OFRNEH
The Garífuna communities on the Caribbean coast of Honduras have been abandoned, especially by the youth and children, who have taken the uncertain path towards “the north”, generating an emptying of the territories, in the face of the severe crisis affecting the country.
Meanwhile, the Trumo administration and its policy of “zero tolerance” has generated the emergence of concentration camps and the separation of thousands of children from their parents, to the point that the whereabouts of more than 2400 minors are unknown.
Almost ten years after the 2009 coup d’état, Honduras finds itself under a permanent cloud of tear gas with which the cartel that controls the state intends to dissipate its irremediable failure; its only sustenance being the unrestricted support provided by the Donald Trump administration.
In the last ten years, the state has been plundered by politicians and their associates, who have dedicated themselves to legislating to violate rights and share the spoils. Meanwhile, poverty has skyrocketed at the same time as the neoliberal reforms have been privatizing the demolished institutions; on the other hand, biodiversity and the national territory are being auctioned through the “model cities” (ZEDE).
The atomization of community titles, promoted through the municipalities and endorsed by the courts, has been one of the catalysts of the increase in the loss of ancestral territory; a situation that added to the 90% unemployment rate in the Garifuna communities, form a gloomy cocktail, giving rise to an enormous increase in migration, if not stampede.
Since the coup d’état, the Caribbean coast corridor has become a feud of different leaders who, in association with the masters of the governmental administrations in office, have taken over the security agencies, the municipalities and the justice system. Violence became a form of social control administered by organized crime, a situation that has culminated in a widespread stampede.
In addition to the precarious conditions of the country, there is the catalyst of social networks, which are conducive to social contagion, predisposing people to an exodus that has been occurring in groups, without reaching the notoriety of the media caravans of last year.
Although the Garinagu have a cultural heritage of horticultural collecting people, which predisposes us to migration, the stampede that took place from the end of 2013 to the middle of 2014 was like an essay of the exodus that we face in 2019.
Everything seems to indicate that it is the Trump administration itself, with its unconditional support for the current Honduran government, that has been promoting and manipulating the exodus for electoral purposes, as happened with the Honduran caravan, which emerged prior to the midterm elections.
Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, which has caused the separation of thousands of parents and their offspring, has resulted in an endless number of human rights violations, whose denunciations seem not to be covered by the media caravans. The concentration camps in which unaccompanied minors are interned have gone unnoticed.
Last May, 11,507 unaccompanied minors were detained. This figure suggests that this year the number of unaccompanied minors will surpass the more than 70,000 detained in 2014, when what can be called the first crusade took place. Although by 2015 the number dropped, it is from the past years that the detention of minors, mostly from Central American countries, has skyrocketed.
The detention of illegal immigrants in the United States has become a big business, given the exorbitant costs that private companies charge the U.S. government. The figure of 750 dollars a day for each detainee in the infamous Tornillo concentration camp, located in Texas, which was closed at the end of last year, is a sign of the lucrative business. There are currently more than 15,000 minors detained by ICE, who are expected to be deported as soon as they turn 18.
The mass exodus in Central America is caused by structural violence manifested by security agencies and organized crime cartels, which are becoming more and more alike. The resounding failure of the war on drugs is demonstrated by the symbiosis existing between political parties, maras (gangs) and cartels, which have been in charge of undermining the incipient democracy that existed in the countries of the northern triangle.
In the current reclassification promoted by Emperor Trump, Honduras went from a banana republic to a shit hole country, and it can be assumed that for the current emperor the hordes of desperate migrants do not qualify as human beings, but in the end “the crisis at the border” has become a lucrative business.
It is important to bear in mind that Trump’s electoral triumph in 2016 was to a certain extent inspired by Steve Bannon and the alt right, which awakened the hidden racism existing among the prospective white minority, giving rise to a rejection of the once praised multiculturalism.
The “shaky ” government of Honduras manages to remain in power, in the face of the enormous militarization to which it has resorted, with the support of the United States and its new and intimate partner, Israel, through its disputed president Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli arsenal’ includes helicopters, fighter planes, drones, balloons and espionage apps, in addition to the supposed arrival of troops; they are not specifically used to combat drug trafficking and organized crime, but to intimidate a desperate people who are faced with a repressive dictatorship which has dismantled the country’s institutions.
