The federal government has allocated 800 million pesos (US $42 million) for the restoration of 279 buildings in 10 states that were damaged in the powerful earthquakes of September 2017 and February 2018.

Among the buildings that will benefit from the National Reconstruction Program funding are the municipal palace in Juchitán, Oaxaca, the Emiliano Zapata Revolution Museum in Tlaltizapán, Morelos, and the Juaninos Hospital in Puebla city, which functions as a cultural center.

Arturo Balandrano, head of the cultural heritage department in the Secretariat of Culture, told the newspaper Milenio that the buildings that will receive funding were carefully chosen.

“We’re attending to what is most important. We asked all the states in affected areas to tell us what still needed to be restored so long as [the buildings] represented an important value for the historical memory of the place and for the cultural identity of the communities,” he said.

Balandrano said that a total of 669 requests seeking 1.7 billion pesos in funding were submitted but just over one-third of those weren’t considered.

“. . . We found that 150 requests were to attend to churches, which are included in the [National Institute of Anthropology and History] program. Other requests arrived without the essential information to be able to make a ruling. In the end, we evaluated 430 proposals,” he said.

The 279 buildings that were chosen are in the states of Chiapas, México state, Guerrero, Morelos, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, Tlaxcala and Mexico City.

Morelos will receive the highest funding allocation – 287 million pesos – while Mexico City will get 130 million. Both were hit hard by the 7.1-magnitude, September 19, 2017 earthquake, whose epicenter was in Puebla.

Southern states bore the brunt of the September 7, 2017 earthquake, whose epicenter was in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chiapas.

A 7.2-magnitude quake that struck on February 16 last year with an epicenter near the city of Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca, also caused damage to buildings but unlike the other two earthquakes – which claimed the lives of almost 500 people – no fatalities were reported.

Source: Milenio (sp)