If the 53 immigrants who choked on a trailer in Texas are identified, their lives and misery could also be reconstructed
When they were found in a trailer that smelled of cooked meat, they were just a mass of intertwined bodies “so hot it burned to the touch,” said San Antonio fire chief Charles Hood, who had to seek psychological help for his men. Little by little, the Bexar County coroner has unraveled the strand of dreams and misery that united the 53 dead of the greatest migration tragedy to have occurred in the United States, left in a truck without water or air conditioning at the bottom of the highway near San Antonio (Texas).
It is necessary to call on the investigations and journalistic reports of five countries to restore the slowly extinguished life. “Our team is passionately committed to naming each of the lives they represented,” a county spokesperson told the Washington Post. So far they are 27 Mexicans, 14 Hondurans and 7 Guatemalans, but five bodies have yet to be identified. Consular authorities are working together in a return process to remote villages to match any identification, card or phone number they carry. The death toll could rise as Mexico’s immigration director Francisco Garduño said the truck’s human load was 67, including at least two 13-year-old adolescents.
It is believed that they went to Laredo, excited to have finally reached the Promised Land, and convinced that they had already stroked the American dream. “Let’s go outside, Mom!” Was the last time Magdalena Tepaz heard of her son Wilmer Tulul, who had gone on an adventure at age 13 with his cousin Pascual Melvin, of the same age. They followed the route of so many other inhabitants of their small village of Quiche Indians in Tzucubal, in the heart of the Guatemalan mountains, where the 1500 inhabitants have to live on what they grow and on the remittances of those who have already immigrated to the United States .
The woman, a single mother of two, doesn’t even speak Spanish. His son and cousin barely messed with it, but they grew up together, dreamed together and died together on Monday. “I wanted them to study in the US,” he told the Associated Press through an interpreter. “They wanted to find work and help me build my house,” she sobbed. They had relatives waiting for them in Houston and had raised the money to pay the traffickers until they could pay it back.
Just like on the planes, everyone had paid a different rate. Wilmer’s relatives, $6,000, of which they will save half because the merchandise never arrived at its destination and the traffickers are unable to claim it. The suspected driver of the truck, Homero Zamorano, 45, was found by police hiding in some nearby bushes, with the apparent intention of posing as one of the survivors.
Border patrol cameras captured him as he drove through Texas on Interstate 35, though the vehicle never crossed the border. The calls recorded on his phone also allowed the arrest of 28-year-old Christian Martinez, accused of conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants resulting in death, and Mexican brothers Juan Claudio and Juan Francisco D’Luna-Mendez. , 23 and 48 years old. respectively charged with gun-related crimes.
If Magdalena Tepaz expected her children to build her a house in her Guatemalan village, Yolanda Olivares had to sell hers in the Mexican city of San Marcos, Veracruz, to pay the 10,000 for each of her two children and her cousin undertook at age 16. The last thing he knew was that they were sitting in a warehouse in Laredo, waiting to be picked up, having swum across the Rio Grande with the coyote, “a nice man” who already had other relatives. ‘helped’. One of them was waiting for them in Austin. “They were so excited because they knew they would be there the next morning,” the excited mother told the Washington Post. The message on the phone has been deleted, never to be heard again. “I have no more tears.”
Not everyone was so humble. From Las Vegas, Honduras, Karen Caballero said her children had worked hard to pay for college, but couldn’t find a job. “They were always told they had no experience. It is believed that if they are prepared they could have a future in the US,” he lamented.
Fernando José Redondo Caballero, 20, his brother Alejandro Miguel Andino, 24, with a degree in marketing, and his girlfriend, Margie Tamara, 25, a graduate in economics, were helped by their younger brother, aged 18. “Alejandro was a little scared . He said to me, “Mom, if we don’t come back…” she said. “Don’t say that, you won’t be the first or the last to go to the US wet,” she snapped. And in that he was right.
Source: La Verdad
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