Fearful Mexican Families Send Envoys to Capital

Jorge Cabrera sat patiently in the lobby of this city’s airport Friday, waiting for a flight that would take him to Mexico City where he will “walk among the ruins” to look for his wife’s relatives who survived Thursday’s earthquake--and for those who perished in it.

“Sitting here, one can only anticipate the worst, even if nothing happened to them,” Cabrera said. “The worst part is not knowing anything. We could not contact them yesterday or today. The family appointed me to fly down there to walk among the ruins and see for myself. It will be up to me to tell them the good and the bad.”

Cabrera, an employee of Mexicana Airlines, does not have any blood relatives in Mexico City. But most of his wife’s family, including numerous uncles, aunts and cousins, live in Colonia Roma, one of the areas worst hit by the quake. Many Tijuana families with relatives in Mexico City cannot afford the $216 air fare to fly there and instead are waiting anxiously for any news about their loved ones.

However, Mexicana gives its employees a 90% discount, allowing Cabrera the opportunity to fly to the Mexican capital to search for his wife’s relatives.

Sitting next to Cabrera was his father-in-law, Juan Madrigal, whose dark, piercing eyes showed the strain of two days of worrying. Madrigal tried to occupy himself by playing with his 3-year-old granddaughter, but he admitted that his thoughts were somewhere else.

“We are a big family . . . a big family that lives in Colonia Roma. I hope that through some miracle everyone is all right,” Madrigal said. “But after seeing pictures of the devastation on television, you cannot help but think of the worst possible consequences. You don’t want to think about what could have happened, but the thought is still there.”

But Madrigal’s hopes were not the only ones that rested on Cabrera’s journey. Cabrera pulled from his shirt pocket a list of 10 Mexico City addresses given to him by friends who asked him to track down their families.

“When my friends learned that I was going to Mexico City, they asked me to find out about their relatives. I could have added another 15 addresses to this list, but given the time I’m going to be there, I won’t have time to track down all these people,” Cabrera said.

Bernardo Schaar, an official with Aeromexico at Tijuana Airport, said Thursday that Cabrera’s mission was not an isolated one. Schaar said the airline received hundreds of calls throughout the day from frantic callers begging for seats on the flights to Mexico City.

“Of course, they are concerned about relatives whom they have not been able to contact. And once they get there, many of them have been asked by friends and co-workers to look up their relatives,” Schaar said.

But on Friday, even journalists flying to Mexico City to cover the disaster were carrying lists of names and addresses given to them by people anxious to find out if their relatives were alive.

Dora Elena Cortez, a reporter for the newspaper Novedades de Baja California, boarded a flight carrying a list of 25 names and addresses. She promised to track them down and report their fates to worried relatives in Tijuana.