Starving in McMansions: Big homes in poor Guatemala

[Liberal_in_LA]

With money that three of his children working in the U.S. sent him, Alejandro Rojas was able to afford an extravagant house in this desolate area of Guatemala. But Rojas, who struggles to feed his family, cannot afford to live in the house, so he rents it out and lives in a nearby shack.


Aldea San Antonio, Cabricán, Guatemala – The white, two-story villa that dominates the entrance to this hamlet on a volcanic hillside in the Mayan highlands could have been plucked straight from any prosperous suburb in the southern United States.

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Four feet away in the same dirt yard encircled by a concrete-block wall, however, is a dark, single-room adobe shack covered by corrugated metal where the owner of both houses lives, with barely enough to feed six of his kids.

Money sent from his other three children — ages 16, 22 and 25 — who are working near Atlanta paid for the mansion. What's left covers the meager diet.
"We eat more or less, one can't say well. Frijoles, tortillas, this way we survive," Alejandro Rojas said. He was waiting for the evangelical pastor to start Sunday services in the outsized, and empty, house that Rojas rents out while hoping his older children will one day return to live in it.

"They went because of necessity, but I want them to come back," he said. "They have no papers."

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2015/05/02/starving-mcmansions-big-homes-poor-guatemala/26805235/

[enid602]

1. high curb

You'd want to slow down a bit before you pull into that garage.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. good catch

[madville]

3. Sell it? I couldn't afford to own many houses

There are many houses here in Florida I couldn't afford to own if someone gave them to me. My late grandparents beach house was $7,000 a year in property taxes and $5,000 a year for insurance, add in utilities and maintenance and it was about $1,500 a month minimum just to own the the place outright.

[SoCalDem]

4. Shame on HIM for wasting their hard-earned money

He could have surely built a smaller, easier to manage place..and put the rest of the money into a savings account for lean times..

[LuvNewcastle]

6. I was wondering about that myself.

I've never had much money to speak of, but if I suddenly came into a large amount of money, I think I would get some different opinions from others with money on how I could make the money last. I guess he doesn't know anyone with money, or at least he doesn't know anyone willing or able to give him good advice.

[Recursion]

5. Remittances often end up like oil money

They get used to buy some white elephants, and then you have two problems. I've seen it in rural India and southern China, too.

[dembotoz]

7. here in the us we have some elderly stuck in houses and run low on food

If they lived in houses that there small resources would cover there would be a run on refrigerator boxes