Victim’s father wants to meet castaway
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — The father of a man who died on a fishing boat has questions about his son’s death after speaking on the phone with an El Salvadoran castaway who apparently survived the 13-month accidental journey across the Pacific Ocean.
Nicolas Cordoba Cruz, the father of Ezequiel Cordoba Rios, 23, said he spoke to Jose Salvador Alvarenga but wants to meet him in person, the El Paso Times reported Saturday.
Cordoba Cruz was sobbing and holding the only two pictures he has of his son when he spoke to the newspaper from Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican border town, where he lives.
Alvarenga’s small fishing boat made landfall on the Marshall Islands early this month, where he described a 6,500-mile journey from Mexico across the Pacific that began when the vessel was thrown off course by bad weather.
Doctors have said he was in strikingly good physical health, though mentally frail.
Alvarenga has said he survived the long ordeal by eating raw fish and turtles and drinking bird blood.
Alvarenga has said his fishing companion died about a month after they went off course when he couldn’t eat the raw fish and turtles.
Cordoba Rios and his three brothers lived with their father in Juarez until early 2012, when they moved back to their native seaside village in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
Five days after Cordoba Rios failed to return from his shark-fishing trip with Alvarenga, the family in Chiapas reported him missing and began searching for him, his aunt said.
“Our family looked for him in the sea, in other villages, always hoping to find him,” she said, adding their search ended about three weeks later in December 2012.
But his father, who had been sick, was not told about his son’s disappearance for several months.
Now, though, after speaking with Alvarenga, he has questions about the story.
Cordoba Cruz said he believes Alvarenga, but he needs to talk to him in person to be certain.