Completion of SA Memorial for 53 migrants who died in hot trailer scheduled for end of month
A memorial honoring the 53 migrants who died in the back of a sweltering hot tractor trailer in 2022 is scheduled for completion at the end of this month.
The memorial will be made up of a slab of concrete and 53 limestone blocks, one for each life lost, along Quintana Road in San Antonio, Texas. Each block will be as many inches tall as the corresponding migrant was old.
“Our youngest victim was 13 years old, so there will be a boulder that’s 13 inches long,” District 4 Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia explained to KSAT.
The memorial is expected to be completed by June 29th. For now, 53 crosses line the road where the memorial will stand, and Rocha Garcia says the crosses will also stay for as long as they last.
Crosses have lined Quintana Road honoring the 53 migrants who died in the back of an 18-wheeler in 2022. A local group is planning a rosary to mark 2 years since the tragedy.
— KSAT Daniela Ibarra (@KSATDaniela) June 17, 2024
Tonight on the #Nightbeat, how the city plans to honor the migrants permanently.#KSATnews pic.twitter.com/QU8rgEvYEJ
“We figured that this memorial might be an opportunity for them to come to pray, and maybe get a tiny bit of closure, even figuring out exactly where their loved one was when they took their final breath,” she said.
“I’m happy that that’s going to be done here because maybe one day we can’t come and fix our crosses, but there will be something down there that is permanent,” said Angelita Olvera, who tends to the crosses even though she didn’t know a single one of the migrants.
“These were 53 souls that were lost here,” she said. “I love them. They were human beings.”
“How could they have not given them water, air conditioning, or something in that 18-wheeler?” Olvera continued of the migrants left trapped in the parked commercial vehicle.
A rosary service will be held at the newly opened memorial on June 29th at 5 p.m.