Guatemalan migrant killed in accident in Mexico is buried​

Guatemala City, January 1 (RHC)-- Family, friends and neighbors in a village in the Guatemalan department of Chimaltenango have buried Aurelio Cuy Tamat, who died when a cargo truck overturned in southern Mexico while trying to reach the United States at the beginning of last December.

His body was repatriated on Thursday along with those of 14 other Guatemalan migrants, also killed in the spectacular accident in which some 56 people died.  The 27-year-old worked as a bricklayer in the village of Parajbey in the municipality of Santa Apolonia, a mountaintop community located in the west of the country and 53 km from Guatemala City. 

Like other migrants, he decided to go to the United States to pay off debts and build a house for his wife Ana Vilma Telón and their four-year-old daughter.  However, the dream turned into a nightmare when the truck with over 150 migrants on board crashed on a highway in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas on December 9th. 

Forty-six people died at the scene and another 10 died in hospitals.  More than 100 migrants were injured.  Thirty-seven Guatemalans died in the accident, although only 19 bodies have been repatriated. Guatemala is one of the countries from which more citizens emigrate due to poverty, hundreds every day, according to estimates. 

According to Guatemalan government figures, the nearly three million people living in the United States sustain the Central American country's economy: in 2020, despite the pandemic, they sent 11 billion dollars in remittances, a little more than 14 percent of the Central American country's Gross Domestic Product.