From the Archives: As poverty and violence force Guatemalans to leave their country, one anthropologist reflects on her work with Indigenous peoples in the highlands—and shows how the U.S. is implicated in its own “migrant crisis.”
On May 23, a bystander filmed 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gómez González after a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot her in the head. The young woman had recently crossed into Texas from Mexico, and she was unarmed. In an article published soon after her death, her mother, who still lives in Guatemala, described her as “naughty and cuddly and playful,” adding that “she loved to draw and sing.
U.S. policies that criminalize such migration ignore the longstanding relationship between the U.S. and Central America. During my time in Guatemala, I have learned that Maya-Mam residents have extensive knowledge of the history of U.S. intervention in their communities. Most U.S. media outlets characterize migrants as fleeing Guatemalan violence and impoverishment for a country where they do not belong. For many Guatemalans, they are fleeing circumstances that are American-made.
The second dominant story that spring described U.S. President Bill Clinton’s formal apology on behalf of the U.S. government for actively supporting Guatemalan military forces and intelligence units during the repression and violence. The truth commission had concluded that the U.S. had provided the Guatemalan government with extensive financial, intelligence, and military assistance throughout the war.
At the time of the CEH report and Clinton’s subsequent apology in early 1999, I lived in a mountain community in northwest Guatemala with a Maya-Mam woman named Maria, whose last name has been omitted for privacy. She had been pregnant with her third child when her husband left for the United States, three years before I arrived. Unable to sustain his family on their small plot of land, he was desperate for employment. Poor, Indigenous Guatemalans were rarely granted U.S.
Many Guatemalans I met at that time felt Clinton undermined his promise that the U.S. would not repeat the mistake of supporting campaigns of repression when he simultaneously pushed for the expansion of trade liberalization. Later that year, the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, Washington, drew massive protests as activists rallied against proposals to further deregulate international trade.
As part of my research, in 2008–2009, I linked up with a government-sponsored health project that made daily trips to deliver nutrient supplements and basic health services to San Juan Ostuncalco communities, including the one in which Gómez González was raised. Guatemala has the third highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world, according to UNICEF, and San Juan Ostuncalco’s rate is among the highest in the country.
Migration has been a key survival strategy, not only for those who have left the country but also for those who have stayed. In 2017, US$7.5 billion came to Guatemala, predominantly from Guatemalans living in the U.S., and that is expected to increase 10 percent in 2018. Several communities in the Maya highlands rank among those where families receive more remittances than in other regions of the country, and most of the money is spent on basic household needs.
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