Shadow Lives

by Jon lowenstein

During the past decade, millions of Latin Americans have left their homes and risked death on the perilous journey to the United States in search of a chance to live the ‘American Dream.’ Once here, many of these people face economic exploitation, live under the increasing spectre of criminality and confront a right-wing political movement dedicated to their removal from U.S. society. Despite these obstacles, these resilient individuals have contributed greatly to the economy and are transforming U.S. culture in communities across the nation. How one of the world’s wealthiest nations integrates an estimated 12 million Latin Americans living in the country without permission will define the future of the U.S. for decades.

The struggle about how best to define and treat the growing and increasingly influential population of Latin Americans, is one of the most vital and complex issues the United States faces. Although many agree that the current immigration system is not working, few can find common language or understanding to forge effective solutions. 

Thousands of Mexican and Central American migrants are returned to their home countries each year by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. The agency operates about 48 flights each week to deport people from the United States back to their country of origin.

The crimes committed by the individuals will determine whether or not they will be shackled throughout the flight. The flights originate from various parts of the United States. Approximately 400,000 people were deported this past year.

During the past several years I have made at least four trips to Guatemala to document the social upheaval and its impact on the local population. I have arrived at a murder scene three minutes after a bus driver was fatally shot, witnessing the last bit of life ebb from his body after he was pulled from the bus. Exodus follows the journey that migrants take through the Peten Jungle in Northern Guatemala. The men and women ride on the back of a smuggler’s truck crammed into a steel cage meant to transport livestock. Like the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, these migrants are fleeing the Dust Bowl of their home countries, facing extortion, robbery and death in their journey to the promised land of the United States.

292 people were murdered in Guatemala in 2008. Most of them were killed in the capital of Guatemala City. The violence in this small Central American country knows no limits and currently it is one of the most violent and insecure places in the world that is not in a declared state war. People are consistently murdered for their cell phones on the streets, bus drivers are shot in the head in broad daylight in front of crowds of onlookers and people are openly extorted and killed if they do not pay.

Violence is on the rise and many here feel that the current government has little or no control over the various forces undermining basic civilian normalcy.

As part of a project examining the collective experience of Latin American migrants to the United States I have traveled to Guatemala at least 4 times over the past several years to show the devastating effect that violence has on everyday people in the nation’s capital and demonstrate why some people choose to leave their country’s homeland in search of a better and hopefully safer life in the United States.

With the daily drumbeat of intimidation, fear, extortion, and murder continually met with impunity, the local population grows increasingly desperate. Because the police often do nothing, it is not uncommon for street justice to take over, with mobs clamoring to protect their neighborhoods and enforce provisional order. This body of work attempts to show shows the bloody impact of organized crime, ineffectual government and grinding poverty on everyday working people.