Gustavo Castillo, Alexia Villaseñor and Jessica Xantomila
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, January 8, 2026, p. 13
The second district court in matters of commercial bankruptcy extended the deadline to carry out the auction of assets owned by Altos Hornos de México (AHMSA) and Minera del Norte (Minosa). He also ordered the Federal Labor Defense Prosecutor’s Office (Profedet) to issue an opinion within 15 days regarding the “liquid amount corresponding to the preferential amount of workers’ compensation.”
In this way, the process of auctioning the assets of the companies AHMSA and Minosa is postponed, of which Alonso Ancira Elizondo was the majority shareholder, who was subject to a criminal trial and is in the process of having it reactivated by not covering the amount of damages caused to the Mexican government for having sold the company Agronitrogenados at an overprice of 500 million dollars to Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), during the mandate of Enrique Peña Nieto. (2012-2018).
In a resolution released yesterday through the platform of the Judicial Administration Body, Judge Ruth Huerta García reported the postponement of the sale of assets of both companies, scheduled to take place on January 30.
At the request of the trustee in charge of conducting the bankruptcy process, Víctor Manuel Aguilera Gómez, the judge determined to grant an extension of 30 calendar days to hear the opinion of the Profedet, in order for it to “issue the opinion that was requested in relation to each and every one of the labor claims” and thereby determine the “liquid amount corresponding to the preferential amount of labor compensation.”
Likewise, it required the trustee to present to the jurisdictional body “the bases for the auction that will regulate the procedure for the disposal of assets” of AHMSA and Minera del Norte, declared bankrupt in November 2024. Likewise, the call for the auction must be presented by the bankruptcy trustee.
Harm to workers
The steel workers rejected this measure, as it “harms them enormously” by having to wait another month for the call for the sale of the companies to be published and, therefore, causing a delay in determining the payment plan.
Julián Torres Ávalos, president of the AHMSA Workers’ Labor Defense Group, recalled that it has been three years waiting for justice. “There is desperation and urgency on our part for this to end and for everything they owe us to be paid.”
In an interview, he estimated that with this new deadline, the AHMSA auction will not be until March. For this reason, they held a demonstration yesterday in the central area of Monclova, Coahuila.
He trusted that President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo will help them so that social and labor justice is done for the more than 14,600 directly affected workers and affirmed that they will continue in the fight “to defend what Ancira stole from us and to pay us everything that is owed to us.”
