Parents in Mexico agonize over missing teens, pray they’re not among 53 tractor-trailer victims: “It was his decision and his own dream”

Clutching rosaries, residents of the mountain village of San Marcos Atexquilapan, Mexico stared at pictures of three of their own atop the altar on the native church, praying that youngsters Jair, Yovani and Misael have been not among the 53 migrants who perished inside a stifling trailer in Texas.

The look ahead to affirmation has been agonizing for households from Mexico to Honduras. Now they hope for what earlier than would have been dreaded — seize by the Border Patrol, even hospitalization — something however the solemn finality that has been trickling out household by household throughout the area.

Then once more, at the very least they might know. For now mother and father re-read final messages, swipe by means of images, look ahead to a cellphone name and pray.

Not removed from the church, exterior the Olivares household’s neat two-story properties — every sister’s and their mother and father’ all in a row — a black tarp was hung Thursday to shade the handfuls of people that have come every day to be with the mother and father of teenage brothers Yovani and Jair Valencia Olivares and the mom and father of their cousin, 16-year-old Misael Olivares Monterde.

Such a masking is customary for wakes, when the household house can’t accommodate all those that come to pay their respects. But in this case it’s a vigil the place residents of the city of three,000 come to buoy the household’s spirits, praying and swapping tales in regards to the boys.

Teófilo Valencia, father of 19-year-old Jair and 16-year-old Yovani sat taking a look at his cellphone, studying the final messages he obtained from them.

“Dad, now we’re going to San Antonio,” Yovani wrote at 11:16 a.m. Monday. A half-hour later, his brother wrote to their father that they have been able to work onerous and pay for every little thing.

Hours later got here the horrific discovery of the semitrailer deserted beside railroad tracks on the outskirts of that south Texas metropolis.

The cousins had left collectively June 21. Yolanda Olivares Ruiz, the brothers’ mom, tucked Yovani’s faculty certificates in his pockets as identification and stuffed three modifications of garments for every in backpacks, together with cellphone numbers of relations in the U.S. and Mexico.

Hermelinda Monterde Jiménez spent the evening earlier than their departure speaking along with her son Misael. “He told me, ´’Mom, wake me up,’ and for a moment I thought about not doing it so he wouldn’t go,” she stated. “But it was his decision and his own dream.”

Their mother and father took out loans, utilizing their properties as collateral to cowl the $10,000 smuggling price for every cousin. They paid a portion up entrance and have been scheduled to pay the remaining after the boys arrived safely.

The youths needed to work, save up cash and return to open their own clothes and shoe retailer. They gave themselves 4 years.

By final Friday, June 24, they have been in Laredo, Texas.

They instructed their mother and father that after the weekend they might be taken to their vacation spot in Austin, the place a cousin who had made the journey simply months earlier awaited. In the previous week, 20 some residents have departed the city for the United States.

The household did not hear of the ill-fated trailer till Tuesday. They tried to succeed in the boys, however the messages and calls did not undergo. They went that very same day to authorities places of work, offering no matter information might assist in the search.

On Wednesday, Mexico’s consul in San Antonio confirmed that residents of the Gulf coast state of Veracruz – in which San Marcos is positioned – have been among the 27 Mexican victims. On Thursday, state attorneys traveled to San Antonio to help in identifications.

(*53*), the Olivares wait and pray.

The wait ended Thursday for the household of Jazmín Nayarith Bueso Núñez in El Progreso, Honduras. Their prayers for her secure return have been not answered. She was confirmed as being among the useless in San Antonio.

Bueso Núñez suffered from lupus, an immunological illness, that had value her a job in an meeting plant and whose remedies have been very expensive, her household stated.

A household buddy had supplied to assist her journey to the United States, the place she hoped to seek out better-paying work to assist assist the 15-year-old son she left along with her mother and father and to seek out therapy for her illness.

Before leaving June 3, the 37-year-old instructed her father she supposed emigrate.

“Dad, I’ve come to say goodbye,” José Santos Bueso stated she instructed him on their final go to. “I’m going north.”

He tried to speak her out of it, noting the hazards. “No, Dad, this is a special trip,” she instructed him. “‘I was there, daughter,’ I tell her. ‘There are no special trips.'” The solely particular journey was to journey by airplane with a visa, he instructed her.

“The smuggler is making $15,000. He says he’s going to take me without worries,” she instructed him.

She was in Laredo after they final spoke. She instructed him the smugglers have been going to take their telephones earlier than happening, so she would not be capable to talk for a time.

On Thursday, a relative in the United States who had been serving to the household present identification paperwork to authorities instructed them the unhappy fact, stated her brother Erick Josué Rodríguez.

“The economic situation, the social situation that exists in our country is very, very difficult,” Rodríguez stated. “It is the reason that we see day after day, month after month caravans, migrants. It’s because people have dreams and don’t have opportunities.”

Back in San Marcos Atexquilapan, Mexico, sisters Hermelinda and Yolanda walked late Thursday from their properties to the church carrying pictures of their sons. They have been flanked by girls bearing candles.

Inside, the moms sat in the primary row whereas the priest requested these gathered to pray.

“It is not that they are criminals,” he stated. “They went in search of their daily bread.”

The townspeople prayed: “We ask you for these boys to have the dream of a better life, give them that consolation, that relief wherever they are, Lord, that answers are given because these families are suffering, they have an anguished heart.”