Banana Boat

At dawn, as we sit waiting to dock on this mist-draped coast, I wonder if most Americans have any idea about what's happening in Guatemala and why so many Guatemalan's are heading north seeking asylum.

For example most Americans do not know that Guatemala's top exports mostly go to USA and Europe are mostly controlled by US and European companies.  So when wondering what one might do to help with the current crisis in Guatemala, one could start by writing Chiquita Brands Sárl (a Swiss producer and distributor of bananas and other produce) and ask them what they're doing to improve the infrastructure and employment opportunities for Guatemalans today.  They say they'd love to hear from you:  

As dawn has broken over the Bahia de Amatique we see lots of banana boats emerging from the mist.

We are only permitted to dock for 12 hours, so we navigate in to Puerto Barrios at dawn with every intention of traveling across Guatemala and back before our 12 hour limit expires.  This is Puerto Barrios, in the Caribbean Sea's Gulf of Honduras, Bahia de Amatique.

From Mundo Maya we'll take some sort of local transport (taxi, bus) an hour north to Parque Nacional Tikal to explore the ruin of an ancient Mayan city.  And then, we'll have to backtrack doing it all over again arriving back at the port before sunset.  

But for now, we just slowly creep past thousands of containers of bananas and other fruit and vegetables bound for Europe and North America.

Guatemala is the most populous country in Central America with a GDP per capita roughly half the average for Latin America and the Caribbean.  Average time spent in primary school:  3.5 years.  To say there is grinding, debilitating poverty here would be a gross understatement.  I'm not sure how to describe it.  It is meager subsistence existence.

Why are so many Guatemalans migrating to the USA?   Read this:

USA Homeland Security officials have for the first time offered an explanation for a puzzling increase in the number of Guatemalan families showing up at the U.S. Border seeking asylum.

Rather than a spike in violence, the families appear to be fleeing a hunger crisis in Guatemala's western highlands, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, citing U.N. and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) food insecurity data as well as the agency's own intelligence assessments.

Years of meager harvests, drought and the devastating effects of "coffee rust" fungus on an industry that employs large numbers of rural Guatemalans is speeding up an exodus of families from villages bereft of food.

Hunger also explains why large numbers of indigenous villagers of Mayan descent who speak little or no Spanish have arrived with their children to turn themselves in to U.S. border agents, creating communication challenges for enforcement officials and immigration courts.