Starting Points: Guatemala

Showing posts with label Guatemala. Show all posts

Jun 1, 2010

Proposal for day-laborer site brings a national debate to Centreville

By Derek Kravitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2010; B01

At first, a Northern Virginia developer's plan to build a gathering place for immigrant day laborers seemed like a simple solution for a local problem. But as the national immigration debate continues to ramp up, the idea of erecting a double-wide work center in Centreville -- privately funded and staffed by church volunteers -- is facing increased scrutiny from those on both sides of the debate.

Albert J. Dwoskin, once described as the region's "shopping center king" and a longtime Democratic Party donor, last month proposed setting up a trailer behind his Centreville Square Shopping Center as a de facto work center for about 50 Guatemalan day laborers who for years have sought construction and landscaping jobs near the stores and the adjacent Centreville Public Library. Fairfax County Supervisor Michael R. Frey (R-Sully) has supported the plan, and a group of churches, calling itself the Centreville Immigration Forum, has offered to staff the facility.

But a town-hall-style meeting Tuesday to discuss the proposal is expected to bring out hundreds of shopping center tenants and nearby residents who oppose a day-laborer site because they worry that it could lure more immigrants seeking work. Dwoskin acknowledged the potential for a firestorm.

"The less press this gets, the better," Dwoskin, 67, said last week.

Frey, a moderate Republican with a low-key demeanor, said he, too, feared that the meeting could devolve into a larger discussion of federal immigration policy and threaten the community's carefully hatched plans.

"People have wanted me to grandstand and become some kind of a demagogue on this issue," Frey said. "This is a Centreville problem, not a federal problem. Not to say I wish this hadn't bubbled up, say, three months before Arizona," referring to a new Arizona law that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.

Debate about Spanish-speaking day laborers gathering to seek work has been common in the Washington region, from Herndon, Annandale, Culmore and Falls Church in Northern Virginia to Wheaton, Silver Spring and Gaithersburg in Maryland.

In Centreville, a Fairfax County community of about 50,000 that is both prosperous and quickly diversifying, the controversy focuses on the four dozen or so Hispanic men, some of whom are undocumented immigrants, who often stand near Lee Highway and Centreville Road. For five years, Dwoskin has fielded complaints from many of his 120 shopkeepers, who say their customers are being scared away.

"I personally don't like to see them hanging around there. I have families with kids that come in, and it can be a problem," said Rayman Hamid, a Guyana native and former winner of the Centreville Businessman of the Year award who owns a Baskin-Robbins franchise a few blocks from where many of the laborers gather. "But I feel sorry for them, too. They're human beings, man. I don't know what to do."

A year ago, Dwoskin hired a full-time security guard to keep the men off his property, so they took refuge near the library. The Centreville Immigration Forum, the church group that organized three years ago to work with the Hispanic community, has offered its services, holding public forums about immigration and the difficulties of day laboring. Many of the men have told church officials that they have been cheated by employers, said Alice H. Foltz, a parishioner at Wellspring United Church of Christ. She is the unofficial "convener" of about 40 churchgoers who have agreed to staff the trailer as a day-laboring work center.

"It's an issue of exploitation," said Holtz, a history teacher at Northern Virginia Community College's Loudoun County campus. "But we're not trying to solve immigration here. We're trying to help these men."

No taxpayer funds would be used, Frey said, and Dwoskin would pay for the trailer and its utilities. Edgar Aranda-Yanoc, a community educator in the Falls Church office of the Legal Aid Justice Center, called it a "local solution to a local problem," adding that it has the support of the day laborers who live in a stretch of townhouses near the library.

David Garcia, 35, who moved from Guatemala with his wife about four years ago, said a work center could give him and other immigrants a haven and a steady income. "Sometimes they pick us up and don't pay. So a trailer would help," Garcia said.

But many shopping center tenants and customers said they fear that a hiring center would attract more immigrants seeking work, overwhelming already congested roads and spurring a spike in vandalism, loitering and petty crime.

"It's a terrible idea. They're going to come from all over, and we're going to get a reputation for not being a safe place," said Gary Malm, who owns Centreville Tire and Auto near the trailer's proposed site. "I wouldn't want my daughter or son or my wife dropping off a car at night around here if they were hanging around."

Del. Timothy D. Hugo (R-Fairfax), whose district includes Centreville, sent an e-mail to 9,000 supporters urging them to attend Tuesday's meeting -- scheduled for 7 p.m. at Centre Ridge Elementary School -- and oppose the work center plan. "Centreville is turning a blind eye to the concerns of its residents," said Hugo, who co-sponsored a bill this year that will allow Virginia localities to prosecute those who sell "goods or services" on roadways.

Church forum members say they fear that Centreville could experience the turmoil that occurred in Herndon in 2006 over a plan for a town-sponsored day-laborer center. But Dwoskin and Frey hope the work center idea calms tensions. "We'll see what happens Tuesday," Frey said.

Dec 29, 2009

Prince George's Hispanics turn to 'Don Jorge'

Image by Edu-Tourist via Flickr

By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 29, 2009; A01

At a concert in Langley Park featuring Guatemalan country music, the crowd is divisible by headwear, cowboy hats vs. baseball caps. Older immigrants wear the ranch garb of rural Central America; younger ones, the Terps and Nike caps common in suburban Washington.

At the edge of the two-stepping audience, one man stands hatless. Immigrants of all ages approach Jorge Sactic-España to shake hands and pass a few words of Spanish with the man they call Don Jorge or, sometimes, Mayor.

An older man in a white, wide-brimmed hat checks in with the don (a Spanish honorific showing great respect) about an ongoing dispute between Latino store owners and managers of La Union Mall, where the concert is taking place. A younger man (blue N.Y.C. cap) asks if he knows of any construction or painting jobs. A woman in jeans with a bare midriff seeks help with a fundraiser for hungry children in Guatemala.

Dispensing aid and advice is routine for Sactic, although he is no elected official. He owns a bakery.

His Chapina Bakery is a popular gathering spot in the two-story shopping center, the epicenter of the large Hispanic enclave in this part of Prince George's County. Sactic's cachitos and gallinitas are known as the most authentic Latin American sweet buns around.

Image via Wikipedia

But it's his standing as a onetime illegal immigrant who has mastered life in the United States that makes him a bridge between newcomers and old-timers, Latinos and gringos -- the unofficial mayor of La Union Mall.

"Some people call me that," Sactic, 48, says with a dismissive wave. His nearly fluent English rises over the accordion music of Paco Pinado, a singer flown in from Guatemala to croon country ballads for homesick compatriots. "To me, it's just a matter of helping whoever I can. I see the value in all of us working together. This is in my nature."

What makes Sactic stand out from other immigrants-made-good is his continuing devotion to the neediest members of the diaspora, say those who have worked with him.

"Once they get their paperwork and a profession, their focus usually becomes more inward, toward their career, their children," says Amanda Martin, director of the Washington-based Guatemalan Human Rights Commission. Her group regularly calls on Sactic to host meetings at the bakery. "That's why it's incredible that Jorge is still so engaged. He is the cement between the bricks in that world."

Sactic, who became a U.S. citizen in 2002, represents a crucial character in the story of immigrant enclaves such as Langley Park, says Jacob L. Vigdor, a professor of public policy at Duke University and an expert on assimilation. As the rare immigrant comfortable in both worlds, Sactic acts as a "cultural concierge," he says.

"We have examples throughout the history of the country of people like this who have taken it upon themselves to serve as conduits of information," Vigdor said. "They find answers for the newcomers."

'Known to everyone'

With the campesino tunes still filling the mall, Sactic retreats to the tiny bakery office to do paperwork through the night.

Visiting La Union can feel like a quick trip to the tropics. All but a handful of the 46 shops are Latino-owned and -oriented, including the soccer supply store and the party shop packed with elaborate dresses for girls' 15th birthday celebrations.

Other shop owners want Sactic to persuade the mall's new management team to give them more time to make rent payments during the downturn and to be more open to face-to-face negotiations. Sactic works up a summary of the issues for a lawyer to review.

"It's a cultural thing," he says. "They should come and meet us and shake our hands."

He orders flour and updates the payroll for his nine employees. He plans a meeting for the immigrant group he founded, AGUA (a Spanish acronym for the Association of Guatemalans United). He works on a paper for the master's degree in international business he is pursuing through the University of Maryland's continuing education program.

The bakers have arrived to fire up the ovens for the day ahead before Sactic begins translating materials for a meeting on the proposed Purple Line's impact on Langley Park. The e-mail he sends when he finishes for the night is time-stamped 3:18 a.m.

"Late at night is when I can get things done," says Sactic, who rents a basement apartment in Hyattsville for times when the drive home to Germantown is too long and too late. "There are so many meetings, people always coming in to talk."

With a little paunch and an ever-present blue sweater vest, the soft-spoken Sactic looks more like a folk singer than a man whom immigrants, activists and embassies turn to as a leader.

Laborers come to his shop with immigration problems, parking tickets and questions about income taxes and health care. Desperate mothers ask for bread to help them get through another jobless week. Government officials from Prince George's and Guatemala City call when they need an emissary for the thousands of Latinos who fill the surrounding apartment buildings.

"When we need to reach the people, we go to Jorge," says Rita Claverie de Sciolli, deputy chief of mission at the Guatemalan Embassy. The diplomats have asked Sactic to host mobile consulate sessions, during which they process passport requests and record births, deaths and marriages.

Claverie says Sactic helped fill the gap recently after a popular embassy program was dropped because of budget cuts: one that sent home the bodies of Guatemalans who died in the Washington area.

That sad gesture of loyalty to homeland can cost a family $2,000 or more, and Sactic is nearly constantly raising money to support the shipments. Most recently, a donation box on his bakery counter featured a photo of a young man who died of a neurological disease. Earlier this month, Sactic contributed 200 sweet buns to be sold to raise money to send a cancer victim back to a mountain cemetery.

"Don Jorge is known to everyone. He helps everyone," says a 22-year-old Guatemalan standing in front of the bakery. The man, who didn't want to be identified because he is in the country illegally, has just been speaking by cellphone to his wife in Guatemala, telling her that he has landed a job as a painter's helper and will be able to send her school fees for their son. Earlier this year, Sactic had given the young worker bread when he couldn't find work.

Not that Sactic can always help. When a tiny elderly woman came to him with a stack of traffic citations, he was surprised to find that one was a ticket for driving under the influence.

"I said, 'Abuela, you need a lawyer,' " Sactic recalls with a laugh. "We see everything here."

Struggles and successes

Sactic's American experience began in 1985 with a swim across the Rio Grande at Brownsville, Tex. He was 25. The Guatemalan civil war was raging, and college students were targets of right-wing hit squads. He abandoned his studies in economics and fled north. It would be 15 years before he saw the inside of a classroom again.

"I came to Washington because my aunt was here," he says. "I started with nothing."

At first, he worked the usual entry-level jobs: sweeping floors, folding dropcloths for a painter, washing brushes. Within three years, he started his own painting company. He added construction projects, learned English, hired skilled workers.

"My dad just knows how to get things done," says Sactic's daughter, Jacqueline Manchané, 25, a receptionist at an Elizabeth Arden spa in Germantown. "That's his main talent."

Sactic, his wife, Dora, and their three children reached an immigrant milestone in 2000 when they bought a roomy house in Germantown. There have been other successes. A son, Georgie, 23, owns a cellphone store in the District.

But life wasn't easy; the couple's youngest, Edward, was born with cerebral palsy. For years, their routines revolved around doctor's appointments and 24-hour care. Edward died three years ago at 13.

Sactic's community activities ballooned after Edward's death, Manchané says. "I think before, he had to always make sure he was around," she says. "Now he has more flexibility."

Sactic received an associate's degree from Montgomery College and a bachelor's in business administration from Maryland. In 2004, sensing a literal hunger for the authentic pan dulce of Guatemala, he opened the bakery. The lines went out the door.

"We're selling sentiment," he says as customers fill plastic bins with warm, brown buns. "It's what they grew up with."

At the mall, the scents of Sactic's baked goods mix with the aromas of the traditional cooking of two Guatemalan cafes. "It's like being in Central America here," says Sactic, who is president of the mall's merchants association. "This could be in Guatemala City or Tegucigalpa."

At the concert, Sactic takes a break from his paperwork to enjoy the sight of his dancing compatriots. "Tonight, everyone is happy," he shouts above the ruckus. "It's one night without problems."

Then he turns to talk to another shop owner, someone else waiting for a word with the mayor.

Jul 20, 2009

In Guatemala, Chasing Away the Ghost of Alvarado

by Tim Padgett

It's been five centuries since Pedro de Alvarado, a homicidal Spanish conquistador, seized from the Maya the volcanic realm that became Guatemala. But his bloodlust still haunts the country, which today has one of the highest homicide rates in the western hemisphere. Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war, which ended in 1996, killed 200,000 people. Its cloak-and-dagger murders have made locals so paranoid that "even the drunks are discreet," as one 19th century visitor wrote.

That neurosis still shrouds Guatemala City, a gloomy capital that no amount of marimba music can brighten. Rich and poor communities alike are surrounded by walls topped with enough razor wire and rifle-toting guards to look like penitentiaries. This year tandem motorcycle-riding was banned because it was such a popular M.O. for drive-by shootings, and daylight saving time was canceled because the dark mornings created too many opportunities for foul play. Even so, bus drivers face being killed by armed extortionists during rush hour, and lawyers who complain about government corruption can turn up under the bougainvilleas with a few bullets to the head.

That's apparently what happened to Rodrigo Rosenberg, a corporate lawyer murdered on May 10 while biking near his home. In a twist that's macabre even for Guatemala, Rosenberg had taped a video three days earlier in which he anticipated his assassination and put the blame on President Alvaro Colom and his imperious wife Sandra Torres. They deny it, saying their right-wing foes coerced Rosenberg into making the video and then had him killed.

But since the shocking video was uploaded to YouTube on May 11, the nation has begun to confront the benighted lawlessness that plagues not only Guatemala but most of the rest of Central America too. Younger Guatemalans, organizing protests via social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, have turned out by the thousands to protest their putrid judicial system and festoon Rosenberg's murder scene with banners. "Older people say they haven't seen an awakening like this in 60 years," says Alejandro Quinteros, 26, a cherubic fast-food manager and political novice who helps lead the National Civic Movement. "We're not afraid anymore."

Fear is understandable in a country that feels like a "baroque game of chess played with bodies," says Francisco Goldman, whose book The Art of Political Murder details the 1998 assassination of Catholic bishop Juan Gerardi, who was bludgeoned to death after issuing a report on army massacres during the civil war. In a nation where just 2% of last year's 6,200 murders were solved, "impunity opens doors to murderous imaginations," says Goldman.

But the outcry over the Rosenberg case has opened doors to reform. Guatemala's congress was compelled to pass a law, long resisted by powerful political and business interests, that allows public scrutiny of judicial appointments. This month lawmakers say they're set to convene at least one special session to act on measures such as concealed-weapons laws and the creation of organized-crime and anticorruption courts. Activists like Alfonso Abril, 24, of the civic group ProReforma, want to revise Guatemala's sclerotic constitution to modernize lawmaking and codify individual rights. "I'm from the upper class," says Abril, "but I know we can't keep living in a country like this."

He also knows Guatemalan politics is still treacherous. More than 50 candidates were assassinated during the general election in 2007, the same year three visiting Salvadoran congressmen were murdered by rogue policemen (who were then mysteriously killed themselves). In his video, Rosenberg says his coffee-baron client Khalil Musa was gunned down along with his daughter in April because Musa knew too much about drug-money-laundering. "Rodrigo wanted to talk about the deadly manipulation of laws and lives here," says his half brother Eduardo Rodas. Guatemala has asked the U.N. and the FBI to investigate his murder. After 500 years, Rosenberg's ghost may be the first to challenge Alvarado's.