Category Archives: Guatemala

Children as young as eight used to pick coffee beans for Starbucks

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Nespresso also named in TV exposé of labour scandal in Guatemala

High street coffee shop giant Starbucks has been caught up in a child labour row after an investigation revealed that children under 13 were working on farms in Guatemala that supply the chain with its beans.

Channel 4’s Dispatches filmed the children working 40-hour weeks in gruelling conditions, picking coffee for a daily wage little more than the price of a latte. The beans are also supplied to Nespresso, owned by Nestlé. Last week, actor George Clooney, the advertising face of Nespresso, praised the investigation and said he was saddened by its findings.

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How the American dream died on the world’s busiest border

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It is a place where worlds converge, a vast melting pot of different peoples, all in search of a better life. Yet the US-Mexico border is also, increasingly, a focal point for human suffering

Milson, from Honduras, sits with his 14-year-old daughter, Loany, on the reedy riverbank beside the bridge connecting Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, with downtown Brownsville, Texas, across the Rio Grande.

On the far reach – a few yards but another world away – is a vast tent (officially a “soft-sided facility”) erected to cope with the sheer numbers seeking asylum in the US. In a few weeks’ time, on the date stipulated on their “notice to appear” document, the people staying here will have their “credible fear interview” by video link.

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Drought and hunger: why thousands of Guatemalans are fleeing north

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The threat of famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources are increasingly being recognised as major factors in the exodus

Martina García grinds just enough maize kernels to make a handful of tortillas which she serves to her children and grandson for breakfast with a sprinkling of salt.

García, 40, must ration the family’s last few sacks of tiny corncobs after drought and prolonged heatwaves linked to the climate emergency devastated crops across Guatemala.

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Hundreds of Central American migrants rounded up by guardsmen at Mexico border – video

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National guardsmen in riot gear have blocked the path of hundreds of Central Americans near the town of Frontera Hidalgo in southern Mexico. 

Security forces corralled the migrants and hauled them on to buses, as Mexico continues with efforts to contain mass migration under pressure from the Trump administration.


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Central American migrants meet with armed guardsmen at Mexico border

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Mexico continues with efforts to contain the procession under pressure from the Trump administration

National guardsmen in riot gear have corralled hundreds of Central Americans and hauled them on to buses as Mexico continues with efforts to contain mass migration, under pressure from the Trump administration.

Security forces blocked the migrants’ path near the town of Frontera Hidalgo on Thursday afternoon, after hundreds had swept into Mexico across the Suchiate River that divides the country from Guatemala.

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Scuffles erupt between migrants and troops at Guatemala-Mexico border – video report

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Scuffles have broken out between hundreds of Central American migrants and National Guard agents at the border between Guatemala and Mexico. The troops formed a barrier to stop the migrants from entering deeper into Mexico as they attempted to cross into the US

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US agents aid in Guatemalan crackdown on hundreds of migrants headed north

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Move in effect dashes migrants’ plans to travel together in a ‘caravan’ to the United States

Guatemalan police accompanied by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have swept up hundreds of migrants, returning them to the Honduran border and in effect dashing their plans to travel together in a “caravan” to the United States.

Other, smaller groups traveled on in dribs and drabs in a movement involving several thousand people but very different from previous caravans.

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Vivian Suter: the rainforest-dwelling artist who paints with fish glue, dogs and mud

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She was ignored for decades, but now Suter has been rediscovered as a pioneering eco-artist. We meet her, and her 97-year-old collagist mum, in the wilds of Guatemala

A large dog romps across a blue and white canvas, leaving a trail of brown paw prints. “Oh well,” shrugs Vivian Suter. “They’re part of the work now. I don’t think anyone will mind.” I realise Bonzo – one of three Alsatian crossbreeds that shadow the artist wherever she goes in her Guatemalan home – has just put the finishing touches to an artwork that will shortly be on public display thousands of miles away.

The painting lies on the floor of her “laager” – a storage barn open to the elements, apart from a metre-high stone wall, which you have to clamber over with the help of a rickety chair. The wall is to guard against mudslides, she explains, gesturing at a ghostly tideline that rings the interior. Most of her works hang from a rack; the piles on the floor are for three upcoming exhibitions in Berlin, London and Madrid. Having just opened a 53-piece installation at Tate Liverpool, Suter is halfway through choosing the 200 works that will feature in her Camden Arts Centre exhibition, which opens next week.

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Guatemala bus crash: more than 20 dead, including children, in horror collision

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Firefighters say the passenger bus was struck from behind by a truck near the town of Gualan

At least 21 people, including nine minors, have been killed and a dozen wounded in a crash between a trailer truck and a passenger bus in eastern Guatemala.

The national disaster agency said the collision occurred early onSaturday. Volunteer firefighters told reporters the truck appeared to have collided with the bus from behind.

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Mexico boasts of crackdown but smugglers say migrant flow continues

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President Amlo says his new immigration plan is working, but huge numbers still travel north – aided by smugglers’ bribes

Mario Rosales is organising travel arrangements for his latest clients, a Honduran woman and her two primary school-aged children hoping to reach the United States.

Rosales, 47, a coyote, or people smuggler, sends their photos via WhatsApp to his contact in the Mexican National Immigration Institute (INM) in order to obtain fake identity cards – all part of the family’s travel package, which costs $1,800 per person to traverse about half (1,750km) of the region’s most dangerous migration route.

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Running dry: the water crisis driving migration to the US – podcast

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Nina Lakhani explores how drought and famine are fuelling the wave of migration from Central America to the US. Plus: Emma Graham-Harrison on China and the Hong Kong protests

Victor Funez walks to a cemetery in Nejapa, El Salvador, every day and fills a three-gallon plastic pitcher with water before trudging home. He repeats this several times a day – it’s his family’s only source of water. The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani met him as part of an investigation into how a lack of access to clean water is a major driver of migration from Central America to the US.

She tells India Rakusen that rising sea levels are destroying coastal towns in Honduras and how drought and famine have prompted a mass exodus from Guatemala. In El Salvador, meanwhile, corporate interests, corruption and gangs worsen the problems caused by the lack of clean water.

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‘People are dying’: how the climate crisis has sparked an exodus to the US

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As part of the Running Dry series, the Guardian looks at how drought and famine are forcing Guatemalan families to choose between starvation and migration

At sunrise, the misty fields around the village of Guior are already dotted with men, women and children sowing maize after an overnight rainstorm.

After several years of drought, the downpour brought some hope of relief to the subsistence farmers in this part of eastern Guatemala.

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Trump says agreement reached with Guatemala to restrict asylum seekers

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Immigrant rights advocates say the ‘safe third country’ agreement is cruel and unlawful, though it could still be blocked

Donald Trump announced Friday that Guatemala was signing an agreement to restrict asylum applications to the US, a move that immigrant rights advocates said was cruel and unlawful.

The so-called “safe third country” agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the US to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the US border.

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Guatemala election: corruption creeps in again four years after uprising

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Backlash against anti-corruption efforts will have real consequences as Guatemala heads to the polls on Sunday

As day broke over Guatemala’s national palace on 3 September 2015, Gabriel Wer celebrated what promised to be a new dawn for Guatemala.

The president, former civil war general Otto Pérez Molina, had – along with most of his government – been forced to resign by an unprecedented wave of weekly anti-corruption protests that morphed into a popular uprising.

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Mexico tightens southern border security as another day passes with no tariff deal

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Under pressure from Trump, Mexico has launched a crackdown on the Guatemala border, arresting activists and holding migrants

As Donald Trump’s deadline for new tariffs on Mexican imports draws near, Mexico has stepped up security along its porous border with Guatemala – deploying police and soldiers to its southern frontier and arresting prominent migration activists.

Trump last week pledged to impose 5% tariffs on Mexican products on 10 June unless Mexico stops Central American migrants from travelling through its territory.

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Latin American rape survivors who were denied abortions turn to UN

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Women from Nicaragua, Ecuador and Guatemala who suffered child rape take cases to UN human rights committee

Four women from Latin America whose lives were put at risk when they were not allowed abortions after being raped as girls are taking their cases to the UN human rights committee.

The women, from Nicaragua, Ecuador and Guatemala, filed cases against their governments on Wednesday for failing to provide appropriate healthcare and denying them abortions, even when it was their legal right to have one.

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Trump plans to cut Central America aid, blaming countries for migrant caravans

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The US president accused Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador of ‘arranging’ exodus of migrants

The US has confirmed its intention to cut more than $450 million in aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, as Donald Trump accused the three Central American countries of “arranging” migrant caravans to the US.

Trump relented on his earlier vow to close the entire southern border with Mexico, claiming that the security forces there had begun arresting “a lot of people” in response to his closure threat. But he warned that if the Mexican authorities did not “keep it up” he would seal the frontier, no matter what the economic cost to the US.

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Parents of British woman Catherine Shaw missing in Guatemala fear for her safety

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Shaw, 23, has been missing for five days after staying on Lake Atitlan near capital, Guatemala City

The parents of a 23-year-old British woman missing in Guatemala for five days say they have “great concern for her safety” and have urged her to get in touch.

Catherine Shaw was reported missing on 5 March. The Oxfordshire woman had been staying with a friend in San Pedro on Lake Atitlan, 75km west of the capital Guatemala City, and was last seen on 4 March.

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Increase in migrant detentions at US border reveals Trump’s policy failure

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Experts say officials have failed to acknowledge violence and instability in Central America and say system of ‘metering’ is not working

A staggering increase in the number of families apprehended at the US-Mexico border in February has highlighted the Trump administration’s failure to respond to the rise in Central Americans seeking protection in the US.

In February, 66,450 people were apprehended at the US-Mexico border by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency announced on Tuesday – 17,800 more than were apprehended in January and double the number who were apprehended in February last year.

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Zombie clunkers: has your local bus been resurrected in Guatemala?

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Phased out vehicles often end up back in use in developing countries – a form of dumping with serious environmental consequences

In a sparsely furnished office overlooking dozens of buses at the Zone 21 depot in Guatemala City, Jorge Castro flips through photographs on his mobile phone. He settles on one.

“There’s the bus when I bought it in Maryland,” he says proudly. It is a blue and white bus emblazoned with the words “Ride On”, the name of Montgomery County’s public transit system.

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