Twelve Mexicans who died crossing border are buried.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

SAN PEDRO ALTEPEPAN, Mexico _ This tiny rural community 10 miles from the nearest paved road on Friday buried three of its sons, who perished along with nine other men in the Arizona desert last week, abandoned by a 20-year-old smuggler.

In the houses of the dead, questions would not go away about why the United States makes it so hard for Mexicans to go there and work. And worries persisted about what their families here would do now that they are dead.

"Why are they persecuting people so?" said Juana Hernandez, 30, as she sat with her five young children before the coffin of her husband, Lorenzo, who was 34. "They are honorable people who go to the other side. They just go there to work, to improve their lives."

"And too often, they pay with their lives," added Lorenzo's father, Vicente Hernandez Martinez, 74. "But what can we do? We've always been poor, but now they pay us less for our crops than it costs to produce them. It seems that we die if we go, and we starve if we stay."

The deaths of the 12 men from dehydration, part of a group of about 30 who left here May 15, shocked the public on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.

But surprise is less common here in the state of Veracruz. Thirty-six men from this state alone have died so far this year trying to enter the United States, up from 30 in all of 2000.

Improved border control has spurred Mexicans to cross in less hospitable places. But the dangers do not deter efforts to enter the United States.