Julio Cesar Cuc spends his days blindly feeling his way through sewage and occasionally risking his life deep in the bowels of Mexico's capital.
"It's a great job," the city's most experienced sewage diver told me recently just before a dive, his tone betraying only the slightest hint of irony. "It's unusual, it's challenging, it's exciting and it's a real public service."
That part I buy, especially during the rainy season from May to September when emergency underwater plumbing can be the only thing keeping the rivers of sewage flowing through Mexico City's 1350km miles of pipes and tunnels -- rather than bubbling to the surface or bursting the banks of surface canals.
"Black water" floods still happen here, but without Cuc and his team of sewage divers they would be much more common.
The four-man team spends much of its time fixing the pumps that push sewage out of a sprawling metropolitan area twice the size of London, or pulling out rubbish impeding its progress.
The risks are real, from minor infections to being stabbed with infected syringes. A diver drowned 10 years ago in a cascade unleashed when a pipe he was painstakingly clearing suddenly unblocked.
Cuc's own close shaves include nearly getting sucked into the whirring blades of a pump. But the veteran diver, who was one of the founding members of the team, formed in 1982, prefers to talk about the things he's found, including half a Volkswagen and more than a dozen dead bodies -- "I don't know how they get down there, but we have to get them out."
There are industrial divers in other cities from Kuala Lumpur to Stockholm who sometimes work in waste, but Mexico City's are probably the only ones who do nothing else, earning a maximum salary of US$745 a month.
Their dives last, Mr Cuc tells me, anywhere from 10 minutes to three hours, at depths ranging from 4m to 100m.
The preparation is always the same. Like medieval knights, the divers step into impermeable suits designed for the icy waters of the North Sea, hold out their arms for thick gloves to be taped on, and then disappear into a helmet connected to a tube that supplies them with oxygen from a surface tank and allows radio communication.
"I can feel rubbish, lots of it ... plastic bags, bottles ... nothing big today. .." Carlos Barrios gave a running commentary from the deep, his only guide in the dense, dark liquid his sense of touch.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of