When Robelson Isidro, 15, left Guatemala this month, he promised his concerned mother that he would keep in close contact during his trip to the United States.
She begged him not to go, but he made sure it was the best.
He earned just $ 3 a day working on coffee plantations around Comitancillo, a predominantly indigenous city in the highlands of western Guatemala. With a few years of American salary, he hoped to buy a house for the family.
“We are almost at the border,” he wrote to his mother, Maria Isidro, on Facebook Messenger on January 21, explaining that he would be cruising to Texas the next morning.
It was the last time he heard from his eldest son.
A few days later, she saw news that made her stomach churn. Nineteen burned bodies were discovered in northern Mexico, 20 miles from the border with the United States.
A call to one of the smugglers who organized the trip confirmed his worst fears: Robelson and 12 others from Comitancillo were among the dead.
Mexican officials say it may take weeks to identify the bodies, discovered by police on Jan. 23 in a burnt-out SUV on a dusty road in Santa Anita, in the eastern border of Tamaulipas state. They were riddled with gunshot wounds and charred beyond recognition.
But Robelson’s mother and other Comitancillo families say they are sure 13 of the dead are their children. On Monday, the families traveled six hours to the Guatemalan capital to provide DNA samples to the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which were sent to Mexican authorities.
There is a long history of terrible violence against migrants on the borders of northeastern Mexico. Law enforcement is deeply corrupt and a changing list of criminal groups is fighting to control smuggling routes – whether the cargo of drugs or people. Migrants are frequent victims of extortion, kidnapping and murder.
In 2010, members of the Zetas cartel stopped two trailers full of migrants and took them to a farm in the city of San Fernando, also in the state of Tamaulipas.
The gangsters asked migrants to become gunmen in their cartel. When the migrants refused, they were blindfolded, bound and shot. Only one man survived, a young Ecuadorian who pretended to be dead and escaped, walking miles to alert the authorities.
The following year, there was an even worse massacre in the same region. Several buses were stopped and nearly 200 migrants were expelled, killed and buried in graves discovered by the police soon after.
The dangers of the migrant trail are well known throughout Central America. That is why Maria Isidro was so concerned.
“I don’t want you to go,” she told her son firmly.
“No, mom,” he said. “I’m going.”
In Comitancillo, where many people speak the indigenous Mam language, most houses are made of adobe bricks and many have no running water. Every year, a handful of children die of malnutrition.
Life has always been difficult. But recently things have become even more difficult. Heavy storms damaged the plantations. The COVID-19 pandemic slowed trade in the region.
The state of San Marcos, where Comitancillo is located, has one of the highest rates of malnutrition in Guatemala, with 70% of children not receiving enough nutrients in their diets.
Robelson no longer wanted to live in poverty. His family owned almost nothing, not even his humble home, which had no kitchen.
The community has a long history of sending migrants to the United States, and he had uncles who lived there. They had indoor kitchens. They didn’t have to cook outside under a tarp.
“He was ashamed,” said his mother in a telephone interview. She said he said to her, “I will fight to make my dreams come true. I have to take my brothers forward in life. I will lift you out of poverty ”.
His uncles sent him money to make the trip north.
He traveled with a few dozen other people in the region, many of them teenagers. Some apparently arrived in the United States and notified their families when they returned home, said Maria Isidro.
Comitancillo Mayor Héctor Lopez Ramírez told Mexican news site Animal Politico that he learned that the migrants were traveling in three trucks bound for the border on January 22 when one broke down. He said passengers on the other two trucks reported hearing gunshots.
Human rights defenders condemned the incident, saying that increasingly militarized immigration enforcement in the United States and across the region makes it more likely that migrants will end up in the hands of smugglers.
A group of Guatemalan bishops issued a statement asking police authorities to investigate the attack “in the same way that they organized themselves to stop the caravan”, a reference to a recent group of thousands of migrants, mostly Hondurans, who were repelled by the forces Guatemala’s security forces before they could cross over to Mexico.
Guatemalan lawmaker Mario Ernesto Galvez, who represents Comitancillo, called on federal authorities to do more for the country’s rural communities.
“They cannot find development opportunities in their cities, which historically have been totally abandoned by the government,” he wrote on social media. “The dream of our children and young people has become to reach the United States.”
Maria Isidro, in turn, awaits confirmation of her son’s death.
She said she knows in her heart that he was one of the victims, but she still expects his phone to ring. She can imagine her eldest son’s voice saying, “I’m alive here, mom.”
Editor Linthicum made a report on Mexico City and special correspondent Abbot from Guatemala City. Special correspondent Cecilia Sanchez at The Times’ Mexico City office contributed to this report.