Mexico’s Leader Speaks Out: Baltimore Bridge Collapse Highlights Injustice Faced by Migrants
Debarylife – The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, according to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, demonstrates that “migrants go out and do risky jobs at midnight” and that, as a result, they “do not deserve to be treated as they are by certain insensitive, irresponsible politicians in the United States.”
López Obrador said this after Alejandro Hernández Fuentes, a 35-year-old Mexican native, was identified by Maryland State Police as one of the two bodies recovered from the Patapsco River on Wednesday.
Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of the Maryland State Police, stated during a press conference on Wednesday night, “Based upon the conditions, we’re now moving from a recovery mode to a salvage operation because of the superstructure surrounding what we believe to be the vehicles and the amount of concrete and debris; divers are no longer able to safely navigate or operate around that in the areas around this wreckage.”
Butler recognized Guatemalan Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, as the other victim recovered from the ocean. The two dead were discovered locked inside a red pickup truck that was submerged under around 25 feet of water in the central span of the bridge by divers.
After the catastrophe on Tuesday, when the cargo ship Dali struck one of the bridge’s pillars in the wee hours of the morning, resulting in the span’s collapse, four more construction workers are thought to be dead. They are from El Salvador and Guatemala as well.
The youngest of eight siblings from Azacualpa, a rural mountainous region in northwest Honduras, 38-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval has been identified as another victim, according to The Associated Press.
According to the news agency, Sandoval fled Honduras for the United States eighteen years ago, entering the nation illegally before relocating to Maryland and taking any job he could find, including building and clearing brush. Afterward, he launched a package delivery company in the Baltimore-Washington region, according to his brother Martín Suazo Sandoval.
“He was the fundamental pillar, the bastion so that other members of the family could also travel there and later get visas and everything,” according to the AP. “He was the driving force so that most of the family could travel.”
His brother said that Maynor is married and has two children, aged five and seventeen. Maynor was compelled to look for other employment due to the coronavirus pandemic, and he joined Brawner Builders, the business that was maintaining the bridge when it collapsed.
Despite working at heights on the bridges, Martín Suazo Sandoval stated Maynor never expressed fear of the work: “He always told us that you had to triple your effort to get ahead.” He remarked that you had to be where the work was, regardless of the time or location.”
According to his brother, the Honduran was making progress toward obtaining legal status and intended to return home later this year to finish the procedure.