(Tuxtla Gutiérrez) At the morgue in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, capital of Mexican Chiapas, relatives of the 55 people killed in a truck accident that smuggled migrants, flocked from neighboring Guatemala on Saturday, inconsolable.
“We never thought that it was them, relatives began to send us information saying that they were in this vehicle”, tells AFP Santos Gomez, 60, an employee who lost his son Leonel in the ‘accident.
When the forensic services confirmed to him that Leonel was there, he burst into tears.
A nephew of Mr. Gómez is also among the hundred injured in the accident.
Some 160 migrants, mostly undocumented from Central America, were traveling hidden and crammed into a truck trailer on Thursday en route to northern Mexico, presumably towards the US border, when the vehicle overturned on Thursday. on the highway near Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas, bordering Guatemala.
Leonel, a mechanic, 37, had left his hometown of Malacatan six days before, in southwest Guatemala, to try to go to the United States, despite opposition from his family and his wife.
PHOTO GABRIELA COUTINO, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
At the morgue, his father is accompanied by his stepdaughter Jesenia Flores. She lost the father of their two daughters aged 9 and 13, now the orphan of a man who left like other migrants “to seek the American dream to give the best to his daughters and his family”, laments. she, in tears.
Gerardo Cifuentes is also preparing for the worst when he arrives at the morgue looking for his cousin Cecilio Federico, also from Malacatán, after having sought him at the hospital.
“We have hope that he is alive,” sighs Mr. Cifuentes.
The Mexican and Guatemalan authorities have announced that they will facilitate the repatriation of the bodies without specifying when.
The accident left 55 dead and 105 injured, mostly from Guatemala but also from Honduras, Mexico, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, according to the authorities.
The crashed truck, presumably over speeding, crashed into a pedestrian bridge on a bend. He overturned, smashing the trailer where the migrants were piling up.
A traditional passageway, Mexico is faced this year with record arrivals of migrants, coming not only from Honduras and El Salvador, but also from Haiti.
Bordering Guatemala, Chiapas is the main crossing point for undocumented migrants, transported in trucks to the north by smugglers in appalling conditions.
On Friday, the governments of Guatemala, Ecuador, the United States, Honduras, Mexico and the Dominican Republic announced the formation of an “immediate action group to arrest and prosecute the traffickers responsible for the tragedy”.
This year, 821 migrants died crossing Central America or North America, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Deaths are mainly due to road accidents (162) but also to lack of food, water and shelter (142) and to drownings (108).