One of the mostly Honduran refugees waiting 10 days ago in Chiquimula, Guatelmala, to continue her journey north to escape dire conditions in her homeland. Violence and poverty are the usual reasons given. But both those impacts are being exacerbated by drought that scientists say could be the result of climate change.
Over the past three weeks, a migrant group that started with fewer than 200 people grew into thousands as it wound its way through Honduras, Guatemala, and now Mexico, headed for El Norte, the United States. In what has become known as the caravan, the migrants have simultaneously encountered barricades and generosity in their flight from dire situations in their homelands.
The Trump regime and its proxies have greeted the caravan with hostility that has included anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing about who organized it, Islamaphobic nonsense about ISIS terrorists concealed in its numbers, and the usual racist tropes about the alleged evils of brown people. And now the plan is to greet however many of their dwindling and exhausted numbers make it to the border with several thousand well-armed U.S. soldiers.
Most of the people in the caravan, 80 percent according to some reports, come from Honduras. But since 2014, there has been a steady exodus of migrants from Honduras and two other Central American nations—Guatemala and El Salvador—still plagued by the residual impacts of Cold War policies that generated civil war, indigenous genocide, and death squads, while exacerbating the deep poverty that had spurred leftist revolutionaries to topple or try to topple powerful, U.S.-backed leaders.
While guerrilla fighters have surrendered their guns for a more peaceful politics, endemic corruption, and organized crime made worse by the spread of street gangs have replaced internecine wars as the cause of thousands of civilians winding up dead.
Many of the vile social conditions that spurred warfare a few decades ago are worse than ever. Tens of thousands of Central Americans are understandably fleeing. Not usually in caravans but alone, with their immediate family, or in small groups. It’s an incredibly difficult and dangerous trip, even more so for the many thousands of children who head north on their own. It’s not unusual for them to simply disappear along the way, fate unknown.
And there is now a factor at work that is worsening poverty and violence and the desperate behavior they breed: climate change. That could ultimately mean millions will be headed to El Norte.
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