Poverty, unemployment, violence drive Guatemalan emigration

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Among the thousands of mostly Honduran migrants in the caravan walking through southern Mexico, there are also Guatemalans. Though not as big a group, they too have plenty of reasons to leave home.

While Honduras and El Salvador have been riven by street gang violence, in Guatemala poverty and a lack of jobs is the main reason people flee their nation of 17 million.

Guatemala, which shares a border with Mexico, is also an inevitable transit point for migrants traveling by land from other Central American nations toward the United States. This time around, many Guatemalans joined the Honduran caravan, seeing strength and safety in numbers.

The U.N. International Organization for Migration, whose estimates are usually conservative, says about 1 million Guatemalans currently live in the United States. The Guatemalan government puts the number at 1.5 million.

The remittances they send home each year have become a mainstay of the Guatemalan economy, contributing about 11 percent of the country's GDP. That is threatened by rising deportations: The U.N. agency estimates that U.S. deportations of Guatemalans in the first six months of 2018 rose 64 percent compared with previous years.

FILE - In this Oct. 19, 2018 file photo, rafters maneuver their inner tube and wooden plank crafts on the Suchiate River which connects Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman. Guatemala is an inevitable transit point for migrants traveling by land from other Central American nations toward the United States. (AP Photo/Oliver de Ros, File)

Here is a look at conditions driving Guatemalans to leave.

___

POVERTY

FILE - In this May 31, 2016 file photo, four-month-old Wendy Carolina Vasquez plays with a baby mobile, constructed by her father from an empty cell phone package and a piece of string, in the village of Las Flores, in Guatemala's eastern state of Chiquimula. Guatemala is Central America’s largest economy, but one of the worst-off countries in Latin America by income equality. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)

Guatemala is Central America's largest economy, but one of the worst-off countries in Latin America by income equality.

About 60 percent of Guatemalans live in poverty, and that percentage is significantly higher among the indigenous majority. Many who migrate come from indigenous communities where Spanish is not the primary language.

Even for those with jobs, almost 95 percent earn salaries insufficient to meet a family's basic needs.

Almost half of Guatemalan children under age 5 suffer malnutrition, and 23 percent are severely malnourished. Only one in four attends middle school or beyond; the rest drop out after primary school.

___

POLITICAL INSTABILITY AND CORRUPTION

FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2017 file photo, relatives take part in a funeral procession holding portraits of Carlos Daniel Xiquin, 10, left, and Oscar Armando Toc Cotzajay, 11, who were kidnapped over the weekend and then killed when family could not raise the ransom money, in Ajuix, Guatemala. Authorities found the bodies of the two boys stabbed and thrown into sacks in the municipality of San Juan Sacatepéquez, northwest Guatemala. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)

Since 2007 a U.N. anti-corruption commission has been helping local prosecutors make headway against endemic government graft that has stymied aid and development efforts. Several top politicians and even ex-presidents have been charged, but current President Jimmy Morales has ordered the commission to leave the country, refused to renew visas of key staffers and barred its chief from returning to the country. That has elevated political tensions and discouraged investment.

___

VIOLENCE AND EXTORTION

FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2018 file photo, a boy in costume clutching a Guatemalan flag sits outside a local fast food restaurant as he waits with his father for a march to start against Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and corruption in Guatemala City. Almost half of Guatemalan children under age 5 suffer malnutrition. Only one in four attends middle school or beyond; the rest drop out after primary school. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)

Since 2015, Guatemala has seen its homicide rate drop to about 27 per 100,000 inhabitants, a level only slightly higher than neighboring Mexico and much better than in its Northern Triangle neighbors, El Salvador and Honduras. But law enforcement efforts have been blunted by the current administration's political appointments.

And while murders have fallen, extortion by criminals and street gangs remains a stubborn problem; the rate of reported extortions is 43 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Violence has hit women particularly hard. The United Nations estimates that 83 percent of crimes against women go unpunished.