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| - Head down, Venezuelan Jonhy Matey is despondent: tragedy has struck once again. A year and a half ago his daughter disappeared after a boat she was traveling in to try to get to nearby Trinidad and Tobago sunk. This time it was her eight-year-old stepson who drowned in a shipwreck. "His father sent for him and an aunt sent one of his cousins" to take him to Trinidad, said Matey. "They were going because of the situation in the country, he was going to live with his father." Between 2018 and 2019 around 100 people disappeared while trying to make the perilous 100-kilometer (60-mile) journey from the northeastern port of Guiria to Trinidad. Venezuela is in the midst of economic and political crises, suffering three years of hyperinflation and a seven-year recession. The United Nations estimates that five million people have left the country since 2015, fleeing poverty, failing public services and a scarcity of food and medicines. Around 30 people disappeared in the latest ship wreck in the Gulf of Paria. The boat left Guiria on December 6 and the first bodies were found five days later. Venezuela's Attorney General Tarek William Saab said on Thursday that 28 bodies had been recovered. "A year and seven months since my daughter disappeared, we're going through this again," said Matey. "She brought up this boy from when he was only a few months old." A procession of around 100 people followed a truck carrying the coffin of Cristalinda Goitia, a 36-year-old teacher who was aboard the boat with her 11-year-old son Cristian Garcia Goitia. They were hoping to spend Christmas with her husband and maybe even remain in Trinidad. "Guiria is stunned," the truck driver Cristian told AFP. He previously drove for six hours to the Sucre state capital Cumana to deliver 11 other bodies for autopsies. Before reaching the cemetary, the truck stopped at the village church where a priest said a prayer for Goitia. She was buried alongside her son, who was laid to rest there a few days earlier. "Wait for me in heaven my daughter," cried her mother. "My sister was looking for new horizons," her sobbing brother Santiago added, before hitting out at the lack of safety measures. "There was nothing, we didn't find a single person wearing a life jacket." This is the first time that bodies have been recovered and the shock has hit Guiria hard. They had never before buried migrants that drowned off their coast. The government says it's continuing to look for victims but there is little hope of finding more bodies. A helicopter took part in the search operation, as well as local fishing boats. Interior minister Carmen Melendez went to the fishing village to meet with local officials and announced an investigation into "the existence of mafias that traffick" people, and vowed to find and arrest those responsible. Two people have been arrested, including the boat owner who allegedly has a criminal record for trafficking people and drugs. Saab has ordered the arrest of 10 people and seven members of the armed forces for extorsion. "We're talking about a transnational crime that needs a joint effort from authorities in Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago to tackle these acts both inside and outside Venezuela," he said. Venezuela's opposition has previously hit out at the mafia groups operating clandestine crossings to Trinidad in boats that are not seaworthy and accused authorities of complicity. mbj-jt/lda/erc/gma/bc/bgs
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