I'd rather the Guatemalans have gotten by without our murderous interference and maybe have had a good and happy life at home.
"Guatemalan village salutes expatriates who kept ties; Festival gives residents time to reconnect" by David Montgomery, Washington Post | February 16, 2010
Hey, the Washington Post, the CIA 's newspaper.
So these folks are working for the agency and getting a nice, happy puff piece from the CIA papers, huh?
IPALA, Guatemala - Red-shirted mariachis stroll singing and strumming into the dusty yard of a whitewashed villa where roosters crow the dawn. The lyrics of their serenade compare a maiden’s beauty to the shine of the moon, as homemade fireworks explode in the lightening sky.
Up and down the narrow streets, across rocky farms and ranches, this little town at the foot of a dead volcano is coming alive - to celebrate a girl from Langley Park, Md.
Jennifer Sagastume, a high school sophomore from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, stands radiant on the villa’s porch to receive her serenade. The villa is under construction, like so much in this community stretched taut between poverty and progress.
Her mother was born in a shack and left here 18 years ago. Now Jennifer, 15, has returned as an American citizen. She came to be crowned Queen of the Absent Ipalans, the symbolic figurehead of expatriate Ipalans....
Such great expectations have been invested in her, such dreams. She is proof of the future available to the children of those who strike out for a better life in the north. But her presence also speaks of a companion dream: the possibility of return, the possibility of never leaving at all.
Jennifer is origin and destination. The whole aching drama of immigration might be distilled in the story of one transnational teenager on her special day in the pueblo of her mother’s birth.
This day, which unfolded late last month, is called the Day of the Absent Ipalans. It is the fourth day of the annual five-day festival in honor of Ipala’s patron saint, Ildefonso. The day was added three years ago to the decades-old fiesta to acknowledge a bittersweet fact of Ipalan life. It is the day when those who stayed salute those who left, and the day when many of those who left return to donate money, do good works, and reconnect with their roots.
Queen of the Absent Ipalans is the winsome monarch of a faraway kingdom. She will lead the parade of fancifully decorated “carrozas,’’ or carriages, and be crowned in the town square.
Tourist guidebooks tend to overlook Ipala, in the southeastern part of the country near El Salvador and Honduras.
The defining feature is the volcano that blew its top eons ago. Rainwater filled the crater to form a cold, clear lake. Most people live in rural foothill settlements. The compact town center lies on the plain below.
A new style of grander house has appeared among the one-story dwellings. The owners live around Langley Park, sending money to complete construction little by little. Rebar spikes stretch skyward from first-story concrete blocks, like beseeching fingers, like promises and prayers: A second story is coming.
No one can say exactly when the first Ipalan chose Langley Park to launch his American dream.
While yours is in shreds, American.
It was probably the 1970s and he was probably a struggling bean farmer. He found work in landscaping or construction and told his friends about the amazing crossroads of opportunity in the suburbs just north of Washington.
In the last two decades, about 7,000 Ipalans have departed, according to town leaders, equivalent to more than a quarter of the current population of about 20,000. An estimated 5,000 went to the Langley Park area.
You sure it is not Langley, Virginia, WaPo?
This migration was the best and worst thing that ever happened to Ipala.
All depends on who you are, right?
About a third of the economy depends on the $2 million that expatriate Ipalans send back annually.
That is money permanently removed from your economy, America.
Where there once were few paved streets and no telephones or banks, now there is pavement, Internet service, and seven banks and two credit unions to handle the money.
Oh, bully for the suckers.
The further I read into the article, the more convinced I am that these guys are CIA agents. It's a recruitment outpost, readers.
Now you know who is raising hell in Central and South America.
A new dynamic is revealing itself. Fewer Ipalans are choosing to leave. And the American dream has come true for many in the first generation of expatriate Ipalans, who have bought homes and now own the kinds of roofing, landscaping, construction, tree-cutting, and house-cleaning businesses that gave them their first low-paying American jobs.
So they COME HERE, UNDERCUT YOUR WAGES and TAKE the JOBS, send the MONEY BACK HOME, and then BECOME RICH -- while you Americans face foreclosure and job losses?
SOMETHING went WRONG with that GLOBALISM you were promised, America.
And readers, I do not wish to deny anyone their natural right to a good life; however, that is NOT what THIS ARTICLE is about!
This about a GROUP of FAVORED ELITES that are CONNECTED to the AmeriKan power structure somehow -- otherwise, it would not appear in my newspaper.
If the paper were truly interested in justice for Guatemalans they would not cover up the history I mentioned at the top of this post, nor would they ignore the massive poverty must Guatemalans labor under.
Instead we have this agenda-pushing crap by the WaPo picked up by the Glob.
They can now think strategically about supporting Ipala. If more opportunity can be created in Ipala, they say, then the next generation of Ipalans will not have to follow their desperate footsteps to the United States.
How come EVERY ECONOMY in the world is EXPANDING except YOURS, America!?
--more--"
Also see: Guatemalan Can't Escape the Long Arm of AmeriKan Law
Hitching a Ride With Homeland Security
Just a sampling of other post with Guatemalan connections, dear readers.
