A New Reality

I'm sitting in Starbucks right now, and literally as we speak, large trucks of men with machine guns are rushing past the store. Ambulances are roaring and the police are actually putting on their masks in the back of the truck as they load their guns. Everyone around me is quickly checking the latest twitter posts to see what's going on. I'm looking through the posts and realize that there has been yet another shooting just five minutes from where I'm sitting right now. Just a few minutes away in Plaza Cumbres, a local mall, shots have been fired. One post says that crowds are running out of the movie theater.

Just a month ago, two men ran into the store under my house and started shooting. They didn't kill the store owner but gave him the scare of his life.

Two days later, I heard shots from my bedroom window. After checking twitter, I found out that a police officer had been killed while he was driving. His car went straight through an oxxo, killing a university student on a break. It took me weeks to get the sound of those shots out of my head.

I'm listening to the guy next to me right now. He's trying to follow the shootings through twitter. Apparently there is another one, just twenty minutes away at another local mall.

This is something that has become all too common in Monterrey. Shooting after shooting, people are learning to live with the violence in this city. In so many ways, I've become desensitized to the whole thing. I hear about shootings every day to the point that I just shrug it off now. As this city changes, I just feel sad knowing that the situation here will probably get worse before it gets better.

As for now, I'll stay in Starbucks until twitter tells me its okay to go home. This is one thing I won't miss about leaving here.