Guatemalan Migration to the United States: The

Struggle for Survival and its Effects

Commented [1]: Great job. Make revisions by next
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publish on school website.

Images by peaceinsight.org

Background - by Joseph Song

For decades, migrants from Latin America have been coming to the United States in

mass. Recently, many of these immigrants have been coming the nation of

Guatemala. It is important to know that during the Cold War, Latin America hosted

many proxy wars. A war between socialism and capitalism took place at large.

Guatemala served as one of these battlegrounds.

(image from knowledge.wharton.upenn.org)

According to Harvest of an Empire, a film on immigration, during the 1950s, the

biggest landowner in Guatemala was the American Fruit Company. The Fruit

Company owned railroads as well as shipping lines. In many ways, the Fruit

Company was more powerful than many other governments in Latin America.

The United States became seriously concerned when Guatemala’s newly elected

president, Jacobo Arbenz, began seizing land from the Fruit Company. Arbenz

nationalized these lands and began a blueprint for the redistribution of land

amongst the nation’s impoverished. Arbenz’s socialist policies upset capitalist

interests in the United States.

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(images from pinterest.com)

The United States responded to Arbenz by supporting a coup d’etat and eventually

overthrew the Arbenz government. Soon after, the U.S. supported a dictatorship

under Carlos Castillo Armas. This ensured the continual exploitation of Guatemalan

natural resources for the profits of American corporations.

First World Involvement (Louis)

The privatization of these resources limited the access that citizens had to basic

necessities such as food and water. To make matters worse, third-world debt to the

World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) further prevented

Guatemalans from being able to sustain their families. In response to this, the IMF

imposed Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), which changed many Central

American countries including Guatemala. According to The Guardian, Guatemala

pays high for global food system failings, Structural Adjustment Programs in the

country of Guatemala impacted them by weakening their food security, especially

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for indigenous people who could not feed their own people. Farmers, who had

been self-sufficient in grain production, were forced to pursue growth through

agricultural exports such as coffee, sugar, apparel, and bananas - which is hard to

feed a population with these products. They now depend on staple foods that are

mostly imports from the US.

(image from international organizations wordpress)

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(graph provided by economy watch)

Interview of Brandon Morales (written by Joseph)

To strengthen the accuracy and precision of this article, I sought information from a fellow classmate,

whom I knew was from Guatemala. I thought that a primary source would provide a wider depiction of the

situation in Guatemala.

Brandon spoke of the prevalent corruption and violence that his family witnessed

on a daily basis. Also, educated on the civil war in his home country between the

capitalists and socialists, Brandon spoke of how the United States needs to take

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responsibility, “The U.S. has so much power and wealth, yet still continues to pick

on smaller countries.” Brandon went on to describe the genocide and

discrimination taking place against Mayans, “The U.S created this mess of a country

in the first place. They need to take responsibility and accept the immigrants

running away from the violence and persecution.”

Interview Anonymous (Written by Louis)

An anonymous source who immigrated from Guatemala in _______ shared his

experience and was able to relate to the economic causes of Guatemala such as not

much resources, no money for food, clothing, and absolutely no help from the

government. The interviewer believes Guatemala struggles to develop due to

corruption and lack of resources as he pointed out a former president and vice

president were arrested for stealing money in September 2015, just a year after he

arrived to the US. Poor people were prosecuted, recruited into gangs.

Unfortunately, the interviewer explains that nothing could be done in his town that

was just five hours from the capital because there was no law enforcement. He also

believes that the US should help Guatemala because they were the ones that

caused problems back in the 1970s by influencing the removal of president Arbenz

and the American Fruit Company to own a major part of Guatemala.

Direct Effects of Immigration to the United States (Joseph)

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Nonetheless, the United States government does not agree that it has an obligation

to accept migrants from countries it has impacted. Rather, the US has gone to great

lengths to prevent undocumented immigrants from entering the country. They

have done this by heavily militarizing the border and by limiting the number of

immigrants that can apply for asylum. There has been intense spending on the

border in an effort to keep aliens out. According to the article, “Creating a Military-

Industrial Complex,” by Aljazeera, $18 billion is spent each year on simply

maintaining the border. Moreover, “drones with man-hunting radar systems” have

been activated in the US- Mexico border. Additionally, mass amounts of private

detention centers have been created in order to temporarily hold undocumented

immigrants. The officers in these centers have become notorious for their

mistreatment and dehumanization of immigrants, giving the United States a bad

reputation internationally. All these things are only creating a war zone here in

North America.

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The image border patrol chasing people away from the border with the use of

aggressive weapons such as tear gas.

(images from Time Magazine)

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