A Mexican flag from the towers hangs in New York. Sixteen dead.

A Mexican flag pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center hangs at Mexico’s consulate in New York. At least 16 Mexicans died that morning; five were fully identified by U.S. authorities. On the twenty-fifth anniversary the foreign desk files a flag, a list, and a neighbor who was in the towers too.

Families will hear the names at Ground Zero. Mexico’s consul has kept the cloth. Sheinbaum is in Tuxtla Gutiérrez this morning, a mañanera on the road, not at the pools. The visa fight with Washington is not the ceremony. The flag is. Sixteen dead from a country the sitting president said offered “tamales and tomatoes.”

México no es ni será colonia ni protectorado de ningún país extranjero.

The Mexico desk files the anniversary from the south: a flag in a consulate, five names the Americans wrote down, eleven they did not, and a border that still runs through this city.