He was, by the accounts of people who knew him in Chiapas, a quiet and hardworking young man. His aunt Magdalena Córdoba described him in those terms — someone with some sea experience, not a complete novice, but not a seasoned deep-water fisherman like Alvarenga. He had been hired for the trip at a pay rate of around $50, and he was someone Alvarenga had not worked with before. The two men were, in the terms of a professional partnership, strangers about to share a very small boat for thirty hours.
His family, when Alvarenga’s story broke in February 2014, responded with grief and the particular kind of anguish that comes from learning your loved one did not survive but not knowing exactly what happened. Roselia Díaz Cueto, his mother, made public statements that were notable for their generosity under extraordinary circumstances. She did not blame Alvarenga. She said explicitly: “I want it understood that I am not blaming this person, Alvarenga, nor am I declaring him guilty of anything.” What she wanted was information — to have the man who witnessed her son’s death come to Chiapas and tell her what Ezequiel’s final days were like. She said: “Maybe my son left some words for me.”
That wish, expressed in the immediate aftermath of Alvarenga’s rescue, is the human dimension of a story that media coverage often reduced to Alvarenga’s remarkable individual survival. There was also a 22-year-old who went out on a routine trip and did not come home, and a mother who spent more than a year not knowing whether he was alive or dead.