Since Thursday, the first funerals of ‘broken dreams’ have been held in Mexico. 23 of the 26 dead Mexicans have already been watched over by their families. In turn, the first bodies of the Guatemalan victims will arrive this Friday. In total, 53 migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador lost their lives in a trailer due to suffocation and dehydration on June 27 in San Antonio, Texas. The US authorities hold the driver of the vehicle responsible.
Last Wednesday, the Mexican government began to repatriate the bodies of Mexicans who died pursuing the “American dream”, as the desire of thousands of migrants to reach the United States and obtain better life opportunities is known.
The most tragic balance of the incident that occurred in Texas is borne by Mexico, with 26 deaths out of 53. Therefore, the repatriation of all the bodies had to be done in three flights of the Mexican military forces, which this Friday already culminated, and a fourth flight with the last two bodies is expected to arrive on Saturday. It is followed by Guatemala, whose authorities confirmed last week that the number of fatalities rose to 22.
The Mexican Foreign Ministry assumed the transfer of the corpses from the United States to Mexico. Querétaro and Oaxaca, in the center and south of the country, respectively, were two of the first states to carry out the funeral of their runaway children. There, the rates of poverty and social inequity are very high.
According to the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), in the first year of the pandemic, in Queretaro 18% of the population does not have access to nutritious and quality food, and more than 30% live in poverty. The figures are even worse in the southern oaxacawhere more than 60% of its inhabitants do not have sufficient economic income to face their day to day.
However, some Mexicans who suffer these difficult conditions on a daily basis are not willing to emigrate to the northern country because if they do, they could die. This is the case of Ciro Reséndiz, a resident of Pinal de Amoles, in Querétaro and a friend of the family of one of the deceased in the trailer. Mr. Ciro recounted his journey as a young man to arrive in the United States in which he almost lost his life.
“One goes to look for life and finds death. I also went once and I didn’t like it, they treat the Americans very badly. I left once and I was already dying, we didn’t have oxygen, in a closed truck and that was better I didn’t come back. I didn’t want to go anymore, even though I don’t have any money, but here I am,” says Ciro Reséndiz.
‘The broken dreams’
There are dozens of stories of families that were broken up by the biggest human trafficking tragedy in recent US history.
Pascual Melvin Guachiac Sipac, a 13-year-old Guatemalan boy, will be the first body repatriated this Friday by the authorities of that country on a commercial flight. Pascual will be buried in his native municipality of Nahualá, in southwestern Guatemala, where friends and family will bid him farewell.
Like him, there were two other Guatemalan children and adolescents crammed into the trailer that took them to US soil, according to the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry. They are Juan Wilmer Tulul Tepaz, 14, and Jonny Tziquin Tzoc, 17. Their bodies will arrive on Saturday.
Neighboring Mexico also has young people on its lists of deceased. Atexquilapan, a small town in the state of Veracruz, received the bodies of the brothers Jair, 19, and Yovani Valencia, 16, and their cousin Misael Olivares, 16. They dreamed of having a job that would generate more income . Jair and Yovani worked in the shoe industry.
“Making shoes is very exhausting, there is work here but it is very poorly paid and the price of everything is going up,” said Yolanda Valencia, mother of Jair and Yovani. Yolanda added that “they went looking for a better life but unfortunately they had the bad luck to suffer this tragedy, in which we lost them.”
Yolanda mourns her children and nephew in front of an altar that she made for them with her photographs and the statue of the Virgin Mary, faithful to Mexico’s Catholic tradition. In the town, more than a hundred people gathered to pray for the three young men.
The relatives of the victims anxiously awaited the repatriation of the bodies, and for days they had been making preparations for the funeral. The cost of the funeral was obtained with donations.
Another migrant who died in the trailer was Marcial Trejo, who was a repeat offender in search of the “American dream.” According to his wife, Guadalupe, since Trejo was a teenager he always wanted to go to the “other side.”
His death came as a surprise to the family, because Trejo had told them that he would stay longer in Mexico. The godfather of this migrant remembers him as a “calm boy”. This tragedy also makes him think of his five children, all in the United States, whom he misses but recognizes that his future is better on the other side.
Who are responsible for the tragedy?
The United States authorities detained Homero Zamorano, driver of the trailer, of United States nationality. Along with him there are three other prisoners, two of them Mexicans. Zamorano is already charged with the crime of trafficking aliens with a fatal result and could face life imprisonment or capital punishment.
Meanwhile, organizations and people from different countries ask that the United States make its immigration policies more flexible so that migrants do not fall into the hands of human trafficking networks.
Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), pointed out that “the question is how to create a formula for this migration to be legal” and also said that “the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has caused people to middle class from countries like Brazil and Peru who lost their jobs join the migratory stream to the United States.
These statements were made four days after the trailer incident, during a summit that brought together businessmen and politicians in Miami to analyze the challenges of the region and where Alfonso Quiñónez, Guatemalan ambassador to the United States, was present.
With EFE, Reuters and local media
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