Seven more perished from burns suffered while trying to keep warm. The 76 deaths this winter are through Friday. The children get respiratory illnesses and we don't have the money to cure them. There have been times when children have died in the hospital. The shacks' flimsy walls and plastic-lined windows do not keep out the cold.
Families huddle together in bed with all their clothes on.
Sometimes, precious natural gas is spent burning in a little cooking stove just for the heat. Aviles Lpez and her husband built their tiny home from wood discarded at the dump. But in the cold weather, any wood found goes toward a fire in the yard to keep family members alive. Forty of the reported deaths in Mexico have been in the northern state of Chihuahua, where low temperatures in January typically hover around 32 degrees. Perhaps due to milder temperatures in Mexico's northeast region, only one death has been reported in Tamaulipas, the state that borders Texas from Laredo to Brownsville.