The New Yorker Series on Guatemalan Emigration

The New Yorker recently (March and April 2019) published a series of three very good articles for The New Yorker by Jonathan Blitzer (no easily discoverable immediate relation to Wolf). I can vouch for the truth of much of what he says, and have only minor quibbles with a few aspects. Collectively these articles are an outstanding addition to what we know about why Guatemalans come to the United States.

I can vouch for the truth of much of what he says, and have only minor quibbles with a few aspects. Collectively these articles are an outstanding addition to what we know about why Guatemalans come to the United States.

Click here to view Blitzer’s Series in the New Yorker

What’s important to understand is that emigrations are wildly expensive, and not impulsively undertaken. To the extent that emigration to El Norte can be descibed as a starry-eyed hopeful undertaking, that is only because migration to the States is such a difficult, risky, consequential, and — if successful, permanent — endeavor. Migrants are necessarily hopeful that they can be one of the successful ones who beat the odds. But their hope is borne of desperation rather than of idle dreaming of golden streets lined with McMansions.

Blitzer very properly frames his series around three subjects that I have written about in a shorter and less comprehensive manner. The first two are how climate change and debt are fueling emigration, and the third is about how successful immigration to the United States has led to a building boom of large, expensive, and impractical homes that often are never lived in.

Congratulations to Blitzer and to The New Yorker for writing and publishing these articles. They are particularly useful for humanizing the migrants and providing readers with a meaningful and accurate context to better understand the forces that drive Central Americans to leave their homes and families.

My own research conducting psychosocial assessments of community members should soon tighten the focus on Guatemalan communities, and provider a richer and more deeply personal understanding of what it means to be an individual, a family member, and a participant in a rural Indigenous Maya community in Guatemala.