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GUATEMALA - Forced Exodus

Ilka Oliva Corado

Thursday 19 May 2016, posted by Ilka Oliva Corado

All the versions of this article: [English] [Español]

Why girls, adolescents and women migrate? What is the reason for leaving the country and embarking on the misadventure of an illegal crossing with de certainty that they will be transgressed, and if they make it they will be able to survive and try to deal with the post-border hell; that if they reach their destination, otherwise they will become one more of the statistics of the disappeared and dead while in the migratory journey in no man’s land. Without any authority searching for them and that dignifies them by mentioning their names and recognizing their identity.

A tragedy even if you only imagine it, but it is a reality, and Guatemala is forcing thousands of girls, adolescents and women to look after themselves in another country, the United States appears to be the nearest hand to help, but it is only a fantasy arising out of desperation. It is well known that its immigration policy disrespects human and labor rights of undocumented persons. Abuse by smugglers, Mexican authorities and Border Patrol make the journey the worst of all hells for any human being, and the viciousness wherewith girls, adolescents and women are transgressed is appalling. Why forced immigration and these abuses continue to be invisible and overlooked? What is the benefit for the involved governments?

They are trying to save their lives, fleeing a patriarchal system that abuse and exclude them. They are fleeing the misery, poverty and famine, the gender and domestic violence, and femicides. They are fleeing the social cleansing. They are fleeing the decay of a system that victimizes them. They are fleeing from a society indifferent to cruelty -due to their lack of sensitivity. They are fleeing classism, racism, abandonment and oblivion.

They are fleeing because they have lost all hope, that perishing in the journey it is the least. They are single mothers, girls and adolescents whom criminal gangs have abused and have put a price on their heads. Also abused within the family, by their own parents or close relatives. By their spouses. Migration is forced; no one is going to risk his life just like that, and to venture on a journey by blind ambition.

That effort, that psychosis, that pain and anguish. That desolation and longing return to the home country converted in remittances. The illusion of a home, of a meal for their family on the table, footwear and schooling for the children who were left behind. For the parents back home. For siblings and grandparents.

When will this situation change? When the Guatemalan state will cease to export girls, adolescents and women for the trafficking networks for sexual exploitation, labor and organ trafficking that proliferates during the illegal journey between Mexico and the United States? When Guatemalan society will no longer be indifferent to the hardest hit of the system? When will Guatemala be a country with a comprehensive policy that bets on development, social justice and gender equality?

Meanwhile, thousands will continue to emigrate in those pilgrimages looking in a estrange land what their own could not offered for them.


@ilkaolivacorado

contacto at cronicasdeunainquilina.com

Translated by Marvin Najarro

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