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| Photos by Hector Emanuel |
Pro Publica traveled to Guatemala in September to search for former employees of Case Farms chicken plants.
FOR 25 YEARS, Mayans from an isolated string of villages in the northwestern highlands of Guatemala have made their way to blue-collar towns in Ohio and North Carolina to work in Case Farms chicken plants. The unusual migration began after a Case Farms human resources manager recruited a group of Guatemalan civil war refugees who’d been working in the orange groves and tomato fields around Indiantown, Florida.
Many of them returned home after working for years at the poultry plants, sometimes with crippling injuries. In September, I traveled to the Guatemalan state of Huehuetenango to find these workers and to better understand what drove them to the United States to withstand conditions that most Americans won’t put up with.
The report includes stories of Guatemalans who sought better lives for their families by traveling to the states to earn some cash, migrants longing for the comforts of home and family, Guatemalan family members who only wished for the migrants' return, and references to injuries sustained at Case Farms. There's not enough to the story itself, I wanted another paragraph or two about each person, but the photos are worth it.
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