Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, a historic leader of Mexico’s left, died on Wednesday at age 92. Without him, it would be impossible to understand how the left has gained power in Mexico. Both the current president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and her precedecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, both of the Morena party, walked arm in arm with Cárdenas during the democratic struggles of the 1980s, when El Ingeniero (The Engineer, as he was known because of his engineering degree), broke up the long hegemony of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) from within, giving rise to the transition.

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For the second time in nine months, all of Spain is stunned by images of two high-speed trains shattered on a track in the middle of the countryside, by the appalling death toll and by the harrowing accounts of survivors of a rail crash that will have its own page in history. Almost 400 people were aboard the AVE train that, at 8.53 a.m. on Wednesday, collided with an Iryo train stopped on the Madrid–Andalucía line near Urda (Toledo), which had 146 people on board. The toll of 69 dead is still provisional. The number of injured exceeds 100. In these critical hours, it is necessary to convey to those who have lost a loved one the empathy and solidarity of all of Spanish society. The testimonies of families and survivors will be the anchor to ensure the scale of this human tragedy is never forgotten.

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