You hear that immigrant children are dying at the border.
You hear that Central Americans are dying at the border, but you don't hear that these
are Indigenous children dying at the border.
At the U.S. southern border, people from Guatemala make up the largest portion of unaccompanied
minors and family units apprehended.
At least six known children have died in U.S. immigration custody.
Five of those children are Indigenous Mayas from Guatemala.
And if we include adults, six Guatemalan Maya people total have died at the U.S. border.
The news reports them as Guatemalans, but their specific Maya nations get buried in
the coverage – Mam, Q’eqchi’, Chuj, Ch’orti’, Achi.
We spoke to Maya immigrants in the U.S. about the death of these young people at the border
I'm from the Maya Mam nation.
Some of them asked us to protect their identity for fear of persecution of their families
in Guatemala.
In Guatemala, official statistics say the Indigenous population is around 40%, but some
think it could be as high as 60%.
Despite being a large portion of the population, Indigenous peoples in Guatemala face high levels
of inequality, land disputes and displacement.
In May 2018, 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gomez was shot in the head by border patrol
agents:
As I started hearing the news, I realized that she was from San Juan Ostuncalco, which
is the village right next to where I was born -- and that she was actually from my nation.
Then reports of Maya children dying in U.S. custody started rolling in:
A little girl Jakelin had died in custody.
And then just two weeks later we heard the news again, and Felipe died on Christmas Eve.
Later, we had Juan.
And then we heard that a toddler had died — two-and-a-half years old.
His name was Wilmer.
And not even two weeks later, another boy, 16 years old.
His name was Carlos.
They died of things like bacterial infections, influenza and pneumonia
following ICE custody.
One of the main challenges that Indigenous migrants and refugees face at the border is
the language barrier -- both in English and Spanish.
Aside from Spanish, there are 22 officially recognized Indigenous languages in Guatemala.
We've asked for interpreters in their languages because you cannot have access to justice
if you can't express [yourself].
And if they can't express themselves in their language, then they can't tell the complete
story of what happened.
Mam, K’iche’ and Q’anjob’al, Maya languages indigenous to Guatemala,
are in the top 25 most common languages spoken in
U.S. immigration courts today.
Despite this, there’s often a shortage of interpreters who speak Indigenous languages.
And the language barrier can be deadly.
Detained immigrants who speak an Indigenous language are less likely to receive medical
care.
Seven-year-old Jakelin Caal’s father, Nery Gilberto Caal Cuz, signed a form stating she
was in good health.
The form was in English.
Caal’s first language was Maya Q’eqchi’.
Jakelin Caal died of a bacterial infection.
Indigenous Guatemalans also face high malnutrition rates.
Malnutrition in Guatemala is 47% with up to 70% in some indigenous areas.
The Alta Verapaz province, where Jakelin Caal was from, has a 59%
chronic malnutrition rate among children.
Palm oil plantations have been encroaching on Indigenous land in rural Guatemala.
So you look at the case for instance of Jakelin Caal, the area that she came from is today
heavily controlled by transnational corporations, by palm oil plantations.
In 2018, eighteen land defenders were murdered in Guatemala.
People from Guatemala started coming to the U.S. in big numbers fleeing war.
There was a mass exodus because of genocide that was occurring in our lands and territories.
Guatemala experienced a 36-year civil war between 1960 and 1996.
The United States under the Reagan administration
poured hundreds of millions of dollars into
the Guatemalan military.
The Guatemalan military was responsible for 93% of the human rights abuses during the war.
More than 200,000 of our people were killed or disappeared, and over 1.5 million were
forcibly displaced.
Most of them, most of us, were Maya people.
In present-day Guatemala, Indigenous people are leading the charge to prosecute war criminals
from that era.
Efraín Ríos Montt, dictator of Guatemala from 1982-1983, was convicted of genocide
and crimes against humanity in 2013.
Ríos Montt was charged for the massacre of 1,771 Maya Ixil people.
However, his conviction was later overturned and he died at age 91.
The oppression of Maya people in Guatemala didn’t start with the civil war
There's at least 1.3M people of Guatemalan origin in the United States.
However, it’s unclear how many of those people are Indigenous.
We're inaccurately mislabeled as Latino or Hispanic or Latinx.
But it's also caused a process of erasing our
existence, erasing our identity
Though made invisible, Maya people are part of the fabric of U.S. immigrant communities:
What’s happening to Mayas at the U.S. southern border is the result of centuries
of oppression:
The root drivers of forced migration for many of us has been because of our Indigenous
identity, because of the large scale persecution we have lived.
The International Mayan league has made demands of the U.S. government.
Those include thorough and transparent investigations into the deaths on the border,
and a dialogue with Indigenous leaders on developing humane immigration policies.
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If you like this story about Mayas in Guatemala.
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