Both REMHI (1998) and CEH (1999a) confirm a deliberate strategy on the part of the Guatemalan military to destroy ‘communities of association’ such as unions and student organizations, and to dismember physical communities, such as towns and villages. Political violence was aimed at destroying any notion of community, either as a physical entity, the very fabric out of which Mayas construct their relations with each other, or as ‘communities’ of association. A close reading of the transnational ethnographies and the voices of other participants reveals the ways in which political violence, refugee exodus, and immigration policies engender a shift in primary social relations from face-to-face experiences of proximity that are associated with ‘communities’ to those that stretch across borders. ‘Weak ties,’ (Carrasco et al. 1999; Rose et al. 1998) on the other hand, play a prominent role in the face-to-face experiences confronted in new refugee spaces in Canada.