Silverio
Gámez Herrera, hijo, a 17-year-old from San Luis Potosi
in Mexico, hoped to find a better future in the United States.
He never imagined when he got into a trailer in Harlingen, Texas
bound for Houston, where he planned to meet relatives, that it
would turn into their worst nightmare.
"I never
imagined that my son would make the decision to come to the
United States in search of a better future, nor did I think that
he would be among the victims in the truck," Silverio
Gámez, padre, the father of young Silverio told The
Panama News. Along with the younger Silverio, more than 70 other
people crowded into that trailer on their way from their
countries of origin in search of a better life. Although they
came from diverse parts of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and
Guatemala, they all shared a common dream, to work and improve
the economic situations of their families back home,
Unfortunately,
this dream turned into a nightmare on the night of Tuesday, May
13, when 19 of the people in the trailer died of asphyxia after
the trailer was abandoned by its drivers in Victoria, Texas, 23
miles south of Houston.
When the illegal
immigrants boarded the vehicle between 10 and 10:30 that night,
the tragedy that was about to occur was far from their minds. It
all began with a deception, according to a survivor who spoke
with The Panama News on condition of anonymity. The chicken
truck drivers told their passengers that the trailer would be
air conditioned and recommended that they wear sweaters and
jackets, but once the dozens of migrants were sealed inside, it
turned into an oven.
Locked in and in
complete darkness, the immigrants waited for the air
conditioning as the minutes went by and the temperature rose.
Drenched in sweat, the men and women began to undress in order
to get some relief from the heat. The survivor said that
desperate passengers began to pound on the walls in an effort to
get out of the suffocating Hell that the trailer had become.
Others tried to break into the truck's cab with their bare
hands.
The survivor
added that the passengers were able to break out several lights
inside the trailer, which created four small air holes to the
outside. But then fights broke out, as everyone desperately
tried to get to one of the holes for a breath of fresh air.
Soon asphyxia
began to set in, as the passengers lacked the oxygen to keep
their brain cells alive. As the asphyxia took hold they suffered
hallucinations and severe mental confusion. Their malfunctioning
brains were no longer able to distinguish reality from
fiction.
For lack of
ventilation the oxygen gave out little by little and carbon
dioxide accumulated. It's quite simple, Dr. Benjamin Interiano
and Dr. Renata León, who work at the Centro la Rosa in
Houston, explained. Human beings breathe in oxygen and exhale
carbon dioxide. And thus, in the approximately five hours that
the more than 70 undocumented immigrants were in that trailer,
asphyxia followed its course to the ultimate physiological
conclusion for 19 of their number.
You may have
seen the pictures of the trailer and heard the death toll of 19
on TV. You would have to have been there to know the full horror
of it all.
Also in this
section:
Panama News Briefs
Venezuelan Embassy presents
the other side of the story
Horror on the way to
Houston
Torrijos runs cautious
campaign
Miss Universe
2003
Instability in
Ecuador
