Gracias a Dios: fronterización y aumento de los costos y riesgos de la migración en el departamento de Huehuetenango, Guatemala

Abstract

The article describes and analyzes the relatively recent emergence of a migratory route in the department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala; one that ends at the border point of Gracias a Dios. As the text proposes, this as a product of the frontier process of the Central American country; represented by the increase in the controls, persecution and criminalization of undocumented migration, as well as in the rigors and risks that increasingly accompany the practice. The questions that the article implicitly addresses are: how have some of the main actors in migration (particularly “coyotes”) responded to the increase in frontier process? What are some of the economic effects and perceptions in the study locality (Gracias a Dios), as a result of the deployment of a migratory intermediation industry? What are some of the consequences of the political and economic transformations that currently characterize undocumented migration (its increasing persecution and cost) for migrants? The concept that we propose is that of frontier process, understood as the establishment, deployment or hardening of legal, procedural and even physical fronts, in the face of different flows such as migration. Which allows us to recognize that borders are mobile and historical. Some of the findings of the article are that in the framework of the legal persecution of "illicit traffickers of persons" in Guatemala, "coyotes" or "polleros" have assumed managerial functions; at the time that the figure of the "guide" has emerged in the accompaniment of migrants. As a corollary, the tightening of immigration laws has only made migration mediation more flexible and widespread. Finally, that the increase in the monetary costs of illegal international migration implies, paradoxically, that migrants must get into debt or invest considerable monetary sums to access to the desired jobs.