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Father scoured Arizona desert
until he found daughter's remains


EFE/María León
Cesario Dominguez shows pictures of her daughter Lucrecia who died in the Arizona dessert.
EFE
07/29/2005

For the previous month, Dominguez - with the help of relatives - scoured the desert inch by inch following the instructions of his grandson, Jesus Abraham Buenrostro Dominguez, Lucrecia's son and the last person to see her alive.

"The only thing I wanted was to find her. I couldn't stand the idea that her bones would stay in that spot forever, without a grave where people could cry for her and bring her flowers," said Dominguez in an interview with EFE.

The smugglers - known as "coyotes" - who guided Lucrecia, two of her children and 19 other illegal migrants had telephoned Mexico to tell her family that "something went wrong" and they had left the woman and her son Abraham in the desert after the woman became too ill to continue walking.

Lucrecia, 35, left her home in the town of Sombrerete in mid-June with the 15-year-old Abraham and her 7-year-old daughter Nora intending to join her husband Jesus Buenrostro, who was waiting for them in Fort Worth , Texas .

After walking through the desert for three days during which Lucrecia complained of constant headaches, on June 23, she told one of the three coyotes guiding the group that she could not go on, and the smugglers decided to leave her behind in the vicinity of the town of Tres Puntos .

Before leaving her, the smugglers suggested to Abraham that he stay with his mother and ask the Border Patrol for help.

"For my grandson, it was very hard. He stayed there hours and hours with his mother waiting for someone to come and help them," said Dominguez.

He said that at least the coyotes took little Nora along with them and the girl is now with her father. "If they hadn't done that, perhaps the tragedy would have been greater," he said.

After waiting for a day for the Border Patrol to show up, Abraham noticed that his mother was no longer responding to him in any way, her body was limp and that was when he realized that Lucrecia had died.

After covering her with a yellow-checked blanket, the boy had to leave her body where it lay to go and seek help.

Abraham walked for more than three days eating and drinking only the heart and the liquid contained within the cholla cactus.

When he was finally rescued by the Border Patrol, the boy was in bad shape, could hardly speak and in his confusion he could not clearly tell them where he had left his mother's body.

Abraham was deported back to Mexico on June 26. "Despite what my grandson told me, I hoped that someone might have found her and helped her, taken her to a hospital," said the 57-year-old Dominguez, who after learning of his daughter's disappearance immediately traveled to Tucson.

Still hoping against hope to find her alive, Dominguez went to the local authorities, but nobody could give him any information about his daughters' whereabouts.

Without regard for the daytime temperatures of more than 116 degrees Fahrenheit, he began to search for his daughter in the desert.

For days, from 5 a.m. until 6 p.m., Dominguez walked through the desert, taking the routes used by the migrant smugglers.

"I took photographs of the places and took them to my grandson, who waited for me in Nogales , Mexico , and he told me whether or not he recognized that place," Dominguez said.

On his desperate search, Dominguez found the remains of three other people, two men and a woman.

"Upon seeing the desert, little by little I realized that my daughter was dead and the only thing I wanted to do then was to find her body," said Dominguez, who has a U.S. seasonal work visa.

He told of the pain he felt when one Saturday morning he saw a yellow blanket on the ground in the distance.

Due to the advanced state of the body's decomposition, Lucrecia was identified by the white shoes she wore, as well as by her three gold rings and a bracelet.

The official cause of death has not been established by the coroner, but it is thought to have been dehydration.

Lucrecia's remains were turned over to her father on Friday and they will be taken to Mexico next week, with the costs paid by the Mexican Consulate in Tucson .

"I feel a great pain, but at the same time a great peace. I'm taking my daughter with me to our village, where we'll always have her close by," Dominguez said.