The Honduran Caravan and Lost Opportunities

What times were those, in 1996, when there wasn’t just talk but also work on defining what would have become the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, which would have added the rest of the continent to the already-existing NAFTA. In those times there was exploration of the possibility that the agreement would have characteristics similar to those of the accords among the EU countries with respect to their citizens so that labor could move freely. Today, the principal problem that afflicts the American continent, from Brazil to the United States, is migration, the closure of borders and human rights. That is the current reality.

The migratory crisis through which Mexico is living regarding the caravan of Central Americans who seek to enter its territory in order to cross to the United States, is without doubt one of the serious consequences of abandoning the region and of not taking up an agenda for continental development, particularly regarding those countries that, it is evident, have deteriorating conditions of security, growth and democracy, a situation about which so many world leaders have kept silent.

Countries like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, key Central American actors, are always at the top of the list of countries with the highest levels of violent deaths, combining that statistic, as often happens, with economies that don’t grow or generate legal work opportunities. Given all that, the flow of migrants northward is natural, fleeing violence and searching for better opportunities for their families.

So it is not a coincidence that thousands of people, including women and babies, are traveling in a caravan toward Mexico, which has placed the Mexican government in a diplomatic crisis with the United States, particularly with its president, Donald Trump, while those who govern us try to be consistent with what is constantly demanded of the United States by us − respect for the human rights of migrants. Mexican officials say they won’t dance to Trump’s tune, but the morning tweets have weakened the daily valuation of the peso.

The United States is about to elect all the members of the House of Representatives and a third of the senators, which will be decisive on the path, not just to the presidential election in 2020, but to the possibility of the Democrats having more influence, if they recapture one or both chambers, on the budget and the laws that are or aren’t approved by both chambers. In this campaign the debate over migration is fundamental. Trump knows this and is trying to push the Democrats aside, while the radical Republicans validate his decision to bolster the majority of their party in both chambers, if that in fact helps the anti-immigration agenda and Trump’s re-election.

So, caught in the middle between the political interests of the Mexicans and those of the Americans, the migrants are about to arrive at the border, where they could be denied passage or could be permitted to enter perhaps a hell worse than the one they are fleeing, with recruitment by organized crime, the coyotes, the corruption and so many other dangers that confront them. This is without doubt a consequence of that international policy abandoned by the United States, Mexico and other countries in the Americas. Today, we have neither a Free Trade Agreement for the Americas nor humanism of any value.