Guatemala election: What campaign chaos has to do with migration north

A little boy ran out of a voting booth Sunday in the Guatemalan department of San Marcos, a rural area south of the Mexican border. Grasping his mother’s hand, he victoriously screamed, “I voted!” holding up his inked index finger.

“He’s the only one here that’s excited,” joked Lesli Pérez, his mother, who says all the candidates in the first-round presidential vote have serious shortcomings – most prominently, allegations of corruption. 

If Guatemala’s 2015 presidential election was defined by a sense of hope and possibility, after a sitting president and vice president were arrested on fraud charges,