Social Issues

Salvadoran town mourns father and son who died trying to reach US

San Salvador, May 26 (EFE).- The bodies of a Salvadoran father and son who drowned last week as they tried to enter Mexico en route to the United States were laid to rest Thursday.

After a funeral Mass in the Church of Santiago Aculhuaca, next to the parochial school where 7-year-old Matthew Alexander Antillon was a student, the boy and his father, Cesar Vladimir Antillon, were taken to the Municipal Cemetery of Ciudad Delgado, just outside San Salvador.

On May 18, according to a report from Mexico’s INM immigration agency, the members of the Antillon family were trying to cross the Suchiate River, which forms the border between Guatemala and Mexico.

“They advanced a few meters (yards) along with the mother, when the strong currents of the river separated the minor from his father, who was carrying him in his arms,” the INM said.

While the mother reached the other side, Cesar tried to rescue Matthew and both ended up swept away by the current amid a torrential downpour and their bodies were found the following day.

The grieving wife and mother remains hospitalized in Tapachula, Mexico.

Every year, more than 500,000 people set out from the impoverished, crime-wracked Central American nations of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in pursuit of a better life in the US.

EFE sa/dr

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