Marisela’s Story: Fear, Trauma and Family Separation

When Marisela arrived at the comedor at the end of last summer after a smuggler left her behind, she had already endured domestic violence, threats to her life, and separation from her young daughter in Guatemala. Despite these spirit-crushing experiences, her perseverance and the KBI’s support have helped her continue to seek a brighter future.

Marisela, like all who turn to the KBI, has a heart-breaking story that led her to our doorstep. In her home country of Guatemala, she faced economic hardship and domestic abuse. Still, with her family around her, life held love, support, and promise in the form of her 11-year-old daughter. All that was shattered when local gang members threatened her life, and she was forced to make the life-altering decision to leave.

Extorted at home, Marisela experienced outright robbery when the smuggler she paid to guide her across the U.S.–Mexico border took her money, but left her in Mexico. With nowhere to go, she came to the comedor. There, she found food, shelter, companionship, and the assistance she needed to assess her options. Choosing to seek asylum, her future remains uncertain, but the hope of a safety, a new home, and a reunion with her daughter keep her going. Here is her story, in English and Spanish, as she tells it.

ENGLISH:

My name is Marisela, and I’m from Villanueva, Guatemala. I decided to leave Guatemala because my life was threatened by the Mara Salvatrucha gang (MS-13)—if I didn’t pay them, they threatened to kill me. That’s why I made the decision to leave there so that I wouldn’t be at risk, so that they wouldn’t kill me.

[When] I was 12 years old, I began working in agriculture. I harvested coffee, tomatoes, and sometimes even sugarcane. I earned 250 Quetzales ($34 USD) every 15 days. My mother taught us that it was necessary to work, were we to get ahead. Thanks be to God, I’m a hard-working, resilient woman. That was the case until, unfortunately, those delinquents threatened me, extorted me, and that’s why I had to leave my country.

They threatened me verbally. They’d come up to me and were armed—they’d lift up their shirt [to show me the weapon] and told me that if I didn’t give them what they asked for, they’d make me notice the pistol.

I was working at a clothing factory in Guatemala [at that time]. I sewed. They paid me 1.400 Quetzales ($191 US dollars) every 15 days. I had to pay rent—which was 450 Quetzales, which got us a single room. I’m a single mother, and [my wages] weren’t enough to afford an apartment.

I have an 11-year old daughter, but I didn’t want to put her at risk by bringing her with me—migrating north, you run into bad people, some good people… she’s just 11 years old, so I left her in the care of my mother. I had to send her [to live] on the coast of Guatemala [for her safety]. Unfortunately, I traveled with [a smuggler] who robbed me and left me stranded—he didn’t take me across the border or anything. He left me on the Mexico side of the border. And along the way I ran into people with bad intentions, who take advantage of you. One suffers a lot while migrating—from hunger, thirst, everything. Sometimes you find yourself without shoes or necessary clothing. Sometimes God puts someone in front of us—someone who gifts us a shirt, a pair of pants… or a tortilla.

Along the route we’d have to climb over fences in order to avoid immigration checkpoints, or stay out of sight in the wilderness so that we wouldn’t be [apprehended and deported] from Mexico. We suffered a lot—the wilderness was often vast, the fences sometimes had barbed wire or branches with thorns—but that’s how we came, sometimes on buses as well. But always with the fear that you’d be apprehended [by immigration agents] in Mexico and deported.

[The smuggler] charged and stole from me 40,000 Quetzales ($5,470 US dollars), and that money wasn’t mine—it was money I had borrowed. Now I owe that money. But I cannot return to my country because of fear—I can’t go back to work, you feel afraid of them coming after you, and that they’ll kill you.

I don’t know anyone in the United States—I don’t have family or cousins there. Nobody. Now I’m waiting here [in Nogales], hoping that with God’s blessings I’ll be able to arrange another way to get there. I say that if God gives me the chance to go to the US and have the opportunity to bring my daughter with me, that’d be great.

My daughter is studying—she’s in elementary school, in fourth grade. I miss her terribly. I wish she was able to be with me. She is the best thing that God has given me, even though her father isn’t with us. Ever since I was pregnant with her, he didn’t want to be with us. My daughter tells me that I’m both her mother and her father. For Father’s Day, she makes drawings for me.

I tell my daughter to study—I didn’t finish school, but I want her to. I tell her that I was a single mother, but I don’t want that to be her reality. I’m going to work hard so that she’s able to have [what she wants].

SPANISH:

Soy Marisela de Villanueva, Guatemala. [Decidí salir de Guatemala] porque me amenazaron, de la Mara Salvatrucha, de que si yo no les pagaba un dinero, me iban a matar. Entonces, yo por eso tomé una decisión de salir de allí para no estar en riesgo, que me maten.

A los 12 años empecé a trabajar en el campo. Yo cortaba café, tomate, a veces hasta cortar caña. Yo ganaba 250 Quetzales (612 pesos mexicanos) a la quincena. Mi mamá nos enseñó a que teníamos que trabajar para poder salir adelante. Y gracias a Dios, yo he sido una mujer luchadora, trabajadora. Pues hasta ahora que lamentablemente llegaron estos delincuentes a amenazarme de que, pidieron extorsión, por eso tuve que dejar mi país.

[Me amenazaron siempre] con palabras. Siempre que llegaban allí, llevaron el arma, y siempre se levantaba la camisa y me decían que si yo no les daba lo que me estaban pidiendo, y me hacían que yo mirara a la pistola.

Yo trabajaba allí en Guatemala en una fábrica de ropa [en este tiempo]. Yo cosía. Me pagaban 1.400 Quetzales (3.430 pesos mexicanos) a la quincena. Tenía que pagar renta, unos 450, solo un cuarto. […] Soy madre soltera, y no me alcanzaba pagar un [departamento].

Tengo mi hija de 11 años, pero no la quise arriesgar a ella también en este camino porque a veces en este camino se encuentra uno gente mala, gente buena, entonces… ella tiene 11 años, y por eso la deje con mi mama. Pero la tuve que mandar a la costa [por su propia seguridad]. […] Lamentablemente me vine con alguien que sólo me robó el dinero y me dejo a medio camino, ni siquiera mi cruzó ni nada. Me dejó en este lado de México. Lamentablemente me encontré con personas malas en el camino que se aprovechen de uno. […] Uno sufre mucho en el camino. Sufre de hambre, de sed, de todo. A veces a uno se queda hasta sin zapatos y sin ropa. A veces Dios nos pone a alguién en el camino, y nos regalan una blusa, un pantalón, o algo. Y nos regalan una tortilla.

A veces tuvimos que pasar cercas para poder rodear retenes y a veces hasta nos teníamos que quedar un buen rato en el monte para que no nos pudieran regresar de aquí mísmo de México. Sí, sufrimos mucho—a veces el monte bien grande, a veces habían cercas que tienen alambres o palos con espinas—y así fuimos llegando, en los autobuses también, con miedo de que lo vayan a bajar a uno y lo regresen a uno, pues deportado de aquí de México.

Me cobró [y me robó] casi 40.000 Quetzales (98.000 pesos mexicanos), y ese dinero yo no lo tenía, lo tuve que pedir prestado. [Ahora] tengo que pagar ese dinero. No puedo regresar a mi país por ese miedo, verdad, no puedo ir a trabajar porque uno siente que lo andan persiguiendo a uno, y uno ya tiene ese temor de que lo van a matar a uno.

No tengo a nadie en el otro lado, ni familia, ni primos, nadie. Aquí estoy esperando [en Nogales], con la voluntad de Dios, que me puedan ayudar de otra manera. […] Digo yo si Dios me permite que yo entre a Estados Unidos, y que me diera la oportunidad de que yo tenga mi hija conmigo, sería bueno.

Mi hija está estudiando, está en cuarto, primaria. […] Yo la extraña mucho. Me gustaría que ella estuviera conmigo porque ella es la mejor que me ha dado Dios, a pesar de que su papá no está con nosotros. Desde que yo la tenía en mi vientre, no quiso estar con nosotros. […] Ella me dice que soy su máma y su papá. Para el día del padre, ella me hace dibujos.

Yo le digo a ella que estudie, de que si yo no tuve estudio, yo quiero que ella lo tenga. Si yo fui madre soltera, no quiero que ella lo sea. […] Yo voy a trabajar duro para que usted lo tenga, le dijo.