The American migration crisis is homemade. The United States has made a practice to pass policies that retain American interests irrespective of the effects on other nations.
For decades, these very policies have affected Central American states and damaged their way of life both directly and indirectly through many means. One nation of particular focus is Honduras. It is there where one can see the complex nature of the American migration crisis.
Whether it be for tourism, terrorism, coffee production, or even crocheted clothing, the United States has made a practice to pass policies that retain American interests irrespective of the effects on other nations.
Like many other nations with natural resources, the Honduran economy has been mainly agrarian. To this date bananas are one of the country’s most imported goods.
In the early 1900s, United Fruit Company, known today as Chiquita Brands International, was the single largest importer of fresh fruit in the United States with bananas being one of the pillars of their business.
At that point in time, these fruits started becoming so important for Honduras and its economy that “throughout the first half of the twentieth century, [it was] usually depicted as a ‘banana republic’”. By 1914, American companies owned more than one million acres of land just in Honduras or roughly four percent of the entire nation.
Land and plantations naturally meant an immense investment for these American corporations; therefore, they wanted to see them protected.
Sometimes, this meant that companies took measures themselves. For example, the United Fruit Company made a deal with the Honduran government that would allow them to receive funding for building a railway network.
Honduras wanted to build a nation-wide network with the help of the American know-how of United Fruit Company, who in return just planned to enhance its distribution network. For Honduras, this meant that immense amounts of money—that was supposed to help the country out of poverty—disappeared without any direct use for the country.
The influences and subsequent projects were not always reciprocal. American companies were known to bribe important Honduran officials. In one particular instance United Fruit Company bribed one official with 1.25 million USD in order to ensure low banana export taxes (Peed).
Another example of deals that were not mutually beneficial to actual Honduras citizens, was when the United States sought an ally in Honduran president Tiburcio Carías Andino.
Shortly after his inauguration in 1933, he started to act more like a dictator with no interest for human rights who used “the institutionalization of violence as a political tool”. Any sort of protest was brutally suppressed and political opponents disappeared.
For the promise of stability and control in Honduras, the United States turned a blind eye to Carías’ crimes against his own people.
Migration is not solely a Honduran or South American problem, and neither is it a problem that is easy to fix. It is so tightly intertwined with the United States that one cannot be examined without the other.
Luiselli’s quotations and this research reflects how Honduran migrants do not search for something they do not have but for something they had before American intervention.
