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vu tw Jupiter’s immigrant community was well aware of the growing tensions surrounding the Center Street day labor market and charter neighborhoods. As residents of the same neighborhoods, immigrants were also seeking solutions and points of contact to bring their perspectives to the table. In time, some of them began to emerge as community leaders, well positioned to represent the immigrant community because they could communicate with their fellow migrants, as well as their native-born neighbors and town authorities. Most had survived a brutal civil war in Guatemala and had undertaken tremendous risks in coming to the United States. Now they sought to maintain a foothold in both countries. To continue the cultural customs and traditions that bound their community together, in the early 2000s migrants in Jupiter began to organize, arranging soccer matches, requesting Spanish-language church services, and planning the celebration of the most important annual festival in their community of origin. In the process, migrant organizers began to build bridges to Jupiter’s larger community that would be critical to the creation and success of the El Sol center. Migration through the Eyes of a Refugee No single individual better represents that process than Jerónimo Camposeco, one of the original migrants who came to Jupiter from Guatemala. Born in the late 1930s in the Guatemalan highland community of Jacaltenango, Camposeco understands the connections between Jupiter and Jacaltenango from a unique and multifaceted perspective. As a boy growing up in this agricultural community located on the slopes of the Cuchumatan Mountains in the department of Huehuetenango, he could never have imagined himself living in a place like Jupiter, Florida. As one of the oldest and longest established of the Jacaltecos living in Jupiter, his story brings to light many of the complex forces that link 43 2 The Immigrant Community in Jupiter From Migrants to Mobilized 44 The Immigrant Community in Jupiter the two communities and underlie the larger process of migration from Central America to the United States. As Camposeco explains, the need to move in order to survive has a long tradition within his home community. Most of the Maya people who live in the highlands are organized in municipalities on very small plots of land. Due to the altitude, the cold weather, land erosion, and the difficult nature of the terrain, a lot of the land the Maya work produces just one harvest per year. In order to supplement these yearly harvests, the Maya have often migrated. Traditionally the Maya went from the highland to the coast, where the coffee, cotton, and sugarcane plantations are located, to work as seasonal agricultural workers. These seasonal migrations were not easy; there were little to no means of transportation between the highland and the lowland, and people often had to make the long journey on crowded buses or trucks or by foot.1 Jacaltenango, Guatemala (Courtesy of Marcos Cota Diaz) Jerónimo Camposeco at the Fiesta Maya, 2005 (Courtesy of Timothy J. Steigenga) The lowland farms of Guatemala hold much in common with the climate, work, and geography of South Florida, but it was not these similarities that drew the first Mayans to the area. Instead, as Camposeco points out, it was a combination of forces, including Guatemala’s genocidal civil war, multiple natural disasters , a lack of local alternatives, and networks of knowledge and support that began with the early migrants. Understanding these forces sheds light on how the department of Huehuetenango has become one of Guatemala’s most prolific migrant-sending areas and how it is that almost one million Guatemalans (nearly a tenth of the entire population of Guatemala) now reside in the United States. After leaving his village to attend a seminary as a young man, Camposeco returned to Huehuetenango in 1960 to serve as a schoolteacher at the Acatec Parroquial School in San Miguel Acatán. It was here that he met some of the very first Mayan migrants who would establish the networks linking the area to locations in the United States. Prior to 1976, migration from Guatemala was generally limited and primarily made up of urban workers and ladinos.2 This first small wave of Guatemalan migration to the United States was prompted by The Immigrant Community in Jupiter 45 the collapse of the Central American Common Market in the 1960s. In the face of economic hardship, some middle- and upper-class Guatemalans arrived in the United States seeking opportunities for personal and familial development. In 1976 a...

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