Whether They Want To or Not, Guatemalans Embrace the Elephant to the North

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"America," the taxi driver confides in me with the shit-grin of a child who is just about to get away with stealing from the candy jar. "I'm going to America. I don't care if I have to get mojado (wet) or not."

We are driving through Zone 10 in Guatemala City, an area so wealthy and clean that it could easily be Beverly Hills. Lush, green trees line the boulevards and the sleek vehicles passing us in the left lane are all Swedish and German sports cars, presumably owned by Guatemala's ruling elite -- the Ladinos: whites of Spanish descent who will always have the upper hand over the poor and downtrodden Mayan Indians who make up the majority of this country. Our taxi is the only clunker on the road.

José, as I'll call him in this story to protect his identity from United States border guards, has had me in the passenger seat of his rusty red and yellow cab for all of five minutes, and hearing that I come from "El Norte," he can't help but confide in me that in two weeks he will ditch the vehicle, leave his wife and four children behind, and pay a coyote human trafficker approximately $4,000 to transport him, secretly but safely, up through Mexico and into southern California, where if all goes well he will meet his brother, another illegal immigrant from Guatemala, who now lives and works in New England.

The prospect of hunger and dehydration, and even death, in the back of a windowless van abandoned in the desert somewhere south of Tijuana doesn't faze him. Neither does leaving his teenage kids behind in the prime of their adolescence.

"I'll work there for two or three years and then come back," José assures me. "When I return I'll buy my wife a nice new house here in the city, and we'll be able to send our youngest daughter to dance school."

José's story is not unique. Thousands of Guatemalans brave the treacherous journey to the land of opportunity every year. Many of them make it. In fact, says José, crossing into Mexico is considered tougher than navigating the Rio Grande, because the Mexican border guards shoot first and ask questions later.

But what strikes me as ironic about José's upcoming journey and throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude is that on this day, in this week in Guatemala, his countrymen are rioting in the streets and blocking highways, questioning their very relationship with the United States. "No more subjugation at the hands of the Yankees!" they yell through bandanas as smoke bombs fly between them and the police.

Today, Tuesday, March 15, Guatemalan President Oscar Berger, a member of the white, land-owning oligarchy and a descendent of German coffee plantation owners, officially signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (known here as the TLC), which will remove almost all trade barriers between the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Costa Rica once ratified by the US Congress. To add insult to injury, Berger published his signature in bold letters in an advertisement that ran in today's national newspaper, the Prensa Libre.

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