Despair grows in devastated Honduras, fueling migration

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) – Nory Yamileth Hernández and her three teenage children have lived in a destroyed tent under a bridge outside San Pedro Sula since Hurricane Eta flooded their home in November.

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

“I cried because I don’t want to be here anymore,” said Hernández, 34. She joined the first large caravan in October 2018, but was unable to reach Mexico before returning. She is sure that she will try again soon. “There is a lot of suffering.”

In San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ economic engine and the outlet for thousands of Honduran migrants in recent years, families like Hernández’s are stuck in a migration cycle. Gang poverty and violence drive them out and increasingly aggressive measures to stop them, driven by the United States government, reduce their efforts and send them back.

The economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastation caused by the hurricanes in November only increased these driving forces. The news of a new government in the United States with a more lenient approach to migrants also raised hopes.

After his failed attempt to migrate in 2018, Hernández once again struggled to survive in San Pedro Sula. Last year, she sold lingerie door to door in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. But storms destroyed their stock and their customers had limited ability to pay for items they bought on credit.

“I was unable to charge people because we all lost,” said Hernández. “We all have needs, but you have to be sensitive. They have nothing to pay and why will they charge? ”

Chamelecon is a neighborhood of low houses with a tin roof 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.

On the bridge where Hernández’s tent is set, tattooed youths smoke marijuana and residents wander in rubber boots. The violence continues, with newspapers talking about finding bodies wrapped in plastic.

In December, Hernández fell ill with fever, nausea and, according to her, it hurt his brain. She went to a hospital, but she never took the COVID-19 test. In January, his eldest son squirmed in his tent with a fever.

Her youngest son’s father lives in Los Angeles and encouraged her to save 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 would help migrants,” said Hernández.

Within weeks, U.S. President Joe Biden signed nine executive orders reversing Trump’s measures related to family separation, border security and immigration. But fearing an increase in immigration, the government also sent the message that little will change quickly for migrants arriving on the southern border of the United States.

Hernández recently found work cleaning up flooded streets, but she has yet to manage the house where she lived with 11 other people. It is still full of several inches of mud and dirty water.

The automakers surrounding San Pedro Sula and moving its economy have not yet returned to pre-hurricane capacity amid the pandemic.

The Sula Valley, the most productive in agriculture in Honduras, has been so damaged that international organizations have warned of a food crisis. The World Food Program says that 3 million Hondurans face food insecurity, six times more than before. The two hurricanes affected about 4 million of the 10 million Hondurans. The area is also the most affected by COVID-19 infections in Honduras.

“It is a vicious cycle,” said Dana Graber Ladek, head of the International Organization for Migration office in Mexico. “They are suffering from poverty, violence, hurricanes, unemployment, domestic violence and with that dream of a new administration (of the USA), of new opportunities, they will try (to migrate) again and again.”

The last several attempts at caravans have been frustrated, first in Mexico and then in Guatemala, but the daily flow of migrants transported by smugglers continues and shows signs of increase. The hope and misinformation associated with the new administration in the United States also helps this business.

“Traffickers are using this opportunity of despair, of political changes in the United States to spread rumors and false information,” said Graber Ladek.

In January, San Pedro Sula was agitated by migration plans.

Gabriela, 29, feeling she had nothing to lose, went north a few days before a few thousand Hondurans left San Pedro Sula on January 15. She had lost her job as a cleaner in the pandemic and the rest of her life due to hurricanes. She asked that her full name be withheld because she had arrived in southern Mexico and feared being targeted.

Gabriela paid a smuggler, paid the authorities along her route and walked through the jungle as part of her journey north.

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

“Everyone wanted to leave,” said Juan Antonio Ramírez, an elderly resident. Their children and grandchildren were among about 30 people who spent six days trapped on a corrugated metal roof surrounded by floods in November. “A lot of people left here, but they all came back. The problem is that there is a barrier and they send them back from Guatemala. “

After the 2018 caravans and the increase in the number of migrants on the border with the United States in early 2019, the United States government pressured Mexico and Central American countries to do more to reduce migration in their territories. The numbers dropped in the second half of 2019 and Mexico and Guatemala effectively stopped the caravans in 2020. In December, a caravan leaving San Pedro Sula was unable to leave Honduras.

But the United States has reported an increasing number of border encounters, showing that, in addition to caravans, migratory flow is increasing again.

In September, Lisethe Contreras’ husband arrived in Miami. The La Lima resident said it took three months and $ 12,000 paid to smugglers. She is also thinking of going, but at the moment her small business is selling basic necessities.

Biden has pledged investments in Central America to discover the root causes of immigration, but no one expects to see any changes soon. The primary elections in Honduras are scheduled for March and non-governmental organizations fear that any aid will come with political restrictions.

Hernández admits confusion and disappointment. “I don’t know. … They all promise and then don’t deliver,” she said. “I don’t see a good future here.”

Gabriela, already halfway to her goal of reaching the USA, does not think about going back, even after 19 people, supposedly migrants from Guatemala, were found shot and burned in northern Mexico, right in front of Texas.

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