By Alfredo Corchado
10:45 a. m. on July 14, 2022 CDT
Carlos Joaquín Salinas despite everything becomes the user he dreamed of being. Someone respected. Someone her mom is proud of.
Each month, he sends at least $200 in remittances to his circle of relatives more than 1,800 miles inside Guatemala. Lately, he has sent some extra dollars to the local church and for the new road to town. When paintings abound, which is the case six to seven days a week in North Texas, he even donates to the youth football club.
“Sir,” he says as he takes a Topo Chico, with a big smile and a three-day-old beard, “my mom says everyone in the house says things about me. “
The migrant who left his hometown in Guatemala 3 years ago knows that his adventure may have been very different. Lately, he has nightmares about semi-trailers, the kind that has trapped dozens of migrants, choking 53 to death amid sweltering heat outside San Antonio. Among the dead were 27 other people from Mexico, 14 from Honduras and seven from Guatemala.
“I can almost bet that each and every user who died inside this caravan had a task waiting for them,” said Carlos Joaquin, 34. “People do everything for their dreams, they even die. I know because I’ve been there.
In the case of the third anniversary of his life in North Texas, Carlos Joaquin has discovered a renewed sense of purpose, popularity and a sobering awareness: his importance is measured through the remittances he sends home. The more he sends, the more he is admired through young and old, and especially through the poor. He couldn’t be more proud of his new status, he said, and yet worried about the ramifications.
In a post-pandemic economy, even more people in their hometown must travel north in hopes of emulating their success, Joaquin said. During the three years he lived in North Texas, 20 family members and friends from Guatemala came to Texas. , at the request of the bosses who told him that they needed workers.
Overnight, his friends, cousins and a brother went from small farmers to structure workers, roofers, landscapers from North Texas (Frisco, Plano, Arlington and Fort Worth) doing just about any task Americans might not possibly do, he explained. he left Texas for Tennessee, Oklahoma, Florida and Maryland, where cash is better.
Since arriving in North Texas, Carlos Joaquin has regularly consulted The Dallas Morning News to document his reporting as an asylum seeker and help readers better perceive the transformative dynamics of an immigrant navigating a country full of opportunities and a myriad of contradictions, and having an effect on immigration in the country of origin.
Carlos Joaquin and his son Fernando, then 10, first arrived at the El Paso-Juarez border in the spring of 2019. President Donald Trump, someone Carlos Joaquin loves to “give me a chance,” he said.
He and his son were held “like caged animals” under a foreign bridge, paraded in front of the media. He applied for asylum, citing extortion and gang threats. At the time, he gave the U. S. immigration government a step. He dealt with the U. S. asylum in North Texas and promised to make all appointments until his asylum case was decided. The father and son waited 3 years, appearing each and every time they were told. You should now log in periodically online, until further notice.
“I show up not knowing if we will be deported on the same day,” he said. it needs to be an economic burden so I have to work.
He has a collection of jobs: roofing, window replacement, dishwashing and, on weekends, running at a flea market or mowing the lawn. “Everywhere I look, I see ‘Job Offer’ signs. Every employer I know is asking for more painters. I paint as hard as I can and whenever I can.
The story of immigrants moving from affliction to wealth is very common, especially if “you’re from rural Guatemala,” said Adam Isacson of Washington’s nonprofit Latin America office. cash home. Guatemala is one of the least egalitarian places on Earth.
Each year, Guatemalans running in the United States send about $11. 4 billion in remittances, which represents about 15 percent of Guatemala’s GDP and dwarfs the $4 billion Biden’s management has promised central America.
Carlos Joaquin’s story, Isacson added, “is kind of an argument in favor of transitional work visas so that other people can come here, save money and then have that and get respect and social mobility and reduce those spaces of inequality. “
Recently, Carlos Joaquin sat in a North Texas restaurant and marveled at how lucky he was to have discovered too many paintings, too many, he said. He admits to having gained weight since his arrival. Gone are the sick days. -Tight garments that hung freely on his filiform body. He blames “junk food because I paint so much that I don’t have time to eat well. “
Joaquin also laments that stories of good fortune like his only attract a longer chain of migrants in search of a better life. Many die along the way, walking in the desert, falling barriers, or drowning in rivers and canals. The deaths of 53 migrants from Puertas San Antonio have been among the worst cases in the United States in recent years.
Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei tweeted that the loss of life is “unforgivable” and called for harsher consequences for traffickers.
Carlos Joaquin blames smugglers and political leaders. He said he may have been among the victims, desperate to find a better life because their internal governments are too corrupt, corrupt unions are too hard and countries are too poor to supply their people. Neither do the long droughts, he said.
It was a mixture of those points that forced him to sell a small plot of land from the circle of relatives, 3 cows and 4 chickens to help raise enough to pay an advance to a smuggler to leave his hometown in the domain of Santa Rosa near the Pacific coast of Guatemala. . . The region is located in the so-called dry corridor, between the maximum vulnerable to drought and hunger, and one of the maximums affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Leaving Guatemala wasn’t easy, he recalls. He faced major setbacks. His circle of relatives is broken. His wife left him, abandoning two of their 3 children in Guatemala. Now they live with their mother. His eldest son, Fernando, who traveled with him, is preparing for high school in North Texas, learning English and longing for home.
However, the pros outweigh the cons. In 3 years he has gone from regretting his move to the north for so many “lies” of smugglers that endangered his life and that of his son, to worrying about dying from COVID-19. Last year he promised that until 2023, in fact, as recently as 2024, he would return home to open a business and live in the space he had just built.
But last year he paid the $6,000 he owed the smuggler and finished building the space of his dreams, the one he proudly presents on his phone. Now he’s saving to build one for his mother, with his brother’s, who arrived less than a year ago and has since moved to the Washington, D. C. , area, where the salary is “much, much higher,” he said.
He prefers North Texas because his son made friends and is part of a soccer team. That’s how he came up with the idea of donating to his hometown soccer team, the same one he played for as a teenager.
His generosity has not gone unnoticed in Guatemala. These days he receives calls from everyone, from the parish priest and the local mayor to the postulants. They would like, if not their vote in person, and approval through social media.
Yes, he is flattered that so many other influential people know who he is now, but he is also frustrated because it is dark immigrants like him who are seen in the United States as a solution thanks to his hard-earned dollars.
Sometimes he connects to social media and throws out a tirade, asking the mayor or local congressman not to do more to generate progress in his city, progress that may only prevent migration to the north. But it’s those tirades, he said, that he realizes everyone — friends, leaders in the house and him — are caught in a vicious cycle, “a trap,” he said.
There are days, he acknowledges, when “I can’t believe I’ll be coming home, at least not soon. Back to what? I will be someone else. “
“In fact, when I left Guatemala, opportunities were scarce. Now, with the pandemic, there is nothing left. That’s why so many people threaten their lives to come here.