House Envy: The Unacknowledged Real Motivation Behind Guatemala's Mass Migration to the American Border
By Todd Bensman on February 10, 2020
YALAMBOJOCH, Guatemala – The Domingo family's long-term plan to send sons and daughters — small children at the time — to work in the United States when they grew up took root a decade ago, when a neighbor built an ornate mansion among the traditional mud-brick homes typical of this highland Guatemalan village of indigenous Mayan descendants.
Money from that neighbor's son in the United States funded the concrete multi-story house, with eight bedrooms, gleaming tile floors, and faux-gold rimmed windows. And indoor plumbing too.
"I saw that — the big house — and I wanted the same thing. I wanted a big house for my family," said Domingo, 50, a subsistence corn and beam farmer who raised his extended family of five children in the austere traditional Yalambojoch mud-brick and wood-slat huts.
https://cis.org/Bensman/House-Envy-Unacknowledged-Real-Motivation-Behind-Guatemalas-Mass-Migration-American-Border