Nation time in Mexico

Sometimes a writer has no words.

This video has been making the rounds of the Interweb all day today. It's a painful snapshot of Mexico, as our neighbor to the south recovers from a devastating earthquake, the most recent in a string of seismic catastrophes. As rescue workers and everyday people dug through the rubble, there was a point where the people stopped to stand and sing the Mexican national anthem.



It's a moving, wrenching event made more powerful by its sheer spontaneity, a suddenness that mirrors the swift onset of the earthquake itself. You can see what it means to a country with myriad problems and challenges, a nation needlessly under fire from its hot-headed, xenophobic northern neighbor.

Even amid the tragedy when this video was made (some time in recent days), it's clearly nation time in Mexico, a time to honor that which binds people together, in defiance of the forces — seismic and geopolitical — that do whatever possible to tear them apart.

Viva Mexico.

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