Why do people leave the homes they love? What role do climate and environment-related stressors play in the decision to migrate? These questions are often raised in policy reports, news media, and scholarly research. Prior to the intensification of Central American migration flows in 2018, when migrant caravans trudged through Mexico heading to North America, linkages between migration and climate change were seldom referenced in popular media outlets. Journalistic reports began to make these connections and gain traction with attention-grabbing headlines. Some media outlets highlighted, for example, how climate change was the “unseen driver” triggering migration from Guatemala (e.g, Semple 2019). While these news reports shifted the migration discourse in popular media realms, they obfuscate the complexity of the decision to migrate and the multiple variables influencing that decision (Moran-Taylor and Taylor 2021). Moreover, the impacts of environmental change are often intensely localized and varied, as they interact with existing social, political, economic, and demographic factors. To understand the many variables that influence the decision to migrate, including climate change, it is essential to listen to migrants and their families telling their own stories about their experiences over the past few decades.
A country like Guatemala is especially vulnerable to climate change because half of its population lives in rural areas and relies on rain-fed agriculture (Pons et al. 2017). Given the continued debates about emigration to the United States, understanding the linkages between migration and climate change is crucial and timely. Here, then, we consider these issues and offer a viewpoint that comes from the perspectives of locals. These perspectives were gathered during our fieldwork in 2021 as well as our research into migration from Guatemala that spans 30 years.
To look behind the headlines and probe deeper into the migration and climate change nexus, in December of 2021 we set out to do preliminary ethnographic fieldwork in Guatemala’s Cuchumatán highlands in the northwestern state of Huehuetenango. We conducted 28 informal interviews with both male and female residents in communities stretching from Todos Santos in the west to Aldea Climentoro in the east, Paquix in the south, and Tojquia to the north (Figure 1). Interviews prompted residents with questions about general changes in the region and their livelihoods over the past several decades. We did not prompt interviewees with any questions about climate change.
This region is a largely Mam-speaking Maya area, but also includes Ladino communities in the eastern part of Los Altos. Cuchumatán is an ancient toponym which either originally derived from Mam, meaning “that which was brought together by great force” or Nahuatl, meaning “place of parrot hunters” (Lovell 1992). We focused our research in Los Altos of Chiantla, the highest non-volcanic region of all Central America, because this is an area of long-term out-migration (Steinberg and Taylor 2008; Camus 2008) and because we have a long history of research in the area and have developed a network of local families with whom we have established rapport over time. Our interviews and landscape observations are contextualized within our research in Guatemala on emigration to the United States over the last three decades, allowing us to also assess change over time.
Guatemala is a small country, about the size of Louisiana in the United States, with about 17 million people (versus Louisiana’s 4.6 million). The Cuchumatán highlands have four diverse altitudinal and climate zones—tierra caliente (warm land) to the highest and coldest land known as Andean region (Lovell 1992; Recinos 1954); Los Altos de Chiantla lies in the region of the Cuchumatán Mountains above 3000 m.a.s.l. and includes the communities of La Capellanía and Chancol (Figure 1). This rugged region experiences frosts during the cold season and sits at about 3000 m.a.s.l. with average annual temperatures below 10 degrees centigrade. The landscape, often shrouded in mists, stone walls adorned with agaves, and sheep grazing remote mountain meadows, gives the impression of a place that differs from the most conventional images of Central America (Steinberg and Taylor 2008).
Los Altos de Chiantla remains one of the most isolated regions in Guatemala; it is neglected by the state because of its remoteness from centralized decision-making, as well as because its lack of economic importance to the state. Electricity, for example, did not reach the area until about the early 2000s (Taylor 2005). And, it only did, because community members came together, petitioned for it, and committed to dig their own holes for the electric posts—a project which included having to provide a morning refacción (coffee and snack) for government workers too! Scant government-funded infrastructure addresses water needs for household consumption. Most agriculture in Los Altos is rainfed. Taps for water for household consumption were created by locals. They pulled together the funds to tap into local springs and to create a spot for water gathering. At a larger scale, even though Huehuetenango is still mostly agrarian, “the state has done little to support smallholder farmers” (Camus 2008:46). Although more than 25 years has passed since the Guatemalan government signed the peace accords in 1996, formally ending nearly four decades of armed conflict and with promises of rural development, overall, there is a lack of state interest in this remote rural area.
As one leaves the department capital of Huehuetenango (1900 m.a.s.l.) and begins ascending into the Cuchumatanes (as it is colloquially referred), driving along breathtaking switchbacks, green, steep-sided valleys dotted with maize fields give way to patches of wheat, oats, potato fields, and sheep pastures (Figures 2 and 3). The recently paved and busy two-lane road eventually reaches the high plateau at La Capellanía and the landscape opens up to alpine grassy meadows (Figure 3). This landscape provides for the people in the area who cultivate wheat, potatoes, broad beans, and who raise sheep. The peaks of Los Altos de Chiantla provide firewood and other forest products.
Root causes of international migration from Guatemala to the United States include the following: four decades of a long, bloody civil war; U.S. foreign policy; U.S. immigration policies, free trade agreements, pervasive social, economic, and environmental inequalities, corruption, structural violence, and everyday violence (Moran-Taylor 2008; Taylor et al. 2006). The economic decline related to the global COVID-19 pandemic added to previous pressures to migrate. Climate change and environmental issues also add to the complex mix of social and political factors that drive migration. Guatemalan migration flows to the United States began in the late 1970s, accelerated in the 1980s, and intensified by the 1990s, and continues to grow to the present day. U.S.-bound migration is mature and a vital part of the social fabric for many families in Guatemala, and, in fact, the economy in general.
Although the Departamento (equivalent to state) of Huehuetenango is the largest sender of migrants to the United States in the country (Guatemalan National Census 2002; OIM 2021), we found, based on interviews and our previous research, that emigration from the region of Los Altos de Chiantla is not as mature as in other towns and villages throughout Guatemala. Locals say that U.S. emigration began in the early 2000s, chiefly due to economic stagnation.
The linkages between migration and climate change are complex and not well understood (Moran-Taylor and Taylor 2021). A growing body of research questions media and popular claims that climate change will result in mass displacement. These scholars back away from such displacement claims, and seek a more nuanced understanding of the role that climate plays among the multitude of factors that contribute to the decision to migrate (e.g., de Haas 2023, de Sherbinin et al. 2022, Piguet 2010). Geography matters when looking at the links between migration and climate change. And, in the case of Guatemala, geography especially matters because of the variability in climate and topography over short distances. Climate change in Central America and Guatemala is variable because of how complex topography interacts with larger scale atmospheric conditions (Anderson et al. 2019; Pons et al. 2017), which interact to generate geographic variability of soils, poverty, and food insecurity. In terms of climate model projections, forecasts suggest that future decreases in precipitation and rising temperatures will reduce soil moisture and increase aridity throughout Central America (Margin et al. 2014), influencing geographical and social conditions.
The picture on the ground of this relationship between climate and migration varies over space. Another factor complicating understanding the interactions between climate change and migration is that most areas of Guatemala have been sending family members abroad for decades. This pattern that includes both migrating and staying populations has permitted diversification of the economy, and, in turn, perhaps allowed for more resilience as climate changes. We elaborate on examples of this feedback loop later in the paper.
Los Altos de Chiantla is increasingly pulled and pushed into the world economy because of international migration and its impacts that bring, as Stoll (2013) notes, “the American dream to the Cuchumatanes.” Today migrants from this region are spread out in urban and rural areas across the United States. Some migrants head to cities like Chicago, Washington D.C., Las Vegas, Boston, Atlanta, Kansas City, and New York. Others find work in agriculture, poultry processing and meat packing plants, construction, landscaping, or service industry in states like Florida, Oklahoma, California, New Jersey, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Delaware, and Virginia. According to locals, despite the recent intensification of U.S. immigration and border policies, which make journeys northward even more perilous, circuitous, and expensive, migrants pay around Q80-150 thousand (US $10-20 thousand) for their unauthorized journey. This is a vast increase from the US $1500-$3000 coyotes charged for the journey from Huehuetenango to the United States 20 years ago (House and Lovell 2001). So, how do migrants pay such a premium? To finance their travels migrants often receive assistance from family (at home and abroad), friends, obtain bank or personal loans, use any little plot of land, house, or vehicle as collateral, or even pawn animals or traje típicos (Moran-Taylor 2008; Stoll 2013; Heidbrink 2019). Increasingly, prior to migrating, some migrants get recruited to commit to an employment site (e.g, poultry processing plant) in the United States and then work to pay off the debt (House and Lovell 2001). Although since 2018 thousands of migrants from Central America travelled in organized caravans as protection and to pool resources during the hazardous journey, this type of journey was not mentioned during our conversations with locals in Los Altos de Chiantla. Perhaps it was not practiced because Huehuetenango is a border state with Mexico and thus migrants negotiate fewer borders or have more experience crossing into Mexico, compared to Hondurans or Salvadorans who made up a large part of the migrant caravans.
U.S.-bound migration from Los Altos de Chiantla results in a shortage of young people (18-45 years old) to work as jornaleros in agriculture and construction. As a non-migrant local put it, “it takes forever to find somebody willing and with the knowledge to do these types of jobs.” Although many people may leave due to lack of labor market prospects and because they want to earn a living in the United States that will allow them to have a better quality of life at home and “to get ahead (economically) quicker,” this labor drain adversely impacts local communities as more and more look north and less human capital is available in the region. In the end, however, it seems that the ones reaping most of the benefits of U.S. migration are the ones left behind. Even though “los ausentes siempre están presentes,” (the absent are always present) with their material assets and memories (House and Lovell 2001), those who stay end up living in the homes built with remittances, using the cars purchased by migrants, and staying behind with family. Additionally, those who stay behind do not have to deal with the personal costs of migration: nostalgia for home, loneliness, and the insecurity associated with the journey and life in another country (Moran-Taylor 2009). For the migrants, then, the dream of building a better life in the Cuchumatanes is a reality that they sponsor, but often do not get to experience because they fear that they will not be able to get back into the United States if they leave for a visit to Guatemala. These migrants become stuck and live a life in limbo – neither firmly in the United States nor Guatemala.
International migration has resulted in many visible migration-related changes in migrant-sending communities like Los Altos de Chiantla and its surroundings. As in other Guatemalan towns, remittances help meet basic household needs, but also fuel an economic boom (Moran-Taylor 2008; Taylor et al. 2006). The volume of remittances reaching Guatemalans is estimated at more than 19.2 billion dollars annually (The World Bank 2022), making remittances the country’s leading source of foreign exchange. After remittances are used to meet basic needs, migrants build new houses, buy cars, and invest in education and business creation. These investments shape the cultural landscape of Los Altos (Figures 4, 5, 6, and 7). Migrant funds, for example, have stimulated a boom in house and business constructions with vast ripple effects that are visible in the landscape: an increase in transportation, factories producing construction materials (cement and block), ubiquitous ferreterías (hardware stores), gas stations, and shops. This economic diversity leads to a landscape that is no longer solely reliant on agriculture, indeed, a “new rurality” exists (Hecht 2010), and perhaps households that are more resilient in the face of climate change and the challenges that it presents to agriculture.
This economic boom seen today in the Cuchumatanes is led in part, locals tell us, by U.S. migration in the first place. Many residents recount how income earned abroad enables a diversification in household livelihoods. In terms of the built environment, and as is the case in other Latin American countries with large out-migration, remittances allow locals to either expand existing homes or build new, larger houses using a mix of materials and styles (see Figures 5, 6, and 7). Compare these newly built houses with the traditional dwellings found in Los Altos (Figure 8).
Guatemala is a country where 40-50 percent of the population still lead agrarian livelihoods. While many smallholder farmers continue to rely on agriculture in Los Altos de Chiantla, the high elevations limit options. During colonial times the Cuchumatán highlands were overlooked, especially during the age of cacao and indigo (Lovell 1992). The Spanish, however, began to eye this northwestern region for its potential—not so much for crops, but for raising sheep and horses. The high plateau, with its wide-ranging pastures, became a center for sheep production in colonial Central America (Lovell 1992) – a practice that continues today (Figures 12 and 13).
Owning sheep is a form of savings, locals told us. To meet household needs, owners can sell a sheep for about $100. Increasingly, greater demand for lamb in other regions of Guatemala; especially higher-end restaurants, helps promote the sheep economy. Occasionally, sheep are used for household consumption. Sheep also are coveted for wool, particularly among artisan weavers in Momostenango, a Maya K’iche’ town in the Department of Totonicapán with a long history of producing wool blankets and clothing.
Potatoes are an important crop in Los Altos de Chiantla, as well as in neighboring communities such as Todos Santos (Figure 16). Like sheep, the Spanish introduced new varieties of potatoes from the Andes (Lovell 1983, 1992). Locals also invest in other crops that can endure the higher elevations, like avena (oats) and habas (fava beans).
When asked about growing potatoes, Ana and Lina, mother and daughter, cheerfully chimed in saying: “It’s part of our tradition (costumbre).” Potatoes are consumed in the alpine high plateau “los tres tiempos,” all three meals—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Often, they said potatoes are eaten along with corn tortillas and beans, and sometimes even rice (Figure 12).
Increasingly, people in Los Altos de Chiantla diversify their livelihoods through agrarian entrepreneurial ties with residents of the neighboring Mayan Mam town of Todos Santos (a community below the high plateau to the west, set in a deep valley). Many Todos Santeros are heavily involved in agriculture and are well-known for growing a variety of vegetables (e.g,. carrots, broccoli, beets, kale, etc.) for local and export markets to North America and Europe. Non-traditional crops have become one of Guatemala’s biggest export earners (Hamilton and Fischer 2003). Farmers from the Todos Santos region are also known for their large-scale potato production. Todos Santeros have strategized and expanded their agricultural fields by leasing land for potato production from families in Los Altos de Chiantla (figure 16). This land is available because it is not used for the production of staples like maize and beans. Also, Todos Santeros have the capital for the fertilizer inputs (often chicken manure) that make these lands productive for potato cultivation. They hire locals to work as jornaleros (both males and females), who earn Q50 per day (approximately $7). This agricultural strategy allows Todos Santeros to dominate the potato production in the high plateau of the Cuchumatanes and helps many families in Los Altos de Chiantla supplement their household income.
Todos Santos has a longer history of U.S.-bound migration (e.g., Burrell 2013). This history of migration is more mature than areas like Los Altos de Chiantla, and the accumulated remittances provide farmers in Todos Santos with more capital to invest in land and agriculture close to home and in neighboring communities. This is also the case in other communities in Guatemala, like the Mayan farmers in Almolonga, Quetzaltenango who invest in land and non-traditional crops in the nearby community of San Cristóbal, Totonicapán (Moran-Taylor and Taylor 2010). While this strategy allows Todos Santeros to carry on an agrarian-centered lifestyle, the downside for people in Los Altos de Chiantla is that they end up with land that is exhausted after heavy inputs of fertilizers and pesticides.
More recently, tourism has begun to play a small role in the economy of Huehuetenango. In 2019 the area experienced an increase in international tourism (INGUAT 2020). But as borders closed and international travel came to a halt because of the COVID pandemic, national tourism flourished as Guatemalans set out to explore their country. As one interviewee highlighted, “it’s almost as if suddenly, Guatemalans from around the country discovered their own country and its little hidden, forgotten corners.” Helping to foster this new interest in Huehuetenango are the Rural Tourism Organization of Huehuetenango and INGUAT (Guatemalan Institute for Tourism)—government entities that launched tourism marketing strategies promoting the area’s natural beauty (e.g., lakes, lagoons, cenotes, rivers), hikes and protected areas, agricultural tourism, including llama tourism, archaeological sites, and cultural sites like the Mayan towns of Todos Santos and San Juan Atitán.
During our conversations about the links between migration and climate change, to avoid influencing discourse and perceptions, we were careful not to elicit stories using the term climate change. Instead, we asked about the environment in general, agricultural experiences with weather changes during different seasons, and crop losses or successes. And, to further delve into our narrators’ association between migration and climate change, we asked locals about out-migration trends, their perceptions as to why people migrate, impacts of migration (both loss of people and remittances), and changes in agricultural livelihoods in general.
Locals say that one way in which people’s livelihoods have improved is through improvements in the physical environment. Through the government’s INAB reforestation program (which started in the early 2000s), residents were incentivized and compensated to plant pinabete (Abies guatemalensis—Guatemalan fir) in their plots of land and in surrounding hills. This reforestation program, according to locals, has led to greater soil preservation, less erosion, better crops, and even the emergence of water springs.
Although precipitation variability is among the many challenges smallholder families face in Guatemala (Anderson et al. 2019), most farmers indicate that this past year (2021) they experienced good potato production and were able to sell at higher prices. For instance, farmers received about Q100 (~$13) per quintal (100 pounds) of potatoes. Although farmers suffered a frost in their crops in August 2021, this unexpected cold snap change did not result in significant crop loss. This environmental shock is often referred to as hielera (low temperatures that freeze the leaves of the plant and that leads to lower harvests), paradoxically, also known as “quemando la hoja” (burning the leaf). Despite this environmental shock, most farmers say that they were able to earn enough to cover expenses, bank some profits, and to save potato seeds for the following year. Undoubtedly, environmental shocks like hieleras are part of the risks many farmers endure. And, in Guatemala, such risks come with limited access to government programs to ameliorate impacts.
Past studies have noted the linkages between migration and environmental conditions (favorable and unfavorable) and show how this relationship varies across geographic contexts (Moran-Taylor and Taylor 2021; Hunter et al. 2015, 2017). Our preliminary ethnographic fieldwork suggests that the association between out-migration and environmental factors is highly localized. In the nearby Department of Alta Verapaz, for example, stories abound of Mayan farmers impacted by drought, flood, bankruptcy, and starvation, and of farmers having to pick up and leave Guatemala (Lustgarten 2020). In Los Altos de Chiantla, economic motives, however, emerge as the main reason for migration. Environmental conditions and disruptions to agricultural livelihoods because of changes in the environment are not cited by locals as the most important factors in the decision to migrate. Locals told us that households in this area use a variety of strategies to cope with economic hardships, mainly by sending a household member to pursue off-farm employment (e.g., in banks, schools) in the nearby municipal capital of Huehuetenango, diversifying employment in their community (e.g., wage workers in construction sites, fetching and delivering sand for construction jobs), and leasing plots of land for agriculture to nearby neighbors in the town of Todos Santos.
Understanding the relationship between migration and climate change is important because it is tied to the livelihoods and food security for so many who rely, at least in part, on agriculture in Guatemala. To begin to chip away at the question of how linkages between migration and climate change unfold in Guatemala, we headed to the Cuchumatanes in Huehuetenango. This fieldwork is part of a larger project that also looks at this relationship in the Dry Corridor of Guatemala and Honduras. Following Hunter et al. (2017), the goal in our larger project is to explore this complex relationship across spatial scales and to consider both regional and more localized patterns, assessing both changes in the landscape and local perceptions and experiences—which don’t necessarily map neatly onto one another.
The region of Los Altos de Chiantla, once isolated, and predominantly rural, fits into descriptions of “new ruralities of Latin America and the Caribbean.” This change in regional economy is not only evident in the words of residents, but, in our observations, in landscape and livelihood changes. As some scholars highlight, “the rural sector has changed, and rurality in Latin America cannot be understood in the same parameters used in the last decade.” (Baskovich and Flores Arias Uijtewaal 2019). There are, however, still many challenges facing the rural sector, especially in places like Los Altos de Chiantla that have long been forgotten by the state.
Perhaps this new rurality explains why locals do not bring climate change to the forefront of their discussions when they consider what propels so many to leave the homes they love. In fact, maybe this new rurality is an adaptation to changing social, economic, and environmental realities (e.g., Urquijo et al. 2018; Yarnall and Price 2010). Simply, their livelihoods are far more diversified and less reliant on agriculture. Yet, even residents who rely almost exclusively on agriculture, do not bring climate and climate change to the forefront of their discussions and do not say it is a driver of migration. Rather, the dearth of economic opportunities and peoples’ desires to “get ahead quicker” become the principal triggers for migration from this corner of the Cuchumatanes in northwestern Guatemala.
Photographs by Michelle J. Moran-Taylor
Acknowledgements: We thank all the people in Los Altos of Chiantla for making our research possible. And we thank the DT Institute and the University of Denver, who provided funding to conduct this research.