Migrant Voices: Producers from Guatemala Face Harsh Realities in the United States

We hear from two migrant farmers on their experiences in the U.S., and how the specialty industry can better support communities at origin.

BY MELINA DEVONEY
FOR BARISTA MAGAZINE

Featured photo by Shelby Murphy Figueroa

Immigration is a pivotal issue in the currently uber-divided political climate of the United States. People from all over the world seek new starts in the United States, including many who have worked in coffee production in Latin America.

For this article, we talked to two former coffee producers, Gustavo and Eladio. (Editor’s note: We’re using first names only to protect the identities of the interviewees.) We learned about their lives in Guatemala working as coffee producers, why they wanted to come to the United States, and their experiences so far. Their words offer a window into the struggles of many people on the production side of specialty coffee.

Seeking Financial Stability

Gustavo lives in Tennessee, thousands of miles away from his family and friends in Guatemala. Though he misses a lot about his home, he finds it’s the little things that make him especially homesick.

“I miss the food,” Gustavo says. “The snacks at the market. Coffee every morning. Spending evenings in the park with friends.”

Gustavo was born in the small but bustling city of Santa Cruz Barillas, in the department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. “It’s a beautiful city with a mild climate,” he says. “It’s pleasant, and it has many tourist destinations to visit with friends.”

Like much of the Barillas population, Gustavo earned a living through coffee. He worked up from being a cafetalero (coffee producer) to becoming the roaster for ASOBAGRI, Barillas’ organic coffee producers association. Still, he could not break even on the rising costs of coffee production, nor could he pay for basic necessities, and he was unable to find other job opportunities in Huehuetenango.

“In our country, there is a lot of corruption, and it is difficult to have a safe and stable environment,” Gustavo says.

Seeking a fresh start, Gustavo hoped the United States could offer him greater economic stability, and that he would “be able to get ahead, help my family, and have a better future.”

In 2021, Gustavo tried his luck at entering the United States illegally. He made it to Tennessee and has since stayed under U.S. officials’ radar.

Coffee Pests Lead to a New Start

Eladio lives in America now, but he is from Canton Maravillas, a tight-knit village of around 670 people tucked deep into the verdant mountains of Huehuetenango.

Leaving Canton Maravillas, it takes more than an hour of travel—riding treacherously rocky slopes, taking a bridge over a dazzling river, and braving unpaved forest roads—to get to the nearest city, Santa Cruz Barillas.

Like many of their neighbors, Eladio, his wife, and his children grew coffee as members of the ASOBAGRI cooperative. When producers return from the coffee fields, the Canton Maravillas village center is full of neighbors of all ages, playing soccer or dancing underneath the huge gazebo overlooking the mountains. Although the village is rich in culture and community, many families lack adequate housing, education, and medical care.

“We are very poor in our country,” Eladio says. “We don’t have any help from anyone.”

Coffee is tightly woven into the fabric of society in Canton Maravillas, as nearly everyone there knows the secrets to cultivating this finicky crop. “We know how to build a nursery, how to plant the coffee
shrub, how to prune it, how to depulp the coffee fruit, how to mill it, how to roast it,” Eladio says.

Eladio left Canton Maravillas six years ago after disease devastated his coffee crops. The only option Eladio felt he had left to boost yields was spraying the dying plants with chemical fertilizers and fungicides. However, this goes against ASOBAGRI’s organic certification. Although ASOBAGRI associates value organic farming, “We don’t make much money working that way,” Eladio says.

Eladio’s plan was to work in the United States just long enough to improve his family’s life in Canton Maravillas. He had dreams “to build a small house, to buy a little more land to plant a little more
coffee, cardamom, corn … to have a little more to eat.”

In 2019, Eladio and one of his daughters traveled 20 days via foot, bus, and car across Guatemala and Mexico to arrive at the Texas border. Despite the fear and sadness of leaving home, “As we are poor,
we (kept) coming,” Eladio says.

Immigration officials caught Eladio and his daughter in Houston and sent them to San Bernardino, Calif., for processing (part of the Trump administration’s divisive response to the influx of undocumented immigrants at the time). There, Eladio lived in limbo until his court date. In an unexpected turn of events, the COVID-19 pandemic threw the immigration court system into tumult, putting an indefinite halt on legal proceedings. Eladio found himself free to search for work, and to maybe even pursue the “American dream.”

The American Reality for Producers

Gustavo and Eladio have faced more barriers than opportunities since coming to the United States.

Although Gustavo found a construction job in Tennessee, the work has done little to help him adapt to an unfamiliar lifestyle and overcome many challenges, including language discrimination, racism, and inadequate access to basic health care. To add insult to injury, lack of health insurance meant that Gustavo had to pay $12,000 out of pocket for an urgent surgery this summer.

The financial insecurity Gustavo thought he’d leave behind in Guatemala followed him: “I don’t earn
enough to pay for my family’s expenses, because of the rising costs of goods—such as gas, rent, and basic goods, among others,” he says.

Gustavo plans to return to Guatemala soon, “because in these times, with this government, the laws make it more and more difficult for migrants, so we live with fear and worry,” he says. The increase in recent months of raids by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has amplified Gustavo’s “fear and anxiety of deportation and separation of families.”

Eladio, who doesn’t know how to read or write felt he had few job options in America besides restaurant
food prep.

While two of Eladio’s sons have stayed in Guatemala, both of his daughters and one son also came
to the U.S. for work. One daughter works as a food preparer, the other as a hotel housekeeper, and his son is a restaurant cook.

Without a bank account or a job contract, Eladio explains that he and his children “work on a promise
and nothing more. We don’t earn much, but we earn something … the little that I earn here I put towards my rent. What’s left over, I send to my wife in Guatemala.”

Now, just stepping outside to go to work comes with the unshakeable fear of deportation. “We think
about it daily, every time we get up in the morning,” Eladio says. “We no longer enjoy going out to eat, or
even going for a walk.”

Eladio also feels that working in a restaurant open to the public makes him more vulnerable to ICE raids. “The day they’ll come to take us, the restaurant will be open, and they can enter whenever they like. They can come to eat, drink a soda … and take us,” he says. “They can catch you, sometimes they can beat you or send you to jail, or deport you to Guatemala. They can send you there in chains.”

Building a Future at Origin

Eladio plans to return to Guatemala in one year; he feels that living in the United States is no longer worth it. “It’s very nice living here; it’s very beautiful,” he says. “But what’s happening here, if you don’t have
papers, you don’t have anything. None of us are free in this country.”

Eladio doesn’t plan on returning to the United States because he is older and has lingering pain from fracturing his foot years ago. “It’s very hard to travel through the desert,” he says. “Sometimes we can’t
make it and we are left behind, and that’s the only time we try.”

To survive in their home countries, coffee producers need more outside support in growing coffee sustainably and economically, Eladio says, explaining that amid the soaring costs of production in modern coffee growing, the specialty-coffee industry must uphold its core values of sustainability and producer relationships.

Gustavo also emphasizes the impact that direct trade can have on coffee producers income. “Intermediaries, such as associations and cooperatives, keep the majority of money that our product costs. Therefore, we would like that the (coffee) buyers come directly to the producers,” Gustavo explains.

The importance of paying producers a living wage, no matter how much the C-market price continues to climb, cannot be understated. The present chaos of global politics and natural disasters reinforces the vital need for financial security in producing countries, and highlights the paths needed to protect the physical safety and mental health of migrants.

In the meantime, Gustavo wishes that the United States would give migrants the chance to work, including in higher-paying jobs or even in starting their own business. Gustavo yearns to not only be free to work in the United States, but to be able to choose his own path, do the things he enjoys, and express himself without fear of discrimination.

This article originally appeared in the October + November 2025 issue of Barista Magazine. Read more of the issue online here for free.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melina Devoney (she/her) is a barista and freelance writer in Los Angeles zeroed in on coffee and agriculture. She aims to amplify the voices of farmers and a diversity of perspectives within the coffee industry, and she’s happiest when running on wooded trails and dancing at concerts.

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