Topos Azteca was started by Hector Mendez after a massive earthquake in Mexico City in 1985 that killed around 10,000 people according to the New York Times article. Hector Mendez stated that he was a 38-year-old English teacher with no rescue training at the time. He rushed to the collapsed buildings in Tlatelolco to search for his missing brother. After he found his brother alive, he and other volunteers began crawling into dangerous tunnels underneath the collapsed buildings and apartments to save others’ lives. Hector Mendez spent around 10 hours helping rescue a woman and her niece without wearing gloves or using proper equipment, resulting in injured knees, a sore arm, and aching fingers. Following this experience, Mendez discovered that rescue work is his life’s purpose. The media began calling Mendez and the other volunteers “topos”, which is the Spanish word for moles, because they worked underground.
Since then, Topos Azteca has expanded beyond Mexico, even working internationally after a 1986 earthquake in El Salvador, where Mexican rescuers trained local volunteers. Some of their volunteers are firefighters or paramedics. However, many of them have daily jobs, completely unrelated to natural disasters. Miguel Garcia is 25 and joined Topos Azteca because of his father, a longtime rescue worker who taught him first aid and firefighting skills as a child. Juanita Duenez has been a firefighter in Mexico for 20 years, and she first became involved with the volunteer rescue group when her friend invited her to one of its training courses. There were many other members who joined. All of them are volunteers, risking their lives for others. Mendez once quoted, “We are volunteers, and we answer the call of duty. We are not diplomats, we do not request permits.”
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