Alejandro Miguel Andino Caballero had almost finished his university studies in marketing. His fiancée, Margie Támara Paz Grajeda, had graduated in economics. Both saw the school as a way to break free from their careers and triumph over humble origins in Honduras, where endemic poverty, crime and corruption have long stifled paths to social progress.
But few doors opened for the ambitious young couple. The pandemic and the two major hurricanes of recent years have tarnished the economic outlook of one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere.
So, like many of his compatriots, Caballero, 23, and Paz Grajeda, 24, left for the United States. They were accompanied by Caballero’s 18-year-old brother, who had also lost all hope of his long stay in Honduras.
“They didn’t leave because they wanted to leave their lives in Honduras, or because they didn’t like their country, or because they wanted to leave their families,” the brothers’ mother, Karen Caballero, said by phone Friday. house in Las Vegas, Honduras. ” They left because they had no chance to get ahead here. “
The three were among 53 other people, most, if not all, from Central America and Mexico, who perished after being smuggled into a suffocating semi-trailer discovered Monday outside San Antonio. It is one of the deadliest human trafficking tragedies in U. S. history.
As the government continues to identify the sick and tell relatives, the government is slowly publishing the names of those who died on the giant platform, dubbed the “death trailer” in the Latin American press. Their stories have resonated deeply in a region where emigration, despite its whims, has long been the surest path for upward mobility in many communities.
Those who leave are tireless, seeking opportunities, eager to improve their luck and help their loved ones at home according to a centuries-old tradition. Some aboard the semi-trailer came from rural areas and had little opportunity for provocation. Two of the dead were 13-year-old cousins of an indigenous network in northern Guatemala.
The case of the caballero and Paz Grajeda brothers is different. The narrow stereotype of irregular migrants does have compatibility.
Despite economic hardship, Caballero and his fiancée sought to remain in their home country, reading and hoping to get decent jobs. At a time when U. S. politics is going to be a majorother young people aspiring to careers at home have been frustrated.
“They had their dreams, their goals,” said Karen Caballero, still shocked by the loss of two children and a woman, probably her longtime daughter-in-law.
Caballero and Paz Grajeda met in high school and have been together ever since, their mother said. Both attended college in the town of San Pedro Sula, 60 miles north of Las Vegas.
But Paz Grajeda’s title only earned him a low-paid task in a call center. Caballero also struggled to locate paintings and helped in the circle of eating relatives in Las Vegas, an agricultural and mining town of 26,000 people.
Photographs circulated in the Latin American press from social media accounts showing Paz Grajeda sailing in a kayak, her and Caballero embraced, and Caballero’s partner and younger brother, Fernando José Redondo Caballero, loaded with luggage and smiling at the camera, it is unclear when and where the images were taken.
This is Fernando José, a teenager passionate about football and poetry, who first sought to move to the United States. Unlike his older brother, he had dropped out of school and showed little interest in academics.
“Imagine, Mom, if there are no paintings here for those who are studying, what is left for me who have not studied?” said Fernando to his mother, BBC Mundo reported.
His older brother and fiancée eventually signed. They started making plans more than six months ago. in honduras
Paz Grajeda had another motivation: she needed cash to get her mom to pay for her cancer treatment.
“That’s why he made this trip, for my health,” his mother, Gloria Paz, told the Honduran newspaper La Prensa. “I who ran where I was, in the call center. Mom, I’m going to look for a smart task to pay for your surgery. »
Relatives in Honduras and the United States helped fund the trip, said Karen Caballero, who has a brother who lives in the United States. The original destination was Houston.
The three departed on June 4. Karen Caballero accompanies them to Guatemala. She sought to be there to say goodbye.
“In my mind is the idea that it may be years before I see them again,” he told La Prensa. “Because when you go to the United States it’s hard to go back. I knew that five, 10, 15 years can pass before we meet again.
In the last moments together, Caballero said he reassured Alejandro, who was nervous about the trip.
“Nothing will happen,” he told her. You are not the first and you will not be the last human being to travel to the United States. “
She said goodbye to them: “I gave them my blessing and I said, ‘Children, do well on the other side because you can’t do it here. ‘»
He kept in touch via WhatsApp as the three headed north through Mexico. The last time he heard about them was on Saturday after his layover in Texas.
They wait to be transported north.
McDonnell is editor of The Times. Sanchez is an envoy.
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Foreign correspondent Patrick J. McDonnell is the leader of the Mexico City bureau of the Los Angeles Times and in the past headed the Times’ Beirut, Buenos Aires and Baghdad offices. Originally from the Bronx, McDonnell graduated from Columbia School of Journalism and was Nieman. Fellow at Harvard.
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