As Honduras Collapses, Its People are Forced to Flee

[Judi Lynn]

DECEMBER 31, 2019
As Honduras Collapses, Its People are Forced to Flee
by LAURA CARLSEN

Honduras is collapsing. The thousands of migrants who flee every day are direct testimony to a political, economic and social crisis that the world ignores and the U. S. government seems bent on perpetuating. Instead of examining the crisis behind the exodus, the Trump administration has set an intercontinental human trapline that captures thousands of the world’s poorest and most persecuted men, women and children, and then converts their suffering into campaign fodder.

Until the Ukraine gamechanger came along, this seemed to be working as the central message of a candidacy that proclaimed white supremacy a valid political platform. Since the whistleblower exposé, the Trump re-election campaign has had to pivot to spewing lies about Joe Biden and fending off impeachment But unless he goes down, sooner or later he´ll return to slandering immigrants and issuing racist warnings of the “invasion” from the south.

Meanwhile, almost no-one is asking why so many people leave. Donald Trump portrays Honduran and other Central American migrants as global gold-diggers, looking for a way to scam an overly tolerant United States. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with what migrants go through, abandoning their homes and facing the physical and psychological dangers of the migrant trail, immediately and correctly dismisses this explanation.

The Mexican government has emphasized going to “the root causes” of migration, which it defines as underdevelopment, and a democratic congressional delegation led by Nancy Pelosi in August recently used the same language. But what are the ‘root causes’? What really motivates so many people to leave, when their chances of making it to relatives and new lives in the United States are so low? When the cost of the journey—in all senses—is so high?

The Real Roots of Migration

I went down to Honduras to ask grassroots leaders these questions. Also, to find out what’s behind the rise in the popular movement over the past year and, most of all, whether it can provide a way out of the downward spiral the country has been in since the coup of 2009. I found a country facing an acute crisis on all levels—a political crisis of legitimacy that has destroyed faith in the leaders and led to violent repression of protest as the government implodes, an economic crisis with over 60% of the population living in poverty and extreme poverty, and a crisis in security as organized crime groups control urban territory, corporations take over resources, and corrupt security forces and paramilitaries routinely attack the citizenry with practically no legal consequences. There is also a deeper, more ineffable crisis: many Hondurans see no future in their own country.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/31/as-honduras-collapses-its-people-are-forced-to-flee/

[DanieRains]

1. Trump Makes It Worse Every Day

To impress deplorables.

[ancianita]

2. Who benefits. Global corporate resource grabbers and their henchmen. Corporations care nothing

for pesky humans sitting on land bases that corps want to control.

It's a sickening evil, spreading across countries.

My question is, what corporations are down there. The timber, gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, iron ore, antimony, coal, fish, shrimp, and hydropower are all ideal for global extractors who seem to work in their own autonomous economic zones.

Global corporate insurgency is a recipe for nation destruction.

[rampartc]

3. the big one united fruit co

now known as Chiquita brands.

there is a reason these countries are called "banana republics"

[ancianita]

4. In fact it was Honduras that was originally referred to as such.

I think the timber and mining are just as big and destructive but work in stealth, since those operators are not on the official list of companies doing business there.

Just two banks, four airlines, a food company, toy company and our military.

Imagine what's in all those toys!