Migrant tragedy in Mexico: Yovanny has been in the morgue for thirteen years; his dream has not come true

GUATEMALA CITY.— The Yovanny’s bodya young Guatemalan migrant, He has been in a morgue in Mexico City for 13 years. Tried to migrate in 2011 but He was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by criminals in Tamaulipas and was later abandoned in a mass grave. His family is once once more asking for his remains to be repatriated.

Mexican authorities recovered a body at the time and sent it to the Yovanny’s family to bury it, but he was not him.

Thirteen years laterthe migrant’s relatives continue to demand that their family member be handed over to them, but that they also take the body of who was buried in Guatemala because they consider that Another family must also be looking for him.Rosmery Yax, a lawyer for the family, told The Associated Press on Monday.

“This was a very serious error, which violated the rights of the family and the full identification of the victim,” Rosmery stressed.

Neither the surname of Yovanny’s family nor the place of his origin were revealed by the Foundation for Justice in Mexico, who supports the search for justice in this case, nor by the lawyers in Guatemala. Nor did the migrant’s relatives agree to speak to the press, as they fear criticism from their community regarding what happened, according to Rosmery Yax.

“This does not happen in indigenous villages, their social fabric has been violated. The family, due to their customs and traditions, says that they not only want Yovanny to be brought back but that at the same time they want the other body to be taken away and that Yovanny should occupy the place they chose to bury him and that must be respected,” stressed Rosmery.

When Yovanny, a young Quiché indigenous manleft his home in March 2011 I was 17 years old. He intended to reach the United States looking for work to support his familywhich is of scarce resources, but His journey was cut short when members of organized crime intercepted him and other migrants.A week into his journey, the migrant contacted his family and announced that he was in Tamaulipas and would soon cross the border. This was the last communication and nothing more was heard from him.

At that time groups of the Organized crime kidnapped and disappeared migrants “to recruit them by force,” according to the Foundation.

“Between April and May (2011), the Mexican Army reported the Discovery of 48 clandestine graves with 196 bodies in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. Among them was Yovanny. But nobody knew regarding it,” the Foundation said in a document to AP. In 2012, his body was handed over to his family who, without being able to see him, held a wake and buried him in a local cemetery.

Reduced to codes

According to the Foundation for Justice, More than 200 people were killed that year “y reduced to forensic codes with their identification data on the bodies of the victims.”

Yovanny was assigned the identification of “Body 4 Without a Grave, from AP 1114”However, an error in the process caused the label was put on another body of another young man and that of Yovanny received the label “Body 5”.

Between 2010 and 2012, several massacres, disappearances and murders of migrants occurred.

In 2013, the Forensic Commission was formed, which has since supported thethe identification of missing or murdered migrants in Mexico. Through agreements, the identifications began to be reviewed, where inconsistencies were detected.

“Regarding the case of Yovanny, (the forensic commission) identified and later confirmed that the profile of the body delivered in 2012 did not match that of his relatives. Instead, it did match one of the bodies kept in Mexico City,” the Foundation said.

All of these massacres were allegedly perpetrated by cartels fighting over migrant trafficking, the Foundation says.

More than a decade later, A hundred of these people remain unidentified and among those who were identifiedthere are relatives who claim bodies cremated without authorization, remains that were given to the wrong families, people identified whose relatives were not sought for yearsclosed coffins that were not allowed to be opened.

A Honduran mother complained to the Inter-American Commission on Human RightsIn a letter, she explained that instead of her son’s body, she had only received “a piece of meat with dirt and worms” and plastic bags. But not her son’s body.

Fabienne Cabaretdeputy director of the Foundation for Justice, said that they are awaiting the results of the identification of some remains in Brazil and several more in Guatemala, which might also have been confused.

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