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Summary
Just as US President Biden and VP Harris are launching yet another plan to address migration from Central America, U.S. Congress representatives traveled to the region to hear from those most affected by U.S. policy in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
The delegation, “Unearthing the Real Root Causes of Mass Migration from Central America” was led by Congress Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was joined by her colleagues, Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Jamal Bowman, and Rep. Chuy Garcia. Accompanied by U.S. solidarity organizations and activists, the Congressional delegation traveled throughout Honduras and Guatemala to speak with grassroots, community-based organizations, and some government officials about the role of U.S. policy in the region.
The episode features a report back organized by U.S.-based activists that are part of the Central American diaspora and that were key players in coordinating the delegation. They discuss the Biden-Harris plan, share experiences from the trip, and reflect on U.S. policy in Central America.
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Transcript
Karen Spring:
US President Biden and Vice President Harris are proposing yet another billion-dollar plan for Central America. This time, this $3.9 billion plan will allegedly address the real root causes of migration. But as you all know, after years of promises made and promises broken, I, along with many others, have very serious doubts.
No one can argue that the Biden White House is ignorant of these issues. For years, Biden served as the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. As Vice President, he was Obama’s point man on Latin America, and he similarly tasked his Vice President, Kamala Harris, to lead this file.
In the legislative branch, Congressional Representatives have been informed of the issues going on in Central America. In March of this year, and in response to the Biden-Harris plan, several US-based solidarity organizations, including Witness for Peace, School of the Americas Watch, NISGUA, and CISPES, joined forces and coordinated a really incredible Congressional delegation to Central America. From the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa to the site of the forced disappearances of the four Garífuna men, to encampments protesting against the US mining company, US Congressional Representatives and US-based activists learned from the mouths of those most affected about the role of US foreign policy in Central America, and the real reasons why people flee.
Welcome to the Honduras Now podcast. This podcast shares human rights stories from Honduras and connects them with global issues and North American policy. I’m your host, Karen Spring, a longtime human rights activist that has lived in Honduras for over a decade. Thanks so much for listening.
Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota was the lead on the trip. She invited several of her Congressional colleagues to visit Honduras and Guatemala. The delegation was called “Unearthing the Real Root Causes of Mass Migration from Central America,” and it sought to investigate migration and the role of US foreign policy in the region. Representative Omar was joined by Representative Cory Bush from Missouri, Rep. Chuy Garcia from Illinois, and Congressman Jamaal Bowman from New York. The Legislative Director for Representative Jan Schakowsky, Kate Durkin, was also on the trip, as were several Congressional staffers that worked with the offices I mentioned above. It was an amazing trip, and it was so timely.
The representatives were coming to the region just as Biden and Harris were proposing this billion-dollar call to action to address what they call the root causes. We’ll touch on this plan, a plan that is unfortunately more of the same for Central America, a little later in this episode.
I was able to join the Congressional representatives and several amazing activists that were part of the organizing groups of the delegation. I helped with the coordination of the Honduras leg of the trip, which also included a meeting with President Xiomara Castro and her cabinet, the President of Congress, Luis Redondo, and the International Affairs Committee in Congress. Following these meetings, we left to visit grassroots movements, including COPINH, OFRANEH, the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice, amongst others. Several grassroots groups also came up from El Salvador to meet and talk to the delegation here in Honduras.
Now after Honduras, and after the Honduras leg of the trip, the delegation went to Guatemala to speak with Indigenous communities fighting mining and hydroelectric dams, such as La Puya, human rights organizations, and communities affected by the genocide in Guatemala. After the delegation left the region, there has been lots of follow up between the participating organizations, the participants of the trip, and the Congressional offices.
Today, I’d like to share with you the report back that several activists that were on the trip presented once they were back in the United States. All are members of the Latin American diaspora living in the United States.
Before I share their presentation and discussion, I’d like to introduce the activists you’ll be hearing from. María José Méndez or Majo, as you will hear throughout this episode, is a Witness for Peace board member. She’s a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, and an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on decolonial feminist struggles and the politics of organized violence in Central America.
The next person is Jhonathan Gómez, who is the Latin American Program Coordinator for the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America. Jhonathan is a human rights defender, photographer, artist, educator, and father from Guatemala City.
And last but certainly not least, Allison Lira is the Director of the Honduras Program for the Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective. She has a master’s in conflict resolution and reconciliation from Trinity College Dublin. And in the past, Allison has engaged in peacebuilding and human rights research and advocacy in Northern Ireland and Palestine.
The following are parts or sections of the whole presentation. I will link to the full YouTube recording of the entire report back in the show notes.
Now, the first part of what I’m going to play is Majo discussing the Biden-Harris plan for Central America. And second is Jhonathan, Allison, and Majo discussing their thoughts, lessons, and experiences while on the Congressional delegation in Honduras and Guatemala. Now, without further ado, here is Majo kicking it off.
María José “Majo” Méndez:
The delegation we participated on was named Unearthing the Real Root Causes of Mass Migration from Central America. And it was part of the reaction to the US strategy for addressing the root causes of migration in Central America. So let me tell you a bit about this strategy. And this strategy is the Biden-Harris administration’s blueprint for dealing with irregular migration coming from the region. And it identifies corruption, violence, poverty, crime, as some of the major reasons why Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans are leaving their countries. And to address these problems, the strategy proposes various solutions. And some of them include mobilizing private sector investment, creating anti-corruption task forces, and also professionalizing security forces in the three countries. And this plan, it seems nuanced, you know, a plan that seeks to address the root causes of migration. Sounds like a nuanced plan, right? And also, in light of the Trump administration’s more reactive and punitive approach to migration, it’s a plan that seems to differ greatly from that kind of agenda. You know, Trump administration’s agenda included family separations. So there’s a sense that this plan is much better than what we had in the past, than what the US had in the past.
However, this strategy is still part of a long-term bipartisan strategy to securing US hegemony in the region. And more problematically, it also ignores the role that the United States has played in perpetuating many of the problems that it identifies in the region as being some of the root causes. So one key takeaway of our trip to Central America was that the solutions that are proposed in this plan are paradoxically some of the drivers of migration, so that the root causes, and also the solutions that are proposed to these root causes within this plan, are actually some of what is driving people to migrate.
And this is a bit paradoxical, so let me unfold this with with examples from the delegation. During this trip, we heard from courageous land defenders in Honduras and Guatemala, about how US-backed mega development projects, for instance, such as hydroelectric dams, and also mining projects, have resulted in mass impoverishment, and also tremendous communal displacement. And this taught us that the private investment solution that is at the core of the current Biden-Harris administration’s plan to address migration is very problematic, because it’s an approach that the US is proposing as a solution to migration, but it’s really a continuation of what the United States has been doing for decades in Central America. And what the US has been doing for decades in Central America, it has been promoting neoliberal experiments that largely benefit private sectors and private investors at the expense of impoverished workers and peasants, many of whom are Indigenous.
So when we met with COPINH in Honduras, for example, and we shared some of the content of the strategy, it’s also interesting to know that a lot of the partners, the popular social movements we met with, had no idea what was contained in this plan. And when we shared some of the, you know, especially this aspect about private investment being seen as a solution to migration, one member expressed something that I think really just captures what some of us felt about this plan. And when we were discussing this with them, he said, oh, we’re screwed. So our trip has really encouraged this critical attitude towards the Biden-Harris plan to address migration in Central America. And so today we want to reflect on some of our reservations based on on the generous conversations that various grassroots movements and political leaders had with us during our trip. So let’s move to that.
So three big questions we want to address. Allison will lead one, Jhonathan will lead one, and I’ll start us off with one question. What we want is to share a little bit more about what we learned during the delegations. So the first step, a lot of us who went on this delegation come from Central America or part of the Caribbean diaspora, or the Latin American diaspora. And we participated with with a lot of background knowledge about the ways the United States has financed military repression in the region, with initiatives like the Alliance for Prosperity and also CARSI. And so the first question I have both for Allison and Jhonathan, and I’ll come back to this and wrap up this section, is, what were some of the things that surprised you from this delegation? Or also what did you learn that was new or what this delegation reinforced for you in terms of the way in which the United States sponsors militarization in the region?
Jhonathan Gómez:
I’m from Guatemala, I was born in Guatemala in the 80s, and I came to age in the United States. I’ve been living back and forth between Guatemala and Guatemala City and eastern Chicago. And so I think, for us in Guatemala, the war and the Peace Accords that were signed in 1996, the war and militarization in the army is a reality for us. Folks in human rights and resistance movements and activists and human rights defenders understand really clearly the role of the United States and arming, in the past, the armed forces and providing aid, but also today, Guatemala has the biggest and the strongest army in Central America, because of the United States aid, Guatemala has the strongest infrastructure of all military forces in Central America. And to go to Central America, to go walk the streets of Honduras, El Salvador, and walk the streets of Guatemala, the amount of guns that you see in the streets is a constant reminder of that history, the amount of guns that you see in private security, the army checkpoints, the army police collaboration checkpoints, is a strong reminder of that. And so for me that reality was very clear in Guatemala, but going to Honduras and learning that we share that same history, it’s unfortunate, it’s a very sad reminder. But it’s one of those things that when you see it, and you’re confronted by it, it’s never easy to digest. And I’ll just, I’ll pass it over to Allison.
Allison Lira:
Yeah, I’ll just say that the the militarized, the physical, like, visual of being in a place like Honduras, and seeing both police and military regularly in the street, manning checkpoints, but also private security guards, I think, I was just in Tegucigalpa, and there’s private security on every block. It seems like every private enterprise needs one, and it’s part of the cost of business here. I think, living in Honduras, I think there was less that surprised me. But I think one of the big things that surprised me about the government meetings, from what I understood was, was that the government was really open about the the challenges that exist, one of them being that there continues to be a very serious risk of another coup in in Honduras. Rodolfo [Pastor de María y Campos], part of Xiomara Castro’s inner circle [Correction: Allison was referring to the father of Rodolfo Pastor (son) who is the current Secretary to the President], just came out with an article recently, where he talked very openly about the fact that although there’s a lot of popular support in the grassroots for a constitutional reform, that that is just not realistic under current conditions. And he very much alluded to the fact that the military structure is still very much aligned with the interests that led to the main coup in the first place. And so that is context in which the delegation came, a government that very much wants to push reform, but does not have the conditions to do so yet, very precisely because of the [inaudible] effect continuing to exist between the Honduran security forces, the United States that backs them, and the economic elite in Honduras.
María José “Majo” Méndez:
I think, for me, let me just start with the weight of US geopolitics in these landscapes of militarization in Central America. This is a historic role, and I think many of us are familiar with it. When we met with President Castro, we also met with with her cabinet. And it’s a very interesting government because a lot of them, a lot of those who are either ministers now, were people who were imprisoned during the coup, because they were, this was the coup in 2009 that overthrew democratically elected President Zelaya. And it was a US-backed coup. And so a lot of the people that came out of the school that were protesting against it, you know, many of them are also occupying different places in government. So they’re not your typical government officials.
So, for instance, we have the Human Rights Minister, Natalie Roque. She’s a historian. And when we met, you know, we’re meeting with Congressional delegates, we’re meeting with US Congressional delegates were meeting with the Honduran government. And it was interesting to see that, for instance, Natalie Roque was constantly reminding US officials about this very tense, and just, you know, violent relationship between the US and Honduras, and just said it out loud, said, you know, in the 1980s, Honduras was known as the USS Honduras, because of this close relationship that Honduras and the US had, and how Honduras was this, you know, counterinsurgency playing ground and really just, you know, springboard for, you know, destroying all the revolutionary movements in the region.
And so I think it’s important to just have that in mind and also as, as part of the the historical backdrop when we’re thinking about current militarization in the region, because what we’re seeing today is a continuation of that, of the heavy militarization that happened in the 80s to fight counterinsurgency wars, today. And I think, for me, something perhaps that was surprising is that we tend to think of militarization as either pure violence, so like, whether it’s the military that are present and are repressing movements, you know, whether that means like throwing, in the case of La Puya, for instance, in Guatemala, this community that is resisting a US mine, a US-funded mine, you know, they talked about the kind of weaponry that was deployed against them. And so of course it’s these instances of violence, when we’re talking about militarization, that’s what we want to bring to light. But militarization, I think what this delegation challenged me to think about, the militarization is not just about those episodes, it’s not just about those violent acts, it’s part of a continuum, it includes, you know, the kinds of psychological abuse that also results from these violent episodes.
So think of in La Puya, for example, some of the people who suffered from these violent episodes, it was not just the injuries, like the physical injuries that were inflicted on their bodies, but also psychological injuries. So Don Angel from La Puya was telling us about this friend of his who was part of the resistance movement, and after this really violent episode with the military and the Guatemalan police, he suffered depression and he died. And we don’t think about in some ways the afterlives of the militarization, the kind of violence that militarization brings about is not just immediate, it’s a part of a continuum. And sometimes we don’t actually see the effects of it. And so I think that, for me, that was something that the delegation really captured. It was in some ways that, you know, the afterlife, like the continuation, how militarization is not just an episode, but it’s a continuum of abuses against people. And that’s important for us to be thinking of it that way, too.
Jhonathan Gómez:
Can I add something? And just to illustrate what this means, for folks in El Salvador, the army represents a bloody history of repression, that is, again, the war, death squads, assassinations, political prisoners, there’s a history, and similar to Guatemala. For us, whenever we see the military, we immediately have a cultural association to genocide, to crimes against humanity, and to what’s happening today. You go to Honduras today, 12 years of a narco dictatorship, that most people in Honduras in the streets can easily identify and say, yes, we are coming out of a dictatorship that was funded and aided by a president with ties, if not himself participating with organized crime, it’s really very much all interconnected, right? What Majo is illustrating as the legacy of US intervention in Central America, the aid that is sent through these countries, Guatemala, El Salvador, the rest of Latin America, and where we are today, where we see the army in the streets, it’s a timeline of terror and intimidation that is designed to be that way.
You know, I’m from Chicago, the police is a paramilitary. And they’re armed to the teeth, as they say, the Chicago police has so much gear on them. It doesn’t seem like a police officer. It seems like an army, an army soldier. And that’s on purpose. It’s meant to intimidate. It’s meant to send a message to the community, it’s meant to say something. We go to El Salvador, we go to the streets of Guatemala, it’s meant to do the same thing. And so, again, understanding where we’ve come from, and where we are today, the presence of militarization, of the military aid, is part of the plan.
Again, Alliance for Prosperity, we can talk about that so much, we can talk about the White House plan on Central America and Latin America. But tucked inside all of these things is continuous military aid to the region, for these reasons of control, for these reasons of making sure US interests are protected.
María José “Majo” Méndez:
Thank you, Jhonathan. So just to close this section, I think that you’re touching upon something that is very important to think about, and there’s this parallel between police brutality and military brutality in the United States and in Central America. You know, so just to remind you, people like Congresswoman Cory Bush, who was a central figure in the Black Lives Matter movement, every time we would meet with communities, either in Guatemala or in Honduras, and they would share their histories of military repression and police brutality, she would constantly make a parallel, and it was very powerful, because she would insist that these were realities that were interlinked, that it was not just that the United States was doing this abroad, it was doing it to its people.
And so I think that put things into a great perspective, because then it makes us, we think how we forge bonds of solidarity between the United States and Latin America, or Central America specifically, where it’s not just oh, look at, you know, the poor people in Central America and how they’re being attacked, you know, let’s go help them, is that people in this country are also at the receiving end of a lot of this violence, and that many connections can be drawn. And it’s really about, you know, people being affected by that reality of militarization, that is also connected to the reality of militarization in Central America. So let me just stop there. Allison, do you want to go next?
Allison Lira:
Sure, yeah. So, you know, with the incoming Biden Administration, and what the US has termed the migration crisis, there’s been this prioritization of Central America and Central American development. As Majo explained earlier, there’s been a commitment of 4 billion of investment into Central America to try to stem the flow of migration, these are words used by the Biden Administration. And on the delegation, especially in Guatemala and Honduras, we got to see a little bit about what economic development looks like in Honduras and Guatemala, and the ways in which it doesn’t necessarily line up with community needs, community interests, and community development. So for this question, we want to talk a little bit about what we’re seeing coming out of the Biden administration as their approach to supporting development in Central America versus what we’re hearing from communities on the ground as to what they what their needs really are. And so I’d like to pass it over to Jonathan to talk a little bit about what he saw on the delegation in regards to this.
Jhonathan Gómez:
Well, thank you, Allison. I think we can spend a whole day talking about how flawed this approach is. And I’ll keep it very simple, just to introduce another element into this conversation. There’s definitely a healthy debate even among grassroots, community, and human rights defenders, a good healthy debate of what development means in a neoliberal context today with the United States’s influence over the global markets, US influence over local markets, and US interests in every Latin American country, being some of the most important interests for that country.
Honduras would be one of the most important examples of that, coming out of Juan Orlando Hernández’s dictatorship, having a crisis, a government and economic crisis, and Xiomara Castro trying to figure that out.
And then Guatemala, having one of the largest Indigenous populations in the continent per capita having a history, an incredible history of resistance, pushing forth community consultation processes to address any type of development plan, any type of aid, any type of anything that would touch their communities. And so I want to highlight that, specifically, that there is a conversation happening about what development from the perspective of any government, when the government of Guatemala says we’d like to bring electricity to your rural community, people have 500 years of history from the state trying to come into their communities and tell them what to do. And so they, with a lot of good information, with a lot of good history, often times resist, and it’s not resisting the building of a road or resisting the building of an electrical grid in their communities, it’s resisting an imposition that doesn’t take their opinions and their process, their Indigenous or ancestral processes into account.
And so, again, the community consultation processes and Indigenous resistance often reject any neoliberal state-minded US-supported idea of development. And, again, when we look at it, as Majo said in the introduction, when you look at the White House plan, it might seem comprehensive to some, it might seem common sense to all, but the United States is with one hand destabilizing countries and with the other hand giving money to USAID for economic development, that gets lost in the state, that gets privatized, and doesn’t really ask any rural community what it really wants.
María José “Majo” Méndez:
Yeah, let me maybe just share two stories that I think really capture the effects of mega development projects in the region. And one is from Guatemala, and the other one is from Honduras. And so the first one is from La Cuchilla. So La Cuchilla is this small community in southern Guatemala, and this is a community that, today, is part of the Xinka Indigenous resistance against the Escobal mine. And the Escobal mine is one of the largest silver mines in the world. It’s currently stopped, but there’s fear that it will continue operating. I won’t give her name, but this compañera from Guatemala, from La Cuchilla, so she used to live there with her family, you know, and she described how living in this small town, you know, was just a peaceful life, in many ways. It’s not that they were rich, but they led a peaceful life. And suddenly, suddenly, the houses started cracking, like out of nowhere, the houses just started cracking. And so the the main school, the main church, just cracked open completely. And at first people didn’t know what was happening. Of course very soon they learned that it was because the mine was already operating. So they had built these underground tunnels under La Cuchilla, which is this small village kind of up in the mountains, and the underground tunnels were being used to, like, either move machinery or just to start building these mines. And it was causing all the problems.
Ninety families had to leave. This is a US-Canadian mine. Ninety families had to leave La Cuchilla, because they were scared that their houses would literally just fall apart. And that they would basically die in their sleep, because they could crack, they just could crack anytime. The compañera who was sharing the story, her son had to migrate, and her other children was considering migrating to the United States. So, like, direct effect of a mine that was constructed in this town that completely, completely unraveled the lives of the people who were in La Cuchilla. And so that’s just one example of how much destruction this mine brought about. None of the people who lived here agreed to the construction of this mine. They were never consulted, even though they have the right to consultation under Convention 169.
Another example from Honduras. So Jilamito, and this is a Jilamito resistance camp, again, resisting a mine [did she mean to say “mine” or “hydroelectic dam”? Are there both involved here? You might either replace “mine” with “hydroelectric dam” if that’s what she meant to say, or add an explanatory note if you feel one is needed.], also receiving funding from the United States through the [Inter-American] Development Bank. One of the compañeras who was sharing the kind of resistance that they’re mounting in this part of Honduras was telling us about these recent, you might have heard, but of the Eta and Iota hurricanes that hit, I mean it really ravaged parts of Central America in November of last year, and she was saying how because so many of the rivers had been dammed, they faced flooding that they had never faced, not even during Hurricane Mitch, where like half of the country was virtually destroyed. And this was due to these dams that were constructed on all of the rivers, and the one they’re fighting, like, their protection of the Jilamito River, is against the building of a hydroelectric dam. So this for them just highlighted why they want to protect the river, why they want to oppose the construction of these projects. So those are just, I just wanted to give you a sense of the people we were talking to, the stories that they’re facing. This is what’s happening, so when we read in the Biden-Harris plan, that they want to encourage more private investment, more of these kinds of development projects, then, you know, we’re very suspicious, for a good reason.
Allison Lira:
Yeah, just to tie these threads together a little bit, migration from Central America is for a variety of reasons. One of the ones that it is well known is all the counterinsurgency efforts that happened in the 80s. But, you know, there’s also climate change migration as a result of the United States and others of the world’s major polluters. And there’s also migration as a result of privatization. I think labor insecurity is a huge problem in Honduras, as are displacements as a result of these extractive projects that we’ve been talking about. And so when we look at the primary drivers of migration to United States, what you find is a lot of historical policies that the United States has enacted. And the thing that is very discouraging with the Biden plan is that, when you look at it, it’s a lot of the same strategies, the same logics, that created the crisis in the first place.
And so already we’re seeing the impacts of that, especially in Honduras. Kamala Harris did a tour to Central America, visited Guatemala, visited Honduras, skipped El Salvador. And it’s very much concentrating in Honduras, because they see it as one of the most reliable partners in the region, which means that a lot of money is being concentrated there.
There has been an ambassador that just recently got appointed to Honduras, and already there are very concerning posturings coming out of that embassy. So Honduras just passed an energy reform proposal that would allow them to renegotiate contracts for energy, and would allow them to expropriate in areas where corporations don’t want to renegotiate. And the US Embassy has expressed concern over this, and is very much pushing further privatization at a moment when Honduras is trying to nationalize its energy precisely because of the issues with corruption and with mismanagement that has occurred as a result of US efforts to privatize various industries in Honduras. And so we’re already seeing a lot of the same, in ways that are astounding, really, that lessons have not been learned, yet. So I don’t know if anyone else wants to add, before we close this section.
Jhonathan Gómez:
I just want to add one or two things, because this is a topic right now, I encourage you all to read through it, and maybe not read through it but find a good analysis, a good summary on it. And, you know, their idea of solutions is very peculiar, but not surprising, promote investment and reforms, partner with the private sector, climate change, and food security, opportunities for women and minorities.
And I think the problematic thing about that is that privatization, which is a strong, strong, strong element of this, continues to take away the responsibility from the state to address these, to address any of this, right? Like, why would we need to privatize health care in Guatemala? Do we not understand how the health care system is failing in Guatemala, let alone in the United States? I mean, there’s just a lot of irony, and it almost feels like an inside joke. To be telling Guatemala to strengthen its climate change efforts, when the United States is one of the major contributing countries to the climate emergency, and countries like Guatemala, the percentage of their influence on the climate emergency is so minimal. Again, these suggestions for how to help and support Central America really, as Allison said, it’s like we haven’t learned our lesson yet.
María José “Majo” Méndez:
But I did want to mention El Salvador. We didn’t go to El Salvador, but we met with a delegation from El Salvador. And I just wanted to quickly share one critique that they were making about the US plan for Central America. And it has to do with the private-public partnerships. So that’s in vogue, you know, this is sort of like paraded as a new solution also to the problems of Central America. And these private-public partnerships are also an element of that process of privatization, Jhonathan, that you’re describing. It is a process of privatization that we’re familiar with in the US, as well, and that many of you have thoughts about and probably opposed. So it’s a similar dynamic, that’s something that’s being criticized.
Another thing that is being criticized is also just this focus on job employment. So your job creation is always seen as THE solution to all problems. There is a severe lack of employment in the region. But the ways, at least, in which the United States envisions job creation is deeply tied to the US economic interest, for instance, in maquila production and the sweatshops. So the United States is the largest employer in El Salvador, with its maquilas and sweatshops. And so the delegation from El Salvador that visited us in Honduras also just shared some of their reservations about the kind of labor exploitation that they think, you know, like it’s being promoted as almost a solution to the problem of poverty in the region. And these are communities and popular social movements that have another vision of what it’s about or could look like, that it’s not just creating precarious job opportunities that will exploit Salvadorans and that will end up benefiting big US companies, like Hanes, all these companies that make our clothes and you know. So just wanted to share that also, because that’s part of the critique that was shared with us.
Allison Lira:
It’s interesting, we’re doing this monitoring of USAID projects in Honduras, because there’s gonna be this big injection of money from USAID to Honduras. And on the USAID website, they make it very, like one of their openly stated objectives is part of their work is to open markets for the United States. And so oftentimes, when you see US-led development projects in Honduras, they pitch it as a win-win, like, oh, development for you, and also more money for us. But it’s very often not what is best for the community. It is what will marginally benefit them at best, but it’s mostly for the interest of the United States.
A great example is the energy conversation in Honduras right now. Someone who works for the public energy company, the national energy company, says that, given the contracts that are on the books, Honduras is producing more energy than it needs, and yet there are energy shortages all over the country. And when you look at the Biden plan to, like, double the capacity of Central America to produce energy, also tied to this project to create a common grid across the hemisphere that would allow countries to buy and sell energy. So what we’re seeing as a future is Honduras producing energy and selling it off, while their people don’t have energy. So that’s the kind of development that the United States pushes. It’s development that furthers their interest, in this case, energy security for the United States, having nothing to do with what the community wants.
Jilamito is a perfect local example of that, where people want the Jilamito River preserved for drinking water, Honduras is going through, there are droughts popping up all over the place. Atlántida doesn’t have one, but they might in the future, and they want that river preserved for drinking water. They want a small hydroelectric project that would allow the water to get to their communities. And yes, that community is being brutally repressed to allow for a huge hydroelectric dam that would allow this company to make money. And those are the kinds of projects that the United States back. And you’ll see examples of that all over the place, where you see the United States pushing a project, it’s for their interest, it’s not for community interests. And so it’s not that communities are against development. It’s that they want autonomy over what that development looks like, and United States partnerships do not allow for that.
Karen Spring:
That was a really engaging and thought-provoking discussion. The Jilamito resistance was mentioned several times, and for those that want some more background on that conflict and the resistance and the US’s role, please check out Episode 26, “COP 26, Greenwashing & the Jilamito Dam Project.” Because of time limitations, today’s discussion that I played was just a portion of the report back given by activists that were part of the Congressional trip in March. There’s also a Spanish presentation that was part of it. I will link to all the videos in the show notes. People can also go to School of the Americas Watch YouTube channel and check them out there directly.
That’s the episode for today. Thank you so much for listening. Show notes are at HondurasNow.org. I’m Karen Spring, your host. Until next time, hasta pronto.