海角大神

Guatemala鈥檚 first lady, Rosa Leal de P茅rez, traveled to the US-Mexican聽border earlier this month to see how the United States聽is dealing with the surge of migrant children, many from her nation.

She called the situation a 鈥渉umanitarian crisis鈥� and said she believed the kids were primarily traveling to the US in order to reunite with family members. Ms. Leal de P茅rez blamed US immigration policies for keeping families apart and parents for putting their kids at risk. Something she didn't find responsible? Violence back home.

鈥淚 can鈥檛 say violence isn鈥檛 a problem in our countries,鈥� she said, referring to Central America鈥檚 northern triangle, which includes Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and from where the majority of these young migrants are fleeing. But she said violence wasn鈥檛 the reason kids were heading north.

鈥淚n the municipalities where these kids are coming from, there aren鈥檛 gangs,鈥� Leal de P茅rez said.

Really?

Despite higher levels of violence and gang activity in urban areas, and the fact that most of the Guatemalan minors arriving on the US-Mexican border are from more rural areas, there's unfortunately plenty of gang violence to go around.

Gangs in Central America aren鈥檛 confined to big cities. In rural eastern El Salvador, for example, gang symbols are painted on the sides of buildings and written in chalk on deserted sidewalks. A thriving urban center isn't required for extortion, threats, and murder.

Not surprisingly, nearly 50 percent of arriving minors interviewed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported experiencing violence or having received threats from gangs, drug cartels, or state actors, such as the police.

So what does it mean when the first lady of Guatemala 鈥� a country with a staggeringly high murder rate and growing gang activity as Mexican cartels expand across the border 鈥� doesn鈥檛 think violence plays a part in migration?

For starters, it may speak to inequality.

Travel to any major Latin American city and the divide between rich and poor is impossible to ignore. Surely the first lady's聽experience is different from that of a resident living in a more impoverished zone in Guatemala City. She likely doesn鈥檛 take the so-called chicken buses,聽which cost a few cents, careen down highways, and have a reputation for being robbed at gunpoint. She probably hasn't experienced local gangs telling her if she doesn鈥檛 pay a small 鈥渢ax鈥� to neighborhood thugs, someone in her family will be kidnapped.

In parts of Central America and Mexico, gangs can operate in full force 鈥� extorting small businesses to the point of shuttering the enterprise. But there are also neighborhoods where extortion is rare and well-off families take extreme measures to remove themselves from interactions with strangers, such as living in fenced-in compounds, hiring 24-hour security guards, paying people to run errands, and driving in armored cars with tinted windows to keep out any unwanted eyes.

Extreme poverty across Latin America and the Caribbean, defined as living on under $2.50 a day, has declined by 50 percent since 1999, and the region's middle class has grown. Yet in Mexico and Central America, the middle class is still the smallest group in the country.

For one journalist, there was a bitter irony to Lael de P茅rez鈥檚 statement about violence:

On the day Guatemala's 1st lady says kids aren't fleeing violence there, a paper counts 12 murders. The next day, my good friend is a victim

鈥� Jill Replogle (@jillrep) July 8, 2014

'A confluence'

There鈥檚 no single cause for the nearly 50,000 unaccompanied youth that have arrived on the US-Mexican border since last October. As the Migration Policy Institute notes:

But violence appears to be a driving force for Honduran, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan children. Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, with 90.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. El Salvador has the fourth highest, at 41.2, while Guatemala comes in fifth at 39.9. For comparison, the US, which has one of the highest murder rates for wealthy nations, has about 4.7 murders per 100,000.

The New York Times reports:

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