Bananas and Coffee

Today the headline was that 9 were gunned down and killed in San Pedro Sulla. They were shot at the morgue waiting to retrieve the body of a family member that had just been murdered in La Ceiba.  Another headline reads that 5 children the US has deported back have already been murdered by gangs.  I am not entirely sure how many we have deported back to put that number into perspective, but I believe the deportations from the recent flood of child immigrants began in mid July.  Over the past 10 months Border Patrol have apprehended 63,000 unaccompanied migrants below the age of 17 at the border. 

There are arguments being made that the migrants leaving Honduras are not truly leaving to escape violence but to find a better life with better pay.  Hondurans must have become calloused to the violence a long time ago.  The reasons why are probably grey.  Some are escaping violence, some are trying to get to their families who left them behind to send money from the U.S. and some are trying to get a decent paying job.


The violence has been escalating and the poverty has remained for quite some time.  Most people in Honduras live on roughly $1.25 a day. Hondurans working in the U.S. send more than US$2 billion each year to their families in Honduras; these remittances account for 28.2% of Honduras's GDP (2007 information [4]).  I have also read that 40 percent of residents are under the age of 15, although I haven't verified that from a reputable source I will concede that it is close to true.

 I think this article below sums up the recent history -
I also found this old United Fruit Company logo.

This is from the Associated Press -     In the late 19th century, U.S. companies like United Fruit and Standard Fruit owned vast tracts of land and relied on the Honduran military to quell labor rebellions. The elites then formed the country's two major political parties in support of the fruit companies, cementing ties between Honduras' business and political interests, said Marvin Barahona, a historian at a Jesuit think tank in the capital.
With wealth concentrated in the hands of a few families, Honduras remained poor. Decades later, as U.S. aid poured into government coffers, many citizens complained that their country had been converted into Washington's client state, a base for the U.S. military and U.S.-backed Contras fighting the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua.
But the status quo was fine with the oligarchy. Zelaya, a rich landowner from Olancho state, was one of them when he was elected president in 2006. When he began to move away from Washington towards Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez, however, his opponents feared a populist threat. His proposal for a referrendum on changing the constitution was the last straw. He was booted out by leaders of his own party, backed by the army.
The U.S. suspended aid as a sanction for the coup, and in the ensuing political chaos, drug traffickers saw an opening.

To that I would add the effect of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 which left nearly 11,000 dead and 2.7 million homeless and the terrain of Honduras being so mountainous and hard to tame. 

While thinking of possible ways to fix the situation I am reminded of a conversation I had between a Nicaraguan named Ana and an Arizonian named John.  John was talking about how he refused to shop at a particular grocery store because they treated their workers badly.  It led to a conversation about Maquiladoras and sweatshops.  John had made a general rule not to shop at sweatshops and Ana was upset because the sweatshops were a great help to Nicaraguas economy.  The basic take away was that it is wrong that sweatshops exploit labor so cheaply and treat their workers badly, but when sweatshops are the only thing available it is an ideal choice between work and going hungry.
  
Sending aid to the government seems to be a waste as they are so corrupt.  I think perhaps the best thing for Americans to do is to not buy cocaine and to buy as much Honduran coffee and bananas as they can.  As the economy gets better it must be left to the Hondurans to fight for justice within their government and to strengthen their labor unions. 

Or you can pick a non-profit and hope they know what they are doing.  Here is a one that I have worked with -  http://www.educate2envision.org/