by PHILIPPE BOURGOIS, JENNIFER BURRELL, ELIZABETH CARTWRIGHT ET. AL
While the Right shows its legendary sociopathic lack of empathy, hypocrisy and eagerness to defame the victim, all reflected in Trump's mendacious statements, the media fail to tell the real backstory about these migrants.
![](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/MigrantCaravan-truckoad.jpg)
Hundreds of migrants hitch a ride in a truck between Niltepec and Juchitan, Mexico, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2018. The migrant caravan slowly advancing through southern Mexico is demanding that the Mexican government help its 4,000-some members reach Mexico City. People conveniently forget that Central Americans were once all part of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico). As these pictures attest, the major news services have not exactly hidden the magnitude of this human crisis, yet most people remain ignoant about its true origins. This photo was taken by Rebecca Blackwell, distributed by AP.
Migrants from Central America and Mexico have suffered systematic racism and discrimination at the hands of U.S. administrations, from Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. However, the Trump administration’s openly racist rhetoric and threats about the current migrant caravan is based on a cascade of false statements.
We want to correct five lies the Trump administration has promoted about people fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries.
1) There are no “terrorists” on the caravan.
Both Donald Trump and Mike Pence have publicly stated that there are “Middle Easterners” and “terrorists” in the migrant caravan. These claims are not merely false—which would imply some amount of good faith—but are, rather, patently absurd and racist.
There is no evidence of Middle Eastern refugees joining the caravan. There may be people in the caravan whose forebears left Syria or other countries in the Middle East decades ago to come to Central America and Mexico looking for work, prosperity and freedom.
These lies obscure actual solidarity happening on the ground, including the many Mexican and Guatemalan people who have fed and sheltered migrants along their route. We encourage the U.S. public and politicians to respond to the people fleeing persecution and violence with compassion and care.
2) Migrant caravans are not new and they are not “organized by Democrats to hurt Republicans.”
The word “caravan” has been used as a boogieman by the Trump administration and some US media outlets. In Latin America the word “caravan”refers to a group of people (merchants, pilgrims, friends etc.) who come together to travel in the same direction, on foot or in a vehicle. The word also connotes a group of pilgrims walking together for spiritual well-being.
Migrant caravans have been part of the migrant scene in Mexico for at least two decades—during the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. There are fewer caravans today. But none of these caravans were ever involved in political, criminal or gang violence. Caravans are not partisan and the Democrats do not fund them. The current caravan was organized by a small group of Hondurans by social media and word of mouth with no outside institutional or professional support. In fact, caravans only gained recognition in the United States after the Trump administration began vilifying them.
For years, the Mexican government has deported migrants, especially children, without due process, and has willfully ignored the murder and disappearance of thousands of Central American migrants. Caravans allow people to make their suffering and humanity visible. It is by joining together that they gain the safety and recognition necessary to expose human rights abuses.
3) The government of Honduras is not “funding” the migrant caravan.
The Trump administration’s conspiratorial claims that the caravan is organized by shadowy government actors are patently false. To the contrary, Honduras attempted to close its borders to prevent its citizens from leaving, in direct violation of international law.
![](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Migrants-InvadersFoxNews.jpg)
Trump and his cabal have accused the migrants of being "invaders", of being "terrorists and murderers". This—amplified by the avalanche of lies on rightwing media— has inflamed many native chauvinists, including unstable types like the synagogue attacker in Pennsylvania.
Migrant caravans have been organized by priests, churches, and by migrants themselves. There has never been a caravan organized by Honduras, Mexico, or any other government. And George Soros has never funded a caravan.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat is driving the migrant caravans today is the residue of a violent military coup in 2009 that overthrew Honduras’ democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya. The coup was financially supported by the U.S. Department of State. The country’s public sector—including education and healthcare—has since been decimated by the regimes that followed. Political dissent is extremely dangerous in Honduras. Prominent activists like Berta Caceres were murdered for speaking out against the current dictatorship. Honduras has become increasingly unstable with gangs and paramilitary organizations violently wrestling for control. The net result is that thousands of people and families and frightened teenagers have been displaced, and running for their lives.4) The US does not already spend money on humanitarian aid in Central America.
![](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Migrants-Caravan-children.jpg)
Mother and children (held close by a string) on her way up the North American continent. No one knows how the trip will end.
![](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Migrants-trucks.jpg)
A woman holding her baby hitches a ride on the fender of a tanker in Niltepec, Mexico, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2018. Can anything but utter desperation make people take such risks? (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell, distributed by AP.)
Almost all aid money sent to Central America is through a multinational program, Alliance for Prosperity, which the Obama administration joined in 2015. The goal was to stimulate the local economies, to promote educational activities, to target criminal networks and to deter Central Americans from fleeing their homes. Many of us have joined Central American people in speaking out against the Alliance because most of the money has funded privatization programs and military contractors, often from the United States. Predictably, instead of building prosperity, the militarization of what was described as “humanitarian aid” has only resulted in greater violence for Central American people. Forces trained and armed to fight gangs and government corruption splintered into well-organized militias. Rather than helping poor and frightened people in Central America, U.S. aid has helped to make their countries unlivable.
5) It is not possible for the migrant caravan to “go back to their countries and apply for citizenship.”
On October 30 Trump tweeted to people in the caravan: “Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!” No one can apply for U.S. citizenship outside the United States. Only those already granted asylum in the US can apply for U.S. citizenship, a process that takes years and often subjects asylum seekers and applicants to detention and intense surveillance. All of this is wholly ignored by the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, the U.S. spends over $100 million a year on the Southern Border Plan, which pays Mexico to catch and deport Central Americans. This fund is blood money. Bribing another country to criminalize migrants headed to our borders seeking asylum is a disturbing and dangerous precedent.
The fact that Donald Trump has declared that he will not allow the migrant caravan to even apply for asylum and that he will send US troops to prevent them from attempting to do so violates our constitution and immigration laws. Trump is also at war with international law, which demands that migrants at risk in their home countries have the right to seek protection in another country.
The Trump Administration has turned upside down our American history and has ripped to shreds our American values. It feels like a desecration of our red, white and blue flag, a flag burning if you will.
The people walking in the migrant caravan are seeking protection from violence and persecution, like so many of our founding fathers and mothers and ancestors. The caravan is a van of peace and hope, not a weapon of war. Those riding and walking with the van are not our enemies. They are people like us. They are our neighbors who deserve our protection and welcome.
Philippe Bourgois
Jennifer Burrell
Elizabeth Cartwright
Heide Castañeda
RoseMarie Chierici
Maria Cruz-Torres
Brad Erickson
Fabian Fernandez
Jennie Gamlin
Seth M. Holmes
Sarah Horton
Jennifer Hughes
Roger Lancaster
James Loucky
Nolan Kline
Miriam Magaña Lopez
Teresa Mares
Carlos Martinez
Siobhan McGuirk
Lisa Meierotto
Adrienne Pine
Lina Berrio Palomo
James Quesada
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Paola Sesia
Lynn Stephen
Wendy Vogt
Levi Vonk
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
3 comments
If the US stopped invading South America, then they would not need to “invade” the US.
Thank you Patrice for reminding readers that the US backed the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Honduras in 2009. President Manuel Zelaya opposed US neoliberal exploitation of Honduras so he had to go.
Here is a quote about Honduras from an article I wrote in 2015, “Hillary’s Neocon Legacy: Coups, Dictators, Corruption, Chaos, Executions and Assassination”:
[Quote]…..In 2009 Hillary showed what she really means by “smart power” and backed the military coup in Honduras over the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya was getting too close to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and neocons such as Hillary feared another left-wing government in Latin America.
Military coup leaders seized President Zelaya in the middle of the night and flew him to exile in Costa Rico. First they stopped at a U.S. military base, SOUTHCOM Joint Task Force-Bravo. Hillary said it was a “surprise visit”.
Demands by both the Organization of American States and the United Nations for the immediate restoration of President Zelaya were ignored. Instead after the coup, as Hillary wrote in her book Hard Choices:
“I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
The only “stability” the Hillary-backed military coup has brought to Honduras is the “stability” of the murder capital of the world. Journalists, opposition leaders, LGBT activists, blacks, natives, peasants, women organizers, priests, intellectuals, and everybody deemed a threat to the coup-government and the oligarchs are murdered, tortured and disappeared.
An op-ed in the New York Times by Dana Frank called Honduras a “mess made in the U.S.” It said that since the coup “the country has been descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss”. It is a mess that Hillary is responsible for making.
What is happening in Honduras is class warfare with 65% of the country living in poverty. The wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few land owners, corrupt politicians, generals, and oligarchs. They have declared war against the poor.
The U.S. interest in Honduras is its military bases and dwindling stature in Latin America. But Hillary has a personal interest as well.
On June 8, 2015 Matthew Pulver published an exclusive article in Salon.com that accuses Hillary of selling out Honduras for money and links it to Hillary advisor Laney Davis and his client “Honduras Chapter of Business Council of Latin America”.
The article also includes a link to a Wikileaks leaked cable from the U.S. Embassy in Honduras to Hillary. The cable makes it clear that Hillary knew that there had been a military coup. Yet Hillary continued the charade that Zelaya had “fled in the middle of the night to avoid justice for his crimes”. Hillary and Obama illegally continued to provide military and economic foreign aid to the coup-government in violation of the Foreign Assistance Act.
Hillary has since praised Honduras as a shining example of democracy and blamed any problems on drug traffickers. Instead of it being Hillary’s “smart power”, the repression and butchery in Honduras is another reason why Latin American countries loath the U.S.A…… [End Quote].
Neoliberalism is driving subsistence farmers off of their land and into the cities where they cannot find work, or if they do it is the type where they live in a cardboard box next to a Nike factory.
Many, especially Native Americans, are having their traditional lands stolen from them and are being driven off their land by paramilitary groups and mercenaries working for rich land grabbers, many of them US corporations that want the land to grow monocrops for export.
When any country in the world, whether Yemen or Honduras, resists neoliberal exploitation, then the US uses the old fashioned method of military invasion and coups….or has its proxies do it for them.
People such as Trump and his supporters think that everybody in the world wants to come to the US. They don’t. Many of them are fleeing something, and that something is often caused by the US. Honduras is just one of many examples, and it has been going on for several hundred years.
To stress a point in my comment, here is Hillary in her arrogance bragging in her book that she thinks she has the right to decide that a “left wing” government has chosen to share “to much” of their own natural resources (the commons) for the betterment of the Honduran people.
So Hillary in her own words made the democratically elected president Zelaya moot, by arranging a ” free and fair election” that “elects” a military dictatorship that is pleasing to her and Obama.
How strange that Zelaya would flee in the middle of the night in his pajamas to a US military base tp “avoid justice”. Hugo Chavez pulled the same stunt in 2002, but the people of Venezuela demanded that he be returned to “face justice”. Viktor Yanukovych got away with “fleeing Ukraine” and facing justice though because of the “evil” Putin. .
A masterful reply, for which we thank our colleague David Pear. He sums it all up in this lapidary setence: “If the US stopped invading South America, then they would not need to ‘invade’ the US.” Of course, as David indicates, the US invasions are real, while the South American “invasions” of desperate people a dishonest appeal to base nativist chauvinism in the US homeland.