By Claudio Escalón -
The Associated Press
The Latino construction workers who disappeared after the Baltimore bridge collapse came to Maryland from Mexico or Central America and include a Honduran entrepreneur, father and husband who started a package delivery business, but the pandemic forced him to find another job, his family said.
Police were able to close traffic on the bridge seconds before the freighter crashed into one of the supports of the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday, causing the structure to collapse into the frigid Patapsco River. There was no time for the maintenance crew filling potholes on the bridge to escape to safety.
[Baltimore bridge collapse highlights risks faced by Latino construction workers]
At least eight people fell into the water and two were rescued. Two bodies were recovered Wednesday, and four remain missing and presumed dead.
The governments of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras confirmed that there are citizens of these nationalities among the missing.
Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, 38, was the youngest of eight siblings from Azacualpa, a mountainous area in a rural area of northeastern Honduras, near the border with Guatemala.
Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval in 2018.Martin Suazo Sandoval via AP
18 years ago, he left alone for the United States in search of opportunities. He had worked as an industrial technician in Honduras, repairing machinery in assembly plants, but the salary was too low to get ahead, said one of his brothers, Martín Suazo Sandoval, standing on the dusty street in front of the small family hotel in Honduras.
“He always dreamed of having his own business
,” she said.
Another brother, Carlos Suazo Sandoval, said that Maynor hoped to retire one day in Guatemala.
“He was the baby of all of us, the youngest. He was someone who was always happy, always thinking about the future. “He was a visionary,” he told The Associated Press news agency by telephone from Dundalk, Maryland, near the site of the bridge collapse.
[The bodies of two of the six Latino workers killed when the Baltimore bridge collapsed are recovered in a submerged car]
Maynor entered the United States irregularly and settled in Maryland. At first she did whatever work she could find, including construction and clearing brush. She eventually started a package delivery business in the Baltimore and Washington area, Martín Suazo Sandoval said.
Other brothers and relatives followed him north.
“He was the fundamental pillar, the bastion so that other family members could also travel there and then get visas and everything,” said Martín Suazo Sandoval. “He really was the driving force for most of the family to travel.”
Maynor has a wife and two children, ages 17 and 5, he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced him to look for another job and so he joined Brawner Builders, the company that was performing maintenance on the bridge when it collapsed.
Martín Suazo Sandoval said that his brother never spoke of being afraid of the job, despite the height at which he worked on the bridges.
“He always told us that you had to triple your effort to get ahead
,” said Martín Suazo Sandoval. “He insisted that it didn't matter what time or where, you had to be where the work was.”
The situation was going well for him before the collapse. He was already taking steps to obtain his permanent residency and planned to return to Honduras this year to complete the process, his brother said.
[A call that saved lives: agents communicate to close the bridge before its collapse]
Although Maynor had not been able to return to his country, he supported several social NGOs in his community, as well as the soccer league, according to his brother, from an area that depends mainly on livestock and agriculture, the cultivation of coffee and sugar cane. of sugar.
Maynor's employers broke the news of his disappearance to his family, leaving them devastated, especially his mother who still lives in Azacualpa, said Martín Suazo Sandoval.
“These are difficult times and the only thing we can do is keep faith,” he said, indicating that his brother knew how to swim and could be anywhere. If the worst scenario is confirmed, he commented that his family would do everything possible to repatriate his body to Honduras.
In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reported that three Mexicans were on the bridge when it collapsed, including one who was injured but rescued and two who remain missing. He did not share their identities for the family's privacy.
This tragedy illustrates the contribution of immigrants to the American economy, López Obrador insisted.
“This shows that immigrants go out and do dangerous jobs at midnight. And that is why
they do not deserve to be treated the way they are treated by some insensitive and irresponsible politicians
in the United States,” he stated.
Then Col. Roland L. Butler Jr., superintendent of the Maryland State Police, announced that the bodies of two men, ages 35 and 26, were recovered by divers inside a red pickup truck submerged about 25 feet (7.6 meters) under the water near the central arch of the bridge.
One of them was the Guatemalan Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, and the other was the 35-year-old Mexican, Alejandro Hernández Fuentes.
Guatemala's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that two of its citizens were among the missing. The Foreign Minister of El Salvador, Alexandra Hill Tinoco, published on Wednesday on the social network X that the Salvadoran citizen Miguel Luna also disappeared.
State and federal investigators have said the crash is believed to be an accident.