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This week I wrote about the more than 250 Mexican immigrants who have died of Covid-19 around New York and their families' struggles to claim their remains – before they end up in a mass grave – and send them home.
[Thread] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-Mexican-immigrant-deaths.html?smid=tw-share
[Thread] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-Mexican-immigrant-deaths.html?smid=tw-share
Several families told me about this struggle. If it seems sentimental, it's worth recalling that, as @kcornejov writes, “for communities...ravaged by violent deaths, the dignity of a burial and the indignity of a mass grave co-exist as parallel possibilities.”
I’m sharing a few accounts and photos here, with permission. Tomás Puebla, 47, was a longtime line cook at diners on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He went to two city hospitals before getting proper care in Bridgeport, CT, said his daughter, Leslie, 22.
Edmundo García, 62, worked at Salem and Sons Bakery in Union City, N.J., for 21 years, until the day he got sick. His wife, Elia, had not been apart from her ‘Tito,’ short for ‘Chiquitito,’ since they met as teens in Puebla. He died not knowing what he had.
David Rosales Flores, found his father, Remigio, 62, dead in his home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He had been sent home by a doctor and turned away from a hospital. His sons wanted to send their father’s body back so their mother could say “el último adiós.”
Families can't send bodies back amid the pandemic. Dozens have used GoFundMe to raise money to claim and cremate their loved ones instead, hoping to send back ashes. The site has become the closest thing to a memorial that exists for Mexican victims of Covid-19 in New York.
The victims include recent arrivals, and immigrants who came decades ago, like Gregorio Rosales, who died at 69. He always planned to go back, his niece said: “That’s the dream. You think you’ll go where you belong. You don’t think you’re going to end up dead in the Bronx.”
