The two cousins returned to the tiny, hardscrabble hamlet they grew up in in southern Mexico about two weeks ago to say goodbye in what has become a right of passage for generations of migrants from their remote, impoverished mountainous region in Oaxaca state.
It would not be the first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border for Javier Flores López, now in his mid-30s, who had left Cerro Verde years ago and went to Ohio, where his father and a brother live and he worked in construction.
