Immigration Story

The Hardest Decision


It’s the middle of a summer night in Chinautla, Guatemala. The air has finally cooled from the day’s heat. This is the moment for the people of Chinautla to peacefully sleep, yet she sits there manically contemplating her decision. “Should I stay or should I go?” The words repeatedly race through Juanita Barrios. Her mind is telling her to go, leave Guatemala for a better life, a better opportunity, a guaranteed chance to live better than her poverty stricken life in the country that offers her nothing but cheap labor. However, her heart pounds to the beats of the word no. “No, I can’t leave my child. I can’t leave him here in this misery, but it’s too dangerous to take him with me. I have to go and make a better future for us.” With that final thought she gets up, looks over to her unaware child. He lays there huddled with his cousins in their one room home, housing nine people. She stares at him profoundly in order to still frame that moment and imprint it in her memory as her motivation to keep on with her journey. “I have to provide a better life for us. That’s my job as a mother.” Juanita kisses him softly on his forehead in order to not wake him. Her tears are uncontrollable at this point, and her heart is still fighting her mind and telling her not to go, but she knows she must.

Even though that memory was 25 years ago for Juanita Barrios, that moment when she decided to leave her child in the care of her sister for the pursuit of a better life still haunts her to this day. After 25 years, Juanita’s memory is a daily reality for immigrant women who are making the same decision. It is now a much more told story of how mothers left there children behind in their home countries for the land of opportunities. The glamorized American life is effortlessly emphasized in these third world countries. “You hear the success stories of your neighbors’ friend making it to the U.S., and you think to yourself you can do that too,” Juanita says in her soft spoken voice, yet the knot in her throat lingers, ready to break and release the suppressed tears.

She left her 2-year-old son in pursuit of that fairy tale that America would offer her the best opportunity. Juanita was only 19, young, vivacious and optimistic, even though her life to that point was the definition of misery. Now she is 44, the pain is seen in her eyes when the topic of when she left her country, and the night she abandoned her son is revealed. Her eyes want to tell a story of her journey, just like the many women who have or are now sharing the same experience.

Each year, an estimated 700,000 immigrants enter the United States illegally. This wave of illegal immigrants differs in one respect from the past. Before, when parents came to the United States and left children behind, it was typically the fathers leaving for that journey. The mothers were left behind to take care of their children. In recent decades, the increase in divorce and family disintegration in Latin America has left many single mothers without the means to feed and raise their children. The growing ranks of single mothers coincided with a time when more and more American woman began working outside the home. There is this voracious need in the United States for cheap service and domestic workers. The single Latin American mothers began migrating in large numbers, leaving their children with grandparents, other relatives or neighbors.

Juanita’s experience is sadly very common now. In Los Angeles, the University of Southern California conducted a study which showed that 82 percent of live-in nannies and one in four housecleaners are mothers who have at least one child in their home country. A Harvard University study showed that 85 percent of all immigrant children who eventually end up in the United States spent at least some time separated from a parent who was migrating north.
“When I decided to leave Guatemala, I really didn’t know what I was going to myself into,” says Juanita as she dazes looking up and shaking her head as she replays her horrific journey in her mind. “I heard it was going to be dangerous, I was told it was going to be dangerous, yet my own stubbornness blocked all that out. My mission was to do whatever I can to provide a better life for my baby.”

Her journey quickly turned sour when the coyote, the person who leads the hopefuls through the border, abandoned her after barely crossing the Guatemalan-Mexican border. She had paid him in full to take her all the way to the U.S. border. It can cost somewhere in the thousands to have a smuggler lead the way, but it is a priceless feeling to be left abandoned after so much hope. “When I was tricked by the coyote, I wanted to give up and go back home. He left me there with three other people. If it wasn’t for them, I would’ve gone back to my son.”

Juanita explains that the man she was traveling with knew of priests that established missionaries in various parts of Mexico. He knew one in Chiapas, Mexico, and they stayed there for a few days while they figured out a way to get the border. “Mexicans are hostile. They don’t like knowing that people are crossing through their country. They feel like they have power because we’re not from there,” states Juanita with a stern face, full of anger. If it were not for the man Juanita was traveling with, she admits she would have never made it to her destination.

After three months of traveling she did reach her destination.
Ever since crossing the border, she has lived in Los Angeles and earns her income as a housecleaner. She earned enough money after two years to send for her son so she can finally reunite with him. “That was the happiest day of my life. I would never leave my son again,” says Juanita, this time the tears are displayed.
Despite Juanita having a horrible experience of being tricked in her journey north, she says she was blessed to have a guardian angel lead her way through Mexico, the U.S. border and all the way to Los Angeles. “Living here, I hear the real stories of other women making the journey I did 25 years ago. I was fortunate not to have gone through what some of the women I know went though,” she looks up again and recites under her breathe a quick prayer.
Central American women face a huge danger because they have to pass through Mexico entirely to reach the border. That crossing involves the risk of rape, kidnapping and even death. Some parts of Mexico are heavily corrupted by gangs and drug lords and seeking refuge in the police system is suicide itself because they are run by the very corrupt. According to the United Nations, up to 70 percent of women crossing the border without husbands or families are abused in some way. Rape is the price for admission for these women, and sometimes that takes them nowhere but deportation.

Juanita does not regret leaving Guatemala. For her, it was a change for the better. She knows that she would never have been able to give her son the opportunities that were unimaginable when she grew up. Her only regret was trusting the coyote with all that money she had earned. Her secret pain is still that she left her son. She hates to admit she was capable of doing such a thing. She rarely talks about that with her son, but she hopes he understands why she did it. Her son is now a U.S. citizen.