Mural unveiled for Key Bridge collapse victims at vigil

BALTIMORE — Yellow vests, hard hats and work boots cling to wooden crosses memorializing six men.

Miguel Luna. Jose Mynor Lopez. Dorlian Castillo Cabrera. Alejandro “Alex” Hernandez Fuentes. Carlos Hernandez. Maynor Suazo Sandoval.

Behind their crosses stands a mural depicting the tragedy that claimed their lives: They were members of a construction crew filling potholes on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the early morning of March 26, when a massive container ship crashed into one of the bridge’s support piers, collapsing the span and sending them plunging to their deaths.

More than three weeks after the bridge fell, indefinitely disrupting the Port of Baltimore and permanently altering the city’s skyline, the region continued to mourn the six men killed. On Friday in Hawkins Point and Dundalk — communities the bridge used to connect — people gathered for a vigil unveiling the mural and a service for one of the men who died.

“I’m sorry for them, and at the same time I’m sorry for me,” Pascual Magana, 60, said at the vigil.

His eyes welled up as he kneeled to light candles at the base of each cross, two of them for close friends he lost — Mynor Lopez and Castillo Cabrera — and all of them representing people like him who escaped poverty in Central America by coming to the United States to perform grueling work that is both critical and easy to overlook.

Magana, Mynor Lopez and Castillo Cabrera worked construction together in Virginia, fixing bridges and maintaining other types of infrastructure, he said. The three of them came here from Guatemala and got to know each other on job sites, joking and taking jabs at each other about their performances on any given day. He said they were “really good friends.”

“I’m so sorry for their families. They had children,” Magana, who lives in Glen Burnie, said in Spanish.

He was one of about a dozen people who on Friday evening took in the mural painted by artist Roberto Marquez, of Dallas, Texas.

Marquez has responded to the scenes of several tragedies of national and international scale and made art with hopes of helping people cope with their grief. He painted murals after a gunman opened fire at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers, and when dozens of migrants died in a sweltering tractor trailer near San Antonio.

The Key Bridge collapse also hit close to home, given that he once lived in Maryland.

“When I found out about the accident, it’s like, this was my state, these are Hispanics and I used to work construction,” Marquez said. “I have the time, and this is what I do, try to bring some kind of hope, relief, company to the people that are suffering.”

The mural spans several wooden panels, each providing his lens into an element of the tragedy.

Marquez chose not to paint the Dali, the cargo ship that struck the bridge, because he views it as the cause of the tragedy. Instead, he drew faces inspired by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali with the colors of Maryland’s flag.

Divers recovered the bodies of two workers from a red pickup truck. Marquez painted the truck being hoisted from the water, rather than falling from the bridge, because “it’s hope.”

Once he painted the mural and erected the crosses, he invited the victims’ families to the site, asking them to add their own touches. Friends and relatives decorated their loved ones’ crosses with mementos, including photos, work clothing and the flags of their home countries.

Luna’s family members decorated part of the mural with their handprints in red paint, signing their names next to their hands. Sandoval’s relatives authored messages to him — “Our champion” and “We will always remember you,” they wrote in Spanish — in another portion.

In Dundalk, Alejandro Hernandez’ friends, colleagues and relatives filed into Iglesia Solo Cristo Salva for a visitation Friday evening, a service closed to the news media at his family’s request.

In previous interviews, coworkers told The Sun he worked his way up from laborer to foreman at Brawner Builders, a role that came with a company truck and his own crew to supervise. They remembered his big personality and how he was devoted to his family and church. They said he was particularly close to a brother-in-law who was rescued from the collapse.

A man who did not wish to be identified Friday out of respect for the family’s desire for privacy echoed his colleagues, saying he got to know Hernandez working together for about 10 years.”

“Hernandez was a worker who liked to finish his goals,” the man said in Spanish. “Each thing he mentalized, he achieved.”

Others weren’t ready to talk about their loss.

“I really don’t want to discuss it,” one man said. “We’re just grieving the loss of our friend.”

At the Hawkins Point memorial, a hardhat sat atop Hernandez’ cross, which was decorated with Mexican and American flags, a pair of work boots and a reflective yellow vest.

“We work on bridges and you almost feel their pain,” said Yunior Paz, 23, who came to pay his respects Friday night. “We’re almost family. It feels hard.”

Paz, of Baltimore, said he works on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and has friends who previously worked on the Key Bridge. In their line of work, they worry about traffic blazing past. They worry about getting injured by heavy construction equipment. Never, he said, had they considered something so catastrophic as a bridge collapse.

Magana recounted several close calls on job sites and pointed out bruises on his hands. There are nights, he said, when he doesn’t put down the jackhammer for hours.

“We have training for jobs, falls, how to secure yourself,” Magana said. “But for a tragedy like this, there is nothing that can protect you. Nothing.”

Struggling for words to describe how he was feeling, he patted his chest, right above his heart, and cried.