Jakelin was also a brave immigrant
Many of us know the world of Jakelin Caal Maquin, the 7-yearold Guatemalan girl who died in Border Control custody. We are adoptive parents whose children were born in hamlets and villages like Jakelin’s, in Alta Verapaz. We have family members who are Q’eqchi, K’iche, Kaqchikel, Ixil, Mam, Tz’utujil, Chuj and Garifuna — native peoples of Guatemala. They struggle in ways hard for us to witness, much less understand: the daily walks to the public pila for clean drinking water, the scarcity of protein, the homes that get washed away during rainy season, the inability to attend school because of the need to work, the lack of jobs beyond subsistence farming, the absence of any viable and lasting opportunity.
We see it when we visit: the relentless, crushing, inescapable poverty that defines the lives of marginalized, indigenous Guatemalans. We hear it from our families, who tell us their only chance for a safer, healthier future is to leave the country they love.
To understand why Jakelin, her father and thousands like them make the dangerous trek to our border, you must understand what came before. The CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 led to the installation of a series of brutal dictators. Decades of violence followed in a 36-year conflict that ended in 1996. Some 200,000 civilians were killed, most of them indigenous people who lived in mountain villages like Jakelin’s in Alta Verapaz. A tradition of repression and discrimination dominates in Guatemala, leading to violence that takes root in such environments.
When I read stories like Jakelin’s, I remember my grandparents, who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Scotland and Ireland to America. My father was the first of his strain of the O’Dwyer clan born on U.S. soil. Today, I benefit from their brave sacrifices.
My heart breaks for the soul of Jakelin, for her mother and father, her siblings, aunties, uncles and cousins. Her family is my family. We are one.
Jessica O’Dwyer is the author of “Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir” (Seal Press, 2010). She lives in Tiburon.