“Sometimes I think my father just wasn’t thinking through the consequences of leaving,” Magdalena Raymundo, 25, said in a dirt-floored shack she shares with her husband in Acul, a village outside Nebaj. She and her mother still owe nearly $13,000 for a trip her father and brother took in 2006.
Threatening to evict the family, “bank collectors come by every few weeks asking for money,” she said.
-Angel Valentin
In her book I, Rigoberta Menchú, Rigoberta Menchú, an indigenous Guatemalan woman, describes her life during the armed struggle of the Guatemalan Civil War. In the last chapter Menchú leaves the country in exile, (Menchú pp. 284-285). In 2015 indigenous people in Guatemala were still feeling pain from that conflict. According to the World Bank over fifty percent of Guatemalans were still living below the poverty line in 2013. This poverty created cycles of rising immigration from the country into the United States as poverty lead many into drugs, and violence was commonplace in the nation. In the United States immigration reform came to a standstill as both political parties refused to budge on the issue of immigration.
This polarity created a bases for masking the stories of individuals who were traveling from Guatemala to the United States. This New York Times article attempts to tell the stories of the individuals who made the decision to travel from Guatemala. The author, Angel Valentin, shows sympathy towards those who made the choice to take out loans in order to come to the United States. Valentin also describes the way in which loans are taken out in order to provide payment for Coyotes. Coyotes are human smugglers who volunteer their knowledge of the terrain on la frontera, the border between the United States and Mexico, in exchange for payment.
The people who’s stories are told in this article come from small villages in Guatemala, much like Menchú’s, this could help future historians understand the strife of people who are coming from Central America to the United States. It could also be used for research to follow up on the aftermath of the Guatemalan Civil War. The article also tells about the strategies used by the coyotes to recruit people to come to the United States. It connects the payments the coyotes demand to the cycle of people coming to the United States. These coyotes are known for taking advantage of the people who are paying them.