The story behind the Indigenous towns of Guatemala
San Jose Calderas, Guatemala - Roughly 3,000 people live in San Jose Calderas, a small town hidden in the folds of the Guatemalan hills about an hour from Guatemala City.
There is no paved road into the town - although work on one has begun - and Debora Martina Junech Pastor, 26, says that cars and buses heading here are frequently robbed. Aside from construction work on the road, there are few other opportunities in the area, and extreme weather conditions have made farming increasingly challenging. Desperate financial circumstances have seen some turn to kidnapping and extortion.
Debora's son was threatened with kidnapping and worse if the family didn't pay 25,000 quetzals ($3,300) to ensure his safety. Written demands and threats arrived at the family's door, said her sister-in-law, who asked us not to reveal her name for fear of retaliation.
More than 400 people were kidnapped in Guatemala in 2008, but the country's public ministry reported that the number of kidnappings had decreased by 65 percent in 2015.
Some speculate that this decline simply reflects the fact that extortion requires less organisation than a kidnapping.
"It's a really small town. We're all neighbours. We all know each other. But, by the same token, because we all know each other, some people monitor you because the people who extorted us are from the same town," Debora said. Although one person was arrested, Debora says he was held for less than 24 hours.
Yet according to her sister-in-law, even while that one person was briefly in jail, others continued to hound the family.
Fear and poverty Debora feeds her two-month-old daughter as we speak in her mother's kitchen.
She had migrated to the US, but returned to Guatemala in 2008, with the son she had given birth to there, after immigration raids in Pottsville, Iowa saw her mother and older brother deported. Her son's father remained in the US for a short while before following them back.
When her son was threatened with kidnapping, Debora turned to Conamigua, the Guatemalan government entity focused on supporting migrants. Because the boy is a US citizen, he was immediately repatriated before anything could happen to him. The nine-year-old now lives with relatives in the US.
"But threats against the children in her extended family, along with the kidnapping and beating of her sister-in-law's father"
But threats against the children in her extended family, along with the kidnapping and beating of her sister-in-law's father, worry Debora. It was the same concerns that prompted her sister-in-law to pay a people smuggler 70,000 quetzals ($9,100) to bring her and her five-year-old daughter to the US last March. Now, Debora says these fears, coupled with stress over her partner, Benicio's, 35,000 quetzal ($4,600) debt are pushing him to try to reach the US again.
Benicio has made two previous unsuccessful attempts to reach the US. His debt is the money he owes the people smugglers who accompanied him. Now he has a job in Guatemala City, which gives him a steady, if minimal, salary. But, before, Debora says, there were weeks when her husband would earn as little as 50 quetzals ($6) doing agricultural work in the area around San Jose Calderas. Still, his current salary doesn't allow them to make any inroads into paying off the debt.
The family's situation is not unique, and Benicio is not alone in making multiple attempts to migrate. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that in 2013, approximately 300 Guatemalans left every day. More than two-thirds of these were forcibly repatriated. Migrants' rights activists told Al Jazeera that most who attempt to migrate and fail try again, often several times.
The Guatemalan government reported that more than 31,000 people were deported from the US by plane in 2015, while another 75,000 were deported over land from Mexico.
