Honduras: How US Policy Set the Stage for Today's Migration
By Joseph Nevins, teleSUR
02 January 19
The U.S. role in shaping migration raises questions about its responsibility
toward those now fleeing the ravages its policies produced.
Hondurans fleeing poverty and violence who make up most of the
participants of a 'caravan' estimated at between 7,000 and 8,000 people
are slowly moving through Mexico in the hope of reaching the United States
and receiving refuge.
President Trump has responded by characterizing the caravan as, among other
unflattering things, an onslaught and an assault on the United States.
Trumps statements, which do not accurately characterize the makeup and
motivations of the migrants, have pushed many media outlets to rebut his
false claims.
The mainstream narrative of such movements of people often reduces the
causes of migration to factors unfolding in migrants home countries. In
reality, migration is often a manifestation of a profoundly unequal and
exploitative relationship between countries from which people emigrate and
countries of destination.
As I have learned through many years of research on immigration and border
policing, the history of relations between Honduras and the United States is
a prime example of these dynamics. Understanding this is vital to making
immigration policy more effective and ethical.
U.S. Roots of Honduran Emigration
I first visited Honduras in 1987 to do research. As I walked around the city
of Comayagua, many thought that I, a white male with short hair in his early
20s, was a U.S. soldier. This was because hundreds of U.S. soldiers were
stationed at the nearby Palmerola Air Base at the time. Until shortly before
my arrival, many of them would frequent Comayagua, particularly its 'red
zone' of female sex workers.
U.S. military presence in Honduras and the roots of Honduran migration to
the United States are closely linked. It began in the late 1890s, when
U.S.-based banana companies first became active there. As historian Walter
LaFeber writes in Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central
America, U.S. companies built railroads, established their own banking
systems, and bribed government officials at a dizzying pace. As a result,
the Caribbean coast became a foreign-controlled enclave that systematically
swung the whole of Honduras into a one-crop economy whose wealth was carried
off to New Orleans, New York, and later Boston.
By 1914, U.S. banana interests owned almost 1 million acres of Honduras
best land. These holdings grew through the 1920s to such an extent that, as
LaFeber asserts, Honduran peasants had no hope of access to their nations
good soil. Over a few decades, U.S. capital also came to dominate the
countrys banking and mining sectors, a process facilitated by the weak
state of Honduras domestic business sector. This was coupled with direct
U.S. political and military interventions to protect U.S. interests in 1907
and 1911.
Such developments made Honduras ruling class dependent on Washington for
support. A central component of this ruling class was and remains the
Honduran military. By the mid-1960s it had become, in LaFebers words, the
countrys most developed political institution, one that Washington
played a key role in shaping.
The Reagan Era
This was especially the case during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the
1980s. At that time, U.S. political and military policy was so influential
that many referred to the Central American country as the 'U.S.S. Honduras'
and the 'Pentagon Republic.'
As part of its effort to overthrow the Sandinista government in neighboring
Nicaragua and 'roll back' the regions leftist movements, the Reagan
administration 'temporarily' stationed several hundred U.S. soldiers in
Honduras. Moreover, it trained and sustained Nicaraguas 'contra' rebels on
Honduran soil, while greatly increasing military aid and arm sales to the
country.
The Reagan years also saw the construction of numerous joint Honduran-U.S.
military bases and installations. Such moves greatly strengthened the
militarization of Honduran society. In turn, political repression rose.
There was a dramatic increase in the number of political assassinations,
disappearances and illegal detentions.
The Reagan administration also played a big role in restructuring the
Honduran economy. It did so by strongly pushing for internal economic
reforms, with a focus on exporting manufactured goods. It also helped
deregulate and destabilize the global coffee trade, upon which Honduras
heavily depended. These changes made Honduras more amenable to the interests
of global capital. They disrupted traditional forms of agriculture and
undermined an already weak social safety net.
These decades of U.S. involvement in Honduras set the stage for Honduran
emigration to the United States, which began to markedly increase in the
1990s.
In the post-Reagan era, Honduras remained a country scarred by a
heavy-handed military, significant human rights abuses and pervasive
poverty. Still, liberalizing tendencies of successive governments and
grassroots pressure provided openings for democratic forces.
They contributed, for example, to the election of Manuel Zelaya, a liberal
reformist, as president in 2006. He led on progressive measures such as
raising the minimum wage. He also tried to organize a plebiscite to allow
for a constituent assembly to replace the countrys constitution, which had
been written during a military government. However, these efforts incurred
the ire of the countrys oligarchy, leading to his overthrow by the military
in June 2009.
Post-Coup Honduras
The 2009 coup, more than any other development, explains the increase in
Honduran migration across the southern U.S. border in the last few years.
The Obama administration has played an important role in these developments.
Although it officially decried Zelayas ouster, it equivocated on whether or
not it constituted a coup, which would have required the U.S. to stop
sending most aid to the country.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in particular, sent conflicting
messages, and worked to ensure that Zelaya did not return to power. This was
contrary to the wishes of the Organization of American States, the leading
hemispheric political forum composed of the 35 member-countries of the
Americas, including the Caribbean. Several months after the coup, Clinton
supported a highly questionable election aimed at legitimating the post-coup
government.
Strong military ties between the United States and Honduras persist: Several
hundred U.S. troops are stationed at Soto Cano Air Base, formerly Palmerola,
in the name of fighting the drug war and providing humanitarian aid.
Since the coup, writes historian Dana Frank, a series of corrupt
administrations has unleashed open criminal control of Honduras, from top to
bottom of the government. The Trump administrations recognition, in
December 2017, of President Juan Orlando Hernándezs re-election after a
process marked by deep irregularities, fraud and violence. This continues
Washingtons longstanding willingness to overlook official corruption in
Honduras as long as the countrys ruling elites serve what are defined as
U.S. economic and geopolitical interests.
Organized crime, drug traffickers and the countrys police heavily overlap.
The frequent politically motivated killings are rarely punished. In 2017,
Global Witness, an international nongovernmental organization, found that
Honduras was the worlds deadliest country for environmental activists.
Although its once sky-high murder rate has declined over the last few years,
the continuing exodus of many youths demonstrates that violent gangs still
plague urban neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, post-coup governments have intensified an increasingly
unregulated, free market form of capitalism that makes life unworkable for
many by undermining the countrys limited social safety net and greatly
increasing socioeconomic inequality. Government spending on health and
education, for example, has declined in Honduras. Meanwhile, the countrys
poverty rate has risen markedly. These contribute to the growing pressures
that push many people to migrate.
What will happen to the thousands of people now moving northward? If the
recent past is any indication, many will likely stay in Mexico.
What the Trump administration will ultimately do with those who arrive at
the U.S. southern border is unclear. Regardless, the role played by the
United States in shaping the causes of this migration raises ethical
questions about its responsibility toward those now fleeing from the ravages
its policies have helped to produce.
Email This Page
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner