Thursday, July 03, 2008

Life in the Coffee Lands and the Immigration Debate

I found this story, “Chapel in Guatemala Testament to Civil War Horrors”, on the Web last Thursday. It caught my eye because a close friend of mine worked in the town profiled when we were in Peace Corps. While Zacualpa isn’t a coffee town, many coffee communities in Guatemala and other Latin American countries share a similar story.

The article talks about a chapel in Zacualpa that the army commandeered and turned into a torture/interrogation chamber during the 30-year civil war that plagued the country and left over 200,000 civilians dead. The war ended with the signing of peace accords in 1996, but the country still struggles with one of the highest murder rates in the Western hemisphere, weak law enforcement, rampant gang and drug activity, and mass emigration due to lack of jobs.

Every time I read an article like this I’m confronted by the harsh realities that many of the families we work with confront every day, the unimaginable atrocities and horrors that they witnessed. This story is part of a series of articles (“The New Immigrant”) that explore the immigration debate from both sides of the border.