A year ago this month, a 20-year-old Guatemalan woman seeking opportunity in the U.S. was shot dead by a Border Patrol agent in Texas. A video of the killing went viral on Facebook and spurred a media outcry, yet neither the agent’s name nor why he opened fire has ever been made public. In the first of our series on women and migration, we ask, will her family ever get justice?
When Claudia Patricia Gómez González graduated high school two years ago—the first in her family to do so—she had tears in her eyes. One of the brightest students in her class, she had always been told that she was special, that she would go on to do great things and make her small village, La Unión Los Mendoza in the impoverished Guatemalan highlands, proud. “She was always so kind, so humble,” says Andres Vicente, a primary-school teacher in Claudia’s village.
So on May 7, 2018, Claudia packed some extra clothes and corn she had helped her mom grow in their small backyard and kissed her two little sisters, Edith, 12, and Emelin, 7, goodbye. “I was sad,” Lidia recalls, sorting through the traditional square-cut blouses that Claudia had embroidered. “But I was also happy. She wants to follow her dreams, and she’s so smart. There’s nothing here.
Martinez, the neighbor who recorded the immediate aftermath of the killing, has declined to talk to the press as she’s now considered an official witness in the investigation. “It’s hard to get anyone in this town to talk. There’s a culture of silence here, and we’re all still demanding answers,” says Ilse Mendez, a spokesperson for the Laredo Immigrant Alliance, an advocacy group in the area. “Claudia could have been any of us. The Border Patrol has been acting with brutal force for years.
According to Customs and Border Protection data, between October 2017 and September 2018, 50,401 Guatemalans traveling as families were apprehended at the U.S.–Mexico border, nearly twice the amount as in the previous year. In that same time frame, Guatemalans accounted for nearly half of all migrants who sought to enter the U.S. with their relatives—more than those from El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico combined. “North seems like the only answer,” says Gilberto, Claudia’s father.
The first time Heder, 20, saw Claudia, he says he couldn’t believe someone so tiny had made the arduous journey up north by herself. After all, he was a self-described “brave man,” and at several points during the 1,500-mile trek, he didn’t think he’d make it. The two young Guatemalans met at a “waiting house” in Mexico on May 22, a day before Claudia was killed.
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