After days of preparations and collecting donations for the funeral, San Marcos Atexquilapan, a mountain community in eastern Mexico, began Thursday to mourn three boys who suffocated to death in a trailer in San Antonio, Texas, two weeks ago along to another 50 migrants.
With candles, popular songs played by a local band and white flower petals thrown as the hearse passed, several hundred locals and other neighboring towns received the bodies of the brothers Jaír and Yovani Valencia Olivares at dawn. 19 and 16 years old, and his cousin Misael Olivares, also 16.
Four hundred kilometers further south in the town of Cerro Verde, municipality of San Miguel Huautla, Oaxaca, the remains of Javier Flores López arrived hours later to be mourned in a small town chapel where his mother, brothers, wife and Other family.
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Flores López, who lived in Ohio and worked in a construction company with other relatives, returned to Mexico to visit his wife and children and was killed when he tried to return to the United States in June.
Similar scenes were repeated in other parts of Mexico, where 23 Mexicans have already arrived, victims of the worst event linked to migrant smuggling that has taken place in US territory.
Mexico’s armed forces have already made three flights from San Antonio, the most recent carrying seven bodies arriving on Thursday afternoon. As reported by the Foreign Ministry in a statement, one more is scheduled for Friday with which the repatriation of 25 of the 26 Mexicans who died in Texas at the request of their families will be completed.
In the tragedy, 21 Guatemalans and six Hondurans also lost their lives, whose transfer to their countries is also expected to be soon.
Several were teenagers, like the Olivares cousins, who will be buried on Friday. His farewell brought together hundreds of people from that area of the Veracruz mountains because the young people played in a local soccer team and were well known.
“I can’t accept it,” whispered Yolanda Valencia, the mother of the two brothers, as she waited for the coffins to arrive. The woman, almost without strength, assured, however, that they had to “give their heart” to life, “try to fight so that the dreams they had come true… How? I don’t know,” she stated.
His children wanted to build a house and set up a shoe store in this town of around 1,500 inhabitants, which is usually covered by mist and where shoemaking is traditional. “They left with many goals that they did not achieve,” added the mother.
The migrants were found June 27 suffocated and dehydrated inside an unventilated trailer outside San Antonio.
The truck was carrying a total of 73 people, humble men and women who paid traffickers thousands of dollars to enter the United States illegally, where they aspired to a better life.
So far, US authorities have reported the arrest of four people: the driver, a US national, and three other men. Prosecutors said two of the suspects, including the driver, face charges that could carry life in prison or the death penalty if convicted.
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