Portraits of earthquake volunteer rescuers in Mexico

A week after an earthquake that killed more than 300 people, a shaken Mexico was torn between trying to get back to normal and keeping up an increasingly hopeless search for survivors.

Mexicans have responded to last week’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake with an outpouring of neighborly charity, civic activism and national pride.

But there is also outrage in a country where corruption scandals and pervasive impunity have fueled a deep mistrust of the political class and the state structure.

Such is the depth of skepticism that some relief workers went out of their way to stress that they were not affiliated with any official organization.

On a recent morning, a group of young people from another Mexico City neighborhood brought blankets, building materials and food to Xochimilco, a poor municipality best known for its network of canals and artificial islands.

Some have seen echoes of Mexico City’s catastrophic 1985 earthquake, in which thousands died and survivors were left to fend for themselves in the face of an inept federal government response.

Here is a collection of photos of volunteers taken by Omar Torres of AFP and Getty Images.

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