A caravan of human tragedy
As the world watches the slow but determined progress of the so-called “caravan” of migrants making their way on foot across southern Mexico towards the United States, much of the focus has been on the political turmoil surrounding the cruelly bombastic utterances of U.S. president Donald J. Trump and the game of human chess being played by the Mexican government.
What has received less attention is the far more compelling story of what led roughly 7,000 desperate souls, mostly from Honduras, to flee their homeland and undertake a journey fraught with peril and hardship, where over each day hangs the threat of death or deportation.
Honduras is the murder capital of the world, with more than 90 out of every 100,000 Hondurans slain last year. That’s nearly one of every thousand people, twice the murder rate the Central American nation saw two decades ago and 20 times that of the United States. It’s little wonder, therefore, that the risk of dying on the road seems preferable to many over taking their chances daily in a country plagued by unchecked gang violence.
As the international media descended on Tapachula, Mexico near the Guatemalan border, cameras quickly found the hungry faces of the children -- infants and toddlers clinging to parents and siblings, their weary eyes filled with trepidation. Men and women shared the stories that have been told far too often in recent years: one or both parents murdered by gangs or police and the remaining family members leaving all they own behind and setting off on an almost inconceivable trek northward, motivated not by dreams of prosperity but by the simple hope of survival.
It is a human tragedy of epic proportions, but not in the eyes of Trump, who sees only a political opportunity on the eve of midterm elections that threaten his party’s control of congress. In full campaign mode, Trump – with, as usual, no evidence to support his claims – falsely stated at rallies and on Twitter that the “caravan” is made up of dangerous individuals intent on causing harm to the United States.
“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States,” Trump tweeted, “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in.”
It was yet another blatant attempt at pandering to the most racist and xenophobic of his supporters, a gambit designed to energize the GOP’s far right as the November 6 election draws near, and Trump doubled down by threatening to send the U.S. military to intervene and seal off the border with Mexico.
“I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy,” Trump wrote, his inability to spell exceeded only by his apparent utter lack of compassion. “Must change laws!”
Trump has continually claimed to be a champion of “law and order,” making his threats towards the caravan of refugees seem especially hypocritical. As a party to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, the cornerstone of international law governing how nations are to deal with and protect refugees and asylum seekers, the United States is legally obligated to process each claim for asylum, give special protection to women and children, and treat all applicants with dignity and respect. And yet Trump persists in thumbing his nose at international law, both by his threats to use the U.S. military to confront thousands of asylum seekers and by his bullying of the government of Enrique Pena Nieto in what many in the United States’ neighbor to the south see as an infringement on Mexican sovereignty.
But for Maria Irias Rodriguez, a 17-year-old migrant who fled Honduras with her 8-month-old daughter, 2-year-old son and husband, politics and the brinksmanship of self-serving leaders are proving no deterrent to the young woman’s determination to protect her family.
“We want to get to the United States,” Rodriguez told the New York Times with most of the 1,600 mile journey from Tegucigalpa to Brownsville still ahead of her. “If they stop us now, we’ll just come back a second time.” (La Semana)