The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry announced that 16 Guatemalans have been identified among the 53 deceased migrants after being abandoned last week in a trailer in the southern United States.
Guatemalan authorities had reported at least eight of its citizens killed in the June 27 episode, in which migrants from Mexico and Honduras also lost their lives.
“An Update on Recognition through fingerprints has allowed the Consular Network in the United States to make official the death of 16 Guatemalans by the unfortunate case of the abandoned truck in San Antonio, Texas”, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Minex) of Guatemala said in a statement.
Of the 16 identified, four are women and 12 men, among them the indigenous adolescents Melvin Guachiac (13) and Wilmer Tulul (14), Originally from the Tzucubal village in the municipality of Nahualá, western Guatemala.
The Minex added that They are working on the identification of four other presumably Guatemalan people, which could raise the number of Guatemalan migrants killed in the tragedy to 20. Of those rescued alive, four Guatemalans were discharged from hospitals and are in the process of being reunited with their families; three remain hospitalized, two of them in “critical” condition, the statement added.
Specialists estimate that inside the trailer the temperature could reach 65ºC in an area of Texas where the sun beats down furiously. Every year, thousands of Central Americans try to reach the United States irregularly in search of a job, fleeing poverty and violence in their countries, and an economic crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.