Desperate youths try to reach the US despite danger, deaths
COMITANCILLO, Guatemala — Every night for two years, Glendy Aracely Ramírez has prayed by the altar in her parents’ bedroom where, under a large crucifix, is a picture of her sister Blanca. The 23-yearold died alongside 50 other migrants in a smuggler’s tractor-trailer in Texas.
“I ask God for my family’s health and that I might get to the United States one day. My mom asks God that she won’t ... see another accident,” said Glendy, 17, who has already packed a small backpack for her own journey from the family’s home 8,900 feet up in Guatemala’s highlands.
Her “coyote” postponed it because of a flare-up in violence among Mexican cartels that control routes to the United States, but she is undeterred.
Tens of thousands of youths from this region would rather take deadly risks than stay where they see no future. Blanca’s fatal journey was her third attempt to reach the U.S.
“I want to go there, because ... there are no opportunities (here), even though Mom says ... I’ll suffer (Blanca’s fate),” Glendy said as she sat with her mother, Filomena Crisóstomo, in their courtyard. “I’d like to have a house, help my family and get ahead.”
The record numbers of migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have made migration a top concern in this U.S. presidential election year. Among migrants, the largest group of unaccompanied minors has been from Guatemala — nearly 50,000 of the 137,000 encounters recorded by border authorities.
Most come from tiny hamlets in the predominantly Indigenous Western Highlands. Daily wages top out around the equivalent of $9, far below the supposed legal minimum. In tiny plots of brittle clay soil — often the only collateral for loans to pay smugglers’ fees that can reach $20,000 — many families grow corn and beans to eat.
Little else sprouts from the steep mountainsides except for the exuberantly decorated, multi-story concrete homes built with remittances from loved ones in the United States — constant reminders of what’s possible if only one makes it “to the north.”
In the small town of Comitancillo, two murals serve as a different reminder — they’re memorials to the nearly two dozen local migrants who died in recent mass tragedies. They either asphyxiated in the trailer in San Antonio, Texas, in June 2022, or were shot and set afire by rogue police officers in Camargo, Mexico, in January 2021.
It took less than a week after the remains from the Camargo massacre were returned to Comitancillo for burial before the first surviving family member left for the U.S.
And with a 17-yearold boy who made it to Florida this winter, now at least one relative has migrated from nearly all of the families since the massacre, said the Rev. José Luis González, a priest with the Jesuit Migration Network. The lone exception was an older man whose family was already north of the border; he died trying to make it back after being deported, González said.
“It’s an evident sign that the fear to stay is bigger than the fear to go,” said González, who started ministering to the affected families when they traveled some six hours to Guatemala’s capital for DNA tests to identify the remains.
Many families credit the Jesuit group for being the only institution that has stayed by their side, regularly traveling to Comitancillo to provide legal updates — nearly a dozen police officers were sentenced last fall in the Camargo case — as well psychological, humanitarian and pastoral assistance.