A 12-year-old who gave birth to a baby boy in México state last Wednesday will receive medical
health and wellness assistance as well as a 2,500-pesos-per-month stipend
gave birth uneventfully after eight months of pregnancy
said Tecámac Mayor Mariela Gutiérrez Escalante
who posted news of the birth on her social media accounts
The father of the baby is also a minor — aged only 15
The new family will live together with his mother
the woman has expressed willingness to take care of the couple and her new grandchild
The young mother assured the DIF family services agency that she also has the support of her own family
“We haven’t been abandoned,” the young mother reportedly told the social workers
“[The father and I] are living together by our own decision
and we remain in contact with our families.”
The mayor said that besides the financial support and periodic follow-ups with the couple to check on their living conditions
mother and baby would also be offered free health services by the DIF
Gutiérrez had publicized the birth to promote a new government social welfare program for minors in the state that has to date registered 70,000 children in order to document their physical and emotional health
a program which she said could avoid more cases like the one she was highlighting
Gutiérrez said the 9,276 children the program has identified are in need of medical
psychological or nutritional attention and will begin to receive it in March
Source: Milenio (sp)
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A Deadly PassageMore than two years after the worst immigration-related disaster in American history
smugglers involved in the deaths of 53 migrants are set to stand trial
We spent weeks reporting in Latin America and discovered that for the families of the victims
the tragedy isn’t enough to deter their own journey north
Law enforcement investigating the tractor trailer in San Antonio on June 27
2022.Jordan Vonderhaar/GettyMaría Victoria Velasco Jiménez buys votive candles by the case
she has kept one lit on a shelf above the microwave and mini fridge in the apartment she shares with her daughter
a hilltop colonia on the southeastern edge of Mexico City
The streetlights outside the apartment paint the blocky buildings in a yellow glow
Stormwater courses down the center of the unpaved and rubble-strewn street
Millions of lights blanket the ancient lake bed below
rippling out across the hills that surround the capital
the concrete walls of María Victoria’s tiny apartment are cold and austere
The candle burns in a juice glass in front of a framed photo of her son
The portrait shares the shelf with vases of artificial flowers
and a one-foot-tall ceramic Jesus draped with rosaries
Wearing a white T-shirt and sporting a fresh buzz cut
Marcos Antonio looks down from a blue sky filled with puffy clouds and soaring white doves
He has his mother’s high and wide cheekbones
which is how old he was when the photo was taken
encouraged by his friends to echarle ganas—to go for it
María Victoria rode with Marcos Antonio to the bus depot on the day of his midnight departure in June 2022
and María Victoria had entrusted her son’s safety to a pair of older men from San Miguel Huautla—her hometown in Oaxaca—who had made arrangements with the same coyote and promised to look after Marcos Antonio on the journey north
“My son was going to go and work so that he could buy a house
Her long black hair is pulled back in a ponytail
she wears a bracelet with glass evil-eye beads
“How could I have imagined that he would come home dead?”
Marcos Antonio was among 53 people from Mexico
and Honduras who died in San Antonio in what has often been described as the worst immigration-related disaster in U.S
The migrants had made their way to the border via dozens of routes
others as short and uncomplicated as a full-day bus ride
They had waded the Rio Grande in small groups
many of them getting caught and turned back by Border Patrol agents more than once before finally crossing undetected to the U.S
where they were herded into a stash house in Laredo
That’s where as many as 66 of them climbed into the back of a refrigerator trailer early in the afternoon of June 27
to make the last leg of a trip that had cost their families between about $7,500 and $15,000 each
That fee included passage beyond the one-hundred-mile zone that stretches into the U.S
where federal Border Patrol officers operate checkpoints and patrol small towns and back roads in their signature green-and-white trucks
Border Patrol agents are supported by an arsenal of technology
including towers and aerostatic balloons equipped with infrared and high-resolution surveillance cameras
and ground sensors that can detect foot traffic
What this means for many migrants is that crossing the river is only the first step in a marathon of evasion—once they’re on the U.S
where the tractor trailer was discovered in San Antonio.Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/GettyWhen Marcos Antonio and the others watched the doors of the trailer swing closed and heard the latches slam home
they could not have known that the trailer’s refrigeration system was broken
Temperatures soared above 100 degrees that day
at about six that evening—abandoned beside the Union Pacific Railroad tracks on Quintana Road
which runs parallel to Interstate 35 in an industrial area of south San Antonio—48 of the passengers were dead from heat-related injuries
Five more would die at area hospitals in the days that followed
one of the two men who had assured María Victoria that he would keep an eye on her son
The disaster briefly dominated the news cycle
But the Quintana Road incident was only the latest and most terrible in a series of similar events
In 2003 authorities discovered seventy people trapped inside a semitrailer in the South Texas town of Victoria
In 2017 a Walmart employee in San Antonio called the police to report a suspicious semi in the store’s parking lot
Thirty-nine migrants were inside the trailer
Customs and Border Protection suggests that trucking is becoming a more prominent mode of human smuggling
where the Quintana Road victims first boarded that faulty trailer
has the highest volume of truck crossings of any land port in the U.S.—about 2.7 million each year
Seven people have been arrested and charged in the U.S
for the deaths of the Quintana Road victims
The remaining two are scheduled to go to trial in March before a federal judge in San Antonio
The inner workings of their smuggling network will be revealed to the public during that trial
much about the victims and their families has gone unreported
A memorial for the victims of the Quintana Road incident in San Antonio
I spent three weeks searching for relatives of the Quintana Road victims
I met with sixteen families spread out across the migration routes that link Central America to the U.S
from the mountain villages of western Guatemala to diverse regions of Mexico—the tropical lowlands of Oaxaca
and the industrial sprawl of Ciudad Juárez
I found the names of the dead and their hometowns in publicly available government documents
I identified the names of the victims’ family members in Facebook posts or in local media reports
I was able to get in touch with a few of them ahead of time
but locating the families was mostly a matter of traveling to wherever the bodies had been repatriated and asking around
saying they were fearful of drawing attention from smugglers and criminal gangs or that they were exhausted and saw no point in reopening old wounds
But others welcomed me into their homes and refused to let me leave without offering a snack or a home-cooked meal—tamalitos
I spent dozens of hours talking with spouses
all of whom shared migration stories spanning generations
I wanted to understand the forces that had driven their loved ones and millions like them to undertake the journey to the U.S
I wanted to weigh the enormity of the catastrophe from the perspective of the people who had seen their hopes of a better life destroyed by an act of carelessness
Those who died along with Marcos Antonio left behind families that must contend with the ravages of grief and the social and financial fallout of losing a breadwinner
Many of the families drained their savings or took out loans to finance their relative’s journey
Others put up agricultural plots that they rely on for subsistence
All of them will endure hardships for years to come
The Quintana Road tragedy was decades in the making
and the stories that follow are but a small sample from the aftermath
Arlet Velasco Velasco and María Victoria Velasco Jiménez
in their small shared apartment.Stubble left over in a cornfield in San Miguel Huautla
where climate change has disrupted the planting season.An ox and horse on a road above San Miguel Huautla.Marcos Antonio Velasco VelascoAge 18
Long before María Victoria accompanied her son to the local bus depot so that he could begin his journey north—long before she built a shrine to him in her apartment—she set off on her own migration in search of a better life
She’d grown up in a Mixtec family in San Miguel Huautla
in the dry and rocky hill country of northwestern Oaxaca
one of nine siblings who all eventually left the village to make a life somewhere else
Her father had scratched out an existence by growing beans
and crafting ox yokes out of wood and leather to sell at a local market
Her mother’s days were filled with caring for children
sometimes there wasn’t,” María Victoria said of her childhood
in their small shared apartment.At fifteen
she left for Mexico City to work as a domestic servant
she crouched low in her seat every time the bus approached an overpass
“That’s what it’s like for someone from the pueblo
That’s ignorance.” It was night when she arrived
She had never seen so many cars or so much darkness lit up by so many electric lights
she received a pink uniform and cooked and cared for the two young daughters of a working mother in the north of the city
“It’s hard at first when you leave home,” she said
she met a man at a dance during a visit back to her hometown who was also working in Mexico City at the time
They became a couple and rented a house together in a colonia outside the capital
Marcos Antonio was a gregarious child who knew everyone in the colonia and was always looking for work
María Victoria remembers the day he helped a neighbor carry some boxes and came home with his first earnings
I already bought my own drink!’” When he was about sixteen
Marcos Antonio got a job butchering chickens and was proud to help support his mother
He’d become violent toward her and the children
María Victoria struggled to make ends meet
a brother-in-law called to tell her that he had an opportunity for her al otro lado—on the other side of the border
and that all she had to do was get to Nuevo Laredo
the Mexican border city across from Laredo
She didn’t know what the job was or even what city it was in
But she decided she had no choice but to go
Stubble left over in a cornfield in San Miguel Huautla
where climate change has disrupted the planting season.When she told Marcos Antonio
“I’ll go.” He promised to build her a house in Oaxaca near her mother and to pay for Arlet’s school
María Victoria was comforted to know he’d be traveling with two family friends
Marcos Antonio sent regular updates during the roughly twenty-hour bus ride to Nuevo Laredo
telling María Victoria how much fun he was having
The last time she heard from him was June 23
“I’ll call you once we’re on the other side,” he said
María Victoria was out shopping when a black butterfly flew three circles around her
The next morning she woke up nauseated and felt sick with worry
her sister—the one whose husband had arranged the trip—called her about the tragedy in San Antonio
“I started going crazy,” María Victoria recalled
She was summoned to a government office in Mexico City
where she looked at photographs of Marcos Antonio’s corpse to confirm his identity
She decided to have his remains returned to her home village
she dragged herself as if sleepwalking through the burial in the village cemetery
which sits on a high clearing overlooking the surrounding rocky hills
The grave marker she chose for him is shaped like a chapel
María Victoria placed a copy of the same photo that sits by the candle in her apartment
An ox and horse on a road above San Miguel Huautla.For a month and a half afterward
Her monthly expenses amount only to about $200
but even that is tough to cover on her part-time income as a maid
The threat of being forced out into the street is a constant concern
the cooking gas ran out and I had to buy more
so there wasn’t enough money for anything else,” she told me when I visited last summer
share a single cement-block room and live more like sisters than mother and daughter
preferring instead to cook Oaxacan dishes on a comal that sits next to a dinette at one end of the room
Most of the space is taken up by their two twin beds
separated by a tall dresser and piled high with stuffed animals—Scooby-Doo
But the absence of a brother and a son still lingers
“All of the days since he died have been sad,” María Victoria said
he would have made more in three days—around $240 at $10 an hour—than his mother earns in a month
She imagines the day that he would have come home to her
how he would have kissed her on the forehead
or he comes to me in my sleep,” María Victoria said
“He comes to tell me that everything is all right.”
Daniel Delfín Marroquín and Reina Florentina Coronado.Aracely's sisters and sister-in-law at their home near the town of Comitancillo in Guatemala’s western highlands.Reina cooking in her home.Aracely's nephew outside her family's home.Aracely Marroquín CoronadoAge 21
near the town of Comitancillo in Guatemala’s western highlands
the maize is so tall in July that it swallows her family’s house whole
Towering stalks are a source of pride in the highlands
where Indigenous farmers grow the same varieties their ancestors have cultivated for centuries
though the leaves on many of the plants are now streaked with yellow and brown—signs of stress from yet another season of drought
which has become more common and severe in recent years because of climate change
Daniel Delfín Marroquín and Reina Florentina Coronado.Aracely shared a dirt-floored room with her seven siblings
in an adobe home with no running water perched on a muddy hillside
her book bag and her long braid bouncing on her back
Aracely would have seen smoke from her mother’s wood-fired kitchen rising from the bottomless green of the maize
Aracely loved school and was a star student
Reina Florentina Coronado and Daniel Delfín Marroquín
but they have prioritized education for their children
primary and secondary education are free in Guatemala
but costs for mandatory uniforms and school supplies are prohibitive for many
only about one in three kids make it to high school
and she begged her mom and dad to keep her enrolled
so that you don’t have to keep working,” she promised
Reina cooking in her home.Aracely's nephew outside her family's home.Reina and Daniel raised pigs on scraps and corn silage to sell at a local market to bring in what little money they had
Much of their food they grew for themselves
“It was our dream for her too,” Reina said
Aracely was about fifteen when she decided to become a teacher
According to the Guatemalan news outlet Prensa Libre
no new permanent teacher posts were created from 2013 to 2024
as many considered them a pathway to a middle-class life
Aracely gave up the search and left home to work as a maid in San Marcos
But she didn’t give up on her dream of taking care of her family
she asked Reina and Daniel to help pay her way to the U.S.
where she hoped to join her older sister in Worthington
home to a meatpacking plant that in 2006 was the target of one of the largest immigration raids in U.S
Aracely's sisters and sister-in-law at their home near the town of Comitancillo in Guatemala’s western highlands.“I don’t have a husband or a family,” she told them
and I’ll earn much more over there.” Reina and Daniel agreed to pay the first installment of her coyote fee
taking out a mortgage for about $10,000 on their property from a local bank
which they’re still struggling to pay back
Aracely was accompanied by two other women from their small town: Blanca Elizabeth Ramírez Crisóstomo
Now a mural with their names and a symbolic depiction of their journey north covers a wall in the center of town
Reina and Daniel say they will never again help one of their children travel north
“I’ve had enough sadness and sorrow,” Reina said
A busy highway cuts through the northern part of the State of Mexico
Parents and siblings of Gustavo Daniel Santillán Santillán.A memorial to Gustavo at the local cemetery.Gustavo’s parents Micaela Santillán Soto and Daniel Santillán Trejo working the counter at Miscelanea Alma.Micaela showing the wallet returned to her with Gustavo's remains.Gustavo’s son
Rafa.Gustavo Daniel Santillán SantillánAge 27
Miscelanea Alma—or Alma’s Corner Store—sits across from a muddy lot where rebar sprouts from columns of half-finished houses
It’s a one-story building made of concrete blocks
painted white and trimmed in Coca-Cola red
located near a major highway and a Pemex gas station at the southern end of Santa María Ajoloapan
The store’s sliding glass doors tempt passersby with views of floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with chips and refrigerators stocked with soft drinks
There’s another store just like it on the same block
and countless others like it throughout rural Mexico
where local merchants are holding out against supermarket chains
Parents and siblings of Gustavo Daniel Santillán Santillán.Micaela Santillán Soto is one of those merchants
she’s short and round and tends the shop’s counter with her thin eyebrows fixed in the gaze of a shrewd trader
Miscelanea Alma is much more than a business for Micaela—it’s her family’s financial anchor and the realization of a lifelong dream
It’s also what allowed her to help her son
wanted to pay a coyote about $7,500 to smuggle him across the U.S
because she knew the migration route had grown much more dangerous in the years since her husband had made the journey north in 2001
There was the threat of cartel violence and the prospect of drowning in the Rio Grande
increases in Border Patrol funding have consistently been linked to increases in migrant deaths
there is no clear evidence that the intensifying militarization of the U.S
side of the border since the mid-nineties has significantly reduced the number of undocumented people who make it into the U.S
or had any durable effect on the number who try
the border-security apparatus only pushes migrants to take bigger risks
This will almost certainly remain true despite Donald Trump’s promise to close the border
simply cannot place enough officers along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border to intercept every migrant
employers continue to offer much higher wages than laborers can earn south of the border
people will continue to risk their lives to work here
Micaela agreed to front Gustavo about $2,600
enough for him to get to the border and pay the first part of his coyote fee
agreed to loan Gustavo the rest upon his arrival
Everything is very expensive and the salaries are very
In 2022 the average monthly salary in the State of Mexico
and then come back.” Her brothers had done it
A memorial to Gustavo at the local cemetery.Daniel is shy and soft-spoken
he was relaxing on a love seat covered with a pink-and-brown striped blanket in the living room of their home
which is connected to Micaela’s store by a passage through the stock room
The purple-painted walls were adorned with graduation and wedding photos
a hand-carved crucifix that Gustavo had given Micaela
whose hair was pinned up with a plastic panda hairclip
“She keeps the whole family together.” Their daughter Alma
Gustavo’s older sister and the shop’s namesake
Daniel said it was hard on six-year-old Gustavo when he went north in 2001
Daniel had been working at a rebar plant and could never seem to earn enough to move Micaela and their growing family into their own home
“We said that if we wanted something better
“I remember when Gustavo found out I was going to the United States
Daniel spent three years in Atlanta working at restaurants
cleaning and washing dishes for $8 an hour
he was able to build their home and the corner store for Micaela
but the years away from his family took a toll
Daniel decided he would do whatever it took to never have to leave his family again
going north had suddenly become an obsession
He had two kids to take care of and had just gone through a bad breakup with one of their mothers
desperate to get on sound financial footing
he took a 23-hour bus ride to Ciudad Acuña
The first two times Gustavo attempted to cross the Rio Grande
he got caught and was turned back by Border Patrol
“Why don’t you just come home?” Micaela pleaded with him over the phone
Gustavo’s parents Micaela Santillán Soto and Daniel Santillán Trejo working the counter at Miscelanea Alma.Gustavo’s son
Rafa.On June 27 he called Micaela from the stash house in Laredo
It was between one and two in the afternoon
a trailer just showed up,” Gustavo told her
“I thought they were going to put us in the bed of a truck
Micaela tried to persuade him not to get in the trailer
but she could hear the coyote in the background telling him it was safe
that they’d be in San Antonio in three hours
Those were Gustavo’s last words to his mother
saw the news about the trailer on Quintana Road
anxiously scanning the internet for news of survivors
Alma started calling San Antonio hospitals
Eight days later the family finally received confirmation from the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Gustavo was dead
“My daughters were out there on the patio screaming
just devastated.” The house soon filled with family members and neighbors who came to offer their condolences
Micaela could not make sense of why her son
of all the millions of migrants who travel to and from the U.S.
And there were other questions that tormented her: Why had she given Gustavo that loan
Why hadn’t she tried harder to persuade him to stay
Gustavo’s body was returned to Mexico in a steel coffin
The first thing Micaela did was swap it out for a wooden one
She took some solace in being able to give him a proper funeral
she removed the frayed leather bifold with care
which she said are wrinkled from being submerged in the Rio Grande
She paused briefly to gaze at the photo on Gustavo’s driver’s license—his black hair is combed back
and he has a hint of scruff—before putting everything back in its place and shutting the relic in its tin
Micaela showing the wallet returned to her with Gustavo's remains.Micaela did not allow herself much time to grieve—she had a store to run and a family depending on her
“My business doesn’t allow me to shut myself in here crying.” As time passed
her sadness gave way to anger at the smugglers
She doesn’t blame them for the crime of human smuggling itself—which
is a valuable service that migrants depend on to access the better-paying U.S
It’s the smugglers’ negligence that enrages her
“You have to see to it that the trailer has air-conditioning
that everything is in perfect working order,” she said
“The coyote was in the wrong because he didn’t take care of his merchandise.”
Micaela is not placing her hopes for justice in the American courts
kneading a deflated balloon that he’d filled with flour and decorated with a smiley face
Micaela and Daniel took him in after Gustavo’s death
Surrounded by love in his grandparents’ busy house
Rafa still struggles to cope with the loss of his father
And even though Micaela’s store is successful
he knows that he won’t be able to lean on his grandparents forever
He enjoys taking things apart and putting them back together—“Mostly old telephones,” he said—and he dreams of becoming a mechanic
with Volcán Atitlán rising in the distance
Ana's community in the western highlands of Guatemala.Ana with her two young daughters.A view of Lake Atitlán.Francisco Tepaz SimajAge 23
The tiny Kaqchikel Mayan–speaking community sits at 7,400 feet
high above the volcano-rimmed shores of Lake Atitlán
To get there by car or bus requires an hours-long
bone-rattling ride on rugged roads from one of the market towns to the north
The other way is to take a water taxi from one of the lakeside tourist towns to a village called Tzununa
then hoof it up steep switchbacks for about two hours
which means that many people migrate to elsewhere in Guatemala or to Mexico and the U.S
in her home.For Ana Miguel Miguel—who grew up in a sweltering
lawless town near the Pacific coast—the seclusion of the community also meant safety and something close to salvation
Ana had spent her childhood in a dirt-floored shack with walls made of dried sugarcane stalks and no door
Now she sits in a plastic chair in a concrete-block room with walls painted baby blue
in a house she once shared with her husband
with a round face and a sad but gentle demeanor
She wears a long-sleeved T-shirt with a black-and-red-checked silhouette of Texas embroidered on the front
whispering in her ear and begging to play with her cellphone
Ana didn’t attend a single day of school because her family didn’t have enough money
She was around fifteen when she left home to pick coffee for the first time
Her father—worn out from work on sugarcane and banana plantations—could not meet the family’s needs alone
she traveled to farms throughout the coastal highlands
laboring alongside generations of migrant workers
Ana worked with pregnant women and old people with gnarled fingers and bent backs and small children who picked alongside their parents
Guatemala prohibits children under fourteen from working
but in a country where two-thirds of families survive on less than two dollars a day
putting kids to work can mean the difference between starvation and survival
Department of Labor includes Guatemalan coffee on its list of goods produced by child labor
children have been found working on farms that supply beans to Nespresso and Starbucks
(Nestlé Nespresso issued a statement calling child labor “unacceptable” and pledged to take “immediate action that puts the protection of child welfare first.” Starbucks asserted that they have “zero tolerance for child labor anywhere in our supply chain.” The company is currently being sued by a consumer group for “documented
severe human rights and labor abuses” in Brazil
Ana's community in the western highlands of Guatemala.Ana with her two young daughters.Ana and the other pickers were organized into work parties of a few dozen under the charge of a caporal
she was assigned to a foreman named Francisco
teaching the inexperienced how to pick more efficiently
and he helped his workers shoulder the heavy
but he had already been a foreman for several years
“It was his personality that I liked more than anything.” They kept in touch by phone during the offseason
Ana made sure to get on Francisco’s crew again
She moved into the small house in Chuitzanchaj that Francisco had inherited from his father
and soon Ana gave birth to their first daughter
but she felt embraced by the tight-knit community
the nights are cool and breezy in Chuitzanchaj
There is plenty of firewood in the nearby hills
Compared with the cane and sheet metal neighborhoods of Ana’s childhood home
“People are humble and peaceful here,” she said
Ana decided to quit traveling after María Isabel was born
but Francisco stayed on the migrant circuit
returning home about once a month to spend time with Ana and the girls
He took out a nearly $8,000 loan to buy a parcel of land so that he could grow avocados
She hoped that cultivating the crops would keep Francisco closer to home
Francisco called to tell her that he and a few friends were in Mexico
It was the first Ana had heard of the plan
Francisco was part of a wave of roughly 230,000 Guatemalans who headed to the U.S
a fivefold increase over the course of just two years
equivalent to about 1 in every 75 residents
according to a study published in the academic journal World Development
Migration rates of Guatemalan farmers have more than doubled over the past two decades
partly a result of the devastation wrought by a plague called coffee-leaf rust
Francisco sounded upbeat when he told Ana to go see his father if she needed money before he could start sending wages home
“You’ll see: I’m going to do my best for you,” he told her
A view of Lake Atitlán.In the weeks that followed
Ana’s in-laws did what they could to help her and the girls
Her sister-in-law arranged a fundraiser with a local journalist
who streamed a live video on Facebook and asked for donations
Ana stands on the porch of her home with María Isabel on her hip
She doesn’t recall receiving any money from the effort
Neighbors have occasionally offered what they can
A man from the bank where Francisco took out the $8,000 loan has come by a few times
Francisco had put the house up as collateral
and Ana is worried the bank will force her out
That’s how I manage to take care of my daughters and keep them in school,” she said
The girls’ backpacks hang from nails on the cement wall just inside the front door
one of them decorated with characters from Frozen
“Sometimes I get sick thinking about how I’m going to be able to take care of them,” she said
“Sometimes I get this pain in my stomach.”
Yonathan.Parents and siblings of Juan Wilmer Tulul Tepaz outside their home.Wilmer’s younger brother Eugenio.A statue in the center of Salcajá
memorializes the country’s many migrants.Pascual Melvin Guachiac Sipac & Juan Wilmer Tulul TepazAge 13 & Age 14
GuatemalaPascual Melvin Guachiac Sipac & Juan Wilmer Tulul Tepaz
Casimiro Guachiac Suy was working at a supermarket in the Detroit area when his son Melvin
It was Casimiro’s third stint as an undocumented worker
and it was the best job he’d ever had—his boss paid $13.50 an hour and put him up in an apartment
He’d first traveled north as an eighteen-year-old
unencumbered by the pain of leaving a family behind
“I couldn’t bear the sadness of saying goodbye,” he said
“Leaving your family when you don’t know if you’ll ever come back—it’s extremely painful.”
a village in the forested mountains east of Quezaltenango
Casimiro said that more or less everything that’s new in Tzucubal has been paid for with U.S
a single-story green bungalow that is tucked back from the street
with a shaded porch that shields their clothesline from the rain
In 2022 Guatemalans abroad sent home about $18 billion
some $2.2 billion more than the country’s exports that year
multistory houses with reflective glass windows and high metal fences stand next to more humble dwellings
making it clear which families have someone working up north
those houses and the new pickup trucks parked behind their gates are also powerful symbols of the rewards of migration
His father had been gone less than a year when Melvin started hounding his mother to let him go north
and he pleaded with Melvin by phone to wait a few years
working so that Melvin and Yonathan wouldn’t have to quit school and migrate like he had
But Melvin had become consumed by the idea
were facing a similar dilemma with their fourteen-year-old son
The boys were best friends—“They were more like brothers,” Casimiro said—and had hatched a plan to migrate together
both couples eventually made arrangements with a coyote
Casimiro agreed to pay smugglers around $13,600 upon Melvin’s safe arrival in Houston
Wilmer’s parents made similar arrangements
He had two uncles in Houston who agreed to take him in
Both families agreed to pay extra for what the coyote
a local fixture who went by the nickname El Señor
a package that would guarantee the boys a seat on a vehicle the whole way to Houston—no walking across the desert and no trailers
María hardly slept the night before Melvin’s departure
he was already up and bursting with excitement
“What time does he get here?” he asked María over and over
It was still dark outside when Melvin left home
He carried only a backpack with a bar of soap and a change of clothes
The boys reached the border without incident
regularly updating their worried parents along the way
“This is my last message,” Melvin said in a voicemail
Parents and siblings of Juan Wilmer Tulul Tepaz outside their home.Casimiro had traveled about 1,300 miles from Detroit to Houston
where a friend of his brother held a job at a sushi restaurant and offered him a place to stay
The friend had seen the news about a trailer full of dead migrants on the restaurant television
but you need to look on the internet,” he said
Casimiro called El Señor’s cellphone again and again
The next day Casimiro visited the Guatemalan consulate and gave officials details about Melvin’s appearance
It didn’t take long for them to discover that a child matching Melvin’s description had been found among the dead
One of the officials showed Casimiro photos that cleared any doubt
“I started to cry right there in the consulate,” he said
The consulate helped secure a passport for Casimiro so that he could fly home to be with María
the boys’ remains finally arrived in Tzucubal
walking alongside the coffins through maize fields to the cemetery
A constant stream of visitors filled the courtyards of both homes
and classmates and friends made posters and hung them all over their school
“It hurts to have a person in your heart without being able to hold them in your arms,” one of them read
Today those posters are the only mementos that Casimiro and María have to remember Melvin
They keep the posters in an armoire in the living room of their home
tucked inside of Melvin’s book bag along with his Spanish-English dictionary
Almost every page is filled with notes from his natural sciences class
Melvin had already realized one of Casimiro and María’s dreams for him: that he would go to school and learn to read and write well in Spanish
they sat side by side on plastic chairs in the bedroom of their home
Yonathan still asks where Melvin is and when he’s coming home
“It’s almost like he doesn’t understand my son’s death.”
keeps a drawer full of photos of his deceased brother
said Eugenio often takes the photos out before school
spreading them on the floor and studying them quietly
“He still cries every day for Juan Wilmer,” Magdalena said
The boys slept together in a small space that the family cordoned off from the entryway of their house by hanging a sheet
where he washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant
tending plots of maize with a long-handled hoe
Sometimes his weekly earnings only get them through a handful of days
who had quit school after sixth grade to work alongside his father
he had attempted to soothe his mother’s fears with promises to send money home for food and for the education expenses of Eugenio and their sister
“His dream was to get us out of poverty,” Magdalena said
Eugenio came in from playing soccer in the courtyard with his friends
who sported a small stud in his right ear and wore his hair long and mussed on top like a boy-band star
When I asked if he’s ever thought about traveling north someday
I told Eugenio I would be scared to travel to the border if I were his age
She knows there is little chance she will dissuade him
but she hopes he’ll at least wait until he’s older
Eugenio has promised to wait until his sixteenth birthday
This article originally appeared in the March 2025 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “A Deadly Passage.” Subscribe today.