The cannibalism allegation that emerged through a lawsuit filed by Córdoba’s family in 2015 — seeking million in damages from Alvarenga — is recorded here because it is part of the documented history of this story, not because there is evidence to support it. Alvarenga denied the allegation. His lawyer said he passed a polygraph test on the matter. No physical evidence was presented publicly, and no legal finding established the allegation as fact. The lawsuit is part of the public record; the allegation is an allegation; the denial is a denial; and the absence of corroborating evidence is the absence of corroborating evidence. They are different things and should not be treated as the same.
What Roselia Díaz Cueto asked for — the thing she said publicly that she wanted — was not legal action but information. She wanted Alvarenga to come to Chiapas and tell her what had happened to her son. She wanted to know his final days. She said he might have left some words for her. The mother’s request was for human contact with the truth, whatever it was, from the man who had witnessed it.
Alvarenga did eventually travel to Chiapas. The visit was private. What passed between him and the Córdoba family is not part of the public record. The promise he said he had made to Ezequiel — whoever survived would go to the other’s family — was kept. Whatever that fulfillment looked like in practice, whatever grief and relief and complicated emotion surrounded it, it happened.
## The Ships That Passed