where I studied 25 years ago. The fair was a complete success; all conferences, movie debates, expositions and video game sessions were crammed with students.

In the aperture ceremony I was representing the organizer committee and I shared the table with the president of the International Year of Planet Earth in Mexico, Dr. Jaime Urrutia, the director of this High School, Lic. Jaime Suaste, and the director of the CCH High School System, Rito Teran. The CCH High School system (Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades, or Sciences and Humanities High school) is an alternative system in the spirit of the active school systems. At the beggining it was experimental but I was very happy there, being tired of the oppressive traditional system of my junior high school.

One of the most interesting days was Thursday. Almost all day was dedicated to Earth's movement. The first conference was about plate tectonics. The speaker was Dr. Gustavo Tolson, a remarkable geologist and educator, who is also the director of the Geology Institute. The next speech was by Dr. Carlos Valdez, chief of the National Seismologic Service. His conference was about seismic activity in Mexico and about things people should do to mitigate the risk. He also analyzed the recent devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China, and all the mistakes the remiss builders made. But the gist of the day was the earthquake that shook Mexico City in September 19, 1985. After the conference, to give the students a break from the overwhelming (but quite interesting) amount of information of the previous conferences, we projected a short film titled "Bajo los escombros" (Under the rubbles), made by my friend Carlos Davila, about a medical student that was stuck in his room in one of the hospitals that collapsed, and survived for several days until he was rescued.

We in Mexico City are so used to seismic activity, that an earthquake of regular magnitude doesn't excite us, or at least that was the case before September 19, 1985. That day we had the most devastating earthquake of the 20th century. Many old and not so old buildings fell down, including hospitals, schools and multi-family apartment buildings. Many people died, including celebrities (Mexico's largest TV Network, Televisa, lost buildings too). There are many touching stories, good to fill years of tutor Julie's Read Aloud daily sessions, but for some reason nobody has made a good movie about it. Carlos is planning to do it. I hope he will.

The next day we had other conferences and activities. The closing act of the fair was a musical performance made by students of one of my former music teachers, who still keeps numbers of the students magazine I directed when I was there. They even dared to set an act from Carmen's Opera, very well done by these amateur singers.