That April 8th I was half asleep. It was just after 1:40 in the morning when I heard the footsteps of my wife, Daniela. I knew it had come from the newspaper, as usual. However, that night something was different. She stayed sitting in the living room for several hours and, when I woke up at 6:00 in the morning, I understood the reason…
Our cousins Alexandra and Rocío were inside the Jet Set establishment. They were able to save themselves by a hair’s breadth, since they were in the furniture area, close to the wall, on the left side of the platform.
The ceiling had collapsed at their feet. They described a great roar, instant darkness, dust and chilling screams of people trapped, confused between chaos and horror. They were able to leave almost immediately, with minor physical scratches, but with emotional wounds that, today, although they do not shout about it, remain open.
They never gave interviews to anyone. They didn’t even talk about it publicly. Not before, not now, not after. However, they also cry out for justice, like millions of Dominicans who, out of common sense and humanity, hope for a satisfactory closure at the judicial level, although that does not mean that the victims will be resurrected.
In fact, they may get upset with me for citing them in this article, since they are among those who believe that a respectful silence is worth more than a feigned noise, a shameless search for protagonism or a necrophilia of other people’s pain through the media.
The person writing to you lost a fellow student, old acquaintance and colleague of all: Jesús Nikolai Urraca. And, at that event, beyond the journalistic information and cries for justice that many of us legitimately make, I dedicated a humble article about his life.
What’s the point?
During this year I have seen fulfilled, to the letter, the prophecy made by Mario Vargas Llosa in his essay “The Civilization of the Spectacle”, about the trivialization of entertainment and society.
The fine line between the journalist and the news has become invisible. With astonishment, I have seen half tours of some people who have promoted themselves through the media to which they have access, overcoming a tragedy of 236 victims and hundreds of injured in the media.
The Jet Set case has seen the birth of new “vigilantes” who are seen as more than the rubble of ground zero, overexposing the obvious, clearly using the facilities offered by the media showcases to position their figure above the stories of those affected.
You never see them echoing the lack of action of the State which, despite an unprecedented tragedy, shows no rush to promote proposals for laws that toughen penalties against this type of negligence that has caused so much pain to so many families.
Both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies are lagging behind in discussing initiatives that could both prevent and sanction acts of this nature in the future. As always, the National Congress looks to the side.
Furthermore, you can count on your fingers the number of times these media necrophiles have given prominence to those who do deserve to be heard, such as relatives of the victims and dispossessed people, regardless of social or economic status.
And, frankly, it is sad to see that cousins Alexandra and Rocío, outside the journalistic profession, honor with greater rigor one of their essential maxims: the one that says that the journalist should never become the news.
When that border is diluted, journalism is no longer practiced, but something else; maybe influencer, or something like that…
