Addressing the “root cause” of the immigration crisis on our southern border
Once again, the United States is confronted with a “border crisis”— a growing surge of desperate Central Americans fleeing in caravans toward our southern border. The Biden-Harris administration, pressed to manage this immigration crisis, often cites the need to address its root cause, without saying what the root cause is and what policies would be most appropriate.
What, then, is the root cause of the border crisis? From interviews we know that most of the migrants arriving at our border are not coming primarily in search of the American dream. Rather they are coming mainly because they are fleeing the economic, political, and violent nightmare that the history of United States policies has created and maintained in their countries.
Ever since the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has treated Central America (indeed, Latin America!) as “our backyard,” imposing policy interventions that have caused and perpetuated poverty, inequality along with political repression, and human rights violations throughout the region. All U.S. governments, whether under Republican and Democratic administrations, have consistently adopted policies putting the U.S. on the wrong side of the struggles for human rights, democracy, and justice in Central America.
Thomas Carothers, a State Department official working on U.S. “democracy enhancement projects” during the Reagan Administration, put it this way: “Washington only adopted “pro-democracy policies as a means of relieving pressure for more radical change....but inevitably sought only limited, top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the traditional structures of power with which the U.S. has long been allied. Its impulse is to promote democratic change, but the underlying objective is to maintain the basic order of what, historically, are quite undemocratic societies.”
In the civil wars of the 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S.-backed military and paramilitary forces committed widespread human rights atrocities that left hundreds of thousands dead and fueled a first wave of Central American migration to the U.S. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has tried to justify its continuing assistance to regional security forces by citing the need to combat drug-trafficking. U.S. agencies at least pretend to claim they prioritize the promotion of human rights. Nonetheless, U.S. trained and supported police and military forces continue to engage in countless abuses, including targeted attacks on activists, violent repression of popular protests and the forced displacement of communities.
In tandem with U.S. military and police support, the United States continues to intervene in Central American electoral processes; U.S. foreign aid is used as leverage along with other tactics to “rig” and “steal” democratic outcomes through voter suppression and outright repression. Right-wing coup d’etats and Constitutional violations are labeled as “fake news,” then blessed as legitimate and worthy of continued U.S. support. Together with the IMF and multilateral development banks, this all serves to reinforce and maintain neo-liberal economic policies and a “favorable investment climate” for national and multinational corporations profiting from natural resource extraction and worker exploitation.
A large number of the Central American migrants fleeing their nightmare conditions are Hondurans. Therefore, the recent history of U.S. policy interventions in Honduras offers a case study of the root cause of the U.S. border crisis.
In 2009, Honduran popular struggles for democracy, justice and peace were destroyed when President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported a military coup d’etat against the Constitutional President Zelaya, then attempting to adopt democratic reforms. This imposition of a corrupt, violent, narco-dictatorship only intensified the Honduran nightmare. Honduras plunged into the worst social, economic, and political crisis of its history. Extreme inequality, poverty, political and gang violence, all deepened creating a massive exodus of displaced families abandoning their homes for refuge in the U.S.
In 2017, the Trump administration imposed the narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernandez on Honduras for a second term in a clearly “rigged,” illegal “re-election.” Now, in 2021, the Biden-Harris administration promises to address the “root cause” of the massive Honduran exodus to our border. Yet, instead of calling for free and fair elections, Biden and Harris have remained silent as U.S. prosecutors in New York now have linked the Honduran President to violent cocaine trafficking. [“Prosecutor: Honduran President Involved in Cocaine Trafficking Plot, Press Democrat, April 1, 2021.]
Summing up, all U.S. governments, whether under Democratic or Republican administrations, have been consistently on the wrong side of the struggles for human rights, democracy, and justice in Central America (and throughout Latin America). We need to acknowledge this history of U.S. military, political, and economic policy interventions in Central America. Only then can we mobilize pressure on U.S. policy makers to fundamentally change our foreign policies to address the root cause of why so many are fleeing the nightmare of poverty, political violence, and climate destruction in their home countries.
Please contact the Biden-Harris Administration to:
1. End U.S. recognition and financing of unconstitutional, illegitimate, regimes; adopt new U.S. policies to promote and support popular movements for human rights, democracy, and self-determination in Central America.
2. End U.S. security assistance to military and police in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador because of their ongoing abuses of human rights.
3. Channel higher levels of U.S. foreign aid through multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations along with input from in-country defenders of human rights.
John is a resident of Sonoma and can be reached at donnellyj63@gmail.com.
