By AFP | 2025-04-21

JOYABAJ, Guatemala -- Learning to sew is what spared Guatemalan Francisca Lares the perilous migrant journey to the United States, crippling smuggler debt and likely deportation. Instead, she found the better life she was seeking right on her doorstep.

The 30-year-old single mother is a beneficiary of a scholarship program of the government and of the United Nations International Organization for Migration. It teaches young Guatemalans to learn a trade and make a living in their own country.

More than half of the Central American country's 18 million residents live in poverty, according to official figures. The ratio is even higher in Indigenous villages such as Estanzuela in Joyabaj municipality, where Lares lives.

Lares had herself considered pursuing the "American dream" at a time when she was earning $75 a month producing handmade fabrics and barely getting by.

Then she heard about a sewing course offered at the "Quedate" (Stay) Training Center.

After completing the course, she bought a sewing machine and now makes traditional Mayan tunics known as huipiles that she sells from a small shop at her home.

Lares markets her wares on social media too and has already sent a few blouses to the United States.

She does not want to speak about how much she earns, but told AFP she can now easily cover her needs and those of her daughters, aged five and nine.

It was the training, she said, "that made me stay here and say: I can get ahead."

The project, which was launched in 2021 at a municipal center in Joyabaj and has received donations from Japan, trains young Guatemalans in hairdressing, baking, computer repair and other skills as well to help them find jobs or open their businesses.

Courses last from two weeks, like the one Lares took, to nine months.

'Better to stay'

Fellow graduate Marleny Tino, 25, considered emigrating herself. In the end, only her husband went.

He now lives in Florida, "afraid" of being deported, she told AFP.

"It is better to stay here than risk your life going there and then being deported as soon as you arrive," said the mother of two, who also makes huipiles and runs a small business from her home.

Last year, the United States deported 61,680 Guatemalans, according to the government of the Central American country.

The goal is to equip more than 600 young Guatemalans with new skills in 2025, Pedro Miranda, the director of the training center, said.

So far, 814 youngsters have learned a trade at the center and two similar ones in Huehuetenango and Solola.