rescued alive. 9,600 injured people received treatment, including 1,879 who needed hospitalization. Despite the loss of 5,000 hospital beds, there was never a shortage of facilities for the injured. Some of the reason for this was that those with postponable care were discharged, but mostly because the public and private facilities unified de facto during the crisis. There were also people rescued as late as ten days after the initial event. Government The military was deployed to patrol streets to prevent looting after a curfew was imposed, as well as rescue, sanitary efforts and other, with 1,836 soldiers initially sent in and another 1,500 conscripts sent later. The federal government's first public response was President de la Madrid's declaration of a period of mourning for three days starting from 20 September 1985. These earthquakes created many political difficulties for the then-ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) or Institutional Revolutionary Party. The crisis was severe enough to have tested the capabilities of wealthier countries, but the government from local PRI bosses to President de la Madrid himself exacerbated the problem aside from the lack of money. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared it would not request aid; it specifically rejected help from the United States. It was also widely reported in the days after the earthquake that the military assisted factory owners in retrieving their machinery rather than in removing the bodies of dead factory workers. At many levels of the government, who was helped and by how much was determined by one's standing vis-à-vis the PRI. Those belonging to the party received preference and those considered opposition received the runaround. President de la Madrid refused to cut foreign debt payments to use the money to help with the recovery effort. The government's response to the earthquake was widely criticized at various levels of Mexican society, being seen as both authoritarian and incompetent. As most of the collapsed buildings were of recent construction and public works projects, the government was seen at fault due to mismanagement and corruption in these constructions. The government itself realized that it could not handle the crisis alone through already-established institutions and decided to open the process up to "opposition groups". Community On the other hand, the disaster created an opportunity for political opponents, especially at the grassroots level. Much of the community organizing focused on helping those left homeless by the earthquake. The three largest and