La Lima, Cortés
Emerson sells bananas on the side of a dusty street in La Lima, northern Honduras, but hopes to stop doing so soon and migrate to the United States. He believes President-elect Joe Biden will let him get there.
After two cyclones damaged his home and his school closed due to the pandemic, the 18-year-old believes there is not much left to do here.
“We hope it changes, that it benefits us” the departure of Donald Trump and the arrival of the Democrat Biden on Jan. 20, he says Emerson Lopez to AFP from the Bon Samarità neighborhood, on the outskirts of Lima, 180 km north of Tegucigalpa and adjacent to San Pedro Sula, the starting point for other caravans of migrants who have tried to reach the United States since 2018.
Following the outgoing administration’s restrictive policies, many of Honduras ’nearly 9.5 inhabitants believe that roads are now being paved. A new caravan of migrants was summoned on 15 January. “If they come in well, most of us here are going to make the decision to leave later,” Emerson adds.
– Cyclone damage –
La Lima, with 90,000 inhabitants, shows signs of the destruction left by Cyclones Eta and Iota in November. The floods caused Bon Samaritan to arrive, as did several communities in the productive Sula Valley, the heart of the country’s economy.
Tropical storms and the closure of covid-19 in 2020 cost Honduras, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, about $ 5 billion, according to government estimates, about one-fifth of the world’s GDP. country.
The banana crops of the transnational Chiquita, around Lima, were devastated.
Emerson’s home, where he lives with his parents and four younger siblings, was left without a roof. And without a school, closed by the coronavirus, she lost hope of graduating in computer science.
With this scenario, “should I make the decision to leave, how am I going to get a job without experience and without enough age?” He complains.
– “Fighting” –
Martha Saldívar, a neighbor of Emerson, is also getting ready to leave for the United States.
“It has been heard that Biden is going to remove the wall [que construye Trump en la frontera] and it will be necessary to fight “to get there, says the 51-year-old woman, in front of her house, still surrounded by rubble and without a piece of roof.
Since December, there have been calls on social networks for the “Caravan 15 January 2021”, which is scheduled to leave the Honduran San Pedro Sula and to add along the way to Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Mexicans attracted by the “American dream.”
lots of Hondurans they want to be part of the more than one million compatriots living abroad – mostly in the United States – a powerful resource for the country, which in 2020 received from them the record of nearly $ 6 million in remittances , more than 20% of gross domestic product (GDP). Remittances represent 14% of Guatemala’s GDP and 16% in El Salvador.
But Esteban Rosales, pastor of a Pentecostal temple in the area affected by the floods, tries to convince them to stay.
“Church members have considered leaving. One as a pastor motivates them why not, that the struggle continues. God allowed us to stay alive so that we could move forward,” he says.
Since October 2018, more than a dozen caravans have left from Honduras, at least four of them made up of up to 3,000 people. But they have clashed with immigration controls at the U.S. border, and are increasingly being held back by Mexican and Guatemalan authorities.
The Guatemalan government warned that foreigners entering its territory will have to present a negative proof of covid-19 and documents in order.
Meanwhile, the Mexican consulate in San Pedro Sula assured that its government “does not promote, nor will it allow the irregular entry of caravans of migrants.”
– “Chance to work” –
As a reminder of the difficulties, several flights with deportees arrive weekly in Central America, although their numbers decreased last year due to the pandemic.
But Cecilia Arévalo, 54, who lives in California two decades ago and recently returned to visit relatives on the outskirts of San Salvador, hopes that “with Biden, migration laws in the United States will change and become more humane.”
15 kms south, in Sant Tomàs, Cristian Panameny shares optimism.
“I think with this new president, things are for one migrant coming without papers change, because with Trump we’re fucked, ”says the 42-year-old mechanic, who after being deported has saved up by trying to migrate a second time.
“If I get to the United States I aspire to be given a chance to work.”