![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/12122017-2.JPG\")
<\/div><\/div>Altar a Sa\u00fal<\/div><\/a><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/12122017-3.JPG\")
<\/div><\/div>Altar a Sa\u00fal<\/div><\/a><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/12122017-4.JPG\")
<\/div><\/div><\/a><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/12122017-5.JPG\")
<\/div><\/div><\/a><\/figure><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\nThis \r\nwas on May 8, 2017, two days before Mother's Day in Mexico, when Mar\u00eda del \r\nSocorro received the news that her son had died at 33 years of a pulmonary \r\ncomplication.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
Twenty \r\ndays after carrying out procedures with the government of Yucatan and the City \r\nof Peto, Sa\u00fal's body left the airport in San Francisco to Mexico City. It was \r\nthen transferred to M\u00e9rida, from where a funeral carriage moved him to town. It \r\nis a well-known route. So far in 2017, the Institute for the Development of the \r\nMayan Culture (Indemaya) has repatriated 13 bodies, including that of \r\nSa\u00fal.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
Mar\u00eda \r\ndel Socorro cannot talk about it without drowning in tears. And when she can, \r\nshe realizes that she really knew very little about his son's life. Until today, \r\nit is not clear to her where he lived. In fact, she never knew that. Just over \r\nthree weeks before he died, Sa\u00fal was arrested in San Rafael, the suburb north of \r\nSan Francisco, for offering cocaine to an undercover policeman, as \r\nevident in a file published on the website of the city \r\nauthorities<\/A>. \r\nBefore crying again, she explained that the young man had gone \"far away\" and \r\nwas assembling built-in kitchens, a work that allowed him to send US$ 250 a \r\nmonth (about 4,600 Mexican pesos). That was enough to buy food and pay for \r\nutilities, like power, and the heart medicines for his sick \r\nfather.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
The \r\nparents of Sa\u00fal tell that the vandals of the colony take advantage of their \r\nsolitude and the little police surveillance to steal the backyard animals \r\n(chickens, turkeys) they count on as a financial and food support. When their \r\nimmigrant son died in the USA, the income their received from him was also gone. \r\nThe salaries of their other two children in Canc\u00fan, a tourist resort in the \r\nneighboring state of Quintana Roo, are not enough to send a fixed remittance to \r\ntheir parents. Like many elderly people in Peto and Yucat\u00e1n, without pensions or \r\nfixed incomes, they grow fruits and vegetables for \r\nself-consumption.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
Roc\u00edo \r\nQuintal and Iv\u00e1n Franco, doctors in social and political sciences, respectively, \r\nand authors of the book El fen\u00f3meno migratorio en Yucat\u00e1n, contextos e \r\nimpactos<\/I> (The Migration Phenomenon in Yucat\u00e1n, Contexts and Impacts), \r\nconfirm that poverty is the \"backdrop\" of migration in this state, the fifth \r\nwith the lowest entry of remittances in the country (0.5% of the 26,993 million \r\nUS dollars that Mexico received that year). However, the collateral effects of \r\nthis diaspora, such as abandonment, loneliness and disintegration of families, \r\ngo unnoticed by governments.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
It \r\nis precisely because of the lack of updated censuses or statistics of migrants \r\nin the USA
-mostly illegal- that it becomes almost impossible for the \r\nauthorities of Yucat\u00e1n to locate, support or guide the remaining relatives, if \r\nthey were to do it. This means that migration does not have a real impact on the \r\nimprovement of communities. The most common contact of families with the \r\ngovernment is reduced to procedures such as locating or repatriating the bodies \r\nof their loved ones, as in the case of Sa\u00fal.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n<\/p>\n\n