Politic?

Child Endangerment and Neglect

"I am living with a deep sadness since I learned of my daughter's death."
"But there are no jobs, and this caused the decision to leave [Guatemala for the United States]."
Claudia Maquin, 27, San Antonio Secortez, Raxruha, Guatemala

"Somebody came and tricked people and told them, 'I will get you political asylum -- and take a child with you."
Cesar Castro, mayor, San Antonio, Secortez, Raxruha

Friends and family carry a coffin with the remains of Jakelin Caal, a 7-year-old girl who handed herself in to US border agents earlier this month and died in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection.

Claudia Maquin's 29-year-old husband, Nery Caal, decided to leave their small village to find his future and a hoped-for change-of-fortune by claiming himself to be a refugee and entering the United States where opportunities presumably abound. With little formal education, the small family lived on a parcel of land that they felt was too small to provide for their needs. He aspired to better things and had no trust that their lot would be improved by remaining where he was.

He and his wife had four children aged from 9, to 7, 5 years of age, and an infant of six months. Mr. Caal decided to take a long and perilous journey and that his seven-year-old daughter Jakelin would accompany him. For, he was informed, anyone seeking to be welcomed by the United States would induce sympathy with the presence of a child. Either the smuggler he paid to get them to the border between Mexico and the U.S. or others who had made the same trip persuaded him his chances of remaining would be immeasurably improved with the presence of a child.

According to the town's mayor, Mr. Castro, Mr. Caal's venture was not unusual. On average, ten, twenty or thirty people abandon the village monthly to strike out on a journey for which they pay smugglers handsomely. The same smugglers that tell convincing stories of great success, of welcome committees at the border, of the opportunities to live well that will open to them in the United States; they have just to pay and to leave; preferably in the company of a child, which evokes empathy.

In the community of San Antonio Secortez, where the Caal family lives, corn and beans are grown by families who also raise goats, chickens and pigs. The Caal family's patriarch said the fields are no longer as fertile as they once were but he is uncertain whether it is a decline in soil quality or changing weather patterns, or some other undefined reason that is responsible for the decline in agricultural output.

There are fewer wild deer and boar to hunt and the river fish that once teemed allowing large catches have dwindled, resulting from the forest to the north of the town being cleared by oil palm plantations. Evidently, in relation to the size of the Guatemala economy the government collects a smaller share of tax revenues than any other country in the world, according to the World Bank.

Guatemala is not poor according to the World Bank which classifies it as an upper-middle income nation. One, however, with notable inequalities stemming from centuries of racism and powerful groups controlling the economy, resisting efforts to address discrimination, so Guatemalans have always thought of migration as an escape from these divisions.

Despite that it is well known that apprehensions are taking place at the border between Mexico and the United States, nothing appears to convince Guatemalans that they will not, in actual fact, be welcomed into the country they aspire to travel toward and enter to become entitled to benefits their own country fails to provide for them.

Elvira Choc, grandmother of Jakelin Caal, during the funeral service.

Mr. Caal is now at a migrant shelter in Texas. His seven-year-old daughter Jakelin, although deemed by U.S. border agents to be in sound health, died without seeming cause once they crossed the border and were in the care of the system that evaluates refugee claims. The little girl's mother, grieving the death of one of her four children, insists her husband must remain in the U.S., not rejoin her in Guatemala.

Border Patrol agents in whose custody the child had died, stated the girl hadn't eaten or been hydrated for days during her trip with her father across the border. The implication that the parents failed to care properly for their daughter infuriates Jakelin's mother. Entering the U.S. is their route out of poverty, made all the more acute by the estimated $5,000 to $10,000 they paid to the smuggler, according to the town's mayor.

Jakelin died in a hospital in El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 8, two nights after her father, Nery Caal, turned himself and his daughter in to the custody of U.S. Border Patrol. Cause of death was dehydration and shock after running a high fever. Clearly, the child's most basic human needs were neglected by those most responsible for her well-being; her parents in search of a higher-order of priorities.