Central American Immigration: Whose Responsibility?

In August a group of seventeen interfaith clergy and lay religious leaders from across the United States made a ten-day pilgrimage to Honduras and Guatemala organized by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity. Our purpose was to learn from clerical and lay leaders of Catholic and Protestant denominations who provide direct services to immigrants or from academics who researched immigration issues.about the deeper, unreported causes of the violence and poverty.

The fervor surrounding the early debates for next year’s presidential elections provide evidence that immigration will be one of the more closely-watched issues in next year’s political campaigns. But how may one respond when faith leaders across northern Honduras and Guatemala point out problems linked to the historically-corrupt and military-backed oligarchies that have held political power and economic control of thousands and thousands of hectares in order to grow bananas and African palm to benefit American consumers?

What to say when told about the US-backed coups in 1954 and 2009 after democratically-elected presidents of Guatemala and Honduras threatened profit margins of US interests with minimal reforms?

What should one say when faith leaders in northern Honduras report that a consortium of U.S.-based hydroelectric interests, part of the Central American Electrical Interconnection System (SIEPAC), forcibly drive people from their small, rural communities into crime-ridden and desperate urban neighborhoods in a wild plan to subvert water for a dam which in seventy or eighty years will provide electricity to the United States? When leaders of these faith communities begin organizing community members against these interests and discover their lives are threatened on multiple levels, who is to blame?

And what may one say when Chinese and U.S. mining interests in Honduras eagerly explore gold, silver and lead and destroy the ecological systems which have sustained rural communities for generations? And when such interests are granted impunity to mine create environmental collateral damage, who should bear the burden of the cost?

Or one may consider the plight of the Garifuna people, fishing people and rural farmers who’ve lived in Honduras and Guatemala since the mid-18th century. In Honduras they are now being driven from the villages on the Caribbean coast by armed, government forces and accused of “environmental terrorism.” Nearby, an internationally-financed, newly-built five star hotel spews waste into water systems. Over half of the 450 villagers had left, many of whom had either emigrated to tried to emigrate to the U.S.

Textile firms in Honduras, some of whom are given unimaginable liberties, reign in so-called “free trade zones” and open sweatshops. They pay abhorrent wages and employ and discard young women as they see fit to compete in the global market. If one is young and seeking employment is this a viable option?

And when a country is driven to such depths by outrageous practices which collectively crush its poorest citizens, what are they to do? According to the Catholic Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini of Huehuetenango, 98% of Guatemalans are unemployed, depending on the informal economy or part-time work to sustain themselves. Should it surprise anyone that $5.2 billion a year in remittances is sent from Guatemalans living in the United States to their families?

In Honduras and Guatemala, rampant corruption on multiple levels in the national government has been endemic for generations. We were told “they’ve stolen everything from us, even our fear.” And that desperate fearlessness contributed in early September to the resignation of the former Guatemalan president Otto Perez-Molina and his entire cabinet. He has since been incarcerated on scandalous charges of skimming money from customs which amounted to 30% of the national budget. Over sixty thousand people had demonstrated since April to protest the arrogance and now proven culpability of national leaders for their crimes.

In the over twenty meetings we had during our visit, every single group with whom we met fervently urged us to oppose the Obama Administration’s proposed Alliance for Prosperity. They argued it would promote radical insecurity. Of its proposed $1.2 billion in aid to the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, 60% would be given for “security” purposes. While U.S. companies like Lockheed-Martin, Bell Helicopters, AM Sales and Colt will certainly benefit, the promised security will inevitably be used to crack-down on civilian dissent while drug traffickers closely aligned with national political interests will continue unimpeded. Another 30% will be doled out to transnational corporations to continue their looting of human and natural resources.

Who then, we were forced to ask, is really responsible for the flight of desperate people from Honduras and Guatemala?

This author is a member of the Oakland Catholic Worker staff and Pax Christi Northern California. He is also a journalist with the Oakland Voices project of the Oakland Tribune.

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