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Unemployment, danger and violence pushing Hondurans to flee to US
TEGUCIGALPA, Oct 26, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Choking back tears, Glenda Lagos
laments the departure of her teenage daughter to join the Honduran migrant
caravan heading to the United States despite threats from President Donald
Trump to turn them back at the border.
Like thousands of other Hondurans, Belckys Lagos, 17, fled unemployment,
danger and violence in the Central American country, which has one of the
highest murder rates in the world.
“Here there’s no work and a lot of violence,” Glenda Lagos told AFP about
her gang-plagued “Los Pinos” neighborhood in the east of the Honduran
capital, Tegucigalpa.
The caravan of 2,000 people set off on October 13 from the violent city of
San Pedro Sula, 180 kilometers (110 miles) to the north of Tegucigalpa, in
search of the “American Dream.”
Along the way, many, like Belckys Lagos, joined the swarm, which has
swelled to some 7,000 people, according to United Nations figures.
But they have had to contend with threats from the White House to command
the military to block them at the Mexican border, as Trump claims there are
“criminals and terrorists” among them.
Even Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez has accused opposition
politicians of helping the migrants to try to make the county “ungovernable.”
Many of the migrants have told AFP they’re heading to the US in the hope of
finding the work that has proved scant in their homeland, and to escape gang
and drug-trafficking violence that runs amok in Honduras, seemingly with
impunity.
– No help –
While her daughter treks on in hopes of a better future, 45-year-old Lagos
makes do in her five square meter (54 square feet) hut built from scraps of
wood, concrete and corrugated metal on a steep hill accessed by steps crafted
from slate.
On the outskirts of her neighborhood, a group of young gang members scatter
from a corner known for drug dealing, after mistaking a vehicle for a police
patrol.
“I would have gone too with two kids of six and 12 but I had a problem,”
admitted Lagos, who nonetheless says she would ask her daughter to come home
because “things are getting ugly” with Trump’s threats.
Lagos lives with her six children, including two sons of 20 and 22,
although their shack has just two beds.
She says the government “isn’t helping and doesn’t look after the poor,”
who have to make do as they can. She gets by working as a nanny to a
neighbor’s two-year-old for $82 a month, with which she needs to feed her six
children.
At the bottom of the slope leading up to Lagos’s house lives Luisa Mejia,
66, whose 19-year-old grandson Carlos Lagos also joined the caravan.
“I hope he’ll help me, he says he’ll help me,” said Mejia, who lives with
her 25-year-old daughter Julissa in a mud house covered with a corrugated
metal sheet.
“What we do is rustle up tortillas so we don’t go hungry. With what we make
in a day, we eat,” said Mejia.
– ‘Prejudice’ –
Linder Reyes, a 25-year-old working for a charity that provides
humanitarian aid, says unemployment and violence are the biggest factors in
driving people out of the country, as well as domestic discrimination.
“Many communities are classified as high-risk and (employers) hold a
prejudice against us, that we’re criminals, gang members and thieves,” said
Reyes.
But if Honduras could provide “worthy and quality employment, people
wouldn’t leave.”
According to Honduras’s Employment Ministry, just seven percent of people
are out of work; the main problem is under-employment that sees some 44
percent of people don’t earn enough to provide basic necessities for their
families.
Seven out of every 10 people live below the poverty line while the murder
rate is 43 per 100,000 citizens, according to the national university.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0845 HRS