Families of massacred migrants couldn’t pay ransom
REYNOSA, Mexico—Their families pleaded with them not to leave, fearful of the growing danger that faces migrants trekking through Mexican territory where brutal drug gangs hold sway.
But the young migrants from across Latin America insisted on going. They met their ends together, among 72 migrants massacred just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the U.S. border.
Pieces of the migrants’ lives—and the story of their terrible fate—are slowly emerging as investigators painstakingly work to identify the bodies, which were discovered bound, blindfolded and lying in a row after what appears to be Mexico’s worst drug-cartel massacre.
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Among those 72 were three Guatemala relatives, a 17-year-old boy and his two brothers-in-law in their 20s.
The three set off Aug. 9 from Agua Caliente, a farming village where people with relatives in the U.S. are easy to spot. They are the ones who have used money sent from abroad to replace their adobe homes with modern structures.
Manuel Boch said his son, the 17-year-old, longed for one of those homes. The teenager ignored his father’s pleas to accept life as it is in Guatemala.
“They left because of the situation in Guatemala. There is no work. I told him he could do well enough to eat here, but he didn’t want to live in poverty,” Boch said.
Boch got no news of his son until Aug. 16 when unknown callers demanded a $1,000 ransom. Relatives of the two older migrants received the same call. None could afford to pay.
The families first heard of the massacre on television. Cesar Augusto Morales, father of one of the two older migrants, said his wife was sure her son was among the dead.
“I refused to sense the truth, but the heart of a mother doesn’t lie,” Morales said.