Movement of the people: the migrant caravan set for the US

As a migrant caravan snakes it ways across Central America towards the US border, the issue of immigration is once again making headlines and being exploited by Donald Trump as America heads into midterm elections

THEY move at a snail’s pace, anywhere between 10 and 30 miles a day. At times their journey has taken on the appearance of some biblical exodus as they snake their way across Central America, Honduras, Guatemala and now Mexico.

Among their number are entire families, women with toddlers in pushchairs, people in wheelchairs. The majority carry their worldly possessions in threadbare bags. At times they have numbered more than 7,000, but occasionally that dwindles as exhaustion, searing tropical temperatures and lack of food have taken their toll.

It was earlier this month on October 12, in the crime-ridden Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, when a group of 160 people gathered at a bus terminal and prepared to set off on this dangerous journey, some motivated by online messaging.

“The violence and poverty is expelling us,” read the online slogan circulating on social media in Honduras showing a lone migrant sketched against a bright red backdrop.

It was the work of left activists who had helped lead migrants north in the past, but also an effort to undermine newly re-elected president Juan Orlando Hernandez and call attention to the plight of migrants.

Little did they know then that the campaign that began as a domestic dispute in Honduras would mushroom into a political football drawing global attention. Here was yet another chapter unfolding in the mass movement of people that has arguably become one of the biggest stories of our time.

As the current migrant caravan has moved closer to the US border, so the language from Washington has become excoriating.

With the country facing midterm elections, President Donald Trump has pulled out all the stops to use the caravan to stoke fears about foreigners as the poll approaches on November 6.

Trump, who has recently been stumping for congressional Republicans, has already dubbed the poll the “election of the caravan”.

“Every time you see a Caravan,” he tweeted last week,“or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms!”

Although the caravan is still some 1,000 miles from the US border, Trump has hit his favourite cable news TV shows and been tweeting non- stop, hoping his strategy will pay off in the final two weeks before election day.

“Hardened criminals” and “unknown Middle Easterners” are among the migrants’ ranks he insists, even though there is no evidence to suggest this is the case.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also sounded the alarm, calling it a “moment of crisis” for the US while 800 American troops will be deployed to the Mexican border to cope with the “threat”.

Despite such US claims of an unprecedented crisis, the fact is that migrant caravans are nothing new.

For years, an annual caravan of Central American migrants travelling through Mexico to the US border received modest publicity until Trump condemned it in April, pitching the procession into the glare of the world’s media and into the homes of thousands of potential migrants. What the Trump administration fails to mention though is that much of the current migrant situation is largely blowback as a result of US polices in Central America. Yes, the region is a mess and local elites and corruption are partly to blame, with some of the countries ranking among the most corrupt in the world. But so, too, is the US, given its decades of meddling in Central America.

Over the years, with CIA backing, coups have been staged in countries like Guatemala. In El Salvador, there was US support for a military junta while in Honduras, the Reagan administration used the country as a staging post for the far-right guerrilla group the Contras to prosecute a civil war in neighbouring Nicaragua against the leftist Sandinista government

All of these US-inspired actions not only helped destabilised the Central American region, but subjected generations to a cycle of extreme poverty and violence.

President Donald Trump has pulled out all the stops to use the caravan to stoke fears about foreigners