“We always thought that my father would return home one day. But not in ashes.'
The glazed urn rests in a makeshift altar in the family home, flanked by flowers, candles, Roman Catholic images and a faded snapshot of a middle-age man.
In recent weeks, authorities have begun repatriating their ashes. The urns, packed into cardboard boxes, are arriving in hometowns and villages throughout Mexico.COVID-19 deaths in the United States cut an especially wide swath of bereavement here in the central state of Puebla, where impoverished agricultural towns like Ahuehuetitla have long sent their sons and daughters to work in the New York City area — where the pandemic claimed its greatest U.S. toll.
“Thanks to these 250 heroes … this city kept on functioning,” Jorge Islas López, the Mexican consul general in New York, said at the service. “They were invisible and anonymous heroes.” Tlatelpa Calixto entered the United States more than 20 years ago. His wife, Isabel Baez Vaquero, and the couple’s two small boys followed three years later, leaving their two daughters with relatives in Ahuehuetitla.
with the head of a jaguar glaring from the pedestal — a testament to the town’s agrarian character and its indigenous roots. The official population is 1,800, but 90% live in the United States.At least 26 natives have died of COVID-19 in the U.S., according to Eboly Morán Bravo, the town’s“This is something that hit us very, very hard — we are all in mourning,” said Morán. “It’s a personal tragedy, and an economic blow.
Her ashes were returned last month after the ceremony at St. Patrick’s. Her children — all U.S. citizens — had wanted to accompany the ashes to console their grandmother, but an uncle talked them out of it.
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