Traveling back and forth between the Guatemalan highlands and Providence, Rhode Island, the author followed the migration paths of a community of K'iche' Indians, often acting as a courier to bring news and photographs to families. As several said to the author, -Now you have lived with your own skin what we have gone through, only you can leave at any time.-

This ethnography juxtaposes the context of post-war reconstruction at home, shaped by a fragile institutional peace process and emerging pan-Maya movement, with the hidden, marginal lives of mostly undocumented K'iche'...

Traveling back and forth between the Guatemalan highlands and Providence, Rhode Island, the author followed the migration paths of a community of K'iche' Indians, often acting as a courier to bring news and photographs to families. As several said to the author, -Now you have lived with your own skin what we have gone through, only you can leave at any time.-

This ethnography juxtaposes the context of post-war reconstruction at home, shaped by a fragile institutional peace process and emerging pan-Maya movement, with the hidden, marginal lives of mostly undocumented K'iche'...

Argues that the recent surge in Mayan border crossings must be contextualized within both the longer history of violence, marginality, and exclusion that has long led Guatemala's indigenous populations to be "survivors on the move", and in terms of the contemporary push factors such as climate change and growing inequality.