(20 Sep 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mexico City , Mexico – 19 September 2025
1. People evacuate a building as the seismic alert sounds during national drill
2. Various of people evacuate a building
3. Various of people marching in honor of the killed seamstresses during the 1985 earthquake
4. Various of people setting up a flower memorial
5. People looking at the mass in honor of seamstresses
6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Gloria Juandiego, founder of 19-S Seamstresses Union:
“Today, 40 years after those earthquakes that shook our city and our conscience, we gather together to commemorate a crucial moment in our history. A moment in which adversity became an opportunity to unite and fight for our rights.”
7. Woman crying at mass while filming with mobile phone
8. Attendants of the mass
9. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Guadalupe Lopez Cruz, Survivor, member of the 19-S Seamstresses Union:
“It’s important to remember this date, September 19th. In 1985, a very strong earthquake knocked down buildings where seamstresses were working, killing many of them. I think it’s estimated at more than a thousand.”
10. Various of sewing workshop honoring the 1985 earthquake victims
11. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Guadalupe Lopez Cruz, Survivor, member of the 19-S Seamstresses Union:
"We arrived walking, searching. We didn’t imagine what the building would be like. We never imagined it had collapsed."
12. Various of people who lost their homes in the 2017 earthquake gather in Zocalo.
13. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Sonia Rosas de Luna, 70, lost her home in the 2017 earthquake:
"Hearing the seismic alarm makes me nervous, my heart beats fast, the truth is it scares me, I freeze."
14. Victims who lost their homes in the 2017 earthquake gather in Zocalo
15. A woman writing a protest sign
16. Banner reading (Spanish): Movement of Families Affected by 19S"
17. The Mexican flag flies at half-mast in memory of the people who lost their lives in the 1985 earthquake and the 2017 earthquake
STORYLINE:
On September 19, 40 years ago, at 7:19 a.m., an 8.1-magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks left the Mexican capital in devastation.
The earthquake was a watershed moment for the city. Official counts put the death toll around 12,000, but the real number remains unknown.
A new culture of civil defense evolved, better warning systems were developed and, since 2004, there have been annual earthquake drills held on that day.
Then, on that very same date in 2017, things changed again. Barely two hours after the annual drill, a 7.1-magnitude temblor began shaking the ground; its epicenter was so close to the capital that the warning alarms didn’t even sound.
Nearly 400 died this time and word spread in an instant on social media, but the destruction showed some lessons still hadn’t been learned, as many deaths could have been prevented.
While the city’s decades-old wounds had not yet healed, the new earthquake reopened them. During the two natural catastrophes, seamstresses and textile workers were among the main victims.
Hundreds of seamstresses, normally holed up working 12-hour days without breaks, died under one of the capital’s collapsed textile plants in the 1985 earthquake. In 2017, at least 21 people died in factories under poor working conditions.
It seemed remarkable how little the conditions for them had changed over the decades. For the textile workers, victims of the 2017 event, the only difference was that they were migrants.
A small crowd gathered Friday at the site of the tragedy, bringing flowers to honor the dead and tying them to a nearby tree.
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