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Summary:
Honduras was hit by two hurricanes – Eta and Iota – in less than two weeks. The hurricanes and the continuous rains since, have caused tremendous economic and human loss.
Host Karen Spring provides an overview of the estimated damage and shares an interview conducted with freelance journalist Jose Luis Granados Ceja. Karen and Luis discuss the past and current political context that not only undermines rescue and rebuilding efforts but also increases the vulnerability of Hondura’s poor to the global impacts of climate change. They also discuss how the hurricanes may affect migration push factors and the possibilities of change in Honduras.
Transcript:
Welcome, and thanks so much for joining me today.
During my last episode, I talked about how Hurricane Eta had hit Honduras. And unfortunately, since that podcast, another hurricane hit Honduras as well. And this time Hurricane Iota was actually worse than the first one, Hurricane Eta, and it hit Nicaragua as a Category 5 hurricane. By the time it got into Honduras, it had already downgraded into a tropical storm. But the impacts of tropical storms are obviously, the rain is what does the most damage to the country. And since Hurricane Eta had left so much flooding, Hurricane Iota basically did the same thing. And in some parts actually even flooded the affected areas even more than the first hurricane did. So Hurricane Iota hit Honduras approximately November 16 and November 17. But it’s hard to pinpoint a date because the rain starts far before the actual hurricane, or the tropical storm, entered into the country.
It’s now been a couple of weeks since the second hurricane hit and it hasn’t stopped raining. And that’s largely not because of the hurricanes, but because of the time of year it is here in Honduras. And also we’ve had horrible luck. And there’s been a whole bunch of cold fronts as they’re called, which means colder temperatures and lots of rain. And so these cold fronts have basically prevented people from going back to their homes, and also from stopping the floodwaters from going down, which would give people access to their homes, and to be able to return to their communities.
So for this episode today, I just wanted to give a few statistics of the damages that these hurricanes have left in Honduras. So the economic losses of both hurricanes according to a Honduran economic think tank, FOSDEH, the two hurricanes have left over $10 billion in economic losses to the country, and it has set Honduras back 22 years. And they make specific reference to poverty levels and to unemployment levels. Between the two hurricanes, a huge number of people were affected. It’s estimated that 4 million Hondurans, and that’s not even to talk about Guatemalans or Nicaraguans, which in some areas in those two countries were also devastated. 4 million Hondurans were affected by the storms. In terms of infrastructure, 58 bridges were destroyed between the two hurricanes. 26,000 homes were estimated to have been totally destroyed. And 87 highways are significantly damaged or have totally collapsed as a result of the waters. And approximately, and probably the most worrying, especially for subsistence farmers and for the food supply in the country and food security, approximately 250,000 hectares of crops were totally destroyed or damaged. And that is going to have a huge impact in rural areas and also in the cities, because we rely a lot on small producers in rural areas, bringing in beans and bringing in corn and the basic grains.
So, like I mentioned, hurricanes don’t just come and go. The effects of these two hurricanes remain, and they remain absolutely devastating for so many people all around the country. So many people around the area of San Pedro Sula, La Lima, Progreso, and a lot of the different areas, neighborhoods, in villages around those areas are still really, really affected. They were the most affected by Hurricane Eta and they are the most affected by Hurricane Iota.
And so many people remain in shelters, one, because they have absolutely nowhere to go, they either entirely lost their houses, or the floodwaters have not gone down and they can’t access their communities, or they can’t go back and start cleaning up their homes and the damage that was done by the hurricane. And it doesn’t help that, like I mentioned, that it keeps raining.
Over 88,000 people remain in shelters, and there’s approximately 1,000 shelters all around the country, but mostly folk in the most affected areas around the San Pedro Sula area. So many people remain on the sides of roads, because they can’t get into shelters, because the shelters are packed, and there’s just no room. And the conditions in the shelter make it so that people can’t go there if they need a roof over their head. And so, so many people have set up tarps with whatever materials they can get to make sort of tents on the sides of roads and under bridges in different parts of the affected areas.
So in the shelters, I mean, in terms of conditions, there’s been a whole slew of issues in relation to the health crisis that’s unfolding in those areas. For example, I’ve seen estimations of approximately 30 to 50% of people in the shelters have COVID. That’s an estimation, there’s not enough tests being done in Honduras to actually nail down an exact number, but it’s a significantly high number. And the health problems that are being reported in the shelters, there’s a lot of skin problems, a lot of fungus on skin, and stomach problems. And a lot of, some medical workers that I’ve spoken to relate this to the fact that people were exposed to very contaminated water and spent a significant amount of time in contaminated water. And these issues, these health issues, were actually really common after Hurricane Mitch.
In terms of human loss, I really don’t like reporting these numbers too much, because I don’t trust them. I don’t think that the Honduran government has done a sufficient job at calculating the human loss suffered during the two hurricanes. So far, what is officially known is that there were 74 people that lost their life from the second hurricane, from Hurricane Iota. And there’s 14 people that died from the first Hurricane Eta. Again, I don’t trust those numbers. I do think that there are a lot more that are not being reported, and also people that haven’t been found.
And also the impacts of the hurricanes have not passed. So there’s still landslides happening around the country. For example, last night, there was a landslide in a small village in western Honduras in the department of Santa Barbara. And so I think several people passed away from that landslide and over 300 people lost their homes as a result.
So those are just statistics. They don’t say anything about what is actually happening in terms of the suffering that these hurricanes are causing, and the misery, the loss, and the incredible sadness, of the destruction of these hurricanes.
I wanted to travel north to interview people about what they’re going through and go into the shelters. But because of the weather conditions, I haven’t been able to travel north in a safe manner. So I will be doing that over the next couple of days. So for today, I want to share an interview that I did with a Mexican freelance journalist, José Luis Granados Ceja, about the hurricanes and the impact of the hurricanes, almost the day after Hurricane Iota hit Honduras. The interview was recorded on November 18. And so I’m going to play that and share that with you now.
José Luis Granados Ceja:
Welcome to Happs. We’re joined today by Karen Spring. She is the Honduras-based coordinator for the Honduras Solidarity Network and is in the capital of Tegucigalpa. Central America is once again picking up the pieces this morning after Hurricane Iota struck the region, which was still reeling from Hurricane Eta’s impact earlier this month. Shelters were quickly filled, and reports indicated streets in San Pedro Sula were once again flooded, with people being forced to climb on the roofs of their homes to escape the water. Karen, I’d like to begin by telling us what’s the situation on the ground today.
Karen Spring:
So Honduras woke up to a very difficult, after spending a very difficult night, sheltering from the rain. In different parts of the country, there’s been different impacts by the storm. In Tegucigalpa, where I am right now, the rain stopped last night, but the main river that passes through the capital city was spilling over onto the side streets and into the center area of the capital.
But the biggest impact has been felt in southern San Pedro Sula in some of the poorest neighborhoods, in the city of El Progreso, which is a medium-sized city. And then in La Lima, which was totally basically underwater again. And so, from this current hurricane that still hasn’t totally cleared Honduran territory, rain is still expected to hit us. And now especially in the southern part of the country, where the hurricane is still sort of passing through.
So, many of you know that hurricane Eta hit last week on November 4, and all the days have sort of blurred together, because it’s been a constant build-up to this next Hurricane Iota, and all of the different news that has been put out about it, saying that it would be worse than Eta, that it would be worse than Mitch, which was a hurricane in 1998 in Honduras.
And so, Iota, basically the biggest impact of the storm was yesterday. And Honduras woke up this morning to many of the rivers, some rivers that were not even flooded out or spilled over by Hurricane Eta, Iota has basically caused a lot of different rivers to spill over. So I’m talking rivers in western Honduras, in the western departments of Copán, Santa Barbara, where it’s still raining. And it’s very dangerous because those rivers that are now spilled over in that western region of Honduras is, all those rivers flow into some of the most affected areas that are now under water, such as San Pedro Sula, such as La Lima and El Progreso, and so some parts of San Pedro Sula don’t have electricity, some parts of Progreso didn’t have electricity, it’s going on and off.
So people are still very much in chaos, they’re still very much waking up to more disaster, and worse disaster, the water levels are higher, the flooding levels are higher, in a lot of the places that were very, very badly hit by Eta. And so really, there’s no stats out right now about the impact. We know the impacts, or what the government was reporting from Hurricane Eta on November 4, but we don’t have any sort of numbers out so far about, you know, how many people have died from the flooding, how many people are disappeared, how many people were forced out really late last night into shelters, like there’s really no, like, we’re right in the middle of chaos still. And so it’s very hard to get a sense of what the status of the damage has been on the ground, and granted that the hurricane still has not passed completely.
José Luis Granados Ceja:
So we know that Honduras, politically, is an unstable country still reeling from the results of the fraudulent election in the last presidential election. It’s a government that doesn’t command a lot of legitimacy. And I’ve seen that there’s been some criticism of the state’s response. What can you tell us about the way that the Honduran government of Juan Orlando Hernández has handled this double crisis?
Karen Spring:
Well, I think that, first and foremost, people need to understand what it means to have a government like the current government in Honduras. It means the people are totally alone. So that means that if you don’t get your neighbors or your family or your communities or other Hondurans around the country to support you, whether it’s for immediate relief, or for long term support, you’re not going to get any from the government. So what that has meant is that the Honduran government is largely absent from rescue efforts. And I think that you can look at the government’s response, both immediately, like right now, as the crisis is unfolding. You can look at the lack of response in terms of preventing the disaster that’s unfolded both during this hurricane and then Hurricane Eta. And then you can look at all the political and social context in the country that the government is very much responsible for.
So, for example, in immediate relief, the government during Eta, basically, there is a disaster management institution of the government that is like the Honduran FEMA, it’s called COPECO. They were preventing people from going out onto boats to rescue people in their communities, like they were physically stopping boats, turning boat drivers around and telling them to go home, and that they weren’t able to go out on boats, to rescue people in their communities, or get people off their roofs. And these are just good citizens, people that wanted to support, that felt like it was their duty to go and help people in these very difficult conditions. And COPECO was preventing people from doing that. They were saying they needed a boat license. They were saying they had to let COPECO people drive the boats. They were saying that they had to have police and military officers in the boats with them. And just any excuse across the board.
And people basically deduced that the government was doing that because the government wants to make it look like they’re rescuing, because we’re going into an election year. And so image is very important for a government that doesn’t have any legitimacy amongst people.
And so there’s just been countless issues, like COPECO, again, is the disaster relief institution. And so many people know that COPECO is very corrupt. COPECO was one of the institutions responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic response in the country, and has been just absolutely torn apart by anti-corruption efforts in the country showing how corrupt they are, and how they’ve totally stolen money from international financial institutions that was given to Honduras to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. So you already have this institution that is known to be very corrupt, that it’s just been totally accused of all this very serious corruption. And now they’re responsible not only for COVID-19 pandemic, where they’ve stolen all this money, but now they have to do this hurricane disaster relief work, which is not going to translate into anything except total illegitimacy and people not even wanting their help, because they’re not trusted, people don’t believe them, and people don’t want anything to do with them.
And then you just have the whole social and economic situation of the country. I mean, the military, the Honduran government has spent millions of dollars buying military warships from Israel, those military warships don’t do anything for people that are in communities on their roofs waiting to be rescued by a small boat with a small motor on it. And so the focus of the government over the years has not been to do disaster prevention, and to supply COPECO or the municipalities with little life-saving boats to go out during hurricanes to rescue people, but instead buying big gigantic warships and arms and weapons and making sure the military is well supplied. But the military has largely been absent as well from the relief efforts.
So I mean, there’s just so many stories of how this illegitimate government has totally failed the Honduran people. And that’s why the saying, “Only the people save the people,” is so commonly used in Honduras now. I mean, it was always used before, but it’s just everybody’s like, don’t even rely on the government, forget the government, like don’t take your family members’ dead bodies that died in the floodwaters to the morgue. Just, you know, figure out your own way to deal with your your family members that you lost, because the government isn’t going to do anything to support them.
And so it’s a huge issue. I mean, you need a good strong government, you need a legitimate government, when these disasters happen, to be able to know the amount of damage that’s happening, to know how many people have passed away, to evacuate people in a responsible manner. And that just hasn’t happened at all. So it’s very sad. It’s very frustrating, because it’s undermined all of the institutional support, including from large NGOs, you would typically seek for support when the government doesn’t have legitimacy. And again, largely absent. I mean, you go and look for information from the Honduran Red Cross. They don’t have a Twitter account. There’s no information that they’re putting out about what’s going on. And then you have 22 rescuers coming from the Green Cross in El Salvador, there’s 22 people on the ground here, and they’re constantly reporting what they’re doing in the communities. And granted, they’ve had to go back to their country, because El Salvador was very badly hit by Hurricane Iota as well. But I mean, just total lack of support, and it is extremely sad.
José Luis Granados Ceja:
So here in Mexico, after the 1985 earthquake, there were similar stories that the government was just using it to cement their legitimacy. But all of the aid ended up disappearing. Similar accusations actually came in 2017 after the earthquake here. I mentioned ’85, because it was seen as one of the moments where the dictatorship of the Institutional Revolutionary Party known as the PRI was beginning to weaken. And it was seen as a democratizing moment. I know it’s early, and I know people are still dealing with the disaster. But is there a sense from people that this is the last straw, that this is further proof that this government can’t remain in power?
Karen Spring:
So, I would love to say that that is the case. I really don’t know. I mean, Honduras has been in constant crisis in the last 11 years. There was the coup. And then there was the 2017 electoral crisis. And then you have very, very solid allegations of the government being involved in drug trafficking coming from the New York Southern District Court. You know, you have all of these crises that happen in the country, and everybody thinks, including myself, this must be the last straw, there’s just no way this is going to continue as it is.
And if it were up to Honduran people, it would have ended years ago. This crisis would have ended years ago. But unfortunately, this government is backed by the United States government and the Canadian government. And its legitimacy is given and granted by the fact that it has such strong support from the Trump Administration. And so I would really like to say that this is the last straw, it would have been the last straw years ago for Hondurans.
But Hondurans are very clear. If it was up to the Honduran people, Juan Orlando Hernández, the President, would be out of power years ago, but unfortunately, he’s being kept in power by the United States government. And that is very, very clear. And that is a belief that’s widespread in Honduras. And so I would hope it is the last impact.
But another thing that you have to remember, Luis, is that Hondurans were already in a very, very bad situation. They went out onto the streets during the 2017 electoral crisis to try and change their government. And when the fraud in the elections was ignored by the US government, Hondurans started voting with their feet, and going to the US-Mexico border, and saying, You know what? We can’t stay in our country to change things in our country. So we have to leave our country. We have no choice. That was already happening before this widespread devastation of these two hurricanes.
There’s thousands of people that lost everything. And it’s not just like they can go out and buy another house. It’s not like they can go out and buy another refrigerator, or buy another bed. I mean, you see images of people evacuating last night when there was information that the Ulua River that passes through San Pedro Sula, in La Lima and El Progreso and some of the very affected areas. People were pulling out their mattresses, and it’s seen as something that is really precious to a family, because they work really hard to buy those mattresses. And so when you are trying to save the little that you have, and you’re pulling your mattresses out to protect them from the flooding that might come, you really get a sense of how desperate the situation is for people.
People were already in very difficult circumstances. And so I think that, yes, people are in more difficult circumstances, you would think that that would cause people to protest, to say enough is enough, let’s get rid of our government. But Hondurans were doing that for years, and they were ignored. So I do hope that this disaster, at a bare minimum, reveals to the international community just how little legitimacy, or no legitimacy, this government has, and how they absolutely do nothing to assist people that are in the worst positions that they’ve ever been in because of the devastation caused by the hurricane.
José Luis Granados Ceja:
I remember when I was covering the Central American migrant exodus, meeting people who specifically said that, we took to the streets, we tried to make a change here, because there’s been a lot of criticism, even here inside Mexico, saying, oh, they should try to fix their country before trying to leave. And they said, we tried, and we were met with repression, we were met with violence, we were met with criminalization. And so we see that that’s one of the drivers of the exodus from Central America. I remember talking to people who also said, you know, I had my business, but the lack of security in my country meant that I was constantly dealing with extortion, and I wasn’t making enough money to pay the extortionist, etc., etc. So we see the way that this compounds. Do you think that there will be yet another exodus from Central America as a result of these storms?
Karen Spring:
Well, I mean, there was a caravan that was supposed to leave, planned to leave. At the end of this month and December. This is pre-hurricane, pre-hurricanes. And people had had enough, because the impact of COVID has been absolutely devastating as well for people that have small businesses that work in the informal economy. Like they go and sell their tortillas in the market, or they go and sell, you know, small little trinkets in the market, or used clothing. And so a lot of those places were shut down. And so people were already in very dire circumstances.
So yeah, I do think that there will be more migration to the United States, and people fleeing, because their people have lost everything. I mean, I can give some examples of the desperation. I’m in communication with people in most of the affected areas, and the most affected areas during the hurricane have been some of the poorest neighborhoods in southern San Pedro Sula, La Planeta, Rivera Hernández, Celeo Gonzáles, La Lima, Progreso, Baracoa, Cortés. I mean, I’m in communication, bits and pieces, with the people in these different areas.
And I’m in this chat with this man that is from this community called Baracoa. And it was badly affected by Hurricane Eta, and it was totally flooded, almost up to their rooftops again last night. And, you know, he refused to evacuate from his house. He and his family stayed on their roof and they’ve been on the roof for over two weeks now. Or since, basically, Eta hit. And despite the rescue teams that the Honduras Solidarity Network is supporting, that’s going out and dropping stuff off to people in boats that are on their rooftops. He doesn’t want to get down. And last night, in preparation for Hurricane Iota, for the rains that were gonna cause the river to rise around him as he’s on his roof. You know, his family basically took everything that they had, that they were able to rescue from their house from the flooding from Eta, and they put it on the rooftop. They tied it down and then they put a tarp over it. And he sent us a picture saying, you know, this is where we’re going to be, this is all the prized possessions I have in the world. They’re all on top of my roof. We’re still here. They had a generator, they had a boat that they were like basically parking, you know, really close to their house because the water started to reside, or started to go down, from Hurricane Eta. And so you know, he just had his boat there, and people were like, okay, get ready for Iota. And so he’s like, I got my boat. I have everything on top of my roof. My mom’s on the top of the roof, too. And so, hey, can you guys bring us water, we’re running out of fresh water to drink, and there’s a baby here, so we can’t give them dirty water.
And so why are people doing that? And so everyone’s like, it’s so irresponsible not to evacuate. People shouldn’t be staying in their communities. But the thing is, people feel like if they don’t, they’ll just end up losing everything anyways, because of the insecurity in the country. People have said that the government has called for urgent evacuations. And what has actually happened is, and this is more of an accusation than a fact, because it hasn’t been investigated, and it won’t be investigated, is that the government was calling for very, very fast evacuations, for example, in the Rivera Hernández neighborhood in San Pedro Sula. Very poor neighborhood, very dangerous neighborhood. And so people were, so the military police were going around telling people that you have to get out of your house, you can’t stay here and they were forcing people to leave. And later when people went back, they realized that there was all these efforts to break into places and to steal. So the insecurity that people feel, they don’t want to evacuate because they think that it’s a strategy to go in and steal, and to go in and break into houses and steal things.
Also, people don’t feel like it’s safe to leave. Because there are still areas that are controlled by gangs that work alongside state security forces, that don’t feel like they can leave very safely and then be able to come back in. For example, we’re supporting rescue teams in some of these really difficult neighborhoods. The people have to coordinate with the heads of the churches, and the heads of the elected community leadership, in order to go in and drop off food to families that are on their rooftops still, because if they don’t, then they risk losing everything, because the gangs will take away all of their cars, they’ll take away all of the supplies.
So like where’s the government in supporting and in creating a secure environment for people to just be able to evacuate and to be able to go into shelters, and for people to feel like they can stay in their houses, or that they can leave their houses? So it’s a really difficult situation, you know, in any country, and then it’s compounded with all these very difficult problems that, at the end of the day, like when people have lost so much, they’re probably going to leave the country again and keep migrating north.
José Luis Granados Ceja:
You know, I was reading international reports, The New York Times, for example, and they uncritically report, Juan Orlando Hernández says our goal now is to save people. And maybe you evacuate people. But as you just described, they would come back to a situation that is completely unsustainable. They would come back to their homes completely destroyed, all of their possessions gone. There’s just, in Central America here, in Mexico, people don’t have insurance, the state obviously is not going to come and rescue them.
So can you talk to us a little bit about what happens next. You know, sometimes we talk about, for example, the impact of Hurricane Mitch. It wasn’t just the people who died as a result of the storm, but also the contaminated water, the lack of infrastructure, the roads that are destroyed. And so people who, you know, work in the agricultural sector can’t get their products to market for years. You know, tell us about what’s going to happen next in Honduras.
Karen Spring:
The Honduras Solidarity Network has an emergency fund, just like so many different organizations have emergency funds to respond to the immediate situation, and to respond to the life-threatening situation that’s happening now, as the emergency is still going on. But the hardest part that everybody says to me, and a lot of the groups that I’ve talked to, and that we are helping with emergency relief support, is they say, Karen, what is the hardest part about all this is is when all the attention dies down, and when we actually have to go back and rebuild.
And so after Hurricane Eta on November 4, around November 6 or 7, the water was starting to go down. And so people were going to their houses to see the damage that the hurricane had caused. And they started cleaning up and what does that mean? It literally means shoveling and washing out layers and layers of mud. Like up to your knees inside your house. It covers everything, the mud cakes everything, it ruins everything, and it’s everywhere. And it’s very hard to clean. And then when we got notice that Hurricane Iota was going to hit, people were like, oh, well, we’re not going to keep cleaning anymore, because, you know, another hurricane is going to come in, and this is all going to flood out again anyways.
But what people are talking about is how there are huge tracts of land, or areas that are not really, you can’t go back and live there anymore. You know, the water hasn’t gone down in some areas, and people are constantly talking about even where there’s just mud, or it’s just like muddy water. The smell is awful. And it’s very hard to get rid of that smell. And people are saying that if they don’t actually address the smell, that people won’t even be able to go back anymore at all and live there. And the smell comes from the fact that there’s all this debris in the water. There’s probably people that have died that are in the water. There’s all these dead animals in the water. So it’s a very difficult situation, and for long term, it’ll take years to recover, if ever.
José Luis Granados Ceja:
Karen, I want to ask you, so 2020 has been the most active hurricane season ever, with 29 storms. In fact, meteorologists ran out of names and started to use the Greek alphabet because they actually exceeded the amount of storms that they thought was going to happen. As we’ve also been talking about, the impact has been so much harder on low-income people, people who live in precarious housing on the side of a mountain, which is prone to landslides. Can you talk a little bit about how the impacts of climate change, which is producing more storms like the ones we’re seeing, is affecting people in countries like Honduras, and the low-income populations inside them.
Karen Spring:
The places that have been the worst hit by Hurricane Eta and Hurricane Iota have been the poor neighborhoods in La Lima and in San Pedro Sula. We’re talking neighborhoods that like, for example, Chamelecón is one of the neighborhoods in San Pedro Sula that has been always reported on by the New York Times as one of the most dangerous places to live in Honduras. And the poorest in Honduras are the worst impacted by climate change. Like you mentioned, landslides that are usually caused by very saturated land, you know, that’s rained and rained into the land, so landslides start, that’s actually been an issue in Tegucigalpa, as well as in Guatemala, too, and in Indigenous communities.
And so it’s interesting because the poor are the most impacted by climate change. But yet you have very wealthy countries like the United States that don’t even want to acknowledge that climate change is an issue, and that these climate disasters are directly linked to the lack of public policy to address climate change.
And in Honduras, it’s interesting because disaster relief has become a business for the Honduran government, or it’s just turned into this sort of “sexy” issue in the world, because everyone talks about climate issues and climate change. And so the Honduran government, through the creation of COPECO, has turned it into this, like, business where they can get access to international aid through the international financial institutions to deal with climate change, but then they end up stealing the money or using it to fund their illegal reelection campaigns. And it doesn’t actually go to supporting the poor.
And I’m not just talking about, you know, like reforestation efforts. And I’m not just talking about, you know, dealing with like preventing flooding and building the correct sort of channels or canals that sort of absorb additional rainwater. I’m talking about dealing with the social and economic issues that make the poor more vulnerable to climate issues. And that absolutely is not being done. And it’s very clear how much poor people, because poor people tend to live closer around the rivers, because nobody wants to live there, exactly for these reasons.
And so in Tegucigalpa, the Choluteca River was one of the rivers that spilled over last night. And thousands of people that live all along the river banks of the Choluteca River, very poor people that have their houses, basically, with, you know, slats of metal, or wood, that are easily destroyed by heavy rain, let alone flooding that comes right up to their doorsteps. And so there’s been no attempts to address the social and economic issues that cause for populations in Honduras and around the world, basically, adequately respond to these climate disasters that are going to become more and more frequent.
And it’s important to mention, and I’m no expert on this, but Honduras is one of the top three countries in the world most affected by climate change – mostly, I think, because it’s a small piece of land, like Central America is a small piece of land between two large land masses. And we also share a huge coastline with the Caribbean, which is, you know, water that is already very heated or it’s a higher temperature. And so with climate change, that temperature increases, which gives storms and hurricanes, it allows them to build more and more force. Again, I’m no expert, but Honduras is already very, very vulnerable. And so it’s also the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. And so this hurricane season has been devastating, and who knows what will happen down the road.
But there really actually needs to be solid and legitimate and real efforts to address the impacts of climate change on the poor, and not just prevention. We need social and economic responses that address the reasons why people are vulnerable in the first place.
José Luis Granados Ceja:
So my last question is concerning the US-Honduras relationship. You know, we’re talking about climate change. Joe Biden is set to take the presidency, said to be more committed to climate change initiatives, certainly more so than the previous administration, the outgoing administration, and he’s actually talked a lot about Central America. He was Obama’s envoy to the region when he was in power. You know, he talks about the responsibility that the US has. There could be promises of billions of dollars as there were, most of which didn’t actually arrive. But what is that aid actually going to do? Is that going to really improve the lives of people? Or is it just going to prop up this government? Is it just going to be siphoned off as you’ve described previously?
Karen Spring:
So I think there’s two ways that you can look at what Biden has to respond to in terms of Central America. And obviously, the big focus of what’s going on in Central America is always about migration, and migration to the US-Mexico border, and how the United States government is handling migration, or not handling migration, or handling people that are forced to migrate to the United States.
And it’s interesting because after Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras and Central America in 1998, that’s actually when Hondurans started getting TPS, or Temporary Protection Status, in the United States. And so now, you know, TPS has been attacked by the Trump Administration. Now you see, the reasons that TPS was put in the first place actually happened again, which is a very awful, two awful hurricanes.
And so I think, you know, Biden’s track record in Central America is awful. It’s awful, because he, under the Obama administration, he basically created and pushed forward the Biden Plan, which was also called the Alliance for Prosperity. And it was an effort to basically fund military and to fund the private sector. And the focus was on the neoliberal development model, which translates into privatization, reducing social services, making education more expensive, making health care more expensive for Hondurans through privatization processes, making people pay for things when they go to the public hospital, like every single supply that they need to be treated by a doctor. Or in terms of education, the Biden Plan was promoting, or sort of coincided with, efforts in Honduras to basically charge user fees, make parents pay for security guards in schools, make parents pay for the desks where their children have to sit in order to be in school.
So the Biden plan also led to a further privatization of the national electrical energy company, which saw energy prices skyrocket in Honduras. And for poor families, I mean, they can’t pay higher prices, they need the state’s assistance in paying their electrical bill, or at least efforts to sort of subsidize those that need more help than others.
So the Biden Plan, absolutely, it was actually put in place to address unaccompanied minors flooding to the border, and that was in 2014. And then you saw in 2018, all these migrant caravans going to the border. So everything Biden tried to address through the Alliance for Prosperity, the 750 million dollars to the Northern Triangle countries, actually just caused more migration, because that’s what ended up happening in 2018 with the migrant caravans. Migration was always happening in between that, but the caravans were a much more sort of obvious effort to show that people were fleeing and needed to flee.
The Trump Administration signed a memorandum of understanding for $1 billion over three years in Honduras to the private sector, which most of the money will go to private US companies, and energy, steel, in natural resource extraction, which is devastating for communities in areas where they’re very rich in natural resources.
But also, if you go to the Biden campaign website, he talked about $4 million for Central America, or 4 billion, you know, he wanted to do the same thing. It was like a repeat of the Alliance for Prosperity or the Biden Plan. So I don’t really see Biden, so far is not taking seriously, the United States does not want to move away from the damaging neoliberal development model that has failed, that keeps failing, and that they want to slam and push down people’s throats, knowing it doesn’t work.
So I don’t really see any difference, unfortunately, between Trump’s initiatives, and Obama’s initiatives, and Biden’s initiatives. They’re not addressing the root causes of migration, they’re not addressing the root causes of why people flee Honduras and Central America, and they’re just moving forward with a very damaging neoliberal economic model.
José Luis Granados Ceja:
I want to thank you so much for joining us and sharing so much information, putting everything into context. And, you know, we titled this show, “The people save the people.” So just to close, can you tell us of the work of the Honduran Solidarity Network, your work there in the country, and how people who are watching this can also try to do their part to help people in Honduras?
Karen Spring:
So I feel very passionate about this because I think that there are so many fundraisers have been launched. And I think that people should absolutely donate to whoever they’re connected to, to the sources and to the people fundraising money, if they trust them, and they know them, and they can ensure that their money is getting to where it needs to go.
The Honduras Solidarity Network, we have a very active Twitter and a very active Facebook, you can look for us on there. Our website is not very great, so go to our social media. But we are doing a hurricane fundraising effort.
And all of the money that we raised, you know, a lot of NGOs, especially big NGOs, are working alongside private sectors, they’re working alongside big Honduran banks. So I would encourage people to look for those organizations that are actually funding people that are doing the work on the ground, they’re not funding salaries for these big NGOs, and all the money that they’re giving is going to the groups on the ground.
But I do feel like we are doing a very good job at making sure that the money we raise is going to groups that are on the ground in these affected areas. So for example, we’re sending money to not just community-based organizations that have been around prior to the hurricanes, that were doing the hard work, that has structural analyses as to why their neighborhood was hit in the first place by a hurricane or why their neighborhood flooded out, for all the reasons that you and I have talked about. And they’re already doing the work even before we said, Hey, we’re gonna send you some money that we’ve fundraised from the people of Canada and the United States that want to support you. And so they’re doing the hard work.
We’re doing community based organizations, and we’re also funding rescue teams, rescue teams that are going out every day, that are super-committed people that are going out, and not just doing it out of the goodness of their heart, but because they believe that they need to do it, because they need to change Honduras, and they need the people to help the people, because that’s the only way that Honduras is going to change.
So people can check out that fundraiser. We support Afroindigenous people, we support small campesinos, or small farmer organizations. We’re supporting youth education centers. We’re supporting groups of women. Almost all the initiatives we fund are led by women, you know, making food and community kitchens, making beans and tortillas and chicken, and dropping them off at shelters, and people all around the region can show up to where they are and get support.
So you can check out our fundraiser on our Twitter and our Facebook, and we thank everybody that’s given so far. We’re going to put out an update about where the funds are going, and every little bit helps and counts.
José Luis Granados Ceja:
Thank you so much, once again, for joining us. We were speaking with Karen Spring, a longtime human rights activist and researcher who’s lived in Central America for 10 years. She’s the Honduras-based coordinator from the Honduras Solidarity Network and was joining us from the capital of Tegucigalpa.
Karen Spring:
That was an interview conducted on November 18 on Happs with Mexican freelance journalist José Luis Granados Ceja.
Because of the crisis in the country, we’ll be taking a break from posting new podcast episodes during the month of December. But I’ll be working on other episodes to bring you human rights stories in the New Year, especially the coverage of the Berta Cáceres case, and the murder trial that is pending likely for the beginning of the New Year.
Like I mentioned in the episode, I’ll be heading up to the hurricane-affected areas to accompany the groups that the Honduras Solidarity Network is supporting with the funds that are donated by so many people in the United States and Canada. I’m so happy to report that we’ve raised over $30,000, and the money is so greatly appreciated by grassroots organizations and community-based groups that are doing the hard work on the ground. People interested in donating to the Hurricane Relief Fund can go to the podcast website HondurasNow.org, where I will also be posting the show notes.
The music for this episode and all the previous episodes is by the wonderful Honduran singer, Karla Lara.
That’s the episode for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, hasta pronto.