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COMMENTARY: A 'normal' day after widespread violence in Mexico

The phones started ringing before we understood what was happening.

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My brother was about to leave for a trip back home after visiting our parents for a few days. I hadn’t travelled to Mexico for more than a year and had barely arrived. Then messages started coming.

“Are you OK?” a friend wrote. “I’m very sorry, please be safe,” another one sent.

Don’t go out, highways are blocked, there are vehicles burning. Social media said there had been a confrontation; the comments mentioned the military. Then the news spread: the death of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, leader of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, had triggered violent reactions across parts of western Mexico.

I am Mexican, born and raised. I lived in Michoacán most of my life and moved to P.E.I. in 2023. My state is a small region in the middle of the country that most Canadians don’t know about, that is, of course, until moments like this. Sadly, it will now be remembered as one of the regions directly affected by the unrest.

Last Sunday, however, I was back home.

In a matter of hours, plans changed quickly. We stayed indoors. Travel was postponed.

There was uncertainty, but also something else. A strange atmosphere all around. Yes, the videos showed cars burning and chaos on the highways. Yet there, at my parents’ small house in the countryside, nothing was going on. The birds still sang, the sun sat high, and the mountain was silent, as it always is.

By noon the next day, businesses were open again.

Coffee shops. Pharmacies. People running errands.

Life, at least on the surface, had resumed in most parts of Michoacán.

And among all the confusion and apparent peace, I couldn’t help but wonder: How could normality return with such speed? What does “normal” mean in the face of uncertainty?

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Catastrophe and routine

When I was a child, I remember learning about wars in school and wondering how ordinary life could possibly continue while violence was unfolding. How did people go to work during the Second World War? How did cities function knowing bombs might fall? The coexistence of catastrophe and routine felt impossible to me then.

As an adult, I’ve long understood that the human brain does something remarkable when uncertainty becomes chronic: it adapts. Psychologists sometimes describe this as normalization, a process where despite danger remaining, the mind cannot function in a constant state of alarm. Routines help people stabilize. We all still need groceries, we all still need to pick up our children, go to school or go to work.

When life does not pause for instability, it reorganizes around it.

We were safe. Other states, like Jalisco or Guanajuato were still dealing with the cartel’s response. That detail matters because violence in Mexico is not evenly distributed; it concentrates, shifts and sometimes passes nearby without touching you directly. Safety can depend on geography, timing or simply luck. Yet even when nothing is happening around you, the knowledge that it could, changes the atmosphere.

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People learn to read situations quickly. They learn which roads to avoid, when to stay home, when to remain quiet. Subconsciously, they learn that certainty is temporary.

Those lessons stay in the body. And they travel with you, wherever you go.

One of the most unexpected adjustments when moving to Canada was trust. Trusting that calling for help would not create additional risk.

In my time there, I visited the Canadian Forces Base in Gagetown several times and spoke with veterans. I found it striking that the people I met never felt like symbols of danger or power. They were ordinary individuals with families, routines and, in many cases, office jobs.

Most likely, I would not have dared to approach them that way back home.

Here lies another difficult reality: no institution is made up of entirely good people or entirely bad people. Our perception of where danger lies does not appear out of nowhere. It is learned, shaped by context and experience.

Humanity behind uniforms

During the military operations in Mexico this week, at least 25 members of the National Guard, along with a corrections officer and a federal prosecutor, were killed in attacks linked to the cartel response, according to security secretary Omar García Harfuch. They were men with families, most likely not so different from mine.

I’m thankful for their sacrifice and wish them peace. And yet, I know that if I had encountered them on a street in Michoacán — uniforms, weapons, military vehicles — my instinct would have been to turn the other way.

To me, that is one of the saddest parts: that it sometimes takes loss to recognize the humanity behind the uniform. If that does not speak to the normalization of violence, I don’t know what does.

By Monday afternoon, storefronts in nearby cities were open again. Traffic returned. People moved through their day. To someone unfamiliar with this rhythm, that might seem surprising, indifferent or even resilient. How can life resume so quickly after such disruption?

But perhaps the more accurate question is: how could it not?

Communities cannot remain suspended indefinitely. People continue because they must, economically, socially, psychologically. Normality becomes less a statement about safety and more a strategy for endurance.

In the end, violence does not only shape the places where it occurs. It shapes the people who live through it, and the people who eventually leave. Physical distance can change opportunities and environments, but it does not fully remove the awareness that stability can fracture quickly. That awareness becomes part of how you interpret the world.

In a few weeks, I will return to Canada and resume my routines there, deadlines, errands and conversations about the weather and other ordinary concerns. Outwardly, life will look separate from what unfolded here. Yet I will remain attentive to this place I called home for so long, to the family members who stay behind, wondering if things could end and dramatically change in one day.

Perhaps that is the most difficult thing to explain across borders: that what looks like calm is sometimes simply life continuing in the presence of risk. That routine can be both ordinary and the only way forward.

We call it normal because businesses reopen and people return to their errands. But there is nothing normal about living with the expectation that safety can disappear overnight. There is nothing normal about learning, from a young age, to measure distances from violence.

Yes, life continues. But sometimes what we call “normal” simply isn’t.

Judith Mendiolea, a Mexico-born journalist now living and working in P.E.I., where she is a regular contributor to The Guardian in Charlottetown.

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