SAN PEDRO PINULA, Guatemala — For 7 years, the very first thing Carolina Nájera does when she gets up is go to an altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe in her house, cross herself prior to the image and light a candle light in memory of her spouse, Juan Francisco Salguero.
It is a method to have him close, she states, however above all, to offer light and harmony to his soul.
Carolina, 31, thinks of that her spouse should have endured hell in the minutes leading up to his death.
Salguero left his house in February 2014 and never ever went back to his town, San Pedro Pinula, a town of 61,000 occupants in the Jalapa department of southern Guatemala.
Neither did his travel companions, that included next-door neighbors and, a few of them, family members: Emiliano Nájera, Gustavo Nájera, José Ronaldo Morales, Maximinio Gómez, Melvin Mateo, Edgar Amilcar Arias Segura, Pedro Gómez and Silvestre Pérez.
The 9 Guatemalans were abducted and killed 2,200 kilometers away, in Tamaulipas, Mexico. In an only reference, a news firm reported in 2018 that a private tomb had actually been discovered 3 years later on, and their bodies were exhumed and determined.
What the households understand is still insufficient. But the reality that they had the ability to have their enjoyed ones’ remains returned house is a testimony to their dogged efforts to look for assistance and discover their enjoyed ones when they went missing out on.
The massacre had actually happened in Güemez, Tamaulipas, according to files of an examination that the Mexican and Guatemalan authorities never ever concluded.
Noticias Telemundo Investiga has actually had access to part of the examination folder, the forensic reports and the testaments of the family members of the migrants to rebuild the occasions of this forgotten massacre.
Family prayers and $ 11,600
The 9 migrants paid in between 50,000 and 90,000 quetzals each ($6,500 and $11,600, respectively) asked for by a coyote understood to the neighborhood, and on Feb. 10, 2014, they began their journey to the United States. They would enter into a bigger group of individuals from the location taking a trip north. The coyote informed them that the journey was safe.
Gustavo Nájera, 35, became part of the 9. “We never imagined what would happen next,” Benjamín, his sibling, states.
Two weeks in the past, Gustavo had actually gotten back thrilled, informing the household that he had the possibility of taking a trip to the U.S. He’d had the concept to opt for years, however in between offering his 7 kids and paying financial obligations it was almost difficult to raise the cash he would require. But then he discovered a professional, or intermediary, to get access to the coyote, the individual who works out with the households the rate and the date of departure.
This intermediary informed them that they ought to leave some home or land as security to cover the expense of the journey. The household accepted the offer.
“Before he left for the United States, the coyote came to see the house and said that he would accept it. So, in order to guarantee Gustavo’s crossing, we gave him the deeds so that he could keep the house if we did not pay the full cost of the trip,” Benjamín stated.
They left in the early hours of Feb. 10 from the town of San Luis Jilotepeque. There they needed to fulfill the coyote, “Marcos,” who would take them to Mexico to provide them to another coyote. The latter needed to take them throughout the U.S. border.
The day prior to Gustavo left, they bid farewell for the last time: the household got together, consumed together, hugged and hoped that whatever would work out.
“It seems that the prayers weren’t enough because we never imagined that it would be the last time we shared food with him and that I could see my brother in the eye,” Benjamín stated, browsing the household picture album.
“We have to start looking for them”
Lorena Morales keeps in mind having fun with her sibling José Ronaldo, who was 3 years more youthful, and pretending to be bus motorists. It was a lot enjoyable; while one pretended to be the motorist, the other charged the fare. They would invest hours and hours playing. They were extremely close.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get over his death. I still think one day he is going to come and we are going to sit in the trees where we played when we were children,” she stated of her sibling who was 21 when she last saw him.
Two days after beginning the journey, José Ronaldo called Lorena to deposit 6,000 quetzals ($770) for the coyote. They will cross into Mexico and, if he didn’t transfer the cash, they would take him back to Guatemala, he informed his sibling.
Gustavo Nájera called his mom, Marta, 7 days after he left Guatemala. He informed her that the group was near the border with the United States, in Reynosa, in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico.
That was the last interaction from anybody in the group of migrants prior to they vanished.
“Two weeks after the last call, the atmosphere began to feel tense. The families did not hear from them again and the anguish began to invade us,” Morales stated.
Carolina Nájera waited the 20 days that her spouse informed her it would take him to reach the U.S. The coyote had actually been clear: nobody might bring a cellular phone, so Juan Francisco left your house with just a modification of clothing, another set of shoes and his recognition card.
When 20 days had actually passed, Carolina called the coyote’s number. On the other end of the phone, she heard an upset voice: “Why are you calling me? Everything is going well, don’t worry.”
When her spouse left, Carolina was 2 months pregnant and was looking after her then 2-year-old child, who has spastic paralysis. Juan Francisco’s work as a farmer was inadequate to spend for the kid’s physicians, so he chose to attempt his luck searching for a task in the U.S. in order to send out cash to his household.
Weeks passed and dads, moms, partners, kids and brother or sisters of a few of the 9 migrants started to fulfill every night. “We have to start looking for them,” Gustavo Nájera’s mom, Marta, stated. They kept asking the coyote, Morales even went to his home to ask him. “I tried going with a cellphone to record him but he discovered it and threatened to kill me if I did.”
A prison, a storage facility and a possible kidnapping
The coyote firmly insisted that the group of migrants was great; he stated they were just waiting due to the fact that the line to cross the border had actually ended up being tough.
The family members held back for a couple of more days however, in their desperation to speak with their enjoyed ones, they once again challenged the coyote and, from here, the path of the migrants ended up being blurred.
According to the examination folder, there were hints that required to be examined and substantiated.
One was that the trafficker informed the households that the group had actually been apprehended by law enforcement officer and remained in a jail called “La Grande” in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. This information was taped however was never ever examined by the workplace of the then-attorney general. There is no proof that there is a jail there understood by that label.
Weeks later on, a boy who had actually belonged to the bigger migrant group taking a trip north called family members and stated they had actually been secured a storage facility situated 5 minutes from the Rio Grande. The boy discussed that he had the ability to cross the U.S. border; he had actually handled to get away from the cellar and opt for another coyote. Once on U.S. soil, he got in touch with some family members of the 9 migrants from San Pedro Pinula who were missing out on and informed them what had actually taken place.
The Office of the Mexican Attorney General explains the possibility that because storage facility, they were abducted by the mob members, however this info might not be confirmed by them.
Investigators had another hint. The family members stated that the coyote they worked with in Guatemala informed them that on Feb. 18, 2014, he got a call from among the guides. He informed them that the group had actually taken a bus in Guanajuato, had actually passed Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, and had actually shown up in Tamaulipas. There, a checkpoint of judicial or federal authorities (this is mentioned in the examination folder) awaited them to gather a kickback to be permitted to continue the roadway. According to the coyote, the motorist informed him that at the checkpoint, the authorities took the migrants off the bus and purchased the motorist to leave.
But this account might not be substantiated either. Nobody understands what truly occurred. The coyote was never ever apprehended and did not offer more info. What’s more, he threatened relative to stop asking him.
The family members went to the Guatemalan district attorney’s workplace 3 months after the migrants’ disappearance, where authorities took their declarations, guaranteeing them it depended on the Mexican federal government to start the examinations.
In Mexico, at the demand of the Guatemalan federal government, the Tamaulipas district attorney’s workplace and the attorney general of the United States’s workplace opened an examination. For more than a year, from 2014 to 2015, no federal government firm made development in the examinations.
Morales stated it was the worst year of her life, explaining it as a “bad dream.” Today, she is sorry for having actually paid the coyote who took the group to Tamaulipas. “Why did I pay?” she stated as she hugged the wood frame that holds her sibling’s picture. Morales thinks that the coyote turned them over to the mob.
According to a current report by the Mexican Federation of Public Human Rights Organizations (FMOPDH), a minimum of 2,000 migrants vanished in Mexican area in 2020. The U.S. Department of State has actually put the Mexican state of Tamaulipas at the exact same “Do Not Travel” level of threat as nations such as Syria and Iraq.
Human stays —and beer cans
On Feb. 16, 2015, a representative of the Tamaulipas Public Ministry reported the discovery of the private tomb in Güemez, Tamaulipas.
The Mexican army discovered it in a location surrounded by fruit trees. It was an excavation over 3 feet long and about a foot and a half broad.
In the background were bones of human lower arms and a set of hands connected with a belt, along with empty beer cans and 2 glass bottles.
The professionals started the excavation and discovered 6 more human cadavers. In overall, 16 bodies were exhumed, and 9 of them came from the group of Guatemalans who had actually left San Pedro Pinula on February of 2014.
The professionals discovered in the trouser bag of among the bodies a credential provided by the Guatemalan federal government in the name of Santos Cruz Gómez Castro, a citizen of El Zunzo, a neighborhood near San Pedro Pinula. This would end up being the typical thread to assist identity the remainder of the bodies .
After the bodies were exhumed, they stayed frozen in the Forensic Medical Service Amphitheater in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas up until the 9 migrants’ remains were determined in 2018, when the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic State of Law presumed the legal representation of relative.
The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team likewise took part in the recognition procedure, the exact same group that assisted in the examinations into the 43 rural university student from Ayotzinapa, Mexico, who went missing out on in 2014 after they were taken by regional authorities in Iguala.
In their report, the Argentine professionals figured out that the Guatemalan migrants had actually been tortured prior to they were eliminated with a gun; some were shot in the head. All had the exact same degree of decay and comparable injuries. Forensics concluded that they were killed on the exact same day and under comparable situations.
The bodies of 3 other migrants were likewise discovered: Carlos Roberto Mejía Sánchez, Iris Teresa Reyes Rubí and Ramón Edgardo Vásquez Díaz.
A grim return house
The 9 migrants who left together on the exact same day from San Pedro Pinula went back to their town the exact same day, 4 years and 8 months later on Oct. 27, 2018. But they did so in wood boxes.
The caskets were buried in the regional cemetery in the existence of numerous homeowners who went to the funeral service, stunned by a disaster they had actually simply discovered. Everyone questioned how, after nearly 5 years, the family members had actually handled to discover the bodies.
Five migrant massacres and a forgotten massacre
It had actually remained in May of 2014 when among Gustavo Nájera’s 8 brother or sisters asked the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law, (FJDRL) — a nongovernmental company based in Mexico City — for assistance in finding the group.
“If we had not intervened, no entity in Mexico would have initiated an investigation of the events,” stated Fabianne Cabaret, among the group’s planners.
The migrants’ family members stated their nation’s federal government didn’t assist. “They have not supported us,” Carolina Nájera stated.
“Guatemala annulled the process of taking DNA samples from us and was refusing to receive the bodies,” Benjamín Nájera stated.
Noticias Telemundo got in touch with the Guatemalan Embassy in Mexico, however got no reaction to an ask for remark.
“The common denominator is impunity”
The finding of the mass tomb at Güemez did not have the effect or protection of other massacres. No one mentioned the tomb when the Mexican army discovered it.
“No one would have remembered them. In those years, 2014-2015, tombs were no longer counted,” Benjamín Nájera said. “At the level of fact, justice and reparation, the common measure is impunity. It is the absence of information of how the occasions took place and the absence of attention and reparation to the households, a lot more so for households that do not reside in Mexican area.”
Statements in the Mexican federal government’s site prove the location’s risks. “If it is thought about that 63 percent of the migrants who transited through Mexico and who were returned by the United States authorities stated they went into through the state of Tamaulipas, it is possible to conclude that the migratory path of the Gulf of Mexico is one of the most utilized however it is likewise the most dangerous, considering that just in Tamaulipas, 4 out of every 10 migrants who went through Veracruz and Tabasco passed away.”
The Güemez massacre is one in a history of massacres throughout the last years.
In August of 2014, the “San Fernando Massacre” led to the murder of 72 migrants, 58 guys and 14 females, primarily from Central and South America. According to private investigators, they were eliminated after households had not paid to release them and they declined to be hired by the Zetas, the criminal group blamed for the executions.
The next year, in April 2011, stays of 193 individuals were found in 48 private tombs. The bodies of primarily migrants on their method to the U.S. revealed indications of approximate execution; 130 passed away as an outcome of blows with blunt things —some caused by victims required to do so to other victims — and 80 percent of the remains revealed traces of abuse.
In May of 2012, the Mexican army reported the discovery of 49 human upper bodies on a highway in the town of Cadereyta, Nuevo León. They were of 43 guys and 6 females, and just 10 victims of Honduran citizenship who were leaving their nation for the U.S have actually been determined.
More just recently, in January and likewise in Tamaulipas, 19 individuals of Guatemalan and Mexican origin were burned about 43 miles from the U.S. border . Twelve state authorities officers were detained for their possible involvement in the murders.
None of the cases have actually been totally solved, nor have actually those accountable been brought to trial.
“We can go and leave flowers on their tombs, however we request for fact, justice which the Mexican authorities likewise examine,” Carolina Nájera stated.
FJDRL’s Cabaret states that when it comes to the Güemez massacre, justice needs very first understanding what occurred and why the migrants were eliminated, something that’s nearly difficult. “It is most likely that another massacre will take place,” Cabaret said, “prior to we understand the fact about the previous ones.”
An earlier variation of this story was very first released in Noticias Telemundo.
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