Despair grows in battered Honduras, which fuels migration

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) – Nory Yamileth Hernandez and her three teenage children have been living in a battered tent under a bridge on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula since Hurricane Eta flooded their home in November.

They were there in the dust under the roaring traffic, surrounded by other storm refugees, when Hurricane Iota barely hit two weeks later. And when the first caravan of migrants of the year appeared in January, only fear and empty pockets prevented them from joining the growing exodus from Honduras.

“I cried because I don’t want to be here anymore,” Hernandez, 34, said. He had joined the first large caravan in October 2018, but did not arrive in Mexico before returning. I’m sure he’ll try again soon. “There’s a lot of suffering.”

In San Pedro Sula, the economic engine of Honduras and the gateway for thousands of Honduran immigrants in recent years, families like Hernández are trapped in a migratory cycle. Poverty and gang violence drive them out, and increasingly aggressive measures to stop them, driven by the U.S. government, escape their efforts and return them.

The economic damage from the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastation caused by the November hurricanes have only added to these driving forces. The news of a new administration in the United States with a softer focus on migrants has also raised hopes.

After his failed attempt to migrate in 2018, Hernandez took his own life in San Pedro Sula. Last year he sold door-to-door lingerie in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. But the storms wiped out his inventory and his customers had limited ability to pay for the items they bought on credit.

“I couldn’t charge people because we all lost,” Hernandez said. “We all have needs, but we must be sensitive. They have nothing to pay with and why go to charge? ”

Chamelecon is a neighborhood of low-rise houses with tin roofs and small shops with barred windows on the outskirts of the city. Only two of its streets are paved, including one that is the dividing line between rival gangs Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18.

On the bridge where Hernández’s tent is set up, tattooed young people smoke marijuana and neighbors slip on rubber boots. The violence continues and newspapers talk about finding bodies wrapped in plastic.

In December, Hernandez became ill with fever, nausea and, according to her, her brain hurt. He went to a hospital, but was never tested for COVID-19. In January, her eldest son writhed in his tent with a fever.

The father of her young son lives in Los Angeles and encouraged her to get money together for another trip. “He told me that this year will go well because they had gotten rid of Trump and the new president was going to help the migrants,” Hernandez said.

Within weeks, U.S. President Joe Biden signed nine executive orders to reverse Trump’s measures related to family separation, border security and immigration. But for fear of increased immigration, the administration also sent the message that little will change quickly for immigrants arriving on the southern U.S. border.

Hernandez recently found work cleaning up flooded streets, but has yet to be able to cope with the house where he once lived with 11 other people. It is still full of several inches of mud and dirty water.

The assembly plants surrounding San Pedro Sula and fueling its economy have not yet returned to pre-hurricane capacity amid the pandemic.

The Sula Valley, Honduras ’most productive agricultural country, has been so damaged that international organizations have warned of a food crisis. According to the World Food Program, 3 million Hondurans face food insecurity, six times higher than before. Dual hurricanes affected approximately 4 million of Honduras ’10 million people. The area is also the most affected by Honduras by COVID-19 infections.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” said Dana Graber Ladek, head of the International Organization for Migration’s office in Mexico. “They suffer from poverty, violence, hurricanes, unemployment, domestic violence and, with the dream of a new (US) administration, of new opportunities, they will try to (migrate) over and over again.”

Recent caravan attempts have been thwarted, first in Mexico and then in Guatemala, but the daily flow of immigrants displaced by smugglers continues and has shown signs of increase. The hope and misinformation associated with the new U.S. administration also help this business.

“Traffickers use this opportunity of despair, of political change in the United States to spread rumors and false information,” Graber Ladek said.

In January, San Pedro Sula was full of plans to emigrate.

Gabriela, 29, feeling she had nothing to lose, left for the north a few days before a few thousand Hondurans left San Pedro Sula on January 15th. He had lost his cleaning job in the pandemic and the rest of his life due to the hurricanes. . He asked that his full name be retained because he had reached southern Mexico and feared being targeted.

Gabriela paid for a smuggler, paid the authorities along her route, and walked through the jungle as part of her journey north.

He had lived in La Lima, a suburb of San Pedro Sula. Small businesses there have begun to open, but in the suburbs the streets are still full of rubble, dead animals, snakes and burning mattresses.

“Everyone wanted to leave,” said Juan Antonio Ramirez, a senior resident. Their children and grandchildren were part of some 30 people who spent six days stranded on a corrugated metal roof surrounded by water in November. “A lot of people left, but they all came back. The problem is that there is a barrier and they are coming back from Guatemala ”.

Following the 2018 caravans and the increase in the number of migrants on the U.S. border in early 2019, the U.S. government pressured countries in Mexico and Central America to do more to curb migration through of their territories. Figures fell in the second half of 2019 and Mexico and Guatemala stopped caravans in 2020. In December, a caravan leaving San Pedro Sula did not even leave Honduras.

But the United States has reported a growing number of encounters at the border, showing that beyond caravans, the migratory flow is increasing again.

In September, Lisethe Contreras’ husband arrived in Miami. La Lima’s neighbor said it cost him three months and $ 12,000 paid to the smugglers. He’s also thinking about going there, but for now he has his small business selling staples.

Biden has promised that investment in Central America will reach the root causes of immigration, but no one expects to see any change soon. Honduras ’primary elections are scheduled for March and non-governmental organizations are concerned that any aid will come with political ropes.

Hernandez admits confusion and disillusionment. “I don’t know. … They all promise and then they don’t deliver,” he said. “I don’t see a good future here.”

Gabriela, already in the middle of her goal of arriving in the United States, does not plan to think about going back, even after 19 people, who are believed to be mostly Guatemalan migrants, were found shot and burned in northern Mexico. , right next to Texas.

“I will only return to Honduras if immigration returns me,” he said. “And if that happens, I’ll try again with my son.”