The bodies of 17 Guatemalan migrants who died in the fire in a detention center under the custody of the Mexican government arrived in Guatemala on Tuesday and were received, between tears and sadness, by their relatives.
“Daddy, son, my love”, was heard in the middle of the silence at the moment of receiving the remains of the victims. The coffins, with the Guatemalan flag on top, were placed in a line, with wreaths and photographs of the migrants.
The Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Mario Búcaro, accompanied the repatriation of the bodies in a Mexican Air Force plane and, upon arrival, described the fire in which they died while in the custody of the Mexican immigration authorities as a terrible tragedy.
He added that the Government will seek “trial, punishment and reparation” for the victims and that, under Mexican law, the Guatemalan Government became an intervening party in the federal criminal proceedings opened on this fact.
Regarding the investigation into what happened, on Tuesday the Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said that the guards who were at the detention center in northern Mexico where 40 migrants, mostly Central Americans, died, did not have the keys. from the cell when the tragedy happened.
The fire at the detention center in Ciudad Juárez, a town on the border with Texas, was started in protest by a small group of detained migrants and triggered the greatest tragedy in living memory at the facilities of the Mexican migration agency.
In video footage from a security camera, guards can be seen leaving the room while he started a fire on some mattresses inside the cell where dozens of migrants were held, without making any attempt to free them.
So far it was not clear who had the keys to the cell or if there was more than one set, but the Mexican president affirmed on Tuesday that the poisoning that caused the death of the migrants took place because “whoever had the key was not there.” .
Five people – three migration officials, a private guard and the Venezuelan migrant who allegedly started the fire – are under trial, accused of homicide and injury, since thirty people were injured in the event.
While the investigations are advancing, which, according to the federal government, will analyze the entire chain of responsibilities and irregularities in terms of civil protection measures in case of emergency, the repatriation of the victims began. First, that of a Colombian, then that of seven Salvadorans and on Tuesday, that of the 17 Guatemalans and another six Hondurans.
Two separate Mexican Air Force planes transported the coffins of the deceased migrants to Guatemala and Honduras. The Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Mario Búcaro, and the Honduran vice consul in Mexico, Darwin Medina, accompanied the procedures and the relatives of the victims.
So far, 31 bodies of people killed in the accident have been repatriated, the Mexican immigration agency said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
Upon arrival in Guatemala, the deceased will be transferred to their communities in at least nine different departments in the northern and western regions of the country. On Friday the Mexican government had begun to repatriate other migrants from El Salvador.
Among the deceased is Bacilio Sutuj, a 51-year-old migrant from San Martín Jilotepeque -in the department of Chimaltenango- who did not tell his family that his intention was to migrate until two days before the fire, when he told them that he had been detained. for Mexican migration.
According to the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry, 19 of the 40 deceased were of Guatemalan origin. However, two of the deceased who are believed to be Guatemalans will not be repatriated as their identity has not been fully established because one did not have an identification document and the other had burns on his hands that prevented his fingerprints from being taken. The Guatemalan authorities will carry out DNA tests to identify them.
Another 11 Guatemalans were injured in the fire.
The Guatemalan government has said that it hopes that Mexico will compensate the families of the victims and that there will be justice. Locally, an ex officio investigation has been launched at the prosecutor’s office to locate migrant smuggling networks that would have helped the deceased to undertake their journey.
