Florida, United States
The families of Hondurans killed by COVID-19 in the United States they are painfully learning that “in our country there are laws, laws and many laws that we do not apply,” the deputy told Efe Edinora Brooks, which was the promoter of a rule aimed at helping them repatriate their remains.
“I’m highly frustrated,” says Brooks, who is in Florida to meet with Honduran communities such as Fundación 15 de Septiembre de Fort Lauderdale.
The deputy regrets that she does not “know” that the “Temporary Law to support Honduran migrants in the framework of the health crisis caused by the coronavirus, through repatriation of human remains cremated of Hondurans who died abroad “, is giving the intended fruits and blames the Government for this.
The rule came into force on May 18 last in order for the process of claiming aid for the repatriation and obtain it faster than that of another law that also provides aid for that purpose but requires many requirements from potential beneficiaries.
Hondurans in the United States
There are an estimated 1.5 million Hondurans living abroad, the vast majority in the United States, which send remittances to their families which in 2019 amounted to 5.4 billion dollars, which means 20% of the country’s GDP.
In Florida, and especially in Fort Lauderdale, there is a community of about 350,000 Hondurans.
When asked if you have any idea how many Hondurans have been able to die from COVID-19 in the US, Brooks points out that no, because it is “impossible” to obtain information from hospitals, since the patients who enter are not asked for nationality.
In addition, many Hondurans live “hidden” in “the shadows” for fear of deportation, emphasizes Brooks, who belongs to one of the 17 indigenous and Afro-descendant groups in Honduras and is affiliated with the Liberal Party.
The consular supervisor of the Honduran embassy in Washington, Rafael SierraHe tells Efe that he has confirmed 45 deaths of Hondurans from the pandemic in the US, but “surely there are more.”
Sierra points out that since the new law came into force they have received about 14 requests to repatriate those who died from the new coronavirus and 10 have obtained an affirmative answer.
The times that the law marks – within two weeks after death must be done repatriation– They are impossible to comply with when death certificates take up to a month, he claims.
The fight to bring them to Handuras
One of the Hondurans victims of COVID-19 In the United States it was Marlon Alvarado, who lived alone in Atlanta (Georgia) and was in his 30s when he died on July 9.
His uncle Juan Carlos Alvarado, who lives in Richmond (California), told Efe that the family decided to invest their savings in cremating Juan Carlos’s body so that it could be taken to Honduras and paid more than $ 800 for it.
Neither at the Atlanta consulate, where, according to his account, they told him that “the body could not enter Honduras either whole or cremated,” nor at the embassy in Washington has Alvarado found the solution to repatriate the remains, he tells Efe.
Another case is that of Marta Pineda, a 68-year-old woman, who arrived on a tourist visa to visit her daughters and had to stay in the country due to COVID-19, which ended up killing her four weeks ago, according to her account. Efe his son-in-law, Oscar Troches.
Pineda died in a North Carolina hospital, to which his relatives now owe $ 20,000, and the family painstakingly raised more than $ 7,000 for a funeral home to repatriate the remains.
But the funeral home has not been able to get Honduras to authorize the entry of the remains.
Each day that the body spends in the morgue they must pay about $ 175, but Pineda’s daughters do not want to cremate her for religious reasons, says Troches, who resides in Kansas with only his children, because his wife was deported.
Troches, who is a heavy machinery mechanic, claims to have spoken with the consular authorities, but, according to his account, they told him that they could not help them because they had already hired the funeral home before requesting protection under the law.
Latinos and death
According to him, the law was motivated by the fact that in the United States it was decided during the pandemic that if the family of a person who died of COVID-19 in a hospital does not claim his body, he is buried in special places where then it is difficult to access.
The deputy indicates that the law establishes that Honduran organizations abroad must also be assisted with a Solidarity Fund endowed with 5 million dollars a year, which is financed with a fee that is deducted from remittances.
Juan Flores, president of the 15 de Septiembre Foundation, tells Efe that the Honduran government does not tell the migrants what it does with that money and ensures that his organization has never received a single dollar and uses its own funds to help them .
“We are making changes, but we need support,” says Flores. EFE
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