Guatemala returns 1st of its 21 victims from San Antonio trailer

Maria Sipac Coj holds a portrait of her son Pascual Melvin Guachiac in Tzucubal, Guatemala, Wednesday, June 29, 2022. Pascual and his cousin Wilmer Tulul, both 13, were among the dead discovered inside a tractor-trailer near auto salvage yards on the edge of San Antonio, Texas, on Monday, in what is believed to be the nation's deadliest smuggling episode on the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo) (Moises Castillo, Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

GUATEMALA CITY – Guatemala repatriated its first victim Friday from the smuggling attempt that left 53 migrants from Mexico and Central America dead last month in San Antonio, Texas.

The body of 13-year-old Pascual Melvin Guachiac Sipac arrived around midday in Guatemala’s capital. Twenty-one Guatemalans were among the migrants who died after being abandoned in a tractor-trailer June 27 in sweltering heat.

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The boy’s family was on hand to receive the casket at the capital’s airport.

Guachiac Sipac was an Indigenous Quiche who spoke little Spanish, but he set out nonetheless with his cousin for the United States, both hoping to work and help their families. His cousin, Wilmer Tulul, died too and his body was expected to return to Guatemala Saturday.

They were from Tzucubal, a community of about 1,500 people in the mountains nearly 100 miles northwest of the capital, where most live by subsistence farming.

A fourth flight carrying the last of the incident’s Mexican victims landed Friday. Mexico flew home 25 of its 26 victims this week in accordance with the families’ wishes.

Six Hondurans made up the remainder of the victims.