By: Daniel Nardini
No family wants to see their children leave their home in search of work and then suddenly disappear. No one wants to live for days, months and years not knowing if their children are still alive but cannot communicate, or worse dead and forgotten by the authorities. And most of all, no mother wants to see her children harmed in any way. But this happens to tens of thousands of young people who leave the countries in Central America every year. For the last ten years, mothers from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador have been traveling, marching and criss-crossing Central America and well into Mexico to protest the disappearance of their children who were heading towards the United States as well as find clues if they are still alive.
There are absolutely no words I can use to express the agony that these mothers are going through to find their children. Many of these children left as young people in their twenties, and some as teenagers. It is not hard to figure out why so many have left. At the top of the list are unemployment and dire poverty. Those people who have been able to make it to the United States and have been able to make a living in this country eventually communicate with their families and send badly needed money. Some make so much money by the standards of their countries that very soon not only can these lucky few Central American families buy land but they can afford to build nice houses and eat very well. Fact of the matter is that most of those Central Americans who do make it to the United States make little to nothing and most will be caught and deported. Then there is a growing list of those who simply disappear. What happened to them may have been tragic. Many may have been slaughtered by the Mexican cartels, many of them may have been captured by Mexican gangs and forced to do slave labor, and many may still be alive but living in the shadows of American society and unable to respond.
And this is where the mothers from so many Central American countries wonder what happened to their children. A few get lucky and find their children alive and well and are reunited with them. There are a growing number of them who are being killed and are never heard from again, and a growing number die along the route and are never discovered. The last part is especially frightening. Every year, the U.S. Border Patrol find the remains of so many countless people who tried to cross the remote deserts and failed. Who knows how many have died in Mexico or parts of Central America. What is truly terrible is that the U.S. government has not always worked in cooperation with the governments of Central America to try and develop that region. Even with the new elimination of tariffs on products from Central America, the U.S. government is still concentrating on countries in Central Asia (like Afghanistan) rather than in Central America. If more young people in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador had more jobs available then they would not be taking the incredibly dangerous journey to the United States. There would then be far fewer mothers looking for their children.
The Mothers of Central America
By: Daniel Nardini
There are absolutely no words I can use to express the agony that these mothers are going through to find their children. Many of these children left as young people in their twenties, and some as teenagers. It is not hard to figure out why so many have left. At the top of the list are unemployment and dire poverty. Those people who have been able to make it to the United States and have been able to make a living in this country eventually communicate with their families and send badly needed money. Some make so much money by the standards of their countries that very soon not only can these lucky few Central American families buy land but they can afford to build nice houses and eat very well. Fact of the matter is that most of those Central Americans who do make it to the United States make little to nothing and most will be caught and deported. Then there is a growing list of those who simply disappear. What happened to them may have been tragic. Many may have been slaughtered by the Mexican cartels, many of them may have been captured by Mexican gangs and forced to do slave labor, and many may still be alive but living in the shadows of American society and unable to respond.
And this is where the mothers from so many Central American countries wonder what happened to their children. A few get lucky and find their children alive and well and are reunited with them. There are a growing number of them who are being killed and are never heard from again, and a growing number die along the route and are never discovered. The last part is especially frightening. Every year, the U.S. Border Patrol find the remains of so many countless people who tried to cross the remote deserts and failed. Who knows how many have died in Mexico or parts of Central America. What is truly terrible is that the U.S. government has not always worked in cooperation with the governments of Central America to try and develop that region. Even with the new elimination of tariffs on products from Central America, the U.S. government is still concentrating on countries in Central Asia (like Afghanistan) rather than in Central America. If more young people in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador had more jobs available then they would not be taking the incredibly dangerous journey to the United States. There would then be far fewer mothers looking for their children.