MEXICO CITY — Word spread quickly: free gasoline. It was spewing from a pipeline, through a hole punched by fuel thieves. People — as many as 900, by some estimates — flocked to the rupture, many carrying containers to fill.
But just as quickly, the apparent windfall on Friday turned to disaster when the pipeline exploded in flames, killing at least 89 and wounding scores more.
Amid the national lamenting, some Mexicans have insisted that the victims had only themselves to blame: They were breaking the law, pilferers taking what wasn’t theirs, and had put themselves in harm’s way.
‘Pouring gas on fire’: Russia and China slam Trump’s stance in Venezuela
But the man steering the nation’s response to the incident, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has rejected that view, arguing that the people were compelled to participate by the poverty and unemployment caused by past government policies.
“We have the conviction that the people are good, that they are honest, that if they arrived at these extremes, these practices, it’s because they were completely abandoned” by the state, he said at a news conference over the weekend.
Recent Comments