A few meters away are the national guards, both men. They do not intervene. They do not speak to each other or turn to see each other, they are very serious. I would even say that they look somewhat uncomfortable, out of place. I want to go over and have a conversation with them, I would like to know what they think of being here, but I am dissuaded by the rigidity of their body language, their tense expression of few friends (perhaps that is the reason why the young people approached the policemen and not the guards). I move away a bit and stay watching them for a while. They look like statues in the middle of the hustle and bustle, river stones that the current surrounds to continue its course. Are they tired, upset, bored? It strikes me how alien his presence on the subway is. I want to take a photo of them with my cell phone, portraying the contrast between their disciplined military appearance and the chaotic popular vitality that surrounds them. I hesitate. After all, they are soldiers. It is not going to be the bad one, I also think very Mexican. Also, I insist, I’m late.
Leaving the station, through the turnstiles, I notice two guys leaning against a railing. I notice that, like me, they pay attention to movement. They look to one side, to the other, they are on the lookout. But, unlike me, they are just standing there. Maybe they are waiting for someone. I remember that when the sending of 6,000 members of the National Guard to the Metro was announced, it was said that some would go “undercover”, that is, dressed as civilians. I speculate if it will be their case, I scrutinize them out of the corner of my eye. I can’t tell if they have military haircuts because they both wear caps. I notice that the tallest one has a tattoo on the back of his hand and the shortest one has a piercing on his lower lip. I don’t know if that is allowed to the soldiers, at that moment I think not. Besides they are skinny. It seems to me that those who have had some sort of military training tend to be beefier. I mentally compare them to the two National Guardsmen I saw earlier and resolve that no, they must not be soldiers out of uniform. I experience a strange relief.
Already walking on Tacuba, I am disturbed to realize what I felt when concluding that those guys were not undercover guards. And if they had been, I don’t know, pickpockets? A few years ago, in this same direction, a brand-new cell phone was stolen from me. And if they were “hawks” of the Tepito Union? As I have read in the press, it is the strongest criminal group in the Historic Center. Or, already entered into catastrophic theorizing, what if they were accomplices in the alleged “sabotage” that led to the deployment of the National Guard? Until now, no complaint or investigation has been reported, nor has any evidence been presented in this regard. And even if it were nothing more than an invention of Lopez Obradorism to pass the buck of responsibility and play the victim, the truth is that this does not change the fact that the number of accidents on the Metro has doubled in recent years ( https://bit.ly/3WinCA5 ). Line 2, from which I just got off, recorded 41 accidents between 2015 and 2018, but between 2019 and 2022 there were 87. More than double.
