the ability to avoid military service during Guatemala's civil war and instead migrate to the

United States.

 While early Ladino migration established the migrant circuits to the United States, Maya

migrants to the Boston area have entered the international migrant stream during the past two

decades. The character of Guatemala-United States migration has roots in the thirty-six year

civil war, which began in the 1960s. Heavy military occupation in San Pedro Pinula and

throughout the Oriente forced Ladinos to flee to the United States in order to avoid forced

military inscription. Lacking the resources to leave, local Pokomam Maya remained and were

frequently forced into military service. When the war intensified in the 1980s and 1990s, Maya

from the Western Highlands began to migrate to the United States, while Eastern Highland

Pokomam Maya joined the Guatemalan army, specifically the Policia Militar Ambulante

(Mobile Military Police).

 Numerous Pokomam males had fallen victim to military round-ups, but others saw military

jobs as a better option than working for "los ricos" (the rich) in town. Many men thus left their

villages in San Pedro Pinula to serve in the army alongside indigenous peoples from other

regions of Guatemala. During the 1980s, the war escalated in the Western Highlands and Maya

men from Pinula fought in the heaviest battle zones, such as Ixcan, the Ixil triangle in Quiche,

and Peten. The war ended with the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords, and many ex-soldiers thus

joined the northward migration flow. As one young man told me,

 I really wasted my time in the army. I thought I would receive training or learn some skills.
 Before, you could get work in the city as a Congressional bodyguard, but since the peace
 accords there is no work for ex-soldiers. I spent all that time for nothing. I am going to the
 (United) States because there is nothing here for me.

 Maya ex-soldiers depended on the promise of work as congressional bodyguards in

Guatemala City, but were later frustrated to find that the signing of the Peace Accords had made