I decided to Google why people are fleeing Honduras. Found several articles of interest. Below is a link and a key paragraph in that article. It proposes that the biggest complaints are about loss of land and jobs to big developers, and corruption at the top destroying the people at the bottom. Gang trouble is down the list. I have seen it in US too, except here people have fled to the Trump vote.
The “Alliance for Prosperity Plan,” implemented as a response to the migration spike in 2014, reflects this flawed perspective. This four-country agreement between the United States and Central America’s Northern Triangle countries aims to curtail immigration from the regions largest immigrant-producing nations—Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Significantly, the $750 million budget approved by the US Congress for 2016 focused primarily on aid for “development assistance” and “security measures” (Iesue, 2016). Under this Plan, reducing incentives for immigration means cracking down on gang violence, drug trafficking, high levels of extortion and overall insecurity on the one hand, and alleviating poverty through increased development opportunities on the other.
This is a dangerously misdirected and incomplete analysis. This past December, I was part of a delegation to Honduras seeking to uncover the “root causes” of immigration. The delegation met directly with a variety of affected communities. Gang violence and economic underdevelopment did not feature in these communities’ analyses of why they and their loved ones fled the country. In fact, as we met with indigenous communities, farmers, maquila workers, church leaders, human rights activists, and returned deportees, few mentioned gangs or underdevelopment at all. Instead, the recurring themes were the rampant privatization and extraction of public resources, facilitated by political corruption at the highest levels of government, and enforced through the militarization of the country and the criminalization with impunity of all those who dissent.
“...and corruption at the top destroying the people at the bottom.”
I had a friend at college that was from Honduras. He said when he entered the US for college he had a $20 bill tucked in his passport. The US Customs guy laughed and said “You don’t need to do that in the US - with ANYBODY.” My friend said in order to do anything down there it was a bribe. mechanics, plumbers, etc.
Towards the end of the year I asked if he would be returning to school. “It depends on who gets elected. There’s basically two families in Honduras. The president now is my family. If the other guy gets elected I’ll have to stay and someone in his family will come here instead.”