ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the social and cultural relevance of the 9/19 earthquake that struck Central Mexico in 2017. The uncanny and double repetition of the event is remembered with phantom projections of surviving children. One of the most heavily publicized media stories from the earthquake was that of Frida Sofía, a girl trapped under the rubble of her collapsed school. After three days of intense search, it was revealed that she did not exist at all. Even though this story has been considered a scam to boost media audiences, it is more relevant to notice that there was a similar story during the earthquake that devastated Mexico City on the same date in 1985. Material and immaterial, both stories are about spectral entities born from traumatic natural disasters that provide them with social meaning. These earthquakes have shaped the identity of the community, and are also mediated by imaginary ghosts: fantasies of survival amidst urban destruction and death. Thus, the traumatic natural disaster is processed through Gothic experiences of haunting and repetition in the everyday, revealing transgenerational phantoms in social memory that process the event. The double repetition of the 9/19 earthquakes discloses the uncanniness of this experience, which can only be signified through gaps revealed by the ghosts created by the community.
