Poverty, conflict man-made constructs

Extreme Poverty
Mexico
Central America

U.S. destruction, destabilization, displacement of peoples of the Americas

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Central American Presidents this week meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington: Otto Perez Molina, Guatemala; Juan Orlando Hernandez, Honduras; Salvador Sanchez Ceren, El Salvador

Press TV reporting under July 21, 2014 headline -- Denying child refugees ignores shared history

Under the guise of the Cold War, successive U.S. administrations provided more than $1 billion of aid to these repressive governments. The United Nations estimates that 75,000 people were killed in El Salvador and more than 200,000 in Guatemala, as the militaries conducted ‘dirty wars’ against their own people. Since the aftermath of the civil wars, the United States has imposed ‘free trade’ policies on Central America. This has flooded these much smaller economies with U.S. imports, which have displaced farmers and workers, while enriching foreign corporations and local elites. With the implementation of the Central American and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement in 2006, economic distress has accelerated. As a result, hundreds of thousands of small farming families and urban poor have been pushed to migrate north to find work.

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 couple of weeks ago as a created crisis became headline-acute Democracy Now spoke with Professor Dana Frank and focused particularly on one of the Central American countries and its questionable leadership and collusion with U.S. leaders.

President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández who is meeting with the U.S. president sailed into office earlier this year on the criminal overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya. Amy Goodman recalled Zelaya’s words in her 2011 interview with him. In translation, Zelaya said:

Poverty in
Honduras

The U.S. State Department has always denied, and they continue to deny, any ties with the coup d’état.

Manuel Zelaya
Honduras
overthrown

Nevertheless, all of the proof incriminates the U.S. government. And all of the actions that were taken by the de facto regime, or the golpista (coup) regime, which are those who carried out the coup, and it is to make favor of the industrial policies and the military policies and the financial policies of the United States in Honduras.

Goodman asked Dana Frank about the responsibility of the United States, particularly under the leadership of foreign secretary Hillary Clinton and chief executive Barack Obama. Juan Orlando Hernández, the new president, who came into power in January 2014, Frank said:

Juan Orlando Hernandez
Honduras
coup 
government

…was a major backer of the criminal coup when he was president and was head of a key committee in the Honduran Congress.

A year and a half ago, as president of the Honduran Congress, [he] illegally overthrew part of the Supreme Court

Americans in poverty

…He illegally was part of naming a new attorney general loyal to him last summer, named to an illegal five-year term.

He built his campaign not around cleaning up the police, but a new military police that is expanding the militarization of Honduran society; that military police itself is committing serious human rights abuses, including, recently, in May, beating up and jailing the most prominent advocate for children in Honduras.

Slums
Central America

The U.S. White House and Foreign Office legitimated “the coup government” as an equal partner [listen to the echoes of U.S. foreign relations patterns in Libya, Egypt and other African countries, in the Middle East’s Syria and Palestine, in Eastern Europe’s Ukraine] to the ousted presidency—“in fact, as a superior partner,” Frank said.

The Obama government “treated Zelaya like a bad child for trying to return to his own country” and announced, even before the votes were counted, “that they would recognize the outcome of the illegitimate November elections.”

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 onsequences of criminally cruel policies

More crime, unrest, discontent, poverty, migration 

Poverty in South America

“When we talk about the fleeing gangs and violence,” Dana Frank said, “it is also this tremendous poverty.”

Poverty “doesn’t just happen.” Poverty “is a direct result of policies of both the Honduran government and the U.S. government, including privatizations, mass layoffs of government workers; and, in Honduras, a new law now permanent that breaks up full-time jobs and makes them part-time and ineligible for unionization, a living wage, and the national health services.”

Franks says “a lot of these economic policies are driven by U.S.-funded lending organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which itself is funding the corrupt Honduran police. The Central American Free Trade Agreement is the other piece of this.

Otto Perez Molina
Guatemala

“Like NAFTA did for the U.S. and Mexico,” the CAFTA “opens the door to this open competition” between small producers in agriculture and small manufacturers; and the result is that “jobs are disappearing.”

Half of America in poverty

This is “not like it, tragically, just happened-- nor is it “like people are [saying] ‘Let’s go have the American dream’” – the situation “is a direct result of very conscious policies by the U.S. and Honduran governments.”

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  overty is driving the people to flee their homelands.

Salvador Sanchez Ceren
El Salvador

“There are almost no jobs for young people,” Frank says. “We are talking about starving to death—that’s the alternative—or being driven into gangs with tremendous sexual violence.”

The needlessly dire situation in Honduras, she despairs in understatement, “is very, very tragic.”

Press TV’s report is absolutely right. We cannot detach North America’s patterns in relations, its history with Central America from conditions in the Americas and arrivals of Central American refugees in the United States of America.

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century and a half later the words still ring true: 

“We cannot escape history,” Lincoln said.  

“We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”

Sources and notes

 “U.S. Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisis,” July 17, 2014,

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/17/us_turns_back_on_child_migrants

Dr. Dana Frank is a writer and researcher on Central American issues and politics, Professor of History at the University of California-Santa Cruz, and author of Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America

“Denying child refugees ignores shared history” Press TV reporting on July 21, 2014,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/21/372150/us-should-shelter-immigrant-children/

We can’t detach this history from the arrival of Central American refugees to the United States. We need to provide refuge for the children arriving from Central America. Sending them back to the countries they are fleeing is contrary to the generous ethos of this country. It also ignores the current and long-term causes of this migration, and the misbegotten U.S. policies that have helped fuel it. In recent years, the drug war has flared out of control in Central America. While the majority of drug consumption occurs in the United States, the bulk of the violence takes place in Central America.

Honduran politician and businessman, current President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado (often written as JOH, b. October 28, 1968, Gracias, Lempira) is a member of the National Party of Honduras and was President of the National Congress of Honduras between January 2010 and June 2013 but left his responsibilities in the Congress to campaign for the country’s presidency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Orlando_Hern%C3%A1ndez

Guatemalan politician, retired military officer, current President of Guatemala (January 14, 2012- ), Otto Fernando Pérez Molina (b. December 1, 1950), before entering politics was Director of Military Intelligence, Presidential Chief of Staff under President Ramiro de Leon Carpio, and chief representative of the military for the Guatemalan Peace Accords. During his presidency, he has called for the legalization of drugs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Perez_Molina

Salvadoran politician and current President of El Salvador (2014- ), Salvador Sánchez Cerén (b. June 18, 1944) was the country’s vice president (2009-2014). In his bid for the presidency, he ran as candidate of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_S%C3%A1nchez_Cer%C3%A9n

Abraham Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress --  Concluding Remarks, Washington, D.C., December 1, 1862 [excerpt], http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm

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