Guatemala is a source country as well as a key migrant transit state linking North and South America. It has also served as an entry point for thousands of “extracontinental” migrants and asylum seekers who hope to continue their journeys north. Mexico and the United States have long pressured the country to halt the movement […]
Guatemala
Guatemala: Is This Peace?
The civil war ended six years ago. Although Guatemala’s uprooted are trying to rebuild their lives, extreme poverty, violence, distrust, and fear remain. During Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, more than a million people were driven from their homes. This spring, I visited the country to see how, six years after the signing of “a firm […]
Donde Esta La Frontera?
IN THE EARLY MORNING OF DECEMBER 3, 2001, Kanu Okany Patel, a 35- year-old undocumented migrant from Gujarat, India, furtively made his way to the bathroom of a government-run detention center in Guatemala City, tied one end of a sturdy cord he’d secretly stripped from a window curtain around his neck, the other around a […]
