Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

Guatemala: A Divided Country's Hidden Hunger

Samuel Loewenberg for the Pulitzer Center

The little girl does not smile. She doesn't have the energy. Hopefully she will soon.

She is in a rehabilitation clinic in Jocotan, Chiquimula, a province in the far east of Guatemala, near to Honduras. Her name is Domitila, she is nine years old. Her body is emaciated, she is fragile. Patches of her hair are missing, the veins in her legs show through her skin. Her face has a perpetual look of sorrow – the muscles are too weak to change expression. Other children in her family were in similar shape, the nurse tells me.

A boy, Israel, can not even support himself. He has been placed in a walker, where he lays sprawled. When he sees me, he tries several times to raise himself, but he cannot muster it. A pair of babies, twins, are so thin and frail I can hardly stand to look at them.

  

Guatemala: Migration Tears

Samuel Loewenberg, for the Pulitzer Center

A meeting of workers deported by the U.S. government after the Postville, Iowa kosher meat-packing plant raid.

I am interviewing a couple about their experience working as immigrant laborers in the U.S., I'll call them Eduardo and Anita. Eduardo has told us that after working successfully for several years in New Orleans doing construction, he was arrested by U.S. immigration officials and put in jail. It was over the Christmas holidays, he says. He was separated from his family. He starts to cry.

People seem to cry a lot in Guatemala. This applies to men as well as women, the country's reputation for machismo notwithstanding. The crying seem to come especially when they are recounting their experiences as migrants to the U.S. It has been something of a surprise to be honest. Over the years I've interviewed family members of murder victims, survivors of terrorist bombings, victims of medical malpractice, and I've not quite encountered something like this before. It is not that the trauma is greater (how can you quantify trauma?), but it does seem somehow closer to the surface. More than anything, I think what brings them to tears is a sense of grand injustice.

Guatemala: Death in the Streets

Samuel Loewenberg, for the Pulitzer Center

Thirteen years after the peace accords were signed here, violence and fear continue to be a way of life. In a country as bloody as Guatemala, the last two weeks have stood out. In the past several years bus drivers have became targets for street gangs seeking extortion money; but the thugs are not breaking the drivers' kneecaps, they are blowing their heads off. The number of bus drivers killed so far this year is up to 33.

Last week, as I was heading back from the countryside where I'd been visiting malnutrition clinics, the health worker who was acting as my guide told me that four bus drivers in Guatemala City had been killed all in the same day. During one attack, an infant was shot and killed. A common theory, taken seriously by both government officials and everyday Guatemalans, was that this was something beyond mere street crime, but was in fact an effort by the right-wing opposition party to spread chaos and fear to undermine the current center-left government. Public officials received anonymous phone calls warning of an imminent coup. When I asked a U.S. diplomat if a coup was likely, the answer was: "probably not."