The Empire's biggest headache

[mahnmut]

While most media are helplessly parroting talking-points and treating the precious viewer with shallow interpretations from the video exchange of US televisions about what's going on around the Central American roads these days, a true and unseen phenomenon is unraveling down there. What's being carelessly presented to us as a trivial push of Latinos who've been enchanted by the tale of the American Dream, what's really happening is a brewing rebellion of the South against the North, of the poor against the wealthy, of the indignant against the deplorable.

Sure, we're talking about a reaction to social inequality and the unbearable living conditions that have been indirectly (or often, directly) generated by the US within their own backyard for two centuries now. It's the inability of these people to cope with their situation that is causing a second mass invasion that originated from Honduras and is threatening the Mexican-US border. The previous one was in March and it had 1,500 people. After a ton of threats about draconian measures from Washington unless it was stopped, the Mexican authorities somehow managed to absorb the bulk of the migrant flood on their territory.

But now the scope of the problem has become even bigger, and the impulse by far exceeds the mere drive to migrate and find a better living standard. These people who are making up the endless human lines advancing like a siege ram against the futile attempts of the police to block roads and checkpoints, are crying in front of the cameras while telling their personal tragedies about their inability to cope with their miserable life any longer, one that's largely been caused by US proteges and proxies who've sat at the tops of these countries' ranks for decades. They chant "Yes we can" and "El Pueblo Unido", waving flags, protest signs and fists in the air, addressing each other with "brother" and "sister"... and increasing their numbers like avalanche with every next step along the way.

They used to be 1,300 back on October 13 when they set off from the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa - only to merge with another line that had started from the country's second larges city, San Pedro Sula. They had organized themselves through the social networks, and they said outright that the US was their destination, despite Trump's vehement anti-migrant policies - because they preferred to take the risk rather than remaining home and becoming vitim to poverty, crime and corruption that's been flourishing under the current pro-American rulers. Their argument, "Since the US are stomping on us in our own home, we'll go visit theirs".

As the march passed through Guatemala, it already numbered 3,000. And it kept growing. The locals showed both solidarity, sympathy and support; they provided food and water to their Honduran brothers. Many joined. Despite Trump's threats to cut US aid to all Central American countries unless they stopped the caravan, there was no way to stop this avalanche.

So last Saturday it finally reached Mexico, now possibly numbering around 7,000. The attempts of the local authorities to control the border, and record personal data, and give priority to women and children, caused tensions around the border bridge. People stayed the night on the bridge, in no man's land between Guatemala and Mexico. The delay ignited passions. Some people jumped into the river, others crossed it in self-made rafts, despite the dangers. The rest pressed against the police blockade and eventually breached it, despite the use of pepper spray and water cannons.

Since many children suffered from the pepper spray, the Mexican authorities decided to quit the repressive methods. Medical aid was provided to the affected. Buses and trucks were offered to the thousands who had made the whole way by foot. Special shelters were constructed. But most migrants refused all this help, fearing that this was a trap meant to prepare them for deportation back home, as Trump wanted. No one wants to go back home. No to that place, where misery reigns supreme, and the local elites, all of them corrupt US puppets, have brougth these societies to their knees. At this point, the caravan had already grown beyond 10,000. Not counting those 2-3 thousand who had already managed to cross the dangerous river, evading all border control.

In the meantime, a fierce debate was raging in Mexico about how to react to this situation. One side noted Trump's threats to send the military to the US-Mexican border and shut it down if Mexico didn't stop the migrant flood. The other took into account the pressure from various influential social movements, political forces, religious and humanitarian organizations, which insisted (even in Parliament) that Mexico should show active solidarity with their Latino brethren. It was stated that Mexico as a state should defend the human rights of its own migrants in the US from Trump's discriminatory measures, and also defend the interests of the migrants from other Latin American countries by extension, including Honduras and Guatemala.

It's a fact that the caravan received active support and solidarity from local activists from among the Mexican population, just like in Guatemala, including humanitarian aid and help with transportation.

The newly elected Mexican president Obrador also ran on such a platform. He proposed that Mexico, Canada and the US should jointly collect 30 billion dollars and invest them in the development of the Central American countries, to overcome poverty and the deep social gaps there, which is the main reason for the problem in the first place.

Trump's move was next; he was quick to display his complete opposite views on the matter. He made true on his threats of cutting US aid to all Central American countries that had allowed the passing of the caravan across their territory. Even El Salvador was cut off, whose territory was never affected, but partly generated some of the migrants.

Furthermore, Trump threatened to deport 57,000 Hondurans from the US, plus another 428,000 Latin Americans. In other words, he's planning to pitch one group of poor people against another, and convince those whom he was deporting that they were guilty for the angry newcomers.

On top of that, Trump offered another of those preposterous claims of his that have never checked the fact-checking test: you see, there were "Middle Eastern criminals" marching with the caravan (how they hell did they reach Central America, remains a mystery). So he declared that the caravan was a threat to America's national security.

In turn, the Honduran government, accused by its citizens of systematically violating the laws, cultivating poverty and creating a unbearable situation in the country, also promoted its own conspiracy theory. It announced that the people were being purposefully pushed into migration by former president Manuel Selaya, deposed in 2009 through a military coup after having stated an intention to join the ideological alliance ALBA of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. You see the pattern here?

They even found a culprit: journalist and former MP from Selaya's party, Bartolo Fuentes. He was fiercely accused of using the indignation of poor Hondurans to depose the current president Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Fuentes, who was indeed a coordinator of the initiative that launched the caravan as it was being prepared on Facebook, rejected these allegations and was categorical tht life itself in Honduras and the government's policies have pushed the people towards this extreme form of raising their voice. One of his latest posts on FB says, "Hernandez should go, so that the whole Honduran people won't have to".

By the way, it's become evident that if the Hondurans hadn't started this infamous caravan, passing through various countries, and if Trump hadn't seen a threat in them and responded as expected, the world would've hardly paid any notice to the situation in Honduras, no matter how many protests the locals would go to.

As for Fuentes, he was arrested by the Guatemalan authorities as soon as the caravan reached their territory, and he was promptly deported back to Honduras, where a number of charges have been raised against him. He told the media that he's been receiving death threats for months, and he fears for his life.

Let me just remind that Honduras is one of the countries with the highest crime rates in the world, including physical assault of inconvenient public figures. The murder of activist Berta Caceres in 2016 gained particular publicity - she was fighting to protect the Indigenous communities, whose lands were being stolen by a large company for the construction of a dam.

Honduras is also known among its Central American neighbors as a country hosting a record number of US military bases. This started in the 80s when the infamous US military instructors and CIA experts went there to train the Nicaraguan Contras, who then used the Honduran territory to invade their former fatherland and destabilize it through sabotages and insurgency against its military. All in the name of freedom and democracy, I'm sure.

It's paradoxical but also logical that this US fortress in the middle of the region is now becoming the Empire's biggest headache. By the way, the word "honduras" means "depths" in Spanish. Imagine how big and deep America's moral downfall would be if Trump really leads the US military against those desperate men, women and children as soon as they reach the border.