Mexico crowns new ‘Queen of the Mountains’ as community reckons with recent mountaineering deaths

By INDIA GRANT
Associated Press

ON THE MALINCHE VOLCANO, Mexico (AP) — On the flanks of a central Mexico volcano, the country’s female mountaineers have chosen a new “Queen of the Mountains,” complete with crown, ice axe and red cape. The tradition that dates to the 1950s came this year at a somber moment for Mexico’s mountaineers. The tight-knit community was still reckoning with the recent deaths of two people on another mountain, the Pico de Orizaba, the country’s highest peak. This year’s queen, Mariana García López, a 42-year-old administrator and teacher at the National Technological Institute of Mexico’s Zongolica campus, hails from Orizaba, Veracruz, the gulf coast state that shares the peak with the state of Puebla.