Upward migration 7-30-2018

30, July 2018                                Upward migration

The court-imposed deadline of reuniting all migrant children with their parents has passed with 711 children remaining separated. More than 400 parents of these children have already been deported. It’s hard to imagine a more sadistic policy separating extremely vulnerable children from their parents. I wonder how Republicans will explain their silence in the wake of these grotesque lapses of morality and basic decency to their children and grandchildren.

Perhaps, a larger question to ask is why migrants are desperately fleeing from the Northern Triangle countries—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador? According to the renowned historian Noam Chomsky, the upward migration is a direct impact of decades of gross interference by the US which helped to destabilize these countries. For example, back in 1954, the US sponsored a military coup in Guatemala overthrowing a reformist elected government plunging the country into spasms of violence. Hundreds of thousands were killed and many tortured. Genocide took place in the Mayan areas by General Ríos Montt described by President Reagan as “a stellar of democracy, a really good guy.” In El Salvador, about 70,000 people were killed during the 1980s, by security forces, armed and trained by the United States.

In Honduras, the refugee flow started to peak after a military coup overthrew the democratically elected Zelaya government, condemned by the entire hemisphere and the world with the exception of President Obama. Hillary Clinton refused to designate it a military coup, because that would have meant terminating military aid to the junta, which the U.S. continues to support. Honduras has now become the homicide capital of the world, and refugees started fleeing after sham elections which were mocked by the whole world with the exception of the US. The exception to this horror story is Costa Rico which resisted US interference. The other country that partially survived is Nicaragua which was assaulted by Reagan’s contras funded by elicit arms sales to Iran (an impeachable offence). In light of the blatant interference in the domestic affairs of these countries, the US has a moral obligation to make amends for past and current misdeeds.