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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Central American migrants escaping poverty and violence in their hometowns find crossing legally is a slow and difficult process
At the age of 14, Jonathan Levit was given an order by the infamously brutal Mara Salvatrucha gang in his native Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras: to kill a friend he had known throughout childhood – “like a brother, all my life”.
Jonathan had, like almost every child in the city of Tela’s terrifying barrio of Colonia 15 de Septiembre, grown up in the gang’s shadow; there was no avoiding it, especially if you were partial to a smoke, as he was. And now the time had come for him to execute “a mission” for what is also called MS-13 – the gang which, Jonathan says, “doesn’t just run Colonia 15, they almost run Honduras”.
Continue reading...Workers known as guajeros descend daily to search for recyclable items at one of the biggest rubbish dumps in Guatemala City. Hundreds carry out the work, which is dangerous due to mudslides and collapses but can earn them nearly twice the minimum daily wage
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