Marta was holding her sleeping son inside her doorway one morning last spring when a man pushed into the entryway and pressed a knife to her neck. “He asked me for money and took my keys. It was a very sad moment – I thought he was going to kill me or my son. He touched me everywhere – I didn’t know what he was going to do. He touched me everywhere.”

Her previous apartment had been broken into and ransacked twice, which is why she moved to this new building. She says she spends her days, and especially her nights, afraid: that someone will break in while she’s sleeping, that she will be hurt in the street and her son will be left alone, that she’ll get in trouble at work for not having the right papers. These new fears, particular to her life in New Bedford, have mingled with a deep and abiding sadness that she has felt since the war in Guatemala, three decades ago.

“I am working really hard. I have to wake up at three in the morning. I work in a fish company, cleaning and packaging fish. I work to pay the bills and buy food. I don’t have extra money – just for food, milk, so my son can eat. I also have my mom, who lives in Guatemala. At her age she can’t work at all.  .  .  .

There is no peace anywhere – not in Guatemala, and not here in the United States. We were persecuted in Guatemala, during the war. My father died; my three uncles were assassinated by soldiers. My dad’s house was burned. Since I was little, I can say that I haven’t had a peaceful life.  .  .  .

I am 36 years old. These scars, on my arm and leg, happened when my mom was running from the war. They had taken my dad already. We never found out what happened to him. We didn’t know where he was killed – nothing. They killed my dad first, then they started to scare us. Soldiers came into the house and asked where my mom was; they asked for my brothers. I was five years old. They would beat my mother and ask where her husband was. She wouldn’t answer. She sent my brothers away to live with other people, so they wouldn’t be taken by the soldiers. She then started to burn all the pictures of my dad and my brothers, so they wouldn’t ask any more questions.  .  .  .

My mom took us out to the forest, to hide us, in the rain. We were hungry. We would walk a lot and hurt ourselves when walking; I would hold my brothers’ hands. The smallest was one year old, the other was two, and I was five.  .  .  .

I decided to come here so that I could move on, and overcome everything that had happened. We lost everything in the violence, and I thought I could buy us a new place to live. But I haven’t achieved anything. Everything that we lost, we haven’t regained. One would like to make one’s life better, to find a way to succeed, have a fine future. But here it is difficult. One doesn’t have papers, one doesn’t feel welcomed, doesn’t know the language. It is very difficult.  .  .  .

I just want to live here, in peace, with my son. What we want is to live in peace, and work in peace.“