Guatemala’s president calls for justice after 19 charred bodies were found near the US-Mexico border in January.
Families of some of the 16 Guatemalan migrants kill near the border between Mexico and the United States, at the end of January, began to bury their remains on Saturday in the town of Comitancillo, where 11 of the victims were from.
The charred bodies of the victims arrived in the area near Guatemala’s border with Mexico on Friday evening after being sent to the other side of Mexico, Reynosa, just across the US border from Texas.
“No more. No more violence against migrants,” Reverend Mario Aguilon Cardona said during services for mourners at the city’s football stadium.
Ricardo Garcia said his daughter Santa Cristina Garcia, 20, had gone north to earn money for surgery for her younger sister. His remains returned on Friday in a coffin.
“She sacrificed herself for others. She was a nice girl, ”Garcia said.
The Guatemalan government has declared three days of mourning.
The bodies, along with three others, were found crammed into a charred van in Camargo, across the Rio Grande from Texas, in an area bloodied for years by turf battles between the remnants of the Gulf Cartel. and the old one. Zetas Cartel.
A dozen police officers from Tamaulipas state stopped in connection with the murders.
Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said on Friday that his government remains in contact with Mexican authorities to ensure that “those responsible for such a deplorable act” are punished.
He said the crime had to be solved so that nothing like this would happen again.
People attend the Rubesly Tomas Isidro suite in the village of Las Flores in Comitancillo, Guatemala on March 13 [Johan Ordonez/AFP]
Relatives of the dead first sounded the alarm that something horrible had happened in Camargo.
Because the bodies had been burned, it took weeks for positive identifications through DNA samples, but families in Guatemala had already started to cry.
The families suddenly lost communication with loved ones around January 21 and believed they were near the area where Mexican authorities made the gruesome discovery.
Giammattei confirmed this month that five Guatemalans survived the attack and are under protection in the United States.
