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Map: University of Texas

On World Environment Day, June 5, some 16,000 people in San Salvador took to the streets for the 19th annual Caminata Ecológica (Ecological Walk), calling for land and water rights and an end to the government’s water privatization policies. This annual urban pilgrimage began in 2000 and traditionally ends at the presidential residence, where a letter is delivered outlining demands. This year, however, the Caminata was stopped several blocks short of its destination by riot police and barbed-wire barricades, preventing marchers from delivering the letter. Demands included approval of a General Water Law that would guarantee the right to water and community control of water management. The Caminata also called for urgent attention to contamination of the Río Lempa by mining projects in neighboring Guatemala and Honduras that impact the cross-border basin  (CISPES, June 14)

We’ve noted before the roots of the current massive migration from Central America in the political economy of the free trade order. The US-led repression and counter-insurgency in the isthmus in the 1980s allowed the imposition of “free trade” or “neoliberal” regimes in the generation since then—ultimately culminating in the passage of CAFTA. This, in turn, has exacerbated the expropriation from the peasantry of their traditional lands by agribusiness and agro-export oligarchies. But this dynamic is now being augmented by factors related to political ecology—the degradation of the land itself due to climate destabilization.

Both these factors were touched upon in a Public Radio International report on April 24:

The decline of El Salvador’s coffee industry goes back decades and is the result of a lot of problems: the low price of coffee on the market, lack of investment in the farms and agricultural pests. But farmers, agricultural experts and environmental academics also point to another factor compounding the challenges: climate change.

Coffee exports, once the backbone of El Salvador’s economy, have fallen by more than half in the last 10 years, according to the Salvadoran Coffee Council. And as production has plummeted, work has dried up. El Salvador’s coffee industry has lost more than 80,000 jobs over the same period, contributing to the wave of migration north.

Nearly 20% of the population of this tiny Central American country now lives in the US.

Paul Hicks of Catholic Relief Services is quoted: “In past decades, you had hundreds of thousands of people working on coffee farms to harvest coffee and to process it. Because of the low production and low investment in coffee, a lot of those farm workers are choosing to migrate to earn seasonal income rather than to work on coffee farms.”

In addition to factors related to corporate globalization, coffee production is being hit hard by a long drought and the effects of La Roya, or coffee leaf rust. A PBS News Hour notes that these last two factors are also related, as La Roya thrives in hot arid arid conditions.

The World Bank estimates that climate change could displace somewhere between a million and a half to nearly 4 million people in Mexico and Central America over the next 30 years. This reality of somewhat obscured by the facts that the United Nations does not label those forced to migrate due to climate change as “climate refugees.” A change in language would require an agreement among member-states expanding the definition of a refugees—currently defined as “someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence.” (IPS, June 12)

The expropriation of the peasantry under the free-trade order has also sent the dispossessed of Central America into urban slums and the rainforests within the isthmus. Colonization of the eastern rainforests by displaced peasants has been encouraged by successive governments as a kind of social safety valve. This has, of course, resulted in devastation of these forests—itself fueling climate change regionally and globally.

President Donald Trump’s decision to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras for their supposed failure to halt migration to the north is only likely to deepen the social pressures and contradictions in the isthmus—contributing further to misery, displacement and, ultimately, migration. (Reuters, June 17)

Photo: IOM

This represents a critical turning point. Immigrants are the proverbial canaries in the American coal-mine. The Trump crew are testing their methods on them because they are vulnerable, and banking on the likelihood that non-immigrants will say “not my problem.” But if they get away with what they are doing now to a vulnerable and isolated population of non-citizens, it sets a precedent—and ultimately nobody is safe. Which inevitably brings to mind the famous quote from Martin Niemöller, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, “First they came for…” Now they are coming for the immigrants—even those who are here legally and have been naturalized, or are serving in the armed forces as a path to citizenship. This is the turning point where an actually fascistic order can be consolidated in the United States. The good news is that Trump’s order was a response to popular protest and opposition, But it is imperative that we do not allow it to buy our complacency, but urgently build uncompromising civil resistance.

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Music: Let Them In by Soul Inscribed with Frank Waln

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Trump, evidently, would bring the US back nearly a century, to when the Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) established restrictive "quotas" from countries whose inhabitants were deemed undersirable, essentially cutting off immigration of Jews, Italians and Slavs. It also completely barred entry of Asians, finishing the work started with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. When all that nonsense was overturned by Congress in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1964 (Hart-Celler Act), a new general consensus was forged that it had all been racist and oppressive, and was consigned to the nation's past.

The fact that such thinking is being revived by the current occupant of the Oval Office is evidence of how dangerous and reactionary he and his supporters really are. They are trying to roll back generations of social progress. We cannot allow this kind of talk to be mainstreamed and become acceptable. The sooner he and his ilk are laughed off the political stage, the less lasting damage will be done to our democracy and our political culture.

And furthermore… What made these countries "shitholes," if by "shitholes" we mean places with deep poverty and chronic instability? The very "free trade" policies aggressively promoted by the United States over the past generations! As our contributor David Wilson wrote after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti:

Haiti pioneered export-based development plans in the 1970s under [US-backed dictator] Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc"). Once assembly plants started operating in Haiti, other parts of the region followed suit under the Reagan administration's 1984 Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI). The brief boom in the Caribbean apparel industry ended when jobs started going to Mexico because of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexican workers became still more "competitive" after 1994, thanks to an economic crisis and a currency devaluation (a de facto wage cut). The Mexicans in turn lost jobs to lower-paid Chinese workers as the new millennium started. Dominican and Central American manufacturers responded with DR-CAFTA and, predictably, more wage cuts. And yet the job losses have continued.

And even while it lasted, the job growth was insufficient to absorb all of those displaced from traditional economies by the "free trade" order. It was the expropriation of the Mexican peasantry by the flooding of the country with cheap US ag-biz corn and the privatization of their collective land-holdings after NAFTA that unleashed the subsequent waves of Mexican migration to Gringolandia. And now this history is repeating itself with CAFTA. It undermined the traditional peasant economy in Central America, and the narco-economy filled the vaccum, unleashing the violence that is now driving migrants north. Salvadorans were granted Temporary Protected Status after their country was devastated by multiple earthquakes in 2001, but there have since been calls to extend it to other Central American nations in response to the endemic narco-violence.

A final point is that left-populist governments in Central America and the Caribbean that sought to deviate from the "free trade" consensus have been overthrown in right-wing coups d'etat in which the US has, to degrees, acquiesced—with strong evidence of actual collaboration or direction by elements of the Washington intelligence establishment. The most recent obvious examples are Haiti 2004 and Honduras 2009.

And this same pattern of "free trade" aggressively promoted by the US and other neocolonial powers displacing peasant economies and deepening poverty has also been seen over the past generation in Africa.

Trump exploited legitimate anger over NAFTA, which fucked over working people both sides of the border. But this latest outburst shows again how he is linking rejection of "free trade" to the ugliest xenophobia. It's our job to build cross-border solidarity against both the "free trade" order and Trump's xenophobic police state.

Photo: Homeland Security's Otay Mesa Detention Center, BBC World Service via Flickr

One cause of poverty and violence in Honduras, according to the report, was the June 2009 coup that removed former president José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), with only token objections from the US government. "Since the 2009 coup, the ruling governments have failed to respect worker and human rights or create decent work, and instead have built a repressive security apparatus to put down dissent," the authors wrote. Another principal cause of the country's problems was the implementation of the 2004 Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). The delegation found that CAFTA-DR's "architecture of deregulation coupled with investor protection allowed companies to outsource labor-intensive components of their supply chains to locations with weak labor laws and low wages." The agreement "accelerated free market devastation," Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and a participant in the delegation, told a reporter. He noted "constant violations of organizing rights…that included everything from the murder of [union] leaders to the collapse of bargaining rights where they once existed."

"Failed trade and migration policies continue to exacerbate Honduras' problems," the report concludes. "The US government criminalizes migrant children and their families, while pursuing trade deals that simultaneously displace subsistence farmers and lower wages and standards across other sectors, and eliminate good jobs, intensifying the economic conditions that drive migration. This dynamic is enhanced in countries like Honduras, where the government's own policies leave workers and families vulnerable to abuse." (National Catholic Reporter, Jan. 28; The Nation, Feb. 6; Equal Times, Feb. 10)

Probably the best known of the displacements of subsistence farmers occurred in northern Honduras' Lower Aguán River Valley, where campesino groups struggling to regain their land have been victims of violence by the military and private security forces since 2009. A recent example was the forced disappearance of Cristian Alberto Martínez Pérez, a young activist in the Gregorio Chávez Campesino Movement (MCGC, also referred to as the Gregorio Chávez Collective), as he was riding his bicycle the evening of Jan. 29 near his home in Panamá community, Trujillo municipality, Colón department.

Human rights groups and several campesino organizations quickly responded to Martínez Pérez's disappearance by joining together in an intensive search. The youth was found alive—but tied up and dehydrated—a few meters from the Paso Aguán estate the morning of Feb. 1, about 62 hours after his abduction. He said he had been seized by a soldier and a security guard and confined to a vehicle, where he was questioned about his group's leaders and possible plans for an occupation of the estate. Paso Aguán is owned by Honduran entrepreneur and landowner Miguel Facussé Barjum and is guarded by soldiers and security employers of the powerful Corporación Dinant food-product company, which Facussé founded. At least two deaths have been reported on the estate in the past; the MCGC is apparently named for one of the victims. (Defensores en Línea, Feb. 3; Honduprensa, Feb. 5)

The Aguán campesino movement is the subject of a new documentary, Resistencia: The Film, which is premiering in Montreal on Feb. 20.

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, February 15.

The $1 billion proposal appears to be a more detailed version of a plan presented by Vice President Biden and the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in Washington on Nov. 14. It provides "over $400 million" for "trade facilitation" and other forms of economic development; "over $300 million" to "advance regional security efforts"; and "nearly $250 million" to "strengthen institutions," including "rule-of-law institutions" so that they can "better administer justice." In his op-ed Biden indicated that the US proposals for Central America are modeled on Plan Colombia, a $9 billion program started in 1999 as a "war on drugs" effort. The vice president claimed that Colombia is now "a nation transformed."

The economic reforms in the proposal are aimed at "creating business environments friendly to entrepreneurs." "Central American economies can grow only by attracting international investment," Biden wrote. The US is "ready to work" to help "ensure that local enterprises get the most out of existing free trade agreements," such as the 2004 Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). (White House Fact Sheet, Jan. 29; New York Times, Jan. 29)

Despite its neoliberal economic features, the proposal has the support of at least some center-left Latin American leaders, including Salvadoran president Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a leader in the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), once a leftist rebel group. With the US aid in the proposal "we have opportunities to go on working to guarantee you the right to education, to health, to live in families," he told a group of Salvadoran school children on Jan. 31. (La Prensa Gráfica, El Salvador, Feb. 1) Center-left Chilean president Michelle Bachelet also backs the plan, which includes having Central American countries join the Pacific Alliance, a trade bloc currently composed of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Bachelet was in Guatemala on Jan. 30 for talks with Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina about his country's request to be admitted to the alliance. (Télam, Argentina, Jan. 30)

The proposal emphasizes the need to reform Central American justice systems but doesn't give specifics. On Feb. 2-3 the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CorteIDH), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), held hearings on a complaint by four Honduran judges over their dismissal from their posts after they publicly opposed the June 2009 military coup that removed former president José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) from office. Former judges Guillermo López, Luis Alonso Chévez, Ramón Enrique Barrios and Tirza Flores say the dismissals violated their free speech rights. The current Honduran government supports the removal of the judges. Government attorney Jorge Serrano argued that the action "doesn't violate…precedents set by the inter-American system." (Tico Times, Costa Rica, Feb. 4, from AFP)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, February 8.

According to CEPR's analysis, the plan is basically a continuation of the security and economic policies the US has been promoting in the region for decades. It includes a "war on drugs" effort similar to "Plan Colombia," a US-funded project in Colombia which Biden and other speakers cited as a success. Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández also referred to Mexico's militarized anti-drug policy as a model, despite the ongoing crisis in Mexico since a Sept. 26-27 attack on students by police in collusion with a drug gang. To address continuing poverty in the three countries, the plan proposes "deepen[ing] our existing trade agreements," such as the 2004 Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). The plan raises the possibility of creating "special economic zones," apparently a revival of earlier efforts to create "model cities," "charter cities" and "Special Development Regimes (RED)" in Honduras. "[T]he plan brings to mind various past cases of crises exploited for economic gain, as Naomi Klein detailed in her landmark book, The Shock Doctrine," CEPR wrote, highlighting a remark by Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina, who said: "The crisis has become a huge opportunity." (Americas Blog, Nov. 26)

Meanwhile, The Nation and Foreign Policy in Focus have collaborated on an article about the results of DR-CAFTA's implementation. The authors found that "the pact has had a devastating effect on poverty, dislocation and environmental contamination in the region. And perhaps even worse, it's diminished the ability of Central American countries to protect their citizens from corporate abuse." "Overall economic indicators in the region have been poor," they wrote. "Amid significant levels of unemployment, labor abuses continue" and "[w]orkers in export-assembly plants often suffer poor working conditions and low wages."

The article laid special emphasis on the way DR-CAFTA restricts Central American governments' ability to stop environmental abuses by foreign corporations. For example, internal documents obtained by activists indicated that fear of losing in arbitration proceedings required under DR-CAFTA was one reason the Guatemalan government failed to act on a 2010 order from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) to close down the Canadian firm Goldcorp Inc.'s controversial Marlin gold mine. "These perverse incentives have led to environmental deregulation'" the authors wrote, "and increased protections for companies, which have contributed to a boom in the toxic mining industry—with gold at the forefront. A stunning 14% of Central American territory is now authorized for mining." (The Nation, Nov. 24)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, November 30.

"US and foreign officials said that El Salvador and Guatemala—both partners to CAFTA-DR—as well as Colombia, Oman, and Peru have acted to change labor laws," according to the report. There was also progress in fighting anti-union violence in Colombia. Data from the nonprofit National Union School (ENS) indicated that murders of union members and labor activists fell from 102 killings in 2003 to 35 in 2013. However, the violence continues, and the report notes that according to observers "although murders of unionists are a serious concern, threats of violence against union members also create a significant deterrent to workers organizing." The report gave no evidence for improvements in Guatemala. "[T]he extent of the problem is unclear because disaggregated statistics on violence against unionists are not collected," the GAO wrote. One union cited 63 cases of union leaders or members being killed from 2007 through 2013 because of their union activities; labor activists said the Guatemalan government hasn't acted adequately on these cases.

The FTA labor clauses require the US to have a mechanism for filing complaints about alleged labor violations by member countries. The GAO found that "[s]ince 2008, the Department of Labor (DOL) has accepted five formal complaints…and has resolved one, regarding Peru." The unresolved complaints are from Guatemala (2008), Bahrain (2011), Honduras (2012) and the Dominican Republic (2012). One likely reason there are so few complaints is that "union representatives and other stakeholders GAO interviewed in partner countries often did not understand the submission process, possibly limiting the number of submissions filed." The failure to resolve the complaints quickly, according to people interviewed, "may have contributed to the persistence of conditions that affect workers and are allegedly inconsistent with the FTAs."

US agencies have provided $275 million in labor-related technical assistance and capacity-building activities for FTA participants since 2001. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) responded to the report with a Nov. 13 statement charging that "[w]hile the words and promises may be put on paper, this report demonstrates that we are unable to hold countries responsible when they break those standards." She cited the poor results as a reason not to pursue the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive FTA that would include Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru and the US, along with Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. (GAO announcement, Nov. 13; Politico, Nov. 14)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, November 16.

Opponents labeled the legislation the "Monsanto Law," after the Missouri-based multinational Monsanto Company, the world's leading producer of GM seeds. Activists charged that the law opened the way to the introduction of GM plants, which might contaminate local crop varieties and disrupt traditional indigenous farming. Campesinos also felt they could lose their livelihoods due to competition from large-scale farmers who can afford higher-yielding seeds from multinationals.

Opposition to the law appeared to be broad. On Sept. 2 thousands of indigenous campesinos blocked the Inter-American highway at three points in the southwestern department of Sololá until 6 pm to demand the law's revocation. The protests were led by mayors of the department's 82 indigenous communities, and some communities closed schools so that students could join in. Organizers estimated total participation at 120,000. Opposition to GM plants and to the dominance of multinationals like Monsanto has been growing in Latin America; indigenous communities in southeastern Mexico have won three court actions blocking GM soy so far this year. (Adital, Brazil Sept. 2; Prensa Libre, Guatemala, Sept. 2; TeleSUR English, Sept. 5)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, September 7.

A spokesperson for Kyungshin-Lear at the company’s Alabama sales office denied the unionists’ allegations. Daniel Facussé, president of the Honduras Maquiladora Association, called the charges “a falsehood and a slander set up by workers manipulated through the interference of the US unions, which want to recover the jobs that they lost in their country.” (AFL-CIO blog, Aug. 12; El Nuevo Herald, Miami, Aug. 13, from AP; ABC News, Aug. 14) Facussé is a member of a powerful Honduran business family that includes former president Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé (1998-2002), who owns the Tegucigalpa daily La Tribuna, and cooking oil magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum, whose security guards have been repeatedly accused of killing campesinos in a land dispute in the northern Aguán Valley region.

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, August 18.