Everyone Who Is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer

A couple of years ago I was working in Guatemala City, working for an international organization dedicated to providing assistance to refugees, asylum-seekers, and others in need of international protection. One day, I read a news headline that struck me – "One-year-old Guatemalan abandoned at the border." I had to reread those words several times. A coyote (smuggler) had abandoned a toddler, who could barely stand, on the bridge of the Colorado River on the U.S. border with Mexico. A 1-year-and-9-month-old baby/child, originally from Escuintla in Southwestern Guatemala, was traveling unaccompanied to reunite with his father in California. My mind was spinning: What circumstances led the father of this child to believe his only option was for his young son to undertake a dangerous trip led by human traffickers? Could this have been prevented? I didn’t have the answer to these questions back then – nor I do now.  Much has been said and done about the situation that the child had to face. Sadly, he wasn’t the first to face this, and he won’t be the last. 

As a Guatemalan, migrating “north” is almost a cultural phenomenon. Everybody knows someone who has undertaken the journey, most of them irregularly. Many fled during the 36-year-long internal conflict, many are currently fleeing generalized violence, and many more will keep leaving for this and many other reasons. However, has it always been this way? 

I’m not the first person to ask this question, neither was journalist Jonathan Blitzer. Blitzer saw the current situation at the United States border and the collapse of its asylum system and decided to dig deeper – but in a different direction. Rather than doing a policy analysis or focusing on the current state of the border and the flows of people fleeing their countries today, in his book, Everyone Who Is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, he takes a step back in history to try to understand the big picture that ended us in this situation. Quoting Guatemalan poet Humberto Ak’abal, Blitzer “walks backwards as a way of remembering”. He reviews the historical path of the North of Central America through testimonies and human stories that allow the reader to understand at which point in history people from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras began fleeing looking for protection. 

Through several testimonies, Blitzer traces the situation of Central American migration to as early as the 1960-70’s, as the result of the heavy influence the U.S. had in the intrastate conflicts in the region. Through financial aid and military support to the Central American governments fighting leftist guerrillas, the U.S. indirectly planted the seed of the first groups of many who paved the way for the hundreds of others that would come after them seeking protection.  

However, these civil wars were just the beginning of decades full of conflict, violence, and persecution. In his book, Blitzer also dives into the 1990s-2000s and the consolidation and rebuilding of post-conflict Central America. During this time, another driver of displacement was introduced into the fragile Central American societies: gangs (maras). Through the story of Eddie, a former gang member, the book provides a general explanation of how the maras find their origins in the same people who fled El Salvador during its internal conflict. The assimilation of Salvadorans into the gang society in low-income neighborhoods in Southern California resulted in the creation of gangs of their own, which were later exported from the United States back to Central America through mass deportation, allowing gangs such as MS13 and Barrio 18 to settle and expand in states with weak institutions and fragile societies that were just recovering and coming out of years of conflict. 

Parallel to these causes of displacement and the hundreds of people fleeing, Blitzer also provides a historical review of the United States’ response to this phenomenon. From community-based efforts at the Southern border and the institutional building of the asylum system, to family separation policies and safe third-country agreements, the book gives an overview that will help [you/people] understand the current restrictive protection policies, the externalization of asylum and the militarization of the border being implemented today. 

Through the stories presented in the book – in a very detailed matter, maybe a bit too much- Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here highlights the humane side of migration. It tells the stories of displacement through the testimonies of Juan, a medical student who fled El Salvador after being tortured by the military; Myrna, the anthropologist killed by the Guatemalan army and her sister Helen’s fight for justice; Keldy, the Honduran woman who was separated from her sons at the border; and many more. This allows the reader to individualize migration stories that are usually reduced to simple data and high numbers by news outlets and policymakers. Jonathan Blitzer reminds us that every single person who was forced to flee carries a story and that, in most cases, those stories go back decades. They are not isolated cases. They represent the outcome of a society and a state that was unwilling and unable to protect them. 

Blitzer no inventó el agua azucarada (he didn’t invent sweetened water) in his book. The reader can easily draw the not so groundbreaking conclusion that the United States, through its aggressive interventionist and anti-communist policies implemented in Central America during the Cold War, fueled and prolonged internal conflicts which in turn, forced many people to leave their home country looking for protection in their closest best option. This option was, of course, the United States.  The Central American migration phenomenon and the “making of a crisis” is therefore better understood under the historical lenses that the United States played a big role in fueling and strengthening the displacement drivers and unstable environments they now are so desperate to fix. 

Through the radiography presented in his book, several questions can be raised related to the current situation of displacement and migration from Central America and the responses the U.S has implemented. The numbers of individuals from Central America (specifically from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) reaching the U.S looking for protection continue to increase every year, and yet  U.S policies on asylum, in response, continue to become more restrictive and limited. Through Everyone Who Is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, Jonathan Blitzer provides a historical that helps us understand today’s current policies and immigration system. Going beyond a mere legal view of asylum as a human right and the international obligations of states to accept (or not) asylum-seekers and refugees, this book can provide the grounds for a deeper analysis of the relationship between both regions. Through Blitzers’ book, I began asking myself some questions that can help me envision a clearer path into the future: 

Why is the United States closing its borders to the very same people who are fleeing the consequences of U.S interventions and foreign policy? Is there a “moral” obligation to take them in? Could asylum also be seen as a sort of “reparation” to the people of the countries from which they are fleeing?  Did the U.S cause this to themselves?