Desperation grows in battered Honduras, which fuels migration

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) – Nory Yamileth Hernández and her three teenage children have been living in a battered tent under a bridge on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula since Hurricane Eta flooded their home in November.

They were there in the dust under the rumbling traffic, surrounded by other storm refugees, when Hurricane Iota struck barely two weeks later. And when the first trailer of the year shuffled in January, only fear and empty pockets prevented them from joining the growing exodus in Honduras.

“I cried because I did not want to be here anymore,” said the 34-year-old Hernández. She joined the first major caravan in October 2018, but did not make it to Mexico before returning. She’s sure she’ll try again soon. “There is a lot of suffering.”

In San Pedro Sula, the economic engine of Honduras and the departure gate for thousands of Honduran migrants in recent years, families like Hernández’s are trapped in a cycle of migration. Poverty and gang violence push them out and increasingly aggressive measures to stop them, driven by the US government, boast their efforts and send them back.

The economic damage from the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastation caused by the hurricanes in November only contributed to the driving forces. The news of a new US government with a softer approach to migrants has also raised hopes.

After her failed attempt to migrate in 2018, Hernández returned to scraping in San Pedro Sula. Last year, she sold underwear from house to house in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. But the storms wiped out her stock and her customers had limited ability to pay her for items they bought on credit.

“I could not charge people because we all lost,” Hernández said. “We all have needs, but you have to be sensitive. They have nothing to pay with and why go fetch? ‘

Chamelecon is a neighborhood of low-rise houses with tin roofs and small shops with barred windows on the outskirts of the city. Only two of its streets are paved, including one that is the dividing line between rival gangs Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18.

At the bridge where Hernández’s tent is pitched, tattooed young people smoke marijuana and residents sneak around in rubber boots. The violence continues, with newspapers talking about finding corpses wrapped in plastic.

In December, Hernández fell ill with fever, nausea and, she said, hurting her brain. She was taken to a hospital but was never tested on COVID-19. In January, her eldest son became fussy in their tent.

The father of her youngest son lives in Los Angeles and encourages her to raise money for another trip. “He told me that this year is going to be good because they got rid of Trump and the new president is going to help migrants,” Hernández said.

Within a few weeks, US President Joe Biden signed nine executive orders overturning Trump’s measures on family separation, border security and immigration. But for fear of an increase in immigration, the administration also sent the message that little will change quickly for migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border.

Hernández recently got a job clearing flooded streets, but she has not yet been able to tackle the house where she once lived with 11 others. It is still filled with a few inches of mud and dirty water.

The assembly plants that surround San Pedro Sula and drive the economy of the economy are still not back to capacity before the hurricane.

The Sula Valley, the most productive agricultural production in Honduras, has been so badly damaged that international organizations have warned of a food crisis. The World Food Program says three million Hondurans have food insecurity six times higher than before. The double hurricanes affected an estimated 4 million of Honduras’ 10 million people. The area is also worst affected by COVID-19 infections in Honduras.

“This is a vicious circle,” said Dana Graber Ladek, head of the International Organization for Migration’s office in Mexico. “They are suffering from poverty, violence, the hurricanes, unemployment, domestic violence, and with the dream of a new (American) government, of new opportunities, they are going to try (migrate) again and again.”

The last few caravans have been seized, first in Mexico and later in Guatemala, but the daily flow of migrants driven by smugglers continues and has shown an increase. The hopes and misinformation associated with the new US government are also helping the business.

“Traders are using this opportunity of desperation, of political change in the United States to spread rumors and false information,” Graber Ladek said.

In January, San Pedro Sula was overwhelmed by plans to migrate.

Gabriela, 29, who felt she had nothing to lose, was heading north a few days before a few thousand Hondurans left San Pedro Sula on January 15. She lost her cleaning job in the pandemic and the rest of her life to the hurricanes. . She asked for her full name to be withheld because she came to southern Mexico and feared she would be targeted.

Gabriela pays a smuggler, pays authorities along her route and walks through jungle as part of her journey north.

She lived in La Lima, a suburb of San Pedro Sula. Small businesses there have started to reopen, but in remote neighborhoods the streets are still full of rubbish, dead animals, snakes and burning mattresses.

“Everyone wanted to leave,” said Juan Antonio Ramírez, an elderly resident. His children and grandchildren were among 30 people who spent six days on a corrugated iron roof surrounded by floodwaters. ‘A lot of people left here, but everyone came back. The problem is that there is a barrier and they are sending it back from Guatemala. ‘

After the 2018 caravans and the increasing number of migrants at the U.S. border in early 2019, the U.S. government put Mexico and Central American countries under pressure to do more to slow down migration across their territories. The numbers fell in the latter half of 2019 and Mexico and Guatemala effectively stopped caravans in 2020. In December, a caravan leaving San Pedro Sula did not even get it out of Honduras.

But the US has reported an increasing number of encounters at the border, showing that migration flows outside the caravans are increasing again.

In September, the husband of Lisethe Contreras traveled to Miami. The La Lima resident said it took him three months to pay $ 12,000 to smugglers. She’s thinking of going too, but at the moment she’s selling small businesses supplies.

Biden has invested that investments in Central America will be the main causes of immigration, but no one expects any change to take place any time soon. Honduras’ primary election is scheduled for March and NGOs are worried that any aid could go hand in hand with political strings.

Hernández acknowledges confusion and disillusionment. “I do not know. … They all promise and then do not follow,” she said. “I do not see a good future here.”

Gabriela, already halfway through the goal of reaching the US, does not think of returning, even after 19 people, believed to be mostly Guatemalan migrants, were shot and burned in northern Mexico across Texas.

“I will only return to Honduras if immigration sends me back,” she said. “And if that happens, I’ll try with my son again.”