This post is also available in: Spanish

Our Comando Photographer Francisco Campos documented a trip we made to Mexico overland to pickup a Salvadoran National who wanted to repatriate back to El Salvador to have peace and die in El Salvador due to a chronic illness. Photo Essayhere @ contrapunto. Translation below.

Victoria de los Angeles pearl Castillo, a native of Santa Ana, attempted several times to reach U.S. through Mexico. After numerous attempts, she ended up living in Tapachula. After twenty years of being seriously ill, on June 2010 she was diagnosed with stage III cervical cancer, Diabetes Mellitus T “and trousseau syndrome/thrombophlebitis. The 52 year Salvadoran expressed her desire return to El Salvador, and die in her country.

The family made contact with the Directorate for Protection of Human Rights and Humanitarian Management via Ministry of foreign relations, who requested the collaboration of Comandos de Salvamento to repatriate her.  Even though she could not achieve her American dream she did obtain her goal of dying in El Salvador.

According to the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared/Deceased Migrants from El Salvador (COFAMIDE), told the newspaper La Jornada of Mexico,that 293 people in this country have disappeared or died in Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz and Oaxaca over the past two years. ” More than 80 percent of those who pass through this area suffer robberies, beatings, sexual abuse, kidnapping, and murder, never having the opportunity that Victoria did to die in their country.