Conflict in Central America: Why thousands flee their homeland in search of a safer existence
Conflict in Central America: Why thousands flee their homeland in search of a safer existence
FELIX MARQUEZ / AP
Central American migrants rest during the annual Migrant Stations of the Cross caravan or “Via crucis,”
organized by the “Pueblo Sin Fronteras” activist group, inside a sports center during the group’s few-days
stop in Matias Romero, Oaxaca state, Mexico, Monday, April 2, 2018. A Mexican government official said
the caravans are tolerated because migrants have aright under Mexican law to request asylum in Mexico
or to request a humanitarian visa allowing travel to the U.S. border to seek asylum in the United States.
By Camalot Todd (contact)
Friday, July 13, 2018 | 2 a.m.
Before the Trump administration enacted a zero-tolerance policy, thousands of Latinos had already left their homes in Central America to begin the trek to the U.S. The journey through cartel-controlled states in Mexico is safer than what they face in Central America’s Northern Triangle, comprised of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. With Nicaragua to the south, this geographic area accounts for many of the asylum seekers arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Between 2014 and 2016 alone, there were more than 8,900 asylum claims filed by individuals from this region, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The borders of these four countries foster political instability plagued by violence, weak or corrupt governments and poverty, all exacerbated by natural disasters, guerilla warfare, street gangs and the drug trade, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Here are just a few of the main factors contributing to each country’s unrest.
GUATEMALA
• Immigration status in the U.S.: Guatemalan citizens do not have temporary protected status (TPS), but more than 3,300 Guatemalans have claimed asylum.
Why the region is destabilized:
• Warfare: Lasting from 1960 to 1996, almost 200,000 people disappeared or were killed during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war. The U.N.-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission reported that 83 percent of those individuals were indigenous Maya, and the majority of human rights violations were carried out by government forces. As of 2017, more than 242,000 Guatemalans were still refugees or internally displaced because of the civil war and ongoing drug cartel and gang violence.
• Drug Trade: Drug trafficking groups called transportistas take advantage of Guatemala’s poverty-stricken people and corrupt government to operate from the nation.
• Weak/Corrupt Government: Guatemala’s leading anti-drug investigator and his aides were arrested in the U.S. on charges of drug trafficking in 2005. The nation has a long history of authoritarian governments, with its most modern roots in the 1950s when the CIA supported a coup d’état against the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz. The U.S. viewed Arbenz as a communist threat and helped Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, laying the foundation for the nation’s civil war. In 2007, three Salvadoran Central American Parliament members went to Guatemala for a meeting with other regional delegates. When they entered the country, they were murdered. Their bodies were found burnt on the side of the road. Guatemalan authorities arrested four police officers, according to InSight Crime, a foundation that studies organized crime in Latin and Caribbean nations
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