Castaway’s claims backed by fishermen and officials

Guardian News and Media/Mexico City

Alvarenga has told diplomats and reporters from his hospital bed on the islands that he set out from the fishing village of Costa Azul on the coast of the Mexican state of Chiapas in December 2012 with a fellow fisherman called Ezequiel but they were blown into the ocean by bad weather.

He has said that Ezequiel died about a month into the odyssey while he survived on a diet of fish, birds and turtles, and by drinking turtle blood and rainwater.

Chiapas rescue services official Jaime Marroquin confirmed to the Guardian that a boat manned by two fisherman was reported missing from Costa Azul two days after it set out on November 17, 2012.

The report was lodged by the boat’s owner, a member of the Camaroneros de la Costa co-operative, which Alvarenga has mentioned in an interview.

Marroquin, who oversaw the search operation, said the weather had been very bad and it was perfectly possible the boat was blown out into the ocean.

He said fishermen in the area commonly set off in similarly small vessels on one or two-day trips in search of shark or shrimp with no navigational equipment.

“The winds were high,” he said. “We carried out an intense search but we had to stop the search flights after two days because of poor visibility.”

The official report of the event names the two missing fishermen as Cirilo Vargas and Ezequiel Cordova. Both are said to be aged 38, which jars with Alvarenga’s description of his companion as a teenager, although Mexican official reports commonly contain mistakes.

While Alvarenga’s name is not mentioned in the report he has given his age as 37. Marroquin said the boat’s owner indicated that Vargas was from El Salvador and there were no family members following the progress of the search effort, while Ezequiel’s father had always been at the airstrip during the operation.

Local fishermen from Costa Azul have told Associated Press that Alvarenga lived and worked in the area for years and was lost at sea in mid-November.

From the Marshall Islands, Alvarenga has said that while he had been based in Mexico for some 15 years, he was originally from a coastal town in El Salvador called Garita Palmera, near the border with Guatemala.

The Salvadoran newspaper tracked down his parents in the town. They said their son had moved to Chiapas because he wanted to work on shark fishing boats based there but the family had lost contact with him eight years ago when he stopped visiting his hometown.

“We thought that he must be dead,” Maria Julia Alvarenga said. “I cannot find the words to describe how I feel, as his mother, to know that he has been found.”

His teenage daughter told the paper she was looking forward to seeing her father again.

El Salvador’s foreign ministry released a statement saying it was co-ordinating with the Mexican authorities and that the castaway would return first to Mexico and then go on to El Salvador.

From the Marshall Islands a spokesman from the foreign affairs ministry confirmed that Alvarenga was likely to be discharged from hospital soon.

“Other than some swollen ankles his overall condition is OK,” Anjane Kattil said. “According to the doctors his immune system is weak, but not as weak as we expected.”

The idea that anybody could survive so long at sea in such a small boat with no cover from the elements, while living on such a restricted diet, let alone end the ordeal with little more than swollen ankles, has fishermen scratching their heads in Mexico as well. “It’s incredible to survive that long,” boat owner Cesar Castillo said.