Towson Latin American students host vigil for victims of Key Bridge collapse

By Gabriel Donahue, editor-in-chief

The ceremony began with a minute of silence. 

About 50 students sat in a room in the University Union Wednesday holding battery-operated candles. They were commemorating the six men who died last Tuesday after a cargo ship crashed into a column of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, sending the bridge into the Patapsco River. 

“I could not stop thinking that this could have been your parents, your brothers, or even you,” Alejandra Balcázar, the Center for Student Diversity’s Latine/x coordinator and Latin American Student Organization’s advisor, said to the group. 

Balcázar brought the idea to hold a vigil to LASO, according to the group’s vice president, senior Luis Serna. 

“We thought it was a really beautiful idea,” Serna said. 

The vigil continued as co-events coordinator Angel Hernandez read the names of the men who died –– Miguel Luna, Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval and José Mynor Lopéz –– leaving 10 seconds pauses “dedicated to prayers” between each. The sixth victim has not been publicly identified. 

The men had all immigrated from Latin America and were working overnight to repair potholes on the Key Bridge when it collapsed. 

The cargo ship, the Dali, sent a mayday after losing power. The call did not go directly to the construction workers on the bridge. 

Authorities closed traffic, but there was not enough time for them to alert and evacuate Miguel, Dorlian, Alejandro, Maynor, José and their colleagues. Two others survived. 

Balcázar said the Key Bridge collapse is just one of many instances in which Latin American migrants doing dangerous work are left behind in a catastrophe, sometimes due to a language barrier and lack of translators. 

“There is agency,” she said. “What happened cannot keep happening.” 

Rubí Caceres and Stephanie Molina, who are on the club’s executive board, attended the event. In an interview, they said they felt a sense of community. 

“I’m glad a lot of people took it seriously,” Caceres said. 

Balcázar said it was important to her to give Towson’s Latin American students, who are often celebrating their identities, the space to now grieve as a community.  

Serna echoed this sentiment. 

“It means more to us than you would think,” he said.