The Heart of a Young Immigrant Mother

Rosa Ajanel

• Editorial: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Año: 2019
• ISBN de la versión impresa: 9781643342245
• ISBN del libro electrónico: 9781643342252
• Categoría: Ciencias sociales
• Categoría: Emigración e inmigración

This book talks about the reasons why many people from Central America emigrate to the United States. This is also about how it was my journey and how I crossed the desert of the United States. In reality, most of us as immigrants have a past that has marked our lives, and I dare to talk about this so that all the people of the world see the cruel reality that we have to pass to arrive in United States.

I can still remember when my parents lived together. Those were beautiful days. To this day, I cannot believe how so many small things were powerful enough to destroy my beautiful family. I couldn’t believe that my life changed from one day to another. It was impossible to understand.

My father worked as a farmer and earned very little money. The most he was ever able to earn was five dollars a day. My mom was working, too, but she was only able to earn 2.50 dollars per day. In Guatemala, women’s work is paid less than men’s. At that time, my grandmother was very sick. She had diabetes, and her medicine was too expensive for my family to be able to afford. My father and mother were not able to buy her all the medicine that she needed because of the little money they earned.

It seemed as if every day, she would need to take a different medicine, and every time we had to go get the new medicine, it became more expensive. My father would often cry because he believed that it was his fault my grandmother suffered from this disease. All this because he could not afford to give her the medical attention she needed.

The jobs in the field are very poorly paid in Guatemala. The pay is even worse for us women because even when we work ten hours a day, they still only pay us two dollars. They will however pay you up to 2.50 dollars if you are an old employee.

Note: Working in the fields is not easy, and not everyone can do it. When you have to survive, however, you will do whatever it takes to get ahead.

There are many types of jobs, but they all pay the same. There are fewer opportunities, and the majority of adolescents do not have the chance to study because of the little money that can be earned there.

Many times, some adolescents take almost six to seven years to finish high school. This is all due to the lack of support and opportunities given to students. These young adults have to work a whole year and save that money in order to study the next year. This continues until they can receive their high school diploma.

Since then, my father have been working in the fields because he never had the opportunity to study because he grew up poor and had to start working when he was six years old.

My father always went to work in the mountains. One day, he arrived in the evening and had been really beaten. He told us that a group of men had followed him and stolen everything he had after severely beating him.

Every time my dad went to his job, these same men followed him. After a couple of weeks had passed, my dad filed a complaint against these people, but the police never did anything to stop them.

This group of people are criminals known as the Mara 18. You can recognize them by the tattoos that they have all over their bodies and the number eighteen on their backs or arms. My father began to fear for his life and ours once these people started calling him by phone to extort him and threaten to kill all my family. He knew that if he gave them what they wanted, they wouldn’t hurt our family.

Since then, my family has not left the house, and my grandmother is getting worse because we were unable to bring her medicine.

After all this, one of my cousins disappeared. We were all worried because the last time we had seen her, she had gone to work and never came back.

My uncles had gone to the police to report that she was missing, but the police never did their job to find her. One night, my uncles thought to ask the community to help us find my cousin. That very next day, my whole family had spoken with many people and asked them for help. We divided ourselves into groups of fifteen people and began looking for her everywhere.

It took us a week to find her, but the most painful part about it all was finding her dead. She was found lying in a furrow behind an abandoned house. All my family cried for her because when we found her, she had a rope around her neck, and her body was cut of skin. The pain was especially bad knowing that she was seven months pregnant.

After her death, my whole family was angry and kept asking why the gang had decided to kill my cousin especially because she had not done anything to them.

Afterward, my father told us to stay at home and to not go anywhere. Following that night, my father received a call from those people who had previously followed him. They told him that if he did not give money to them, my cousin’s death would have been for nothing. They also told him that if my father would not give them what they wanted, they will kill us too.

Note: There is so much extortion in our country, but our government never does anything to stop these gangs regardless of the murders they commit.

During this time, my father refused to gi...

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