Despair is growing in Honduras, beaten, fueling migration

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) – Nory Yamileth Hernández and her three teenage children have been living in a 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 noisy traffic, surrounded by other storm refugees, when Hurricane Iota hit only two weeks later. And when the first migrant caravan of the year passed 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,” said Hernandez, 34. He joined the first large caravan in October 2018, but did not arrive in Mexico until he returned. She’s sure she’ll try again soon. “There is a lot of suffering.”

In San Pedro Sula, the economic engine of Honduras and the gateway for thousands of Honduran migrants in recent years, families like Hernández’s are trapped in a migration cycle. Poverty and gang violence are pushing them into increasingly aggressive measures to stop them, led by the United States government, sparing their efforts and sending them back.

The economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastation caused by the November hurricanes added only to those driving forces. The word of a new administration in the US, with an easier approach to migrants, raised hopes.

After the failed attempt to migrate in 2018, Hernández returned to earn a living in San Pedro Sula. Last year, he sold door-to-door underwear in one of the country’s most dangerous neighborhoods. But the storms wiped out her inventory, and her customers had a limited ability to pay for the items they bought on credit.

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

Chamelecon is a neighborhood of small 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.

At the bridge where Hernández’s tent is set up, the young tattooed people smoke marijuana, and the inhabitants bow with rubber boots. The violence continues, with newspapers talking about finding the bodies wrapped in plastic.

In December, Hernandez fell ill with fever, nausea, and, she said, his brain ached. She went to a hospital, but was never tested for COVID-19. In January, her eldest son writhed in their tent with a fever.

The father of her youngest son lives in Los Angeles and encouraged her to raise money together for another trip. “He told me it would be good this year because they got rid of Trump and the new president was going to help migrants,” Hernandez said.

Within weeks, US President Joe Biden signed nine executive orders revoking Trump’s measures related to family separation, border security and immigration. But, fearing rising immigration, the administration also sent the message that little would change quickly for migrants arriving at the southern border of the United States.

Hernández recently found a job cleaning up the flooded streets, but has not yet been able to approach the house where he once lived with 11 other people. It is still filled with a few inches of mud and dirty water.

The assembly plants surrounding San Pedro Sula and fueling its economy are not yet back to pre-hurricane capacity in the midst of the pandemic.

The Sula Valley, the most agriculturally productive in Honduras, has been hit so hard that international organizations have warned of a food crisis. The world food program says 3 million Hondurans face food insecurity, six times higher than before. Two hurricanes affected about 4 million of Honduras’ 10 million people. The area is also Honduras most affected 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 are suffering from poverty, violence, hurricanes, unemployment, domestic violence and, with that dream of a new administration (USA), of new opportunities, they will try (to migrate) again and again.”

The last few caravan attempts have been destroyed, first in Mexico and later in Guatemala, but the daily flow of migrants moved by smugglers continues and has shown signs of growth. The hope and misinformation associated with the new US administration also helps that business.

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

In January, San Pedro Sula was full of migration plans.

Gabriela, 29, feeling she had nothing to lose, left for the north a few days before several thousand Hondurans left San Pedro Sula on January 15. He had lost his pandemic cleaning job and the rest of his life after the hurricanes. . She asked to keep her full name, because she had arrived in southern Mexico and was afraid of being targeted.

Gabriela paid for a smuggler, paid the authorities along the route and went 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 reopen, but in the suburbs, the streets are still full of debris, dead animals, snakes and burning mattresses.

“Everyone wanted to leave,” said Juan Antonio Ramirez, an elderly resident. His children and grandchildren were among about 30 people who spent six days stranded on a corrugated metal roof surrounded by floodwaters in November. “A lot of people left here, but they all came back. The problem is that there is a barrier and they are sending them back from Guatemala. “

After the 2018 caravans and the increased number of migrants at the US border in early 2019, the US government has put pressure on countries in Mexico and Central America to do more to slow migration on their territories. The numbers fell in the second half of 2019, and Mexico and Guatemala actually stopped caravans in 2020. In December, a caravan leaving San Pedro Sula did not even leave Honduras.

But the United States has reported an increasing number of meetings at the border, showing that beyond caravans, the flow of migration is increasing again.

In September, Lisethe Contreras’ husband arrived in Miami. A resident of La Lima said it took him three months and $ 12,000 paid for smugglers. She is thinking of going too, but for the moment she has her small business that sells basic necessities.

Biden has promised to invest in Central America to address 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 attachments attached.

Hernández admits confusion and disappointment. “I don’t know. … Everyone promises and then they won’t continue,” she said. “I don’t see a good future here.”

Gabriela, already halfway to her goal of arriving in the United States, has no plans to return, even after 19 people, believed to be mostly Guatemalan migrants, were found shot and burned in northern Mexico. across from Texas.

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