32 8.23.20
anthropologist and migration expert at Univer-
sidad del Valle de Guatemala, it could be as many
as four million, or roughly a quarter of the cur-
rent population of Guatemala. While poverty is
still the principal driving factor, more and more
members of the middle class are migrating. In
2019, according to the World Bank, Guatema-
lans living abroad sent back remittances worth
nearly $10.7 billion. That is roughly equivalent to
the Guatemalan government’s entire spending
for the year.
In 2000, the year after Caty was born, Tomás
migrated to the Nashville area. Three years later,
Magdalena followed, leaving Caty in Cubulco in
the care of her grandmother, a common choice
for young parents who migrate. In Tennessee,
Tomás worked as a builder, Magdalena as a clean-
er, until 2010, when he was pulled over for speed-
ing and subsequently deported. Had he not been,
they might never have come back to Guatemala.
As it was, they returned people of means. They
built a new home in the middle of Cubulco and
on its ground fl oor opened a grocery, bakery and
animal- feed shop.
Tomás and Magdalena agreed to let Caty see
Roberto on the condition that she fi nish school.
She and Roberto dated for three years, the tradi-
tional courtship period, and in 2018 he proposed.
Caty was Catholic, Roberto evangelical, and at
fi rst she wouldn’t agree. She broke up with him.
They reconciled, and she converted.
Caty had trained to be a teacher, but there
were no teaching jobs in the local schools. The
region around Cubulco, Guatemala’s dry belt,
was among the poorest in the country and par-
ticularly vulnerable to climate change; the last
several harvest seasons had been a pitiful sight.
But Roberto was doing better fi nancially than
anyone in his family ever had, making as much
as 300 quetzals, or about $40, a day in his shop.
He had paid back his father’s loan. Lucas gave
Roberto a plot of land. They were planning to
build a house together.
Roberto had never expressed interest in
‘‘going north,’’ as Guatemalans call migration
to the United States. When his aunt off ered him
a chance to apply for a work visa, he declined.
But now he and Tomás talked about his going.
Tomás’s deportation hadn’t soured him on the
U.S. On the contrary, he still revered Amer-
ica, in exile more than ever. Guatemala did
not off er people like them much opportunity,
Tomás pointed out, even people as enterprising
as Roberto. Whatever Roberto might be making
at his barbershop, whatever he might make in
the future as a nurse, would be dwarfed by the
pay he would fi nd in the U.S., even in a job like
construction or meatpacking.Caty and Roberto discussed the idea. Like
Roberto, she didn’t feel hopeless in Cubulco,
or not always. Yet she knew so many people in
the U.S., including her younger sister, an Amer-
ican citizen whom Magdalena had given birth
to in Tennessee. There was no one in Cubulco,
it seemed, who didn’t have family somewhere
in Tennessee. Nashville was 1,500 miles away,
yet for how familiar it felt, it might have been
the next town.
Going north wasn’t just about escaping des-
peration, not any longer. It was about being a
success. People who went to the U.S. had nicer
houses, nicer jobs, nicer lives. They sponsored
religious festivals, endowed churches and paid
the school fees and hospital bills of distant
cousins. Their children had better prospects
— a matter of newfound concern for Roberto
and Caty, who in early 2019 learned that Caty
was pregnant.
When, that summer, Roberto told his parents
he was considering migrating, he had already
made his decision. The plan was for him to go
fi rst. Once he was settled near Nashville, Caty
would go. She wanted to give birth there so their
baby would be an American citizen.
Finding someone to take him wasn’t diffi cult.
Tomás called a ‘‘coyote,’’ or people smuggler, who
had recently transported the nephew of a friend.Roberto’s brother, Marvin, at Rokuzzo, the barbershop founded by Roberto in Cubulco.
Roberto left the business to his younger brothers before he began his journey to the United States.