En Buscar del Sueño Americano

By: Amanda DePerro

Produced & edited by: Olivia Harlow

Hugo Chinchilla was starving. After paying huge sums of money, crossing the border between Mexico and Guatemala, swimming through rivers and running through the night, then-24-year-old Hugo and his 16-year-old cousin had been left in Mexico City by their coyote. Stranded without food, money or a way to contact family, the two slept in a fruit stand owned by a stranger they’d befriended. Before taking refuge in the market, Hugo and his cousin hadn’t eaten for three days.

“I had family in the United States. I could have called them but I didn’t have a penny,” said Chinchilla.

They had no other choice: They had to return home to Guatemala.

Chinchilla’s story from 2000 is not unusual or unique to Guatemalans. UNICEF estimates that 44,000 people from Guatemala are successful in leaving the country each year, many of whom are undocumented.

It is common for Latin Americans looking to leave their home countries to pay coyotes, or people who are paid to smuggle Latin Americans across borders, close to $3,500 each. Journeys across borders usually require multiple coyotes, and it is not unheard of for coyotes to kidnap and ransom the smuggled once they reach their destination for even more money—money that impoverished people and their families simply do not have.

Guatemalan families deported from Mesa, Arizona in the United States cover their faces as they wait to be processed for re-entry at an air force base.
© Jorge Dan Lopez ; Reuters Images

Chinchilla attempted twice in 2000 to cross the border into the United States. During his first attempt, Mexican police caught him at the U.S.-Mexico border.

For Juan Manuel de León, a Guatemalan farmer, the trip was more successful. Like Chinchilla, he took buses and taxis, shepherded by coyotes, to get to the United States. Along the journey, both Chinchilla and de León were forced to swim across the Rio Suchiate, which marks a section of the border between Guatemala and Mexico.

For de León, the trip took eight days. Running through the night from town to town, through the desert and swimming across the river were just the beginning. Once he reached his destination, a milk farm in Dallas, he faced other hardships.

“I felt marginalized because I did not speak English. I didn’t understand what was happening around me,” said de León.

After paying for false documents and working for a year in Dallas, de León returned to Guatemala. He does not plan to go back to the United States, he said, unless he is able to go back legally. Both of his sons attempted to cross the border; one was successful and has lived in Indianapolis for 11 years, the other was unsuccessful and still lives in Guatemala.

“Most people aren’t coming here because they want to live in California,” said Richard L. Johnson, a Ph.D. student at Arizona who lived in rural Guatemala for two years with the Peace Corps, and is studying immigration from Guatemala. “They’re looking for a way to escape the poverty they’ve been in—when you deport someone like that, you’re deporting them into economic hardships that they’re here to escape.”

More than 5,000 people have died attempting to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, according to the ACLU. Many of those crossing are children; according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, nearly 45,000 unaccompanied, undocumented children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador combined have been apprehended in attempt to cross the U.S. border in 2014 alone.

“To me it’s incredible that kids do this travel,” said Javier Ronquillo, an international graduate student from Guatemala studying mathematics at Ohio University. “It’s so hard. They get exposed to so many dangerous things; they get raped, they get harassed, they even get sometimes killed.”

However, for many who want to leave Guatemala, obtaining a visa rather than migrating without documents is unrealistic. A visa can get up to 10,000-12,000 Guatemalan quetzals (around $1,300-$1,500), but it is not a certainty that one’s visa will be granted after one’s money is paid. A coyote may be more expensive, but it is often seen as a guaranteed success.

Guatemalans face extreme violence tied to government corruption, poverty and drug trafficking every day. The promise of safety and opportunity in the United States can lead Guatemalans to attempt coming to the States undocumented.
© Giles Clarke ; Getty Images 

“Immigration laws are closing the door for immigrants,” said de León. He had been convinced not to try the journey again without documents, however, after hearing a story of Guatemalans who were locked in a cold, dark room for three days without food by the U.S. border police after being caught.

“There’s forced labor at the border, kidnappings, other forms of violence that people experience,” said Johnson. “It’s a fracaso more often than it’s a success.”

However, the U.S. government has had little victory in quelling the flow of undocumented migrants into the country.

“The idea that we can just deport this problem away is totally false and an illusion that needs to be countered,” said Johnson.

“It’s clear that deportation doesn’t work, because they are going to come back again,” said Ronquillo. “It’s incredible because they face so many risks coming back; getting killed, getting kidnapped, getting raped, getting—a million of things.”

On November 20, President Obama gave a speech on immigration and the steps the U.S. government has taken to lower the number of crossings at the border.

“Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law? Or are we a nation that gives them a chance to make amends, take responsibility, and give their kids a better future?” said President Obama in the speech.

 Chinchilla’s brother, who came to the United States successfully and is working in Stanford as a gardener, told Chinchilla not to come back to the United States. “This is not as good as it seems,” he said. Chinchilla’s brother’s wife and children still live in Guatemala. He hopes to be able to save enough to start sending money back to them, but is barely making enough in the United States to support even himself.

“I wanted to change my life, because in Guatemala you are condemned to poverty,” said Chinchilla. “Ir en los Estados Unidos es un sueño.”

“To live in the United States is a dream.” 

Poverty and Agriculture in Guatemala

By: Amanda DePerro

Produced & Edited By: Andrew Davis

In Guatemala, poverty and agriculture are a way of life. Throughout Guatemalan history, farmers have been marginalized to make room for big-name foreign corporations like the United Fruit Company. 

The effects are obvious today, as 70 percent of Guatemala’s poor population is made up of farmers, according to Kristin Lacy, CFO and coordinator of moderation and evaluation for Semilla Nueva, an organization dedicated to empowering farmers in Guatemala. To understand the plight of modern farmers in Guatemala, one must understand their history.

Semilla Nueva staff members in Guatemala city during a meeting
about the production, improvement and distribution of maize. © Semilla Nueva

A Troubled Past

Jacobo Árbenz, president of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954, was devoted to the agricultural state of Guatemala. However, his vision got in the way of the sprawling United Fruit Company, which was operating in many areas around Central America at the time, and was very profitable to the United States. The Central Intelligence Agency supported a coup d’état in Guatemala, and Árbenz was overthrown as threats of civil war emerged.

Small farmers are still feeling the consequences of that coup, as major companies are purchasing land that small farmers can no longer afford nor manage.

“The major problems with farmers and poverty is that land rights is a huge issue,” said Lacy. “Huge industries are buying a lot of land. Farmers don’t have any other option, their only asset they have is their land, so they have to sell it.”

The decline of private farmers has led many Guatemalans to turn away from agriculture in favor of more technological occupations.

“People who were farmers don’t want to be farmers anymore, they want to be tech guys. They think being a farmer is, like, being a poor person,” said Alexander Kronick, director of Caoba Farms, an organic farm in Antigua that produces food for Guatemala and connects nongovernment organizations, NGOs, with similar goals to one another.

Kronick contends that population growth in Guatemala has led to widespread pollution, which has led the population to become more aware of their environment.

Native farmers are being overrun by these corporations because of a lack of money, education and technology. They are unable to compete with massive businesses that can produce on a large scale.

“Most of smallholders’ agricultural activities are still traditional and manual, while continuing to use high amounts of chemicals,” said Joaquin Lozano, sub-regional coordinator and CPM of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Guatemala. “Agriculture is becoming less profitable for them, as they devote high resources to invest in a high-risk activity, more and more affected by climate change and natural disasters.”

Monsanto Law

Amidst the excitement of this year’s World Cup, Guatemalans were blindsided by the passage of a law that would potentially ruin smallholder farmers. The Law for the Protection of Plant Varieties, dubbed the “Monsanto Law,” would require the purchae of patents of certain seed varieties, patents that many small farmers in Guatemala could not afford.

“When people found out about it, the whole country kind of went berserk,” said Lacy. “Communities got together and put up roadblocks—they just stand in the highway and shut it down, which is pretty powerful.”

The law was rejected after the public outcry, but had the law succeeded in slipping past Guatemalans during the World Cup, it could have greatly damaged the agriculturally dependent country.

“It is not about being against GMO (genetically modified organisms) or not, it’s about seeking what is best for the countrymen,” said Juan Diego Chang, a physicist living in Guatemala City. “Many, many country people live from their own [sic] agriculture.”

Worms, distributed throughout the farm, inhibit healthy plant
growth at farms supported by Semilla Nueva. © Semilla Nueva 

The law would have hurt Caoba Farms, a large and successful farm dedicated to sustainability and the future of agriculture in Guatemala.

“In the long run it would make it more difficult to—there’s all sorts of new paperwork and registration to make the seeds more expensive, and it makes it harder for small farmers to come out,” said Kronick. “It’s just a way to control who can and can’t produce seeds. Basically, it’d make it more complicated and harder for the small agriculture guy to produce.”

Sustainable Farming

Many organizations, like Semilla Nueva and Caoba Farms, strive toward sustainability and the empowerment of small farmers through education and technological development. Since smallholder farmers don’t have access to resources including roads, it is difficult to compete with corporate-owned farms. This is amplified by the fact that many Guatemalan citizens are unable to read or write.

For Kronick, education is the key to the success of small farmers. Caoba Farms works with schools to teach agricultural education, and hopes to house students at the farm in the future.

“We’ll hopefully have a school of farming. We haven’t really gotten to that point yet,” said Kronick. “We’ll bring some people to the farm, house them, give them Spanish lessons. There are some people who have worked with us who don’t know how to read or write.”

Semilla Nueva uses a program named Farmer to Farmer to distribute technology that it tested on its own experimental farms. The technology can then be spread from farmer to farmer.

“We don’t want to hear that NGOs have to be here forever,” said Lacy. “Their money has flooded into the country, but it’s not really changing anything. So we’re really passionate about engaging with the state that can help carry out this agricultural development.”

According to Kronick, organic is the current trend. He hopes more people will embrace the possibilities that agriculture in Guatemala can offer.

“A lot of people are opening their eyes, and you can show them a lot of things,” he said. “Everything is a cycle—that’s what the Mayans said. It’s not a beginning, it’s not an end.”

Coaba Farms is nestled in the picturesque landscape of Antigua,
Guatemala. © Caoba Farms