Jeff Abbott
Young protesters march to the U.S. embassy in Honduras on December 8, demanding that the United States defend their democracy against alleged electionfraud. The protesters connected the migration of youth from Honduras to the policies of President Juan Orlando Hernández.
In early January, Michael and his friends had just left a protest in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, when they were apprehended by Honduran security forces.
Michael (a pseudonym to protect his safety) was a twenty-one-year-old law student at the National Autonomous University of Honduras and a member of the leftwing political party Libre. He and his friends had participated in a rally where they had tried to close a busy street in defiance of the allegedly fraudulent 2017 presidential election. Afterward, as he tells it, he and his friends stopped at a small store on their way home to purchase a few drinks and sit along the road. A truck bearing the insignia of the Honduran military police arrived. The young men were quickly surrounded by military policemen and forced, at gunpoint, to pose for incriminating pictures.
“We were doing nothing, but they took out eight Molotov cocktails from their patrol and put them in front of us and told us not to move or they would shoot,” Michael recalls in a recent interview from a safe location. “They took photos, videos, and our names. They told us that if they found us in another protest, they would ‘disappear’ us.”
Days later, Michael says, military police wearing black ski masks showed up at his home, looking for him. He was not there, and he hasn’t been since, for fear of what might happen to him or his family. His parents paid $7,000 in U.S. money to a coyote, or migrant guide, to help him make it to the United States. He is now making his way to the United States, where he will stay with relatives. But Michael is unhappy about being forced to leave school.
“They took away all my dreams in life to study and the sacrifice of my mother to allow me to study,” he says. “Everything for nothing.”
Michael is one of tens of thousands of young Hondurans who have taken to the streets to protest the re-election of rightwing National Party President Juan Orlando Hernández. They believe the election was stolen from Salvador Nasralla, a business owner, popular sports commentator, and politician with the opposition party La Alianza.
“We are protesting because we know that our president is Salvador Nasralla,” Michael says. “We all know there was fraud in our election. We cannot permit an illegitimate government to govern our country.”
The opposition forced a recount of nearly 5,000 polling stations. But the Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared Hernández the victor, and the Trump Administration said it was satisfied with that result.
“We did look at the circumstances of the election. We concluded it was conducted fairly,” said then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in response to a question put to him after a February 1 speech at the University of Texas at Austin.
But in the months since the November election, an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty has fallen on Honduras. The fear of violence driven by the U.S.-backed Hernández administration is driving many Honduran youths to seek safe haven in the United States. As Michael puts it, “If the United States continues approving of an illegitimate government, of a narco-trafficker like Juan Orlando Hernández, then they must prepare for more migration of youth from Honduras.”
Ahead of Hernández’s inauguration, the military police and Honduran national police launched a widespread operation against activists. They went house-to-house looking for activists who were identified as organizers of the protests that had gripped urban centers since the election.
Carlos, a twenty-five-year-old activist from the Honduran city of Villanueva, Cortés, took part in the mobilizations denouncing the electoral result. He says a clerk tipped him off that the military had come by the store, offering 30,000 lempiras (about $1,300) for information on his whereabouts. The soldiers had his photo, his name, and the names of his friends. They also showed up at his home to question his family. And so Carlos (a pseudonym) went into hiding.
Jeff Abbott
A woman holds a Libre flag during a march to the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa on December 10, 2017.
“They are accusing me of inciting disorder and terrorism,” Carlos tells me, fighting back tears. He and his friend Ramiro (also a pseudonym), another activist from Villanueva, who also went into hiding, are now looking for ways to leave the country.
Ramiro, twenty-one, was on the same list as Carlos. The two traveled to a safe house in western Honduras, along with other young people andactivists who believe they are in danger. Says Ramiro, “The soldiers are arresting people for no reason, without any justification.”
When Ramiro went into hiding, he left his three-year-old son and his wife behind. But on the day of our interview, they arrive for a visit. The conversation turns to his son’s favorite subject: dinosaurs. He proceeds to show us his dinosaur toys. When we tell him that some scientists now believe that dinosaurs evolved into chickens, he begins to chase the chicks around the property.
Young people make up more than 50 percent of Honduras’s population. They are often targeted not just by the military, but by violent gangs. Many feel their only option is to leave the country.
“Most youth don’t want to go to the United States. We love our country,” Michael says. “But if we do not go, we will be killed by the government. They call us members of the maras [a violent street gang also known as the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13], but we are university students.”
“We love our country. But if we do not go, we will be killed by the government. They call us members of MS-13, but we are university students.”
Making matters worse is the lack of work options in Honduras. “Everything is going up in cost, the food, gas, and there is no employment,” says Jennifer, a twenty-nine-year-old woman in Tegucigalpa, during a protest in front of the Honduran Congress. “We want a change, we want Honduras to be better.”
Jennifer, who asked that her last name not be used, has thought about leaving. “We cannot live here,” she says. “The violence is always rising, there are no jobs, there is no health care or education. This government has done nothing for us. There is no medicine in the hospitals, the schools have no supplies, but there is money for tear gas to repress the people.”
When Hernández was elected to his first term in 2013, poverty in Honduras hovered around 64 percent of the population. After three years under Hernández, it had risen slightly to 66 percent. Poverty is a major factor driving northward migration; another is violence.
“People migrate for economic and security reasons,” says Alianza campaign manager Marlon Ochoa. “Also in part because of the extractive projects and the development projects that the government imposes on communities. The United States can say they are injecting funds and alleviating the causes of migration, but in reality they are promoting the causes of migration.”
According to a 2016 study by the Asociación de Investigación y Estudios Sociales, the annual number of migrants leaving Honduras nearly doubled from 2009 to 2013. These people have gone to other Central American countries, Europe, and the United States. It is estimated that in 2015, there were around 375,000 migrants from Honduras living in the United States without the proper documentation.
According to research from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the number of child migrants arriving at the U.S. border with Mexico rose sharply in 2017. Just weeks after the inauguration, the Honduran Radio America published a report citing Alden Rivera, the Honduran ambassador to Mexico, who stated that migration to the United States was expected to rise to around 60,000 people per year.
Nearly a decade after the 2009 coup d’état that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, Honduras has become ground zero for the implementation of Washington’s desired development plans. This includes promoting foreign investment in mining, energy generation, and mega-infrastructure projects. These efforts have greatly increased in the years since the coup, with the Honduran government promoting the country as “open for business.”
Honduras is a key ally in the efforts to stem northward migration, with President Hernández being among the first to support the U.S. plan known as the Alliance for Prosperity. Its goal is to generate development to stop migration in the northern part of Central America, commonly known by the military term Northern Triangle.
Honduras has become ground zero for the implementation of Washington’s desired development plans.
The Trump Administration has continued the efforts of the Obama Administration to stem migration from the countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras through the Alliance for Prosperity. The plan seeks to encourage private investments in the region, as well as increased security and efforts against corruption.
“Economic development and security reinforce each other,” exclaimed Tillerson in his February speech. “When individuals are living in poverty, a life of crime can look like the only opportunity available to make a living. Legal and illegal immigration increases as people look for more opportunity elsewhere. And innocent people are more likely to become victims of drug cartels, human traffickers, and corrupt law enforcement authorities.”
But the Alliance for Prosperity has been met by intense criticism from activists and analysts. They point out that the plan does little to resolve the problems driving migration.
“The Alliance for Prosperity arrived like a bomb to mitigate the root causes of migration from Central America,” says Quique Vidal Olascoaga of Voces Mesoamericanas in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. “But in reality, it provoked a significant increase in the dispossession of land for rural communities, and it provoked a criminalization of protest as it justified the investment plans as part of the national priority. This had the effect of protecting the investments of U.S. companies in the region.”
Critics also note that the efforts of the Alliance for Prosperity have mostly created low-paying jobs. And the plan favors mega-projects that themselves contribute to the displacement of communities, subsequently driving migration.
“[The U.S.] has not given attention to development and solidarity with our countries,” Sister Lidia Mara Silva de Souza, the national coordinator of the Human Mobility Pastoral in Honduras, and a member of the Scalabrinian missionary order, tells The Progressive. “Their interest rather is to install their big companies in the country at the lowest cost.”
The expansion of mega-projects has generated intense social conflicts and violence against communities that resist the projects. The assassination of acclaimed activist Berta Cáceres in 2016 is a testament to the lengths that the Honduran state will go in order to guarantee these types of projects. The atmosphere of violence and threats around the construction of projects across the region too is driving people to flee.
In other Central American countries as well, emigration to the United States is being driven by projects and policies supported by U.S. officials.
Marcos (a pseudonym) lived in the Mayan village of El Pojom in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. In 2007, he set out for the United States, where he found work in the South at a restaurant. He planned on staying just a few years to earn money for his family.
But then the government approved plans for a hydroelectric project in his village, and Marcos felt it was too dangerous to go back. “I decided not to return because I didn’t know if the supporters of the hydro project would kill me,” Marcos says.
The controversial hydro project is part of the Central American Electrical Interconnection System transmission line, which connects the energy grids of the region. This is a key component of U.S. efforts to control development through its Alliance for Prosperity plan. But the projects are causing massive social conflicts within the communities where companies are seeking to build the requisite dams.
“[Mega-projects] have become far more serious in the last seven to eight years, and coincide with the signing of the free trade agreements, and the rise in poverty among campesinos,” Olascoaga says. “Together with the historic discrimination against the original peoples, Afro-descent peoples, and campesinos, as well as the violence against women and children, this has contributed to the rise in migration.”
U.S. officials argue that these projects will improve the economies of the region through lower energy costs. As Tillerson said in his speech, “We have the chance to develop an energy partnership that spans the Western Hemisphere, to the benefit of all of our citizens. We cannot afford to squander this moment.”
But the residents of El Pojom do not believe the project will benefit them. More than 4,000 residents of San Mateo Ixtatán, where Marcos is from, mobilized in opposition, fearing it would damage the environment and lead to evictions. In a 2009 referendum, municipality residents overwhelmingly rejected the construction of any project. But the company continued to move ahead with its plans, until it was forced to temporarily suspend operations in 2017 due to widespread protests. The company, Proyecto de Desarrollo Hídricos S.A., is seeking to enter into a dialogue with the community to end the protests.
Jeff Abbott
A member of the Libre party shares her feelings with the Honduran military and military police during a protest at the Honduran Congress in Tegucigalpa.
“The police and the soldiers are protecting the company, which is making the people even angrier,” Marcos says. “It does not matter if one is a leader or not, if you raise your voice against the mega-projects, then they criminalize you.”
In January 2017, residents held a protest near the construction site. Private security guards opened fire on the protesters, killing seventy-two-year-old Sebastián Alonzo Juan. Shortly afterward, Marcos’s wife decided to join him in the United States with their ten-year-old daughter.
“The situation grew worse for her,” Marcos says. “The police were sent to intimidate the people and deploy tear gas against the population. This affected our house. It affects the women and the children. With the military and police in favor of the hydro company, who will protect the citizens?”
Guatemala is among the key geostrategic countries where the United States has long sought to promote energy expansion. In February 2016, United States Southern Command funded a study by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to investigate the possibility of using the Guatemalan military to protect the production and distribution of energy.
United States Southern Command declined to acknowledge or comment to The Progressive on the report. Prior to the study, the administration of former Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina established a new military encampment in the remote community, further contributing to the fear and anger over the project.
For Marcos and other Guatemalans, the violence of San Mateo Ixtatán brings back the horrors of the military’s counterinsurgency in the 1980s. During Guatemala’s internal armed conflict, which lasted thirty-six years, more than 200,000 people were killed, an estimated 45,000 were disappeared, and more than one million people were displaced.
Marcos’s family directly experienced this violence. In 1982, his grandfather was disappeared by the military. His family has never found his remains.
“If we are deported, where will we go?” asks Marcos. “The government is against us, and to return to Guatemala with this situation, well, I do not want to return.”
Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist currently based out of Guatemala. His work has appeared in NACLA Report on the Americas, In These Times, and Upside Down World. Follow him on Twitter @palabrasdeabajo.