AS VEGAS, Honduras (AP) — Children set out hoping to earn enough to support their siblings and parents. Young adults who sacrificed to attend college thinking it would lead to success left their country disillusioned. A man already working in the U.S. who returned to visit his wife and children decided to take a cousin on his return to the U.S. 

As families of the 67 people packed into a tractor-trailer and abandoned on Monday in Texas began to confirm their worst fears and talk of their relatives, a common narrative of pursuing a better life took shape from Honduras to Mexico. 

Fifty-three of those migrants left in the sweltering heat on the outskirts of San Antonio had died as of Wednesday, while others remained hospitalized. The tedious process of identifications continues, but families are confirming their losses. 

The dead included 27 people from Mexico, 14 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala and two from El Salvador, said Francisco Garduño, chief of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.

Each put their lives in the hands of smugglers. News of the trailer full of bodies struck horror in cities and villages accustomed to watching their young people leave, trying to flee poverty or violence in Central America and Mexico.

In Las Vegas, Honduras, a town of 10,000 people about 50 miles south of San Pedro Sula, Alejandro Miguel Andino Caballero, 23, and Margie Tamara Paz Grajeda, 24, had believed his degree track in marketing and hers in economics would open doors to economic stability.