Violence, evictions & impoverishment of the global economy are political persecution: The U.S., Canada & ‘international community’ are helping produce forced migrancy flight from Honduras & Guatemala
By Grahame Russell, director Rights Action

There is no end in sight as to why tens of thousands of Hondurans and Guatemalans will continue to flee home and country, year after year.  In 2018-2019, the numbers spiked to 100s of thousands.
 
People anywhere would leave all behind for the same reasons:

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Living without legal documentation in the U.S. or Canada, cut off from family and friends, taking whatever underpaid job one might find, receiving no public benefits, living in fear of jail and deportation, are better life options than the conditions Hondurans and Guatemalans are forced to flee.
 
Media not reporting on complicity of U.S., Canada & ‘international community’
The mainstream media in Canada and U.S. have been reporting on the huge numbers of Hondurans and Guatemalans trying to cross Mexico and enter the U.S. to apply for asylum or residency, or to slip into society and get any jobs they might find. Media coverage divides generally into two camps.
 
One camp focuses (sometimes quite movingly) on the suffering of forced migrants:

This camp argues that all migrants and asylum deserve humane treatment and a legal process for being able to stay in the U.S., or have their petitions denied.
 
The second media camp vociferously and sometimes racistly denigrates the forced migrants as criminals, rapists, gang members, people coming to steal jobs from U.S. citizens, etc.  This camp encourages all measures to physically keep forced migrants out of the U.S., or to criminalize, jail and then deport those who enter the U.S.

Recently, a few media outlets have reported on how “climate change” is devastating parts of Guatemala and Honduras, particularly in the ‘dry corridor’ that passes through both countries, and how this also is forcing impoverished and desperate people to flee home and country. (“Hunger driving migration in drought-hit Central America: U.N.”, August 14, 2019, www.reuters.com)
 
Yet it is astonishing to read, month after month, reports about the forced migrancy situation and not read a single commentary about how the U.S. and Canadian governments and other actors in the ‘international community maintain full and beneficial economic, political and military relations with the very regimes in Guatemala and Honduras responsible for the conditions forcing people to flee.
 
It is astonishing to read about “climate change” worsening the ‘now-permanent-crisis-situation’ in Central America, with no commentary about the underlying political and economic causes of it.
 
Community defense struggles - versus - the global economy
Since 1995 in Guatemala and 1998 in Honduras, Rights Action has been funding and working with land, human rights and environmental defenders resisting forced evictions, human rights violations and environmental harms caused by different sectors of the global economy in partnership with corrupt and repressive governments, military and police in both countries.
 

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Every one of these struggles is related directly to why Hondurans and Guatemalans are forced to flee home and country, year after year.
 
Chixoy dam
For over 15 years, Rights Action supported victim-survivors of the 1982 Chixoy dam massacres that killed over 440 people from the Mayan Achi village of Rio Negro, forcibly evicted 32 communities and, since then, devastated living habitats and the environmental along and around the Chixoy river. This ‘economic development project’ repression was carried out by the U.S.-backed military regimes of generals Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt in partnership with the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank – the principal investors in the Chixoy dam project. No justice was done for the atrocities caused by this “economic development” project. The World Bank and IDB - that profited from their investments - avoided any political and legal accountability for the death and destruction they caused.
 

Since 2005, Rights Action has supported Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities suffering and resisting forced evictions, killings and repression, environmental and health harms linked to Canadian and U.S. companies: Goldcorp Inc. in Guatemala and Honduras; Aura Minerals in Honduras; Hudbay Minerals/ Skye Resources/ INCO in Guatemala; Tahoe Resources/ Pan American Silver in Guatemala; KCA/Radius Gold in Guatemala. Investors in these mines include: U.S. and Canadian pension funds, shareholders, private investors, trusts, endowments, the World Bank, etc.
 
Except for the landmark Hudbay Minerals and recently settled Tahoe Resources/ Pan American Silver lawsuit, working their ways through Canadian courts, no justice or accountability has been done in Honduras, Guatemala, Canada or the U.S. for any mining-caused violence and killings, harms and evictions.
 
Tourism
Since before the U.S. and Canadian-backed military coup in Honduras in 2009, and worsening considerably since then, tourism investors from Canada and the U.S. have used corruption, violence and forced evictions to get control of lands of the Indigenous Garifuna people, to then build condos and holiday enclaves for North American and European tourists.

Dams
Beyond the Chixoy dam massacres and destruction, Rights Action has supported other communities in Guatemala and Honduras suffering and resisting evictions and repression caused by internationally-financed dam projects. The most known struggle is that of the Lenca people in western Honduras resisting evictions, repression and criminalizations due to the Agua Zarca dam that resulted in the assassination of Berta Caceres and attempted killing of Gustavo Castro. The trial against the ‘material authors’ of Berta’s assassination and shooting of Gustavo Castro goes painstakingly forward. To date, no justice has been done whatsoever for the ‘intellectual authors’ - the Honduran economic and political elites who planned and paid for the assassination team.
 
African palm & sugarcane
Since 2010 in the Aguan region of northern Honduras, and Polochic region of eastern Guatemala, Rights Action has provided emergency funding to family members of people killed and evicted by wealthy elites using military, police and hired gun violence to take their lands for the expanded production of African palm and sugar cane. The demand for both has spiked as food products and as a source of “green energy” biofuels. The World Bank is a major investor/ profiteer.
 
The global economy exports consumer products and desperate people
The oppression and violence of the global economic model can be seen most stunningly in the ‘for-export’ production of African palm, sugar cane, cotton, cattle-for-meat, bananas and pineapples.
 
Hundreds of thousands of acres of Guatemala’s and Honduras’s richest lands – mainly lowlands with access to fresh water year round – are controlled by the ruling elites and foreign interests, and used to produce ‘for-export’ consumer products at the very same time as caravans of desperately poor, landless people are forcibly exported.
 
There is no dry season, there is no drought in the ‘for-export’ sectors of the global economy that produce mono-culture products year round.
 
As top priority policy, the U.S. and Canadian governments and other ‘international community’ actors support – via “free trade” agreements, government “aid” programs, World Bank and IMF loans, etc. - the endless expansion of global corporate and investor interests in all these sectors of the economy, ignoring human rights violations, forced evictions, crimes and other harms; ignoring how these sectors of the global economy control (oftentimes violently and illegally) the best lands of both countries, forcing impoverished campesinos onto dry, uncultivable lands.
 
“Shithole countries”
During a January 2018 meeting the U.S., president Trump said: “Why do we want all these people from shithole countries coming here?"
 
While the president’s denigrating, racist comments were denounced, in many ways this is how the U.S., Canada and other ‘international community’ actors treat the majority populations and environments of Honduras and Guatemala.
 
For global companies and investors, Honduras and Guatemala are places where:

Captive labor: No human rights, environmental or labor standards, No mobility
Companies, investors, countries and persons involved in the production, export and consumption of these products from Honduras and Guatemala are, directly or directly, contributing to and benefitting from some of the reasons why people are forced to flee home and country.
 
In many ways, what is happening in Honduras and Guatemala is a blatant form of race-to-the-bottom-global-capitalism. In Honduras and Guatemala, the brutalized, evicted and destitute are not even allowed to “take their labor” and go elsewhere.
 
When forced to flee home and country in search of a bare minimum peaceful and subsistence life, they are “criminalized”, jailed, and forced home to the same conditions that forced them to flee.
 
Connecting the dots
Military coups, ‘for-export’ production and forced migrancy
To complete the picture, this unjust global economic order is kept in place by undemocratic, corrupt, violent governments in Honduras and Guatemala that have been put and/or kept in place to large degree by the government of the U.S. and Canada and other “international community” actors.
 
On June 27, 1954, Jacobo Arbenz – president of Guatemala’s last truly democratic government – was forced from office during a U.S. orchestrated military coup against his government.
 

  

“Glorious Victory” is Mexican painter Diego Rivera’s mural depicting the 1954 U.S. coup that ousted the government of President Arbenz. In the foreground, CIA director Allen Dulles shakes the hand of coup “leader” (selected by the U.S.) Colonel Castillo Armas. Allen Dulles’ left hand rests on a bomb with the face of President Dwight Eisenhower. Behind Allen, brother John Foster Dulles, head of the State Department, and John Peurifoy, Ambassador to Guatemala, hand out cash to Guatemalan military commanders. A Catholic priest officiates over the killing of Mayans and other poor Guatemalans, while exploited workers carry United Fruit Company bananas.
 
On June 28, 2009, Mel Zelaya – president of Honduras’ last democratically elected government – was forced out of the country in a military coup legitimized and supported by the U.S. and Canada.
 

 
Depicted here, Berta Caceres the widely respected Indigenous rights, anti-patriarchy, anti-imperialist, Mother Earth defender and organizer. Berta was assassinated March 2, 2016 by sectors of Honduras’ economic and military elites with links to the president’s office. Depicted here also is Edwin Espinal, who was recently released – yes, it is true! – from his illegal detention. For over 18 months, Edwin was held as a political prisoner in a max-security military jail, “awaiting trial” on a laundry list of trumped up charges.  After a courageous struggle, Edwin was finally released, though he still has to go “to trial” to confront the trumped up charges! (Image: Honduras Solidarity Network)
 
June 27, 1954 and June 28, 2009, mark the ends of short periods of peaceful, democratic governments that were actually implementing necessary economic, land, political and social reforms - more broadly in Guatemala, 1944-1954, less so in Honduras, 2005-2009.
 
These ‘regime change’ dates mark the return of “open for global business” policies benefitting multinational companies and investors in the sectors of sugarcane and African palm, bananas and pineapple, mining and privatized hydro-electric dams, tourism and “sweatshop” garment factories.
 
These dates mark a return to extreme exploitation in each of these sectors of the economy whose operations are characterized by evictions, human rights violations and repression.
 
Connecting the dots
“Democratic allies” in illegal regime change efforts in Venezuela
Not only are Honduras and Guatemala profitable places for global companies and banks, not only are the U.S. and Canadian governments responsible – directly and indirectly – for the military coups that brought back to power corrupt, repressive, pro-global business regimes in both countries, but over the past two years Guatemala and Honduras (along with other repressive, corrupt governments in Latin America) are considered “democratic allies” in support of the illegal U.S. and Canadian-led efforts to economically strangle, isolate and overthrow Venezuela’s government.
 
Fundamental inter-connectedness and co-responsibility
In many ways, this is where we are today. By design and operation, Guatemala and Honduras are violent, corrupt, refugee-producing countries. What is never addressed is the directly complicit role of the U.S., Canada and other actors in the ‘international community’.
 
In Honduras and Guatemala, no matter how hard and courageously people work to have their human rights, lands rights and environments protected, to restore fair elections and real democracy, as long as their economic, political and military elites maintain beneficial, empowering relations with other governments and a host of ‘international community’ actors, these regimes will continue to manipulate or openly steal elections, and use repression, corruption and impunity to keep in place exploitative, violent economic models … that force 10s of thousands of people to flee every year.
 
Work in support of refugees and forced migrants in the U.S. and Canada must continue:

Many “economic migrants” are refugees
There is a long-overdue challenge to work related to forced migrancy and refugee rights. Repeatedly, one is told that “economic migrants” cannot apply for political asylum. Yet in many regions of the world, particularly in exploited, abused countries of the global south such as Honduras and Guatemala, the global economy is imposed illegally and violently on vast numbers of impoverished, destitute people.
 
Even before local citizens are targeted for repression (killings, attacks, ‘criminalizations’, etc.) by the government or powerful private interests because they are protesting exploitation, evictions and destitution, it is the economic exploitation and evictions themselves that are government and private sector sanctioned violence.
 
The poverty and destitution that the global economy creates and forces people into are life-threatening violence, are political violence.
 

(Feel free re-post and share this article.
Grahame Russell is a non-practicing Canadian lawyer; adjunct professor
at University of Northern British Columbia; and, since 1995, director of Rights Action)
 

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