The New York Times Agency Photos
NY GUATEMALANS 2
Day laborers, some from Guatemala wait for work in Brooklyn on Monday, Feb. 1, 2010. In Bensonhurst, they wait on corners for odd jobs, sending as much money as they can back home to Guatemala. They gather at the two small churches that double as community centers. They sleep in apartments crowded with friends and family. And when some member of this community dies, as five did in a terrible blaze last weekend, they reach into meager savings to help send the bodies back home. Built around work and church and deeply rooted to the troubled Central American country they left behind, their lives are so quietly lived it would be easy to miss their swelling numbers. But Guatemalans are an increasing, if still understated, presence. (John Marshall Mantell/The New York Times)