This page: Daniele Volpe for The New York Times. Opposite page: From the Primero Luis family. Opening pages: Kevin Cooley for The New York Times. 31
Around his town, few people called Roberto
Primero Luis by his name. His friends called
him Rokuzzo, the name of the barbershop
he owned. His wife liked to call him Robert,
because it sounded more American. Mainly it
was his parents who still used their fi rstborn
child’s given name.
Lucas Primero and his wife, Eufemia, traced
their heritage back many generations in the area
of the town, Cubulco. They were both Achí, a
Mayan people that established a trading route in
this area of central Guatemala before the Span-
iards arrived. Lucas left school as a boy to labor
in the cornfi elds and eventually worked his way
up to earning a living as a bricklayer. He and
Eufemia married at 15. Roberto was born in 1996,
the year Guatemala’s 36-year civil war ended.
Roberto was studious, obedient and, thanks to
his father, who was also a pastor, devout. He sang
and played the saxophone, keyboard and drums
in the church band. After high school, he wanted
to become a nurse, but the tuition for nursing
school was more than his family could aff ord,
so to raise the money Roberto apprenticed as
a barber. Finding that he liked the work, he put
nursing on hold to open his own shop. Lucas
lent him the money, and together father and son
went to Guatemala City to buy the chairs and
razors and scissors.
Rokuzzo became one of the most popular
barbershops in Cubulco. (The name apparently
derived either from Antonela Roccuzzo, the wife
of the F.C. Barcelona soccer player Lionel Messi,
or from Rakuten, a sponsor of the team.) Roberto
was beloved for his good cheer and devotion to
his customers. He worked 13 hours a day, six days
a week. He hired his younger brothers, and they
became known for their signature style: a high
quiff , pushed back, with closely shorn sides into
which they shaved swirling patterns. They print-
ed posters of Cubuleros with the cut and hung
them on the walls. At night, those same Cubule-
ros would gather in the waiting chairs in the shop
to banter and watch Barcelona highlights and lis-
ten to music. After closing, Roberto’s brother and
his friends would pull down the aluminum gate
and continue hanging out, but Roberto wouldn’t
stay — he wanted to be with his fi ancée.
He and Caty Sunún had been together since
he was 16 and she 13. Before they met, he had
noticed her on the street. She was angelic, he
thought, with big, warm eyes and a radiant
smile. One day he called out to her: ‘‘You’re
Catalina!’’ She replied, ‘‘And?’’ and continued
walking. He phoned her for months before she
agreed to talk to him.
For two years they dated secretly. When
Caty fi nally told her parents about Roberto,they weren’t pleased. They had a vision of their
daughter’s future, and it didn’t include her stay-
ing in Cubulco.
Tomás and Magdalena Sunún were also Achí,
and, like Lucas and Eufemia, they came from
families of poor farmers and laborers. They, too,
had married as teenagers. But there the families’
stories diverged. They diverged in the way Gua-
temalan society itself has diverged over the last
two generations.
Guatemalans had been migrating to the United
States for decades, but mass migration began in
earnest in the 1980s, when the civil war entered a
genocidal phase. Washington had backed Guate-
mala’s military dictatorships since inciting a coup
d’état in 1954. Armed with American weapons and
funds, the government now labeled Mayans like
the Achí insurgents. Cubulco was one of many
towns set ablaze.
The American government went a small
way toward atoning by granting thousands of
displaced Guatemalans asylum. Some gained
citizenship; others didn’t but stayed. Many
prospered, and in time family and friends and
neighbors followed them north. According to
the International Organization for Migration,
roughly 2.6 million Guatemalans live outside the
country, a vast majority in the United States.
But according to Aracely Martínez Rodas, anAbove (from left): Roberto Primero Luis’s parents, Lucas and Eufemia, with his sister and brother-in-law, Nohelia and Edmer, at his
grave in Cubulco, Guatemala. Opposite page: Roberto and Caty. Opening pages: Bird Nest Hill in the Sonoran Desert near Sells, Ariz.