Mexico City— The tranquility of the agricultural town of Tehuacán, in central Mexico, was disturbed this week by devastating news. One of its young inhabitants, Yecenia Lazcano Soriano, was identified among the eight bodies rescued from the sinking of two boats that occurred last weekend off the coast of San Diego, in one of the maritime incidents of human trafficking with the most registered victims. in United States.

Lazcano Soriano was a 22-year-old single mother who dreamed of having her own home and business in Tehuacán, Puebla state. Pursuing her dreams, the young woman, from a poor background who worked selling fruits and vegetables in a local market, decided, without telling almost anyone, to risk her life on a journey by land and sea to reach the United States, just as they do thousands of migrants each month, many of them Mexican.

The Border Patrol made 128,877 migrant apprehensions on the border with Mexico during February, slightly less than the number reported in the previous month.

She left her four-year-old daughter behind in the care of two of her aunts and her 72-year-old grandmother to seek a better economic future that she could not find in Tehuacán, a town of some 300,000 inhabitants where most of them live by growing corn and flowers. .

Another aunt, Wendy Valencia, lived with her in the same house until she came to Dallas six years ago. At just 15 years old, Lazcano Soriano went to live with a man with whom she had a girl. Shortly after the little girl was born, her husband was kidnapped and joined the list of more than 112,000 disappeared, in an expression of the violence that is bleeding Mexico dry.

“She was not afraid of work, she was a warrior, a very fighting woman,” Valencia said in a telephone interview from her home in Dallas. Lazcano Soriano had a brother who lives in Texas and two sisters who reside in Mexico.

“Her goal was to give her daughter a better future, a dignified house,” said the aunt when talking about the temper of her niece who never gave in after the loss of her partner.

Valencia said that she did not know that her niece had decided to embark on the dangerous journey and added that a year ago, when the young woman told her that she would like to go to the United States, she replied that she was afraid something would happen to her and the girl would be left behind. orphan.

Lazcano Soriano left his house almost in silence. He only shared his plans with a sister and one of his aunts, Valencia said. In the middle of last week, Lazcano Soriano sent a heart emoji to Valencia to greet her via text message, but she didn’t tell him anything about her trip. At that time, she could be at the border, the aunt commented. She never reached her destination.

In addition to Lazcano Soriano, the bodies of Alma Figueroa Gorgoria, who would turn 18 next week, and her aunt Ana Jacqueline Figueroa, 23, were identified. Both were originally from the rural town of Tlacotepec de Benito Juárez, in Puebla.

The bodies of Guillermo Suárez González, a 23-year-old worker who worked in a maquila, and Eloy Hernández Baltazar, 58, both inhabitants of Santiago Miahuatlán, a small agricultural town of 30,000 inhabitants, which is about 15 kilometers away, were also found. from Tehuacan.

The death of Suárez González devastated his family and in particular his four young children who were left without a father.

The relatives of Suárez González completed the procedures last Wednesday to repatriate the body of the young man to Mexico, which will be taken to Santiago Miahuatlán where his family is waiting for him, reported the Puebla Institute for Migrant Assistance.

The US authorities began rescue efforts for the victims of the shipwreck last Saturday after a call to the 911 emergency number. A Spanish-speaking woman reported that she was one of eight passengers on a boat that washed ashore and that 15 other people were traveling in another boat that capsized. The two boats capsized in shallow water in dense fog off the coast of San Diego.

Survivors may have fled by land, including the woman who called 911. The authorities do not know the whereabouts of all of them.

The Border Patrol reports hundreds of known human smuggling attempts each year off the California coast.

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