Quiché to San Andrés Sajcabajá

 I started my sojourn in the altiplano in Santa Cruz del Quiché, in part because it is a convenient staging ground for forays in different directions. The three communities I planned to visit are not all in a straight line. While Chinique and Zacualpa are on the same highway, San Andrés Sajcabajá is off in a different direction. There are some back roads that connect San Andrés to other municipalities, but not recommended. So I planned to start in Santa Cruz del Quiché, where I also wanted to visit the mother of two friends active in the Pescando Justicia (Fishing for Justice) campaign, and also some old friends from my time in 2011, with whom I've kept in touch intermittently. 

As I noted in an earlier post, Doña F. had virtually accosted me at the door of my hotel and dragged me to her home half a block away. The next day, Tuesday, I met with an NGO called the Observatorio Indígena (Indigenous Observatory), which had been recommended to me by a friend and colleague who researches migration. I'd first asked a friend who works in the health department at the departmental level if she knew of any NGOs or organizations working on immigration-related issues but she did not (I hadn't really expected that she would -- her scope is pretty narrowly related to the health workers' union). But my research colleague suggested the Observatorio Indígena so I contacted them and very soon set up a meeting with them.

I explained my project and my interest, and they told about their work. They had conducted a study of 10 municipalities with large migrant populations -- Zacualpa and San Andrés Saj. (SAS) were on the list, but not Chinique. Funding came from USAID - which immediately raised a question mark in my mind, but I didn't ask them about whether the funder had set any constraints on their work. Their angle was not looking at causes of migration but at the way families made use of remittances, which  are perhaps the largest source of funds in the Guatemalan economy. And in looking at how remittances could be used more productively -- for social and community purposes, not simply for personal consumption (I'm just reporting what they told me, not particularly taking a stand on it). We chatted for a while, and then the director, Mario, got very excited when I explained what I was doing with immigrant workers in the U.S. and invited me to give a talk on Friday when they would be presenting their project at the local campus of San Carlos (the state university -- the students at the main campus have been on strike for over a year but I guess the strike hasn't reached the highlands). 

So I planned to head to San Andrés - now only about an hour away since the road has been paved (when I first traveled there in 2009, the road was only paved about 500 meters outside of Santa Cruz del Quiché and the trip took closer to 2 hours) - the following day and start interviewing the family members I'd managed to contact in advance.

The first person I was going to talk with was the father of a young man who was part of the "deferred action" program. In most of these cases, I haven't yet interviewed the migrants, but had only explained my project and asked for their permission to contact their relatives in Guatemala. I'd also taken the precaution of their contacting their relatives first, since people in Guatemala don't usually answer phone calls or messages from numbers that they do not recognize (this is not universally true, but more true than not). 

The father, Don Antonio, met me in the central plaza or parque of San Andrés. While I was waiting for him I watched a vigorous game of basketball on the public court on one side of the square. There are a couple of statues (I didn't bother to see who the figures were) and also a monument to victims of the massacre in San Andrés during the armed conflict. 

I only waited a few minutes for Don Antonio. He works as a mason, and his work is mostly in and around the town center, although he lives in an aldea a bit farther off.  There are plenty of benches and seating areas so we just perched ourselves on a low wall and talked. Since I hadn't interviewed his son, but only knew him through the Deferred Action project, I hadn't realized that he had other children in the U.S. He told me that he and his two daughters had attempted to go to the U.S. some months ago. As is often the case when adults and minors travel together, they separated at the border. The girls had presented themselves to immigration and were sent to a shelter for juveniles and then were released. He was not so lucky, and ended deported back to Guatemala, where he now lives alone. He told me that he was very lonely with his children away (his wife died some years ago, leaving him alone with the children). Yes, he talks to them frequently, they call every day, but it's not the same. He told me "There's no one to make tortillas." I suggested gently that he could buy them -- there are tortillerias all over every town I've ever visited in Guatemala, advertising "los tres tiempos" (the three times -- breakfast, lunch, dinner). He responded, "But it's not the same as having people to sit down and share a meal with."

Several days later, after I had left San Andrés, I got a text message from him, and then some phone calls, asking my advice about a supposed job offer he had received. I say "supposed" because when I finally was able to understand what he was talking about, it sounded like a scam. Someone had called him saying that they were from the U.S. Consulate, and told him that he had been selected for a program that would bring him to the U.S. for a specified period of time for a job - but he had to pay Q2500 in order to "apply". I tried to have him send me the PDFs that the person claiming to work for the consulate had sent him, but he only sent me screen shots of the messages containing the PDFs, not the PDFs themselves. The whole thing seemed fishy to me, and I told him so. I texted his son in the US and briefly told him about this, because I wanted him to be alerted. He said his father hadn't told him anything about it.

I gently explained that the U.S. Consulate would not be likely to call a Guatemalan citizen and that the consulate did not arrange for jobs. I told him that I thought it was fake, and that when a U.S. employer wanted to hire someone from another country it was the employer's responsibility to do all the paperwork. I hope I managed to dissuade him.

But this incident points out the vulnerability and gullibility of people in Guatemala, especially those with less education and less familiarity with the world outside their local community. I could sense how much Don Antonio wanted this to be real, wanted an opportunity to go to the U.S. legally, to be able to earn a decent living and to see his children (although the job was in California). The desire is so strong that people want to believe.