I suspect that many Americans have a similar story of desperation in their Family Tree. That if not for the relative freedom and opportunity on American shores, they would have been born into intolerable living circumstances, in the land of their ancestors.
Some people however, say No that destiny -- and "Let's Go For It" ... go for the hope that exists across the sea.
Driven by crime, immigrants risk runs to America
by Albeto Arce, The Associated Press -- June 27, 2014
[...] He [a 30-year-old mechanic from El Salvador] explained that he wanted to leave behind his workshop in the capital, San Salvador, because extortion made it impossible to earn a living.
“If you buy a car, they come to extort you. A machine for the workshop, they come to extort you. If they see you put on some nice pants or sneakers, they come to extort you,” Lemus said. “You can’t work like that. You go bankrupt.”
He said that after taking his wife and children safely north he would wait in Mexico for a chance to cross on his own and hopefully not get caught.
[...]
Of course "intolerable living circumstances" may vary from person to person, desperate story to story, victim to officially forgotten victims ...
Murder in Guatemala: 'I won't allow my daughter to become another statistic'
by Nina Lakhani, Guatemala City, theGuardian.com, 18 June 18, 2014
Since 2005, Jorge Velásquez has devoted his life to seeking justice for his daughter, Claudina Isabel Velásquez, a 19-year-old law student who was raped, shot in the head and dumped in an alley in Guatemala City.
Her murder, like those of thousands of other women in Guatemala, remains unsolved. The official investigation was marked by incompetence, inaccuracies and missed opportunities. It almost broke the Velásquez family.
[...]
During the country's 36-year civil war, 200,000 people were killed or disappeared. A quarter of the victims of abuse and torture are estimated to have been women, according to a report of the Historical Clarification Commission, established through the Oslo peace accords in June 1994 to investigate rights violations during the conflict. The commission concluded that the "rape of women, during torture or before being murdered, was a common practice aimed at destroying one of the most intimate and vulnerable aspects of the individual's dignity". The majority of rape victims were Mayan women, it added.
Less than 1% of civil war crimes documented by the UN have been properly investigated and perpetrators held to account, establishing a climate of impunity and indifference to violence that continues to blight society.
[...]
Less than 1%.
That means 99% of the Guatemalan criminal-class get away scot-free. That should be intolerable, by any gauge of humanity.
As a indicator of the profound and deep-rooted conditions in Guatemala, that makes the gang violence there, the extortion, the rape and murder -- "intolerable" ... I found this one tiny snapshot into their "official enforcement of the laws" ...
Swiss sentence Guatemalan ex-police chief to life over prisoner killings
tengrinews.kz -- June 9, 2014
Guatemala's former police chief Erwin Sperisen on Friday received a life sentence in Switzerland for seven murders committed in the Central American country, AFP reports.
Reading out the verdict to a packed Geneva court, chief judge Isabelle Cuendet said Sperisen had been found "jointly responsible" for six murders and was "directly responsible" for one more.
[...]
Sperisen, who insisted he was innocent, was charged over the summary execution and subsequent cover-up of the murder of seven inmates in Guatemala's Pavon jail in September 2006.
He personally shot one of the prisoners dead, the court ruled.
[...]
"Intolerable living circumstances" may be in the eye of the beholder. But I suspect that most Americans would not last long, if they were 'lucky enough' to have been born into such rampant crime and corruption and lawlessness. I suspect most of us would be looking for a way to just 'Go For It' ... to strike out for a chance at a new life in the land of opportunity.
It is an old story. Desperation often leads to desperate migrations.
The Potato Famine and Irish Immigration to America
crf-usa.org
Between 1845 and 1855 more than 1.5 million adults and children left Ireland to seek refuge in America. Most were desperately poor, and many were suffering from starvation and disease. They left because disease had devastated Ireland’s potato crops, leaving millions without food. The Potato Famine killed more than 1 million people in five years and generated great bitterness and anger at the British for providing too little help to their Irish subjects. The immigrants who reached America settled in Boston, New York, and other cities where they lived in difficult conditions. But most managed to survive, and their descendants have become a vibrant part of American culture.
Of course that wave of Irish immigrants had one thing going for them, that the current wave of Guatemalans do not.
And that would be the color of their skin. And because of THAT, we can officially look at their "intolerable living circumstances" and somehow nationally decide, that their 'grief and pain and desperation' of the Guatemalans now reaching our borders, is somehow lesser ... that is somehow doesn't matter, doesn't count, like it did in the past.
That their 'grief and pain and desperation' somehow does NOT merit the solace and hope and the refuge -- that once was America ...
And THAT is to our great national shame. That the 'land of liberty' is now simply turning away 'their tired, their poor, their huddled masses' ...