Migration
From Sylhet to Spitalfields: Bengali Squatters in 1970s East London – review
In From Sylhet to Spitalfields, Shabna Begum examines the Bengali community’s struggle for housing and belonging in the face of systemic racism in 1970s East London. According to Md Naibur Rahman and Ruhun Wasata, Begum’s rich combination of ethnographic work and historical analysis reveals how, through squatting, activism and community organising, Bangladeshi migrants successfully demanded their right to housing.
Someone with a rumbling stomach taking a stroll around Tower Hamlets in London, famous for its Bangladeshi community and cuisine, might be focused on finding a place to eat. Once satiated, attention can be focused on questions of how this diasporic community who were once colonised made it to the land of the coloniser and eventually called it home. In From Sylhet to Spitalfields, Shabna Begum undertakes an academic journey to examine the experiences of the Bangladeshi community as they faced systemic and targeted racism in their struggle to find literal and figurative homes in East London.
The book examines the Bangladeshi Squatter movement in the 1970s [. . .] to ensure the minimum basic rights of finding tenancy agreements in places that could keep them safe from targeted and street racism.
The book examines the Bangladeshi Squatter movement in the 1970s, a united effort against institutionalised racism of the Greater London Council (GLC) and Tower Hamlets Council (TLC) to ensure the minimum basic rights of finding tenancy agreements in places that could keep them safe from targeted and street racism. Begam’s robust ethnographic research both documents the suffering and struggles of the Bangladeshi community in London and records their resilience and resistance in the face of adversity.
The book begins with a historical account of the migration pattern of people from Sylhet, the North Eastern region of Bangladesh, to East London. Dating back to the boat building and sailing traditions of Sylheti people found in Ibn Battuta’s record in 1346 and Robert Lindsay’s observation in 1777, Sylheti men were initially employed as ship workers by the East India Company under British rule. Lindsay, the revenue collector deployed in Sylhet, extracted all trading opportunities for limestone, elephant trading (at least 6000), tea plantation and ship building. This typical practice of colonial-era property acquisition and exploitation of natural resources led him to purchase Balcarres House in Fife, Scotland from his older brother, Earl Alexander. This is a glaring example of how Sylhet and Sylheti seafarers contributed to the growth of the economic and political power of British colonisers in the 18th century.
The book observes this migratory pattern as part of the legacy of imperialism, epitomised in Sivanandan’s phrase, ‘We are here because you were there’.
The exploitation continued with an administrative strategy of annexing Sylhet to Assam, the neighbouring district, whose tea plantations became a cash cow. This layout and arrangement made Sylheti people owners of their land, unlike in other districts, which were governed by a few elite landlords and the majority of tenants. With the growing population, Sylheti people gravitated towards the merchant shipping industry to ease the pressure on the land-based economy. As part of an invitation to new commonwealth citizens in the post-war period Sylheti people started migrating from Bangladesh to East London in the 1960s and 1970s in search of opportunity, finding work in the garment, catering and hospitality sectors. The book observes this migratory pattern as part of the legacy of imperialism, epitomised in Sivanandan’s phrase, “We are here because you were there.”
The book stands out for highlighting the significance of the role of women in the squatter movement. In the mid-1970s, Sylheti men were concerned that, due to the racialist restriction on Commonwealth migration, they wouldn’t be able to bring their wives and children to the UK in the future as family reunification migrants, who would then morph into economic migrants. Their families were eventually allowed to join them, and their temporary, unstructured and compromised accommodation setups were no longer adequate. The lack of suitable accommodation led to Sylhetis wrangling with the GLC and THC powered with residency qualification and fifty-two weeks continuous residency policy for endorsing their discriminatory allocation. Eventually, the only option left was squatting. In these squats, women became the frontline defenders against discriminatory attacks since men were largely away at work outside the home. From protecting the home to protesting on the streets, Sylheti women played a key role in the movement, requiring resilience and defiance.
With no facilities for private bathing, broken windows and doors and interrupted utility supplies, the squatters adjusted to squalid living conditions.
Through the heart-wrenching lived experiences of its interviewees, the book evidences the poor conditions of the squats: dilapidated, leftover houses where no one else would agree to live. With no facilities for private bathing, broken windows and doors and interrupted utility supplies, the squatters adjusted to squalid living conditions. Beyond the this, squatters experienced smashed doors and windows, targeted racist harassment and elected politicians’ committing to expel the Bengali people from the area. In one rare instance where a Bengali family was allocated a council tenancy, the targeted violence they were subject to from the local community meant prevented them from moving in.
The formation of the Bengali Housing Action Group (BHAG) in the spring of 1976 paved a new way to coordinate the efforts and demands of squatters that were conveyed to the councils. The book highlights how this organisation not only established a game-changing platform but also emerged as a united force to resist violence. The formalised voice and force of the organisation proved crucial in gaining support, respect and acceptance from different groups.
The book presents a thorough account of BHAG activities which led to broader amnesty for squatters, enabling them to register and receive GLC tenancy in June 1978. From desperate attempts of squatting to 3000-strong demonstrations of Bangladeshis to finally being able to meet with GLC Councillors, the BHAG representation gave momentum and organisational force to the movements. In 1977, it was agreed by the GLC that their request to be housed in the E1 area would be honoured. BHAG activists made it clear that white or mixed-race people were also welcome as long as the majority of Bangladeshi people are housed in the same area.
The friendship, love and sacrifice of non-Bangladeshi BHAG activists like Terry Fitzpatrick, Mala Sen and Farrukh Dhondy demonstrated the power of multiculturalism and solidarity that London enables.
The Squatter movement and formulation of BHAG fomented lifelong friendships and connections that went beyond shared trauma and suffering. The friendship, love and sacrifice of non-Bangladeshi BHAG activists like Terry Fitzpatrick, Mala Sen and Farrukh Dhondy demonstrated the power of multiculturalism and solidarity that London enables. While some tried to protect Bangladeshis through their vigilante patrolling in Ford Zafire every night for a year, others voiced their frustrations, sufferings and demands on behalf of the Bangladeshi women. In addition, the support from the Socialist Worker Party, the Anti-Nazi League, and Race Today brought more attention and visibility. This movement worked as a foundation stone for many subsequent achievements in the housing cooperation, direct representations in councils and recognition of Bangladeshi culture. From forming housing cooperatives such as Shahjalal and Mitali Housing Co-Op to having representation with a Labour Councillor in 1985, the community established their presence in East London and beyond. British Bangladeshis’ continued political awareness and engagement led to the election of their first Member of Parliament (MP) in 2010, followed by three others in 2010, 2015 and 2019, respectively. The overall emergence of Bangladeshi community in almost every sector has often been credited to their commitment to education, which resonated through many interviewees’ responses – “because we put a graduate in every family”.
The book takes the reader on both an academic and an emotional journey, balancing robust historical research with human stories of resilience in the face of adversity.
Begum’s book does a commendable job of weaving the impacts of political events in Bangladesh with the nature of protests in East London. Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971, the famine of 1974, and the assassination of the Founding Fathers of the Nation sedimented the resilience, resistance and courage, demonstrated by Bangladeshis who stood for their rights in Spitalfields, East London. Although many Sylheti people moved to Britain with the full intention of returning to Bangladesh, the struggles and achievements in East London gave them a sense of double belonging. The book effectively employs an oral ethnographic approach, making it a significant historical record of the Bangladeshi community in East London. The book takes the reader on both an academic and an emotional journey, balancing robust historical research with human stories of resilience in the face of adversity. From historians and geographers to anthropologists, sociologists to gender studies specialists, this book will appeal to many as a means to better understand the experiences of immigrants in Britain.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Olivier Guiberteau on Shutterstock.
The Front Room: Diaspora Migrant Aesthetics in the Home – review
In The Front Room, Michael McMillan examines the significance of domestic spaces in creating a sense of belonging for Caribbean migrants in the UK. Delving into themes of resistance and creolisation, these sensitively curated essays and images reveal how ordinary objects shape diasporic identities, writes Antara Chakrabarty.
Migration, at its most basic level, means a physical relocation. However, this “mobility” entails a complex, polysemous reality whose consequences reverberate for those who leave one place for another. Michael McMillan’s The Front Room: Diaspora Migrant Aesthetics in the Home presents a poignant personal tale of materiality, memory and diasporic emotions. It connects with readers by presenting the past without falling prey to anachronism, narrating ordinary aspects of our day-to-day lives through pertinent sociological themes and recurring issues like racism, world politics, aspirations, diasporic memory and more. Michael McMillan, a playwright and artist, offers a text that unfolds as a choreopoem to the domestic spaces inhabited by migrants, infused with theatricality and a curatorial sensibility around the images and references shared. The book, originally published in 2009, has been re-released and is divided across several themes and including additional essays, including by eminent cultural anthropologist Stuart Hall.
Caribbean diaspora re-imagined the Victorian parlour, (the front room) through a sense of decolonial resistance, cultural survival and aspirational attempts to adapt to the new culture in which they found themselves.
The book takes us on a journey of discovery as to what spaces meant, looked, smelled and felt like for Caribbean diaspora settled in the UK from the mid-20th century. It describes how the tactile sensations and emotions held in a room amount to so much more than its aesthetics. The text begins with a section on how Caribbean diaspora re-imagined the Victorian parlour, (the front room) through a sense of decolonial resistance, cultural survival and aspirational attempts to adapt to the new culture in which they found themselves. The images used to showcase the different varieties of such front rooms were mostly taken from the response to the exhibition, A front room in 1976 , curated by McMillan at the Museum of the Home in London in 2005-06.
A primary thematic focus is the emergence of a significant cultural process of change often called as creolisation which gives rise to a third culture which is neither Caribbean, nor British, but a diasporic intermingling of the two. This creolisation also occurs as a result of intergenerational change in the wake of World War Two and apartheid. Moreover, it speaks to the changing imagination around what can be called a “home”, reflecting changes in identity in a foreign land. The lucidity of the essays and the various references to sociological and anthropological works on the perception of “self”, vis-à-vis place making like those by Erving Goffman, Emile Durkheim, Stuart Hall gears the book towards students beyond the disciplinary boundaries of Sociology, Anthropology, Arts and Aesthetics, History, Museology and more. Towards the latter part of the book, McMillan also brings in other diasporic communities beyond the Caribbean, such as Moroccan, Surinamese, Antillean and Indonesian migrant communities in the Netherlands.
Front rooms generally resisted change, carrying forward an aesthetic and sensibility as the badge or identifier of a community.
The book presents an important diasporic narrative underpinned by a critical struggle of the diasporic experience: underneath the subject of the ”front room” lies the process of subverted diasporic emotions and anti-assimilation cultural change. The emotional attachments are prioritised over fitting exactly within the typical British space. McMillan presents his readers with ten commodities that were normally seen in the Caribbean households which were also seen in the diasporic “front room” in the UK. These objects wordlessly communicated the Caribbean way of life without. A homogenisation of the objects found in the across the British Caribbean front room happened gradually as people visited one another, trying to emulate the aesthetics of a diasporic migrant culture. As someone from South Asia, I can vouch fora very similar pattern post-colonisation. Some chose to keep religious symbolic items at the forefront whereas the others chose to fit into the moral definition of aesthetics according to the British. A front room could become a Durkheimian quasi-sacred space which had to be seen beyond its mundane nature. McMillan emphasises the changes across generations and how front rooms generally resisted change, carrying forward an aesthetic and sensibility as the badge or identifier of a community. The book makes its readers aware of the significance contained in the spaces not just through imagery, but also literary compositions like songs, poems, and other varieties of literature.
The gendered division of aesthetics was apparent in the crochets made by the women in contrast to the glass cabinets and drinks trolleys that showcased men’s tastes.
The book describes the affective power of objects through ten examples including the paraffin heater, which gave a sense of reassurance and reminded migrants of their homes through the scent of paraffin oil. The radiogram (a piece of furniture that combined a radio and record player) played the role of “home” in another new land, a sonic gateway into the past. Several other items also acted in service of what Goffman would call ‘impression management’ to a larger audience. The gendered division of aesthetics was apparent in the crochets made by the women in contrast to the glass cabinets and drinks trolleys that showcased men’s tastes. Notably, the carpets and wallpapers, though quintessentially British in theory, could be reclaimed and subverted through the choice of colourful options rather than plain base colours. The book also captures the effects of technological evolution through the inclusion of televisions, telephones and pictures of revered role models such as politicians and singers on display.
McMillan’s work takes account of the constant search for refuge in the perfectly arranged room as a way of way of asserting one’s identity and materialising an authentic diasporic identity in one’s home.
One may make the mistake of perceiving this text as an over-romanticisation of material objects that convey diasporic identity. However, McMillan avoids this, convincing his readers of the deeply felt significance of the ordinary in connecting diaspora to the places they left behind. He bolsters this through setting ordinary items, spaces and lives in the context of unique epistemological nuances such as apartheid, cultural hybridisation, symbolic capital, taste and more. His work takes account of the constant search for refuge in the perfectly arranged room as a way of way of asserting one’s identity and materialising an authentic diasporic identity in one’s home.
The book is successful in its theatrical and thoughtful presentation and the depth it achieves over only a limited number of essays. Its effect is to fill readers’ minds with questions and to pave the way for similar studies in other postcolonial diasporic communities.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: 12matamoros on Pixabay
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‘In the Wake of the Massacre Near Moscow, Russian Anti-Migrant Policies Could Backfire’
The Crocus City Hall terror attack, in which 133 people were killed by Islamic extremists, has unleashed a wave of xenophobia all over Russia. While the Kremlin blames Ukraine and the West for the massacre, public anger over the tragedy appears to have been directed at the millions of Central Asian migrant workers living in the Russian Federation.
Moscow is using its war on Ukraine to profoundly transform Russian society. Anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western rhetoric in the Russian media has already become a norm. Army recruitment advertisements plastered on billboards and shop windows can be seen on the streets of almost every Russian city. The Kremlin is investing significantly in militarizing children and youth.
But after the Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) terrorist attack on a sold-out concert on the outskirts of Moscow on 22 March, certain factions within the Russian ruling elite seem to have launched a campaign against migrants from Central Asia. Tajiks have become their major target, given that four suspects in the Moscow terror attacks are citizens of Tajikistan.
Sergey Mironov – the leader of A Just Russia Party, which is part of Russia's state-authorized opposition – proposed the introduction of a visa regime for Central Asian countries to “tackle the growing threat”. He sees such a measure as a “step to strengthen security and cooperation throughout the Eurasian space.”
But the Kremlin is unlikely to accept Mironov’s proposal. Some Central Asian nations are members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) – a Russia-dominated entity that has developed a common labour market for citizens of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. A visa regime for Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan would have a serious impact on the very future of the EAEU. That is why Moscow will try to use other methods to control the influx of migrants.
The Russian government plans to introduce “digital profiles” for all migrants, aiming to “better track the movement of foreign workers and ensure security”. Critics, however, argue that the authorities seek to create a “digital Gulag” for migrants. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, there are around 10 million labour migrants in Russia. It is believed that 80% of them are from Central Asia, namely from countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
In the Russian labour force, migrants occupy vital roles. They mostly work as taxi drivers, truck drivers, or supermarket workers. There are reports suggesting that the Kremlin is forcefully recruiting some foreign workers to fight in Ukraine. Thousands of them have reportedly been brought to the Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory – mostly to the city of Maripuol in the Donbas – to work on various construction projects. Ukrainian authorities believe that Russia aims to change the demographic composition of the temporarily occupied territories.
Russian nationalists, on the other hand, indirectly accuse the Kremlin of having the same plans for the Russian Federation itself. In their view, the Russian ruling elite allegedly aims to replace ethnic Russians with migrants from Central Asia. Even the Russian Orthodox Church insists that the authorities must “stop non-Russian migration from Central Asia”, and attract “millions of highly qualified cadres, presumably from the West or from among Russian expatriates” instead.
Despite the fact that he has been relatively successfully balancing the interests of various oligarchic groups for the past two decades, Vladimir Putin suddenly found himself in a rather difficult position. While Konstantin Malofeev, the so-called Russia’s “Orthodox Oligarch, took a strong anti-migrant stance, Aras Agalarov, the Russian-Azerbaijani oligarch who is also the owner of the Crocus City Hall, claims that “Russia cannot do without migrants”. Which faction does Putin support?
Opinion polls show that the majority of Russians want their leader to limit immigration into the Russian Federation. That is why the Kremlin allows certain political figures to criticize the current government’s migration policy. Even the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny supported anti-migrant measures. But Putin knows that Russia is facing a huge demographic crisis and that nearly one million young, educated Russians have fled the country over the past two years as they did not want to be mobilized to participate in his war in Ukraine. As a result, Russia is now short of around 4.8 million workers.
That is why Putin can unlikely afford himself to radically change the country’s migration policy. While in 2003 he called “idiots and provocateurs” all those who supported the “Russia for Russians” political slogan and nationalist doctrine, he now insists that such ideas could “lead to the breakup of the Russian Federation”.
Putin, therefore, seems to back the “pro-migrant faction” within the ruling elite, although he likely decided to indirectly support the ongoing wave of repression against migrant workers from Central Asia.
Following the Crocus City Hall attack, Russian authorities started conducting raids on dormitories and apartments known to house Central Asian migrants and carrying out mass deportations. Taxi drivers in Moscow and other parts of Russia have reportedly been asked by clients to state that they were not Tajiks. As a result, the Ministry of Labor of Tajikistan reported that a rising number of Tajik migrant workers wish to leave Russia out of fear for their safety.
However, the ongoing anti-migrant campaign could have a serious impact on Russian oligarchs who need migrants as cheap labour. It can also affect the so-called siloviki faction that can use Central Asians as cannon fodder in Ukraine. But Russian nationalists, and the Russian Orthodox Church, want them out of the country.
Putin will, therefore, have a hard time finding a delicate balance that will allow him to avoid serious social and political turbulence in Russia.
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Migrant Rights Groups Launch Fresh Push to Ensure Migrants’ Voices are Heard in UK Elections
Community organisations have united to get the vote out among UK migrants in this year’s elections, with a new push to address low voter registration rates.
The Migrant Democracy Project, Just Register, and Citizens UK have launched a new tool, the "Can I Vote? Checker" for migrants to work out whether and how they can vote in this May’s elections or the upcoming General Election.
The online platform is designed to help UK residents from various nationalities determine their eligibility to vote, based on their citizenship and place of residence within the country.
The launch coincides with Commonwealth Day, and marks a response to concerns that many communities in the UK are unaware of their right to participate in the electoral process, potentially leading to a lack of representation among eligible migrant voters.
Under current rules, individuals from the 56 Commonwealth countries are entitled to vote in all UK elections and referendums. Similarly, EU nationals residing in the UK have the right to vote in local and devolved national elections. Many, however, are unaware of these rights.
Residents of Scotland and Wales, irrespective of their nationality, are allowed to vote in local and devolved national elections, provided they have the legal right to reside in the UK.
The "Can I Vote? Checker" aims to simplify the process for migrants to understand their voting rights by asking users to input their nationality and where they live in the UK. The tool also offers guidance to those who are not eligible to register to vote on how they can engage with the democratic process in other ways.
In some constituencies in the UK, barely half of the eligible migrant population is registered to vote, according to the Migrant Democracy Project. The creators of the "Can I Vote? Checker" argue that more registered and politically engaged voters would lead to a more representative and equitable democracy. It could also shift the political dial when it comes to "toxic" narratives about migrants in Parliament and elsewhere.
Lara Parizotto, Co-Director of the Migrant Democracy Project, told Byline Times: “We have a General Election on the horizon and local elections, including for metropolitan mayors, happening in May which will shape policies affecting people's everyday lives, on housing, transport, education, and everything in between.
“These decisions cannot happen without migrants' input. However, voter registration rates amongst eligible EU and Commonwealth citizens are only 66% compared to 87% for UK nationals.”
The barriers to democratic participation for migrant communities in the UK include a lack of translated resources and targeted messages from politicians encouraging their political participation, Parizotto says.
But the current voter eligibility rules are also “extremely complex” she adds, with Commonwealth citizens being able to vote in all UK elections but EU citizens only being able to vote in local elections, and other residents having no vote at all.
Changes brought by the Elections Act following the UK's departure from the European Union bring further changes to EU citizens' voting rights after May.
While the rules for Westminster elections are the same everywhere, voting rights for other elections differ depending on which UK nation you live in.
Parizotto says the new online translated resource can ensure “migrants make their voices heard in UK politics."
Rida, a Brazilian living in London, added: “London is my home. The UK is my home. I care about my community. I volunteer with local groups keeping our streets clean and green. That’s why I am so excited about participating in elections by voting."
Rida, who volunteers with Migrant Democracy Project on voter registration stalls, says it’s often difficult to tell people whether they can vote because some of us have dual nationalities which give different voting rights.
"Unfortunately, as someone with only Brazilian citizenship I cannot vote. My partner was born in Brazil but has Italian citizenship. Through this tool people like him can see that as an EU citizen, they can register to vote...I want those who have the right to make use of it by registering and turning up to the ballot box.
"There are so many of us migrants who can vote. I hope they get encouraged to do so, and I hope everyone gets the right to vote one day as well," she said.
Neha D'Souza, an Indian-Australian campaigns manager from Just Register, a national voter registration campaign, helped to build the 'Can I vote?' tool because she didn’t realise she could vote in UK elections when she arrived in the country five years ago.
D'Souza said “Voting is a huge deal in Australia. We have mandatory voting, so we don’t even think twice about it. When I moved here five years ago, I didn’t realise I could get involved in UK elections. I’m hoping this initiative will encourage more Commonwealth communities, particularly the large number of eligible voters who can vote in London's Mayoral Elections, to exercise their rights."
To vote in the next General Election, voters must be correctly registered, be 18 or over, be either a British citizen, a qualifying Commonwealth citizen or a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, and must not be subject to any ‘legal incapacity’ to vote – e.g. prisoners serving a sentence for a conviction. They must also bring a photographic ID to vote in person.
The rules are different for local elections, where overseas voters cannot vote, while resident EU citizens can vote.
However, most resident EU citizens will no longer be able to vote in local elections in England and Northern Ireland from May this year, as voting deals are being made between the UK and individual member states on a piecemeal basis. 16 and 17 year olds can vote in local elections in Scotland and Wales. The 'Can I Vote?' tool Is available here.
Update: This piece has been updated to correct the name of an organisation, Just Register, backing the new tool.
Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com
#VOTEWATCH24 CrowdfundER
Help us investigate disinformation and electoral exclusion as we head towards the 2024 General Election.
Byline Times and the Bylines Network want to launch the most ambitious monitoring project for this year’s elections – #VoteWatch24. We will be coordinating hundreds of volunteers across the country to show what’s really happening on the ground by sending in news from constituencies across the UK.
Wherever there is voter suppression, misinformation, or dodgy funds, we’ll be here to call it out. Across Britain, months ahead of polling day, the work is about to begin.
But we need your support to make this crucial project a reality. If we don’t make this effort, no one else will. Can you help us cover the staff and infrastructure we need to make it possible?
The Overton Window: A Migrant’s Tragedy
The service had not been planned. So, they had to ask to use a small space behind a coffee shop, and the place was soon filled. Some were dressed in the huipils (blouses), fajas (belts), and cortes (skirts) of the Guatemalan highlands. Others were in denim shirts and cowboy boots. They took their hats off and when they sang, their voices merged with the passing traffic and raised up into the thin, blue air and grief was marked on their faces.
But this was a wake without a body.
Rossana Azucena Coché Navichoc was just 25 years old when she died crossing the Rio Brava into the United States – some 3,300 km to the north.
At 11am she, her boyfriend and three others had attempted to enter the Estados Unidos.
By 11.15am, she and her partner, Whitman Alexander Tax Chinic, had drowned in the Rio Brava.
The last time her mother, Francisca Navichoc Mendoza de Coché, had spoken to her was the day before at 4pm. Rossana was fine; nervous, but excited at the life that awaited her. The promise of a well-paid job in Miami beckoned, and she planned to be there for five years, saving each dollar she could working in a kitchen. Saving up for a future here in San Juan La Laguna in Lake Atitlán, tucked away in the blue-washed mountains of the Sierra Madre.
It had been nine days since her mother had hugged her a final time, and now the mother stood, gaunt and blinking under a harsh light, lamenting the daughter. Her other children, three daughters, three boys, joined the congregation in reciting the litany of the faith, and paid testimony to a life taken too soon.
Rossana's funeral service Photo: Iain Overton
This quiet tragedy, unreported by the American press and unrecorded by the Guatemalan government, is just one of unnumbered tragedies that stalk the dangerous crossings into the United States. Last year, the numbers heading north from Central and South America were so great that a town near where Rossana died – Eagle Pass, Texas – declared a state of emergency.
The US Departments of Homeland Security and Justice reported last year that in 2022, more than 890 migrants died attempting to enter the United States across the southwest border, this was up 22% from the year before. And this is just those known – of course, there are the migrants who die who are never found or identified.
Their deaths are hard, and their loss even harder to grasp. In June 2021, 53 people suffocated, cooked inside an overheated trailer on the side of a Texas highway. It was the most deadly smuggling incident in recent US history. Severe injuries caused by people falling from the new border walls – built under President Trump – are on the rise.
According to the El Paso Times, the number of women in those border-lands more than doubled from last year and more than tripled from 2021. As the paper reported: “If the migrant death toll in El Paso was viewed as a national emergency — an unnatural disaster — it would be larger than that of the Lahaina, Hawaii, and Paradise, California, fires, more deadly than 2017's Hurricane Harvey. It would draw federal attention and emergency resources.”
But such resources are not forthcoming and the dangers of the crossing did not dissuade Rossanna, nor did the mural in nearby Panajachel that showed a Guatemalan woman reaching towards the Statue of Liberty but instead of seeing the familiar green copper face, all she could see was the hollows of a skull.
Instead, Rossanna had paid 150,000 quetzales (just over £15,000) to the coyotes (smugglers) who had taken her across the border and now the family were left with a debt and no-one to earn it off. Later, a truck would drive through the streets of San Juan and women would follow with small baskets, asking for donations to help pay off the debt.
Rossana's mother. Photo: Iain Overton
What leads Rossana, and so many like her, to risk their lives to cross the border has become a huge political issue in the United States. In 2023, its border policy underwent significant changes, including the cessation of rapid expulsions under the Title 42 pandemic-era directive and the potential for legal action against unauthorised entry. There was a rise in deportations alongside the establishment of new "legal pathways" for migrants from countries like Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Additionally, asylum seekers are now required to attempt to find refuge in another country first.
The Biden administration has also declared it would proceed with the construction of the border fence, a u-turn from a previous campaign pledge. It’s a raft of attempts that seem to mimic the UK’s own complicated responses to the far lesser numbers crossing the Channel.
And, far from Washington, families like Rossana’s are just left with the weight of loss and not even a body to bury.
“She loved singing, cooking. She was so kind, so sympathetic,” her sister says, wiping away her tears. “The family was so close and this grief just rises.”
Later, the mother meets mourners in a simple shop-front. The local printer has been employed to produce a banner of Rossana. She used to be a teacher here and her college friends come to pay their respects. They stand under her image that hangs on the wall. “Si vivimos, para el Senōr vivimos,” the poster reads. “Y si morimos, par el Senōr morimos”.
“If we live, we live for the Lord. And if we die, we die for the Lord.”
The words are strangely hollow; Rossana’s youthful, smiling face seems so separated from this quiet, devastating tragedy. And so very far from what her crossing promised.
Photo of mural: Iain Overton
The Little Prince Haunts New York
When I moved to New York, I set out to discover how my new adopted home had influenced that sense of tristesse in The Little Prince, which Saint-Exupéry wrote during his 1941–1943 stay in the city....