On Thursday, residents of Nahuala, Guatemala, mourned 14-year-old Wilmer Tulul and 13-year-old Melvin Guachiac. The two cousins had left their home with the dream of learning English and reuniting with their family, but they died in the deadliest human trafficking tragedy ever recorded in the United States.
At least 53 people lost their lives in this evidence.
Home to an indigenous Quiche community, Nahuala is a town where little Spanish is spoken and where many migrants have left. Some sent back funds that enabled a few families to build high-end homes. Yet most families in Nahuala earn their living by growing maize and beans on small plots of land.
“My grandson said he had a dream,” said Pascuala Sipac, Wilmer’s grandmother, speaking in Quiche through a translator. “He made the trip but (the dream) never arrived”.
Family members confirmed the deaths of Wilmer and Melvin after seeing photos sent from a San Antonio morgue. Both families honored the boys with modest shrines outside their homes, displaying pictures of the youngsters alongside bright flowers.
Wilmer left Nahuala at dawn on June 14 for Houston, where his older brother migrated last year. The family said it took a loan to pay a smuggler 35,000 quetzales ($4,500) and that his brother had to pay more after Wilmer arrived.
At 3 a.m. Thursday, the family members left in two vans, bringing official documents for a several-hour drive to Guatemala City to help identify the boys.
Like other families across Central America and Mexico, they want to come to terms with the sudden loss of loved ones left for dead in a truck on the threshold of a new life across the US border.
Hundreds of miles away, in the small eastern Mexican town of Atexquilapan, Teofilo and Yolanda Olivares are hoping to get information about their sons Jair, 19, and Giovanni, 16, whom they have heard from last seen on Monday morning when they messaged that they were waiting to be picked up and taken to San Antonio.
The parents are convinced that their sons were in the truck, as well as their cousin, Misael, 16. But the authorities have not yet told them, they said.
“It’s very hard for me to think about everything they went through,” Yolanda said. “It consumes me inside not knowing about them.”
Teofilo said his sons left Atexquilapan on June 21, following other cousins who migrated eight months ago. The boys crossed the Rio Grande on Friday.
“They had dreams for the future… They intended to open a business,” said Teofilo, a shoemaker.
Hermelina Monterde, Misael’s mother, said her son had the ambition to go beyond the family’s tradition of shoemaking.
“He saw the work we do, where we’re sitting all the time, constantly sitting, and it hurts our backs. He said, ‘I want to go (to the United States) to work and support you all’ “, she said.
Teofilo said the family agreed to pay a smuggler 200,000 pesos ($10,000) to have each of his sons taken to the United States and that he had to pawn his house to make the payment.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said.
The family is asking the American authorities to grant them humanitarian visas so that they can find their sons.
“I don’t want a visa to go to work or visit, I want a visa to go see my sons, who I hope are here,” Teofilo said, fighting back tears.