GONZÁLEZ: I’m Ana González, and this is Mosaic, a podcast about immigration and identity. I’ve been feeling really grateful for this show recently. Throughout this pandemic year, talking to the people you hear from in Mosaic has helped me feel less isolated, even if it’s via Zoom.

And every conversation I have shows me, in some way, that through the world's biggest events – pandemics, wars, political upheaval – people continue to live their lives one decision at a time. It’s all of those individual choices that, when combined, make the noisy, uneven mosaic of history. It’s not just kings and queens, lawmakers and leaders who shape the state of our world: it’s everyone. It’s people like Juan García in Providence.

JUAN: Perdí la confianza en persona y en mucho...Pero lo que me enseñó mi padre a mí a trabajar y la ansia de libertad de ser yo, de enfrentarme a obstáculos:comencé a salir adelante.

ENGLISH: I lost my faith in people and a lot of things...But my father taught me to work, and the desire for the freedom to be myself and to overcome obstacles: I started to move forward.

GONZÁLEZ: Today on Mosaic, part one of Juan Garcia’s life tells a history of revolution, migration, and the strength of the human spirit.

MUSIC FADES OUT AND INTO “JOURNEY TO BANANALAND”

GONZÁLEZ: This music is the opening score of a film made by The United Fruit Company in 1950 called “Journey to Bananaland.” On the screen, there’s a cartoon scroll that reads: “Travel with us on the Great White Fleet and meet your neighbors in Middle America. See how they live and what they grow. Follow the banana right back to your home.”

BANANALAND: South of the United States, the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea once were known as the Spanish main. Today, fast, white steamships travel across the Caribbean with cargos more valuable than pirates’ gold. Officers in crisp white uniforms pick up their golden cargos from a place we call, “Bananaland”. [fade down and under]

GONZÁLEZ: This film is a piece of propaganda from The United Fruit Company, which, by the 1930s, was the single largest landowner in the country of Guatemala. And while the film lumps together all of the countries in Central America, aka “Bananaland”, it’s in Guatemala where our story begins. Two years after the release of “Journey to Bananaland”, Juan Garcia is born in Guatemala City. He and his ten siblings grow up in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, zone 5, also called La Limonada. It’s cramped and tough, but his family is strong.

JUAN: Siempre papá nos enseñó a estar unidos como familia. Yo tuve que trabajar. Estudiaba y a los siete años tenía que trabajar. Andaba con una bicicleta repartiendo veladoras. Mi papá pudo salir adelante un poquito con tu expendio de jabón, veladoras, y todo...yo le ayudaba. O sea, me tocó que desarrollar la familia, verdad. Entonces este había mucha pobreza... pero había mucha unión.

ENGLISH: Dad always taught us to stay together like a family. I had to work. I studied and at age 7 I had to start working. I rode a bicycle selling candles. My dad left the house first, and he sold soap, candles, and things like that. I helped him. In other words, I had to help the family. So, there was a lot of poverty, but there was a lot of unity.

GONZÁLEZ: Outside of the García family, Guatemala is anything but united.

GONZÁLEZ: In 1950, the same year “Bananaland” is released, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán is elected as president of Guatemala after a revolution. Árbenz begins his administration by redistributing underutilized farmland to working-class families, many of whom are indigenous. It’s a popular move, but the United Fruit Company feels threatened. So does the U.S., which decides that this land reapportionment is an act of Communism propped up by the Soviet Union.

VIDEO SOUND: The average Guatemalan, observers say, wants no more of Communism. And he’s willing to fight to prevent its return.

GONZÁLEZ: On June 27th, 1954, the CIA stages a coup d’etat in Guatemala. Juan García is a toddler, but he remembers the years following the coup.

JUAN: Me recuerdo que los estudiantes de la universidad estaban orientando y a los campesinos pues al mente a los mayas sobre cómo defender sus tierras Luego comenzó la represión del gobierno militar, verdad.

ENGLISH: I remember that the university students were aligning with the working-class poor. Like, the Maya people, to defend their lands. That’s when the repression of the military government began.

MUSIC

GONZÁLEZ: The rest of the 1950s and 60s in Guatemala are tumultuous years, filled with civil war between leftists and the U.S.-backed military government. As a 10-year-old selling goods in the streets of Guatemala City, Juan is right in the middle of the action.

JUAN: Donde yo vivo, qué es la zona 5 donde nací, había un lugar que se llama “La Limonada.” La Limonada, es como un asentamiento que agarran las personas y no se salen de ahí. Se adueñó el pueblo... Y entonces muchos de estos muchachos estudiantes se reunían con uno de los cabecillas del movimiento que se llama El Chino Yon Sosa. Se reunían ahí y luego nosotros nos poníamos como... A cada cuadra había un muchacho y cuando miraron los que venían los militares este corría le avisaba uno y el otro le avisaba al otro. Le llamabanos el correo humano. Entonces cuando ha llegaban hasta donde estaban reunidos y ya sabían cuando le dije decía llegaba ahí o ya se habían ido.

ENGLISH: Where I lived, which is zone 5, where I was born, it was a place called “La Limonada”. La Limonada is a neighborhood that the people took, and they didn’t leave. The people ruled. And so, a lot of young people and students met there with one of the heads of the opposition movement, El Chino Yon Sosa. They met there. We would place ourselves at each corner, there’d be a boy. And when they saw that the military were coming, they ran and told the next one and that one told the next. They called it “human mail”. So when the police arrived where they were meeting, they had already left.

GONZÁLEZ: As a kid from a poor family, Juan identifies with the mission of the students and leftists. He’s part of the pueblo. Sometimes, he’s part of the human mail. Sometimes, he and his brothers throw rocks at the soldiers. But he never feels too threatened by the military because he’s just a kid, and he’s in school. One day when he’s 16 or 17, he travels to visit his aunt in the nearby city of Escuintla, but he breaks a cardinal rule of living in a police state: he forgets his student ID. And he gets caught.

JUAN: Y en ese tiempo cuando los militares lo agarraban a uno era forzado el servicio militar. Si uno no tenía carnet de estudiante, se lo llevaban. Entonces a mí me agarraron en Escuintla [MUSIC] y como no carga mi carnet de estudiante me agarraron al servicio militar obligatorio que era de 24 meses. Entonces...me metieron al ejército. Me raparon. Era muy duro esos tiempos en el ejército... Yo no comulgaba con la ideología del ejército, verdad allá en Guatemala porque era represivo

ENGLISH: And in that time, when the military caught someone, that person was forced into military service. If you didn’t have a student ID, they would take you. So, since I didn’t have my student ID, they forced me into mandatory military service, which at that time was 24 months. MUSIC

GONZÁLEZ: Juan is sent to become a soldier in the Guatemalan military, the same soldiers he spent years throwing rocks at and warning the university students about. He is training to become the enemy. One day, after a few months of his mandatory service, Juan’s unit is ordered to help the military police suppress with force the town of Zacapa, where activists are, in the eyes of the military, causing problems.

JUAN: Y esto es con un amigo le dije, “Mira yo no voy a ir a pelear contra mis propios hermanos ni voy a matar a mis propios hermanos para hacerle el juego al ejército. Yo me voy a ir, me voy a desertar.” Y él me dijo, “Estás conmigo.”

ENGLISH: And I was with a friend. I told him, “Look, I’m not going to go fight against my own brothers. I’m not going to kill my own brothers just to play the military’s game. I’m leaving. I’m going to desert.” And he told me, “You’re with me.”

MUSIC

GONZÁLEZ: Juan and his friend desert their posts. But they’re caught and taken to a military judge.

JUAN: Nos condenaron a 18 meses a la cárcel de Pavón, como digamos “maximum security” en Guatemala.

English: They sentenced us to 18 months in the Pavón prison, what we call maximum security in Guatemala.

GONZÁLEZ: Juan and his friend serve 9 months of their 18 month sentence. It’s brutal. He doesn’t go into what happened, but he says he left with un monton, a lot, of problems. He thinks the only way to recover is to flee Guatemala and come to the United States, knowing he may never see his family again.

JUAN: Yo nunca me vine a los Estados Unidos por hacer dinero o algo sino que me vine por buscar libertad y encontrarme yo mismo.

ENGLISH: My reason for coming to the United States wasn’t to make money or something like that. I came to find freedom and to find myself.

MUSIC TRAVEL

GONZÁLEZ: Juan is around 23 years old now. He hitchhikes and walks from Guatemala to Mexico with 15 quetzales in his pocket, the equivalent of about ten bucks. He never pays a coyote or guide. He’s with others, mostly men, who are doing the same thing: fleeing. He travels from town to town in Mexico, working for day wages, sleeping in abandoned buildings, driven by a mix of adventure and danger.

JUAN: Me sentía como inseguro por todo lo que había vivido...Porque vivir una vida como la ya que yo vivía los 10 años: perseguido por los militares, terminar en una cárcel y salir después, convivir con gente criminales tremendos que gracias a Dios no me mataron,...te cambiate como que pierde cierto sentido de rumbo.

ENGLISH: I felt unsafe because of everything I had experienced. Because to live a life like the one I had lived for the past 10 years: chased by the military, ending in jail and then leaving, living among criminals who, thank God, didn’t kill me. It changes you, like you lose a certain sense of direction.

MUSIC TRAVELING ENDS

GONZÁLEZ: After a year and a half of traveling, Juan makes it to Mexico’s northern border. He’s ready. He hops in the back of a truck with other migrants. There are holes cut out of the sides for them to breathe in the desert air as they cross the border into Texas. It’s January of 1977.

JUAN: Había frío, me recuerdo. Y este muchacho que venía conmigo, en el México ya habíamos trabajado. Yo traía como $150 y él traía como $200. Llegamos a un bar donde estaban, había un partido de fútbol americano de los Dallas Cowboys. Dallas Cowboy eran tremendos. Y me dijo, “Mira,” me dijo. “Te voy a dejar $20, y estate aquí. Dame el dinero que tienes. Debo ir a buscar un apartamento y ahorita regreso.”

ENGLISH: It was cold, I remember. And this guy who had come with me, we had worked together in Mexico. I brought about $150 and he had about $200. We arrived at a bar where there was an American football game on the TV. The Dallas Cowboys. The Dallas Cowboys were huge. And he told me “Look,” he said. “I’m going to leave you with $20. Stay here. Give me the money that you have. I’m going to go look for an apartment and come back in a bit.”

GONZÁLEZ: The friend never comes back. Juan stays in the bar until it closes. Nothing. Within Juan’s first hours in the US, he has no money, no friends, and no place to stay. He leaves the bar and finds a cardboard box. He places it behind a building and crawls inside. He sleeps there for 2 weeks.

MUSIC

JUAN: Perdí la confianza en persona ya mucho porque lo que él me hizo. Haber sufrido tanto durante año y medio y que se fuera y me dejara. Entonces fue como un choque va… Pero lo que me enseñó mi padre a mí a trabajar y la ansia de libertad de ser yo, de enfrentarme a obstáculos: comencé a salir adelante.

ENGLISH: I already lost my faith in people because of what he did to me. Having suffered so much during the year and a half and he left and left me. So, it was like a shock. But my father taught me to work, and the desire for the freedom to be myself and to overcome obstacles: I started to move forward.

GONZÁLEZ: The owner of the building Juan is sleeping behind finds him one day, hears his story and offers him a job doing odds and ends, getting paid under the table. After a few weeks, Juan can rent a room. And after 7 months, he’s saved up enough to buy a car. See, his dream isn’t to stay in Texas. He wants to go to Miami. Miami is famous in Central and South America as the place to immigrate. It’s warm and tropical, like Guatemala, and there are jobs and other central americans to hang out with, at least, that’s what Juan thinks. Juan dreams of buying a car to drive to Miami, finding Guatemalan friends, and starting his new life there. So, he finds a cheap used car, buys it, and starts driving east.

JUAN: Pero en el camino me perdí. Encontré una barra que se llamaba “Los Amigos” y me metí allí. Allí estoy como 2 horas al rato llegaron unos muchachos mexicanos.

ENGLISH: But I got lost. I found a bar called “Los Amigos” and I stayed there for a bit. I was there for a little over two hours when some Mexican guys came in.

GONZÁLEZ: The guys are nice and familiar. Juan tells them his story, how he’s on his way to Miami, but he got lost. They tell him, “Buddy, you’re in San Antonio!” Miami is days away, if it’s even possible to get there in his old clunker of a car.

JUAN: Y me dijeron, “Quédate.”

ENGLISH: They told me, “Stay here.”

GONZÁLEZ: It’s the first time Juan’s found friendly faces in years, people who ask him to stay with them in San Antonio. So, he does. The first thing he does is call his family back home in Guatemala. They tell him his father died. [MUSIC: LIGHT, SAD, UP AND UNDER]

Juan is distraught. He’s undocumented and can’t go home for the funeral. But he does what he’s learned to do: keep moving forward. Over the next nine years, Juan gets a job and starts a family of his own. He marries an American citizen, which gives him legal status, and they have two kids together, a boy and a girl. But the marriage doesn’t last. They divorce, and Juan feels like he needs to leave Texas. So, he reaches out to his brother, who’s immigrated to Providence, Rhode Island.