Two brothers from the Mexican state of Oaxaca lost their lives in the Arizona desert when they were abandoned by the coyote they paid to cross the border into the United States, according to what their father, Facundo Mendoza Rodríguez, revealed to the newspaper Milenio.
“The consulate said that, as a good couple of brothers, they found them hugging each other,” the man explained.
Édgar Mendoza Rodríguez, 37, and Carlos Enrique Mendoza Santiago, 23, left the city of Tuxtepec on May 27, despite pleas from family members.
"I asked him not to leave, to always be with us, but he left," lamented Ingrid, one of Edgar Mendoza's five children.
The brothers Édgar Mendoza Rodríguez, 37, and Carlos Enrique Mendoza Santiago, 23, on their way through the Arizona desert. Diario Milenio
Their father took them to Santa Cruz, in the state of Veracruz, from where they headed to Sonoyta, along the border in Sonora, to meet the human trafficker.
"I said to one of them, 'Are you sure you're going to hold out?'
And he told me: "Yes, dad. I'm going to really want it and I'm going to do it for my children and for my wife," he explained.
They parted with a hug.
The days passed without news until the coyote called the father on June 2 to tell him that his children had not achieved their goal: Carlos Enrique had become dehydrated, which prevented him from continuing to walk through the desert, and Edgar decided to stay with him in Instead of moving on with the group they were traveling with, the smuggler told him.
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"The law of life is like that in the desert: if you stay, you stay," says the man who told him the human trafficker.
The Mexican consulate in Yuma, Arizona, confirmed the death of her two children on August 9.
The officer who attended him explained that the Border Patrol had located the bodies two days earlier.
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"From the credentials and driver's licenses they knew they were my children," he said, "although the bodies were already in poor condition, decomposed, they still showed the features physically."
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Facundo Mendoza begged the Mexican authorities to help him get a visa to travel to the United States to repatriate the bodies: "I ask the president [Andrés Manuel López Obrador], the governor or the agency that listens to me, to give me a visa to be able to go look for my children. I need to go for them and bury them in their land of origin".