Key Takeaways
A city that woke up under mud
Poza Rica, in the Mexican state of Veracruz, has recently lived through days when the rain simply did not stop. Streets that once carried school traffic and weekend shoppers turned into brown channels of water, then into long scars of cracked mud.
A visual chronicle of loss and resilience
A locally produced documentary, released online under the English title “Chronicles of a Flood,” stitches together voices of people who saw the water rise inside their homes, who climbed to higher floors, who watched furniture, motorbikes and memories float away, and who are now trying to restart their lives with almost nothing.
The silence around a fast-food landmark
Another short online piece focuses on a familiar commercial strip in Poza Rica, the area where a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, a cinema and a supermarket face each other across wide parking lots. One month after the floodwaters withdrew, the buildings stand intact but strangely still, surrounded by dust, broken asphalt and work crews.
A personal story of walking away
In parallel, a written testimony circulating widely in Spanish-speaking networks tells the story of a man who left his family for a new relationship and now, in his early fifties, realises that he has lost both his old home and the new one. His confession reads like a warning addressed to anyone tempted to repeat his decision.
Everyday choices inside a wider disaster
Together, these pieces of citizen storytelling show how a disaster is never only about rising rivers. It is also about what was already fragile before the water came: family ties, local economies and the social fabric of a mid-sized city that suddenly finds itself on national front pages.
Story & Details
Days when the rain would not stop
For several days, heavy rain fell over eastern Mexico. In Poza Rica the nearby river swelled, burst its limits and pushed water into neighbourhoods that had grown used to staying just above previous floods. People describe how the sound changed first: the constant drumming on roofs, the rush of water in drains that could no longer cope, the distant sirens echoing against low clouds.
When the river finally overflowed, streets disappeared. Cars were abandoned at angles. Storefronts vanished behind walls of opaque water. Neighbours who had shared casual greetings for years now tied ropes between balconies and handed children from one set of arms to another. Some residents say they lost everything in a single night; others say they lost almost everything but are still not sure how to name what remains.
A local documentary that listens
The documentary “Chronicles of a Flood” was born out of that moment. Rather than relying on a distant narrator, it gives the microphone to residents.
One woman recalls how the water reached the electrical outlets and the lights went out just as she was lifting her mother’s medicines to higher shelves. A shop owner explains that he had never taken evacuation drills seriously, assuming the river would behave as it always had. A young person describes the shock of seeing familiar playgrounds covered in a uniform layer of grey sludge, as if the colour had been washed out of the city.
Throughout the film, the camera lingers on small gestures: someone rinsing photographs in a bucket, another person scraping mud from a toy truck, hands folding donated clothes on a plastic table. These details turn a large-scale disaster into something intimate and recognisable.
The commercial strip that became a reference point
Along one of Poza Rica’s main arteries stands a cluster of national brands: a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant with its red facade and glass play area, a large supermarket, and a cinema tower that rises above cables and rooftops. Before the flood, locals used this stretch as an everyday reference point when giving directions.
A widely shared short video revisits the same strip about a month after the worst rains. The sky is bright blue and the fast-food restaurant looks almost untouched from a distance. Yet the foreground tells another story. The pavement is cracked and uneven, stitched with hastily filled trenches. Tire tracks cut through dried mud. Empty plastic barrels lie on their sides near the road.
Text on the screen points out that there is no visible movement inside the restaurant. Windows reflect clouds and passing trucks, but no customers and no workers. Nearby, heavy vehicles, municipal crews and orange-clad cleaners move soil, hoses and equipment. The message is understated but sharp: the big brands will be fine; for now, the effort belongs to workers who start their day surrounded by dust and debris.
“Think carefully about what you are doing”
Running parallel to these scenes of physical rebuilding is a very different story that has resonated with many readers: a long confession written by a man who left his wife and three children seven years ago.
In his account, he explains that his marriage felt lifeless and that he met another woman through work. She was divorced and raising two children. The new relationship made him feel young and understood. Convinced that he deserved a fresh start, he told his own children—then aged fourteen, twelve and nine—that he was moving out. He did not tell them he was in love with someone else; he simply left.
At first, he tried to keep up weekend visits. But life in the new home became busy. The new partner needed support, her children needed help at school, and there were matches to attend, meetings with teachers and holidays to plan. He began to miss calls from his own children. Messages went unanswered. Eventually, his eldest child wrote a brief line telling him they no longer wanted to see him; they now saw in their mother both the parent they needed and the strength they had lacked.
For four years he invested time, money and emotion into the new family. He paid for studies, organised trips and tried to be present at every important milestone. Meanwhile, his biological children grew up largely without him. He missed birthdays and graduations. News of their achievements reached him late, if at all.
Then the equilibrium shifted. His partner met someone else at work, a younger and more successful man without children. She thanked him for everything he had done but said she had fallen in love and needed to move on. The break-up left him in a small, empty apartment. The children he had helped raise moved on with their mother and new stepfather. The children he had left behind had long since learned to live without him.
When he finally gathered the courage to reach out, his eldest replied that his absence had lasted too long and that the wounds were no longer fresh but scarred over. Another child refused to meet. The youngest agreed to see him once and asked a single question: why return now? His answer—that he missed them and regretted everything—was met with a quiet statement: the child had missed him too, but that feeling belonged to a time when he still behaved like a father.
Today, according to his testimony, he is fifty-two and feels completely alone. His former partner has remarried. The children he once prioritised have built their own lives. The children he abandoned have little space for him. He continues to send birthday messages and occasional money transfers, knowing that the financial help is not needed and that it does not erase the years he was absent. The text ends not with self-pity but with a stark warning to anyone considering a similar choice to weigh a moment of excitement against the long, heavy cost of breaking away.
How these stories meet after the flood
The documentary, the short video of the commercial strip and the written confession do not share the same creators or formats, yet they intersect in the way people are talking about Poza Rica.
One strand focuses on physical damage: flooded houses, businesses covered in mud, a restaurant that used to be a landmark now sitting immobile amid construction machinery. The other strand focuses on emotional damage: children who felt abandoned, a man who realises that walking out of the door was easier than walking back in with humility and consistency.
Taken together, they show that disaster response is not only about rebuilding infrastructure or reopening stores. It is also about recognising what was already broken long before the storm—unfinished public works, unequal safety nets, fragile relationships—and about deciding, under pressure, what truly matters when the ground literally shifts.
Conclusions
A city holding more than one kind of memory
Poza Rica now carries two overlapping memories: the visible one of flooded streets, damaged sidewalks and famous logos standing in front of silent dining rooms; and the less visible one of conversations held at kitchen tables, of apologies offered too late, of people reconsidering the paths that led them here.
The visual chronicle of the flood makes it harder to look away from the hardship of those who lost nearly everything. The quiet written confession makes it harder to brush aside the emotional consequences of choices that may seem personal but ripple through generations.
In the end, the stories emerging from this city suggest a simple, demanding idea: when the water recedes and the mud dries, what remains is the way people treated one another—before, during and after the storm.
Sources
Feature on disaster impacts and recovery efforts in central and southeastern Mexico, including Poza Rica, published by the Associated Press: https://apnews.com/article/b2cbefbd6e80f3000e12defd77435c73
English-language report on the recent floods in Poza Rica and local calls for aid, published by a major Spanish newspaper: https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-10-15/journey-to-the-epicenter-of-mexicos-floods-poza-rica-calls-for-aid-and-fast.html
Analytical overview of heavy rainfall and flooding in eastern Mexico by World Weather Attribution, discussing exposure and vulnerability in affected states: https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/heavy-rainfall-leading-to-widespread-flooding-in-eastern-mexico-disproportionately-impacts-highly-exposed-indigenous-and-socially-vulnerable-communities/
Background piece on the economic and social impact of floods in Latin America, including Mexico, from the World Bank’s regional blog: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/latinamerica/pacific-alliance-countries-analyze-hydrometeorological-risk-impacts
Television news report hosted on YouTube about deadly floods in Veracruz and a presidential visit to Poza Rica, offering visual context on the scale of the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9qAgnbsaLk
Appendix
Aftermath video
Short, locally produced footage that revisits the commercial strip in Poza Rica after the flood. It shows branded buildings still standing while the surroundings remain dusty, uneven and full of repair work, highlighting the contrast between corporate facades and the labour of cleanup crews.
Cazones River
The river that flows near Poza Rica and whose overflow pushed floodwater into surrounding neighbourhoods. Its behaviour during intense rain has become a central reference point in discussions about infrastructure, protective barriers and urban planning in the city.
Cinemex and fast-food strip
A stretch of road in Poza Rica where a cinema complex, a fast-food restaurant and a large supermarket sit close together. Because these brands are widely recognised, the area functions as a landmark in everyday conversation and became a visual symbol of how familiar places looked after the flood.
Flood documentary
An independently created online film titled in English “Chronicles of a Flood,” built from interviews, ambient sound and scenes of daily life in Poza Rica during and after the high water. It focuses on ordinary residents rather than officials and aims to preserve their voices.
Kentucky Fried Chicken Poza Rica restaurant
A branch of the international fast-food chain located along a major avenue in Poza Rica. In the aftermath of the flood it appears intact from the outside but unusually quiet, surrounded by damaged pavement and cleanup activity, turning it into a visual metaphor for stalled normality.
Poza Rica city
An oil-linked urban centre in Veracruz, Mexico, with residential neighbourhoods, commercial corridors and public services clustered along and near the river. Its recent experience with severe flooding has exposed both physical vulnerabilities and long-standing social inequalities.
Regret monologue
A long, first-person written testimony circulating online in which a man in his early fifties narrates how he left his wife and three children, devoted himself to a new partner and her children, and ultimately ended up alone. The text combines self-criticism, grief and a clear warning about the long-term cost of abandoning one’s family.
Soriana supermarket
A large retail store located in the same commercial zone as the cinema and fast-food restaurant in Poza Rica. Its signage and presence in the background of post-flood footage help situate the viewer in a recognisable part of the city while showing how even well-known, seemingly solid places can be surrounded by mud and debris after extreme weather.
My Diary - Leonardo Cardillo 