8-year-old migrant boy who died in U.S. custody laid to rest in Guatemala

UPDATED ON: JANUARY 27, 2019 / 10:38 PM / AP

Yalambojoch, Guatemala — Villagers in this remote indigenous community of western Guatemala did their best Sunday to give a proper farewell to Felipe Gomez Alonzo, the 8-year-old migrant boy who died in U.S. custody at a New Mexico hospital on Christmas Eve.

held a candlelight vigil, draped his small white coffin with flowers and then carried him to his final resting place. Older sister Catarina scratched his name with a stick into a simple concrete headstone. Women in brightly embroidered shirts and skirts oversaw the last rites since many of the men in the village left for the U.S. long ago.



The grave of Felipe Gomez Alonzo — a 8-year-old boy who died in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after being detained along his father for illegally entering to the U.S. — is pictured during his funeral at home village of Yalambojoch, Guatemala, on Sun., Jan. 27, 2019.
REUTERS

The hamlet, set on a plain and surrounded by misty, pine-covered mountains, is a place of crushing poverty and lack of opportunity, home to a single small school, dirt roads that become impassible during the rainy season and rudimentary homes without insulation, proper flooring, water or electricity.

The community is populated by families who fled to Mexico during the bloodiest years of Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war but returned after the signing of peace accords.

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