![]() ![]() ![]() When Durango was still a small town, authorities tried to wipe out the critters by paying residents for each scorpion, living or dead. The Hernandez clan comes from a long tradition of scorpion hunting in the city. Other advice: Cover doorsteps with smooth tiles, which scorpions can’t climb, and don’t use rough wood or adobe bricks, which create cozy crevices. This is a perfect urban breeding ground for scorpions, the kind that state authorities are constantly advising people to clean up. ![]() More scurried from trash that had been dumped on the lot. In an impromptu hunt in the lot behind their house, Enrique found several scorpions hidden in the rotten stump of a maguey plant. He and brothers Antonio and Alejandro often use a metal rod to stir the rocks and find the scorpions. He says he’s been stung 20 or so times in the 15 years he’s been catching scorpions. “And it’s not dangerous in the good hotels in the city, only in the poor areas and wooden houses.” ![]() “I believe we should sell the image of Durango as the capital of scorpions to bring more tourists here,” Enrique Hernandez says. They hunt scorpions from June to August, mostly in the countryside, and preserve the creatures in plastic jugs for use during the rest of the year. Their modest livelihood comes from the souvenirs the big family produces. It’s a survival mechanism.”įor the Hernandez brothers, scorpions are a means of survival. You’re constantly looking at the walls and ceilings. You shake your shoes before you put them on and shake out your sheets before getting into bed. “There’s a culture here-you learn to live with them. “I have respect for them but no fear,” she says. To share her knowledge, Santiesteban, 49, lectures on radio programs, works with community groups and has written a slim volume, “The Realities of the Scorpion,” which she printed herself. And the truth set me free from those fears,” she says. To overcome her fears, Santiesteban began learning about scorpions, gathering facts about the dangers, the symptoms of stings and the safeguards, “so I wouldn’t have to live in such ignorance. This tiny thing was dominating my life,” she says. “One kept me awake in my bedroom until 4 a.m. She recalls killing 100 or so in two years in her home. She later moved into a house on a hill overlooking Durango where scorpions thrived. Her older brother almost died as a child from a scorpion sting. The tale is recounted by Betty Grace Santiesteban, a Durango city woman who went through her own ordeal thanks to scorpions. The valiant Juan caught the “killer scorpion of the death cell” and survived. He was put in the death cell, where no one had survived a single night because of a monster scorpion. Fatalities are far more common in Guerrero and other Pacific Coast states such as Nayarit, Jalisco and Colima.īut Durango’s fame is unshakable, thanks in part to legends like that of “the death cell.” The story has it that in 1884, a man named Juan was unfairly jailed in Durango for accidentally killing a woman. And nobody died of a scorpion sting last year in Durango state. The city’s 550,000 people suffer about 2,000 stings a year, a fraction of the number reported in some states. In fact, the figures don’t bear out the reputation. ![]()
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