Guatemalan families mourn teens killed in Texas truck tragedy
STORY: Wilmer Tulul, 14, and Pascual Melvin Guachiac, 13, left home with dreams of learning English and reuniting with family, only to die in the deadliest U.S. human smuggling tragedy on record in which 53 people lost their lives after being locked in a sweltering tractor-trailer truck outside of San Antonio, Texas.
On Saturday (July 16), relatives and friends of Guachiac held a mass with his coffin and later a procession towards a cemetery to bury him. People were seen walking through the streets of Tzucubal, located in the municipality of Nahuala.
A day earlier, on Friday (July 15), relatives of Tulul left their hometown towards Guatemala City to receive the body of the young migrant.
“My namesake died. My namesake had a dream to go in search of his life, he dreamed of getting a house, a piece of land," Wilmer's grandfather Juan Tulul told Reuters.
Home to an indigenous K'iche community, Nahuala is a town where little Spanish is spoken and which many migrants have departed. Some have sent back remittances that helped a few families build upscale homes. Still, most families in Nahuala earn a living growing corn and beans on small plots of land.
