After a few days of taking pictures, I started to understand the main reason for this documentation. It came insightfully, as I sat down with the residents, making jokes on how the pandemic was really a global hazing drill for resident students; one of them laughed behind the mask and replied: “Cutting our hair would have been way easier!” It was right then, it became clear to me, his face was my brother’s, in his eyes, the same unquenchable thirst for technique and instinct. Overall, I was deeply moved by the compassion and demand this job requires out of someone at any age.

I also realized, I wanted to focus on the people, all the people that made this hospital seem like this was absolutely normal. Environmental service workers washing windows, mopping floors, the strong, repetitive hands of those laundering and pressing bed sheets, emergency medical service employees carrying patients in or out of stretchers or unto wheelchairs, anaesthetists aiding intubation, cooks feeding administrative personnel, lab specialists performing tests, voluntarily assigned physicians willing to learn the new reality from residents, transporters carrying oxygen tanks, nurses buzzing everywhere, technicians and maintenance staff fixing ventilators, security forces in or outside the institute, paramedics moving patients to other facilities or pathology crew dissecting and filling paperwork at the morgue.

What most people are unable to grasp is that these Foucauldian heterotopias have made a gigantic effort in changing their usual logistics and internal processes. Triage for example, admitting and testing patients within a facility changed entire protocols in a few weeks, once a patient is first screened, to determine the urgency of their condition. If admitted, the physician takes them either to intensive care or to a room for initial testing, after they clear this area, they leave a door hanger with the “Dirty” word printed in it. As soon as the cleaning staff notices them, they take over the room and disinfect it in its entirety, leaving a “Clean” hanger on the door. Over and over again.  Online exhibit no longer available.

Thanks to Dr. Mauricio Sierra, Dr. Mario Ulibarri, Luz María Aguilar Valenzuela and Carmen Amezcua from the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubirán (INCMNSZ).