On Thursday September 7th Mexico suffered an 8.2 earthquake, one of the strongest in years. The earthquake shook the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Puebla, Guerrero and Mexico City as well as a part of Guatemala in Central America. Chiapas and Oaxaca were two of the states that suffered most damage from this earthquake with 45 people killed in Oaxaca, 10 people in Chiapas and several damaged buildings in both states.
During the earthquake and minutes after the earthquake people were flooding social media with posts about the earthquake, but they were not your typical natural disaster post, these were memes to lighten up the mood and make people laugh a bit to forget how scared and shock they were. Below is an example of a joke made in twitter which says “Ah but one week ago “Welcome September,surprise me” and September came with 3 hurricanes and an earthquake”. This way of dealing with disasters has been present in Mexico for several years. In 1985 Mexico City was hit with the most devastating earthquake known in Mexican history, it caused several buildings to collapse and left dead people everywhere, to this day we still don’t know the exact number of casualties. Back in 1985 memes weren’t a thing yet, but they had jokes on the newspapers about the earthquake, this jokes to some people in a foreign country may be seen as rude and making fun of the people who suffered damages, but in reality, it helped the country heal from this terrible event.
In Mexico, people have a great sense of humor and people make jokes about everything, it is our way of dealing with things! After every major event, no matter if it is good or bad we will make jokes about it just because it makes us feel better like with this earthquake. Jokes are our way of saying “Everything will be okay and we will get over this”, is a way of showing solidarity and putting a smile of the face of people who are sheering down tears because if you don’t cheer yourself up then who will? Everyone should share Mexico’s idea of dealing with life, not only does it make great memes but is also shows that laughing is the only way to see life from a better perspective and being able to recover from anything. Stay Strong Mexico!!