ABSTRACT
This chapter opens with a discussion of the media coverage of the death of Jakelin, a seven-year-old Guatemalan child who died in Border Patrol Custody. The child’s death provided an opening for critical media coverage of CBP policies that have weaponized the border terrain of the southwestern deserts of the United States. However, coverage failed to connect conditions in Guatemala, and the decades of U.S. military involvement there, that have left the indigenous people vulnerable and destitute. These are the causes of out-migrations from Guatemala. I recount some of this history, including the reign of terror perpetrated by the government of General Efraín Ríos Montt in the 1980s. In the twenty-first century, the people of Guatemala—like those in many of the developing economies of country’s rich in natural resources—are being systematically pushed off their land as multinational corporations grow bio-fuels for world markets, and extractive industries log timber and exploit other recourses. Violence against indigenous communities are reported with little context or explanation, seeming to emerge from nowhere, much like a natural disaster. In conclusion, I argue that even though the death of a little girl led to critical coverage of U.S. border policies, the lack of historical context prevented an authentic alternative to security discourses, one able to tell stories from the migrants point of view. Without an understanding of the causes of out-migrations from Guatemala, security discourses will continue to prevent a humanitarian focus for news coverage, and leave the militarization of the U.S. border in place.
