“It’s devastating — these are my life savings. And in just five or ten minutes, they tell you you have nothing left,” says Bernardino Ávila Hernández, an 80-year-old retiree who entrusted his money to the

That money — more than 2 million pesos — was the result of a lifetime of work. He had set it aside for medical care and assistance in old age. Loading…

“I was saving it for the time when I could no longer move. I told my wife we could use it to hire a nurse and not be a burden to our family. And now, after all this, I even feel like ending my life,” he confides in an interview with La Silla Rota.

Bernardino is one of 169,000 savers affected by what Mexico’s National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) has labeled the bankruptcy of CAME, one of the country’s largest Sofipos. But f

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