Measuring little more than 112,000 km², occupied by three US military bases, with a population just over 9 million, about 70% of whom live in poverty, Honduras has once again captured international attention -- this time for a dramatic human exodus whose stark images could make even the angels in heaven dissolve in tears.

A republic for more than 180 years, Honduras was trying to lead and survive the lethal consequences of permanent foreign intervention when the 2009 coup d’état ended up breaking it down and turning it into a truly failed state. And with the fraudulent and unconstitutional reelection of now President Juan Orlando Hernández in 2017, this failed state became a narco-criminal state.

In 2009, 58% of Hondurans were living in poverty. There was an attempt to reinstall ousted president Manuel Zelaya, but he was removed in a coup d’état supported by the US government, thus restoring the suicidal politics of neoliberalism in the country.

According to a UN report, 68% of Hondurans live in poverty in 2018. More than 3 million Hondurans eat only once a day. At the same time in Honduras, during the same decade, foreign businessmen like the late Miguel Facussé catapulted into becoming the richest men in the region.

Faced with the raw consequences the Central American country is now experiencing, the population organized itself with the creation of the unprecedented National Front for Popular Resistance (Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular - FNRP). But as under all dictatorships, this pro-human rights social movement was literally dismembered, with many of its leaders assassinated.

The silence of the US government, the OAS (Organization of American States) and the international community tacitly approved this criminal action. And now the country is practically ungovernable. With no rule of law, no life expectancy, no work opportunities, fractured and drowning in blood, Honduras has been one of the most violent countries in the world since 2009.

In 2014, Juan Orlando Hernández came to the government quoting the Bible and proffering blessings for the faithful and Pentecostal people of Honduras. Once in power, faced with his social unpopularity, he stayed in power by sheltering himself in theological biblical discourse and the protection of the US government.

With starvation in Honduras so great, and the specter of violent death so pervasive that every living moment is practically an act of faith, the instinct for survival among impoverished Hondurans has impelled them to embark upon an almost apocalyptic exodus to the bogus promised land of El Norte, joining the almost 1.2 million Hondurans who have already been expelled.

What more is left a people in a country whose disgrace is its natural riches and its close proximity to the US? A country where each year more than 300,000 people are mired in poverty. Where not only is one born impoverished but also indebted to corrupt governments. At birth, every Honduran is born in debt to the government for the equivalent of $1,350. What more can be expected?

Migration is a right, not a crime. The problem is that Honduras has suffered permanent colonialist looting. The ordeal of the Honduran exodus demonstrates the failure of the criminal, “made in the USA” neoliberal system. And the bells are tolling for Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, Argentina and Brazil, whose servile governments use the neoliberal yankee playbook to continue to exploit their peoples.

(Translated by Danica Jorden)

Source:

https://ollantayitzamna.wordpress.com/2018/10/20/el-exodo-hondureno-un-campanazo-para-los-estados-neoliberales/