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BY SONIA PEREZ D./AP
The body of the Guatemalan boy Pascual Melvin Guachiac Sipac, one of the 53 migrants who suffocated to death in San Antonio after traveling in a trailer without air and at high temperatures, arrived in his community this Friday after being repatriated.
Relatives, friends and neighbors began the funerals of the 13-year-old minor, the first to be repatriated of 21 Guatemalans who died in the Texas tragedy, the worst linked to migrant smuggling in the United States.
In a small caravan of vehicles, some of them adorned with black balloons, the gray coffin with the body of Pascual Melvin arrived in his community, where friends and neighbors cried when they saw it. He had left his home in search of emigrating to the North American country.
Jaime and Sebastián, like 155 thousand Guatemalans were looking for the “American dream”👉 [https://t.co/kAX8ffLHXE] pic.twitter.com/DSMVpidQi6
– La Hora Newspaper (@lahoragt) July 16, 2022
Upon arriving in the community of Tzucubal, in the municipality of Nahualá in the department of Sololá and some 150 kilometers from the Guatemalan capital, the minor received honors from local authorities at the local mixed rural school, adorned with white balloons and black bows, where thousands of people accompanied his family in a last goodbye.
Twenty-six Mexicans and six Hondurans also died in the tragedy. The remains of all the Mexicans whose families requested repatriation — 25 in total — are already in Mexico, after the last two bodies arrived on Thursday. The repatriation of the Hondurans is still pending, but is expected shortly
Casimiro Guachiac, father of Pascual Melvin, told the AP that losing his son has been very painful.
“I only have two children and he was my first child. We don’t think about this. Right now we come to receive him in a box, dead like that; it is very painful for me. I know that God has a plan as to why he took my son from me like that,” he said.
The father recalled that he gave his son basic studies, but the minor told him not to spend his money, that he was going to make a living for himself.
“I’d better go study there,” he remembers him saying.
Guachiac Sipac was an indigenous Quiche boy who spoke little Spanish, and together with his best friend and cousin Wilmer Tulul, the same age and who died with him, they played soccer. Both planned to emigrate to the United States together in search of a better life for themselves and their families.
The cousins, originally from this indigenous community that lives from agriculture, were trying to get to Houston to study and look for work, fleeing poverty.
On June 27, US authorities were alerted to the discovery of a trailer parked on a dirt road in San Antonio that had deceased people inside. At the scene, 46 dead migrants were located, while another seven died in hospitals in the area.
The truck was carrying a total of 73 people, low-income men and women who paid thousands of dollars to smugglers 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.
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