In walking out of their country en masse, Hondurans are making a loud, bold statement about the extreme injustices they face at home.
In a sort of companion piece to Amelia Frank-Vitale’s comment on the NACLA website, Crystal Vance Guerra, writing for Yes Magazine argues that migration has become a form of protest for many Hondurans. While Frank-Vitale’s piece sees migration as an act of civil disobedience in the face of an unjust global economic system, Vance Guerra’s piece looks inward at how Hondurans are also shunning their corrupt and repressive government. Golpista president Juan-Orlando Hernández definitely sees it that way, blaming political opponents for organising migrant caravans just to make him look bad (get a grip JOH, it’s not all about you).
Migration has been seen as a development boon (remittances) and as an escape valve for workers who are “surplus to requirements”, a burden on the (usually tiny) welfare state, or a political liability. Vance Guerra writes how in Mexico,
Instead of using organized protest to demand change, people could be encouraged to seek the American Dream, quelling the problem of popular uprisings at the root [...] But now, it seems as if this psychological shift from revolution to migration has circled back, and migration has become the newest form of protest.
This, she argues, is most evident today in Honduras. However, her piece also alludes to how Hondurans have bravely been resisting the golpista regime since 2009 only to be repressed time and time again. In a somewhat disconnected passage, Vance Guerra writes
The saying “la gente puede vivir sin justicia pero no sin esperanza”—people can live without justice, but not without hope—sums up the current mood of the country.
This seems to contradict the general idea behind Vance Guerra’s article, which paints migration as a form of protest against the Honduran regime and not as an act of hopelessness. But that’s precisely what these caravans might be.
That, at least, is the opinion of Honduran journalist Félix Molina, who survived an assassination attempt in 2016. At a recent public appearance in Canada, Molina said that the 2017 electoral fraud was the straw that broke Honduran’s backs. After 9 years of resistance to golpismo, Hondurans are at hope’s end.
But after all, migration could be many things: an act of survival, an act of civil disobedience in the face of an unjust global order, a sign of political hopelessness, as well as a parting shot at the assholes who drove you to this.
