Ashes of Marcelo Lucero laid to rest in Ecuador

GUALACEO, ECUADOR - Rosario Lucero pressed her head against the niche in a concrete mausoleum where she had placed a small wood box containing the ashes of her son Marcelo. Then she began to wail.

"Why did they take my son?" she sobbed yesterday in Spanish at the municipal cemetery here. "Why did they take you?"

According to Suffolk County police, he was taken because of ethnic hatred. Lucero, 37, was killed Nov. 8 in Patchogue, police say, in an attack by seven teenagers, including one charged with stabbing him to death. 

His body was returned to Ecuador on Wednesday, greeted by hundreds of people who lined the streets as a procession carried his coffin from the city entrance to the spacious home he built for his mother but never saw. He had planned to move there soon himself after 15 years in the United States.

He was cremated yesterday morning, fulfilling a desire he had expressed to his family. Then, shortly before 4 p.m., Rosario Lucero and her daughter Isabel walked out of the house. Each carried a wooden box containing his ashes.

One was destined for the cemetery; the ashes in the other will be sprinkled in the sea.

They walked down cobblestone streets, past the plaza where Marcelo played as a boy, and into the towering Matris Catholic Church of Gualaceo. Some 600 people sat in the pews as the church bells rang.

The family ascended to the altar and placed the two wooden boxes on a small table covered with a purple cloth. Six candles on metal stands surrounded the table.

In front of it stood wreaths and a flower display that spelled the word "TUNAS," an acronym in Spanish that stands for "Everyone United, No One Walks Alone." The TUNAS are a group of Lucero's childhood friends. Some sat in a front pew.

In a homily, the Rev. Jorge Moreno denounced the "xenophobia" he asserted contributed to the death of Lucero, whom he said had emigrated to seek a better life. Then, Lucero's sister Isabel took to the altar to read a message from their mother, too devastated to speak herself.

"Marcelo, my son, you will never be far from my heart, because the love of a mother is interminable," Isabel said. Calling it her "night of pain and bitterness," she said she hoped "with the sunrise we will see justice."

When the Mass ended, the family took the wooden boxes from the altar, and made their way out of the church, where a crush of people and television cameras awaited them. They walked through the streets again, followed by hundreds of mourners as they made their way about a mile to the cemetery.

They entered its gates, and walked across a grassy section to a 20-foot-high mausoleum made of concrete and painted white. It was divided into 2-foot-by-3-foot openings where bodies - and in this case, urns holding ashes - are placed. Lucero's spot was the newest one available, No. 150.

Rosario placed one wooden box inside, said a few words quietly, and walked a few feet back to her relatives as a throng surrounded them. But then she turned around and returned to the niche. And she began to wail.

Marcelo Lucero's journey to the United States to help pull his family out of poverty was finally over. He was back home, although his family was hardly at peace.