Jeff Abbott
Alex Enrique Ramos walks with his family en route to Guatemala's border with Mexico.
Alex Enrique Ramos, a former security guard from Siguatepeque, Honduras, stands in the street outside of the Casa de Migrantes in Guatemala City, breaking open a pack of juice boxes to give to his young son, Alex, and his daughter, Sucely. Nearby, his wife, Lupe, rearranged their few items in preparation for the next leg of the family’s long journey north.
Just a few days before, they had left as part of a caravan of migrants seeking to reach the United States.
“There is no work in Honduras,” Enrique Ramos told me. “I have been without work for some time.”
The Casa de Migrantes is a free service from Catholic Priests that serves migrants while en route to the United States. According to volunteers, normally the home serves around sixty migrants, but since October 9, when the caravan entered Guatemala, these numbers grew exponentially, with an estimated 5,000 people arriving on October 17.
Organizers had originally estimated that 500 people would join the caravan.
It is never an easy decision for people to leave their homes. But for these Hondurans, the possibility of escaping poverty and insecurity compelled them to join the caravan.
“Juan Orlando Hernández has ruined everything,” Enrique Ramos told me referring to the Honduran President. “It is impossible to live in Honduras.”
“President Orlando Hernández has not helped the people with anything,” Rolando Alvarez, a young man from Soledad, El Paraíso, in southern Honduras, agreed. “I have never received anything. All the international aid that comes in is stolen.”
“The majority of people leaving are unemployed. We cannot live in Honduras because of the violence. We are looking for a better life.”
He adds, “The majority of people leaving are unemployed. We cannot live in Honduras because of the violence. We are looking for a better life.”
The thousands of migrants face deep uncertainty as they make their way to the United States, especially given Trump’s hostility to the migrant caravan. The Trump Administration has threatened to deploy the military to Mexican border to stop the migrants from crossing into the United States, and floated ending all aid to Honduras over the migrant caravan.
Mexican officials stated that migrants who are carrying the proper documentation will be permitted entry, while those who are not will be turned back. Though in spite of this, the Mexican government deployed Federal Police to the border.
Trump’s statements and threats may push Central America towards embracing China. While it remains unlikely that Honduras will grow closer to China, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández lamented decreases in the amount of U.S. aid to the Central American country during an interview with Reuters in September, and described the rise of Chinese influence in the region as “opportunity.”
Jeff Abbott
Heidy Fuentes stands outside her store holding a basket of muffins for Honduran migrants as they pass by.
The decreases in financing from the United States and Taiwan has already pushed some countries in Central America to embrace China. In August, El Salvador announced that they would be drawing closer to China in order to obtain increased financing for a port project along the Pacific coast.
Honduras’s ruling right wing Partido Nacional took power following a 2009 coup d’état against the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya. The new government declared Honduras “open for business,” passing numerous business friendly policies.
Orlando Hernández was first elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2017 in a controversial election. In spite of the popular outrage to the re-election, which many argued was unconstitutional, the United States and the Trump administration quickly moved to recognize Orlando Hernández’s victory.
“The free trade agreements and the Alliance for Prosperity financed by the United States have not resolved the structural problems.”
The United States has long promoted foreign investment in Honduras as a means of lowering the high poverty rates. These efforts have included the 2006 Central American Free Trade Agreement and the Alliance for Prosperity.
Yet these efforts have done little to resolve the crisis of poverty. According to World Bank data, poverty has risen from 64 percent to an estimated 66 percent in 2016.
“The free trade agreements and the Alliance for Prosperity financed by the United States have not resolved the structural problems,” Father Mauro Verzeletti, the director of the Casa de Migrante told me. “They only favor the richest or capitalists, either national or transnational. The poor stay in the street, excluded.”
The 2009 coup d’état also unleashed a wave of violence. Murder rates climbed to astronomic levels, reaching a peak in 2011 and 2012 of twenty homicides per day.
The violence has abated, but is far from gone. In 2017, Lupe’s sister was killed by an unknown assailant.
“There is no security,” Lupe told me, holding back tears. “We are searching for a better life.”
The Honduran migrants have received solid support from Guatemalans, who have donated food, water, and other items to the travelers. Heidy Fuentes, the owner of a small clothing store, stood outside with a basket of muffins as Enrique Ramos, his family, and the nearly twenty others began to make their way towards the buses for the border.
“These muffins are a small form of help for our Honduran brothers and sisters,” Fuentes told me as we stood in the doorway. “They are only leaving their homes because there is incredible need. The government is the only one to blame for the poverty of the people. They steal money and the people become even poorer.”
“Trump’s politics are as ugly as he is,” Father Verzeletti said. “Trump is harvesting what he has sowed. His politics have been against the migrants. He has attacked the governments of Central America for not controlling migration routes. But nobody, not even the United States, can control the migration routes.”