Despair grows in battered Honduras and fuels migration

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) – Nory Yamileth Hernández and her three teenage children have been living in a battered tent under a bridge on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula since Hurricane Eta flooded their home in November.

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

“I cried because I don’t want to be here anymore,” said 34-year-old Hernández. She had reached the first large caravan in October 2018, but had not made it to Mexico before returning. She is sure she will try again soon. “There is much suffering.”

In San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ economic engine and departure gate for thousands of Honduran migrants in recent years, families such as Hernández’s are trapped in a migration cycle. Poverty and gang violence are driving them out, and increasingly aggressive measures to stop them, driven by the US government, are softening their efforts and sending them back.

The economic damage from the COVID-19 pandemic and the devastation wrought by the hurricanes in November only added to those driving forces. The news of a new US administration with a softer approach to migrants has also sparked hope.

After her failed attempt to migrate in 2018, Hernández returned to scraping a living in San Pedro Sula. Last year she sold lingerie door-to-door in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. But the storms wiped out her inventory, and her customers had limited options to pay her for items they bought on credit.

“I couldn’t sue people because we all lost,” said Hernández. “We all have needs, but you have to be sensitive. They have nothing to pay with and why are they picking up? ”

Chamelecon is a neighborhood of low, tin-roofed houses and small shops with barred windows on the edge of town. Only two of the streets are paved, including one that divides the rival gangs Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18.

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

In December, Hernández fell ill with a fever, nausea and, she said, her brain damage. She went to a hospital but was never tested for COVID-19. In January, her eldest son was writhing in their tent with a fever.

The father of her youngest son lives in Los Angeles and encouraged her to raise money for the next trip. “He told me it was going to be good this year because they got rid of Trump and the new president was going to help migrants,” Hernández said.

Within weeks, US President Joe Biden signed nine executive orders reversing Trump’s measures on family separation, border security and immigration. But fearing an increase in immigration, the government also sent a message that little will change soon for migrants arriving at the US southern border.

Hernández recently found work cleaning flooded streets, but she still hasn’t managed to tackle the house where she once lived with 11 others. It is still filled with several inches of mud and dirty water.

The assembly plants that surround San Pedro Sula and power the economy are still not back to pre-hurricane capacity amid the pandemic.

The Sula Valley, Honduras’ most agricultural productive, has been so badly 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 double hurricanes have affected an estimated 4 million of Honduras’ 10 million people. The area has also been most affected by COVID-19 infections in Honduras.

“It’s a vicious circle,” said Dana Graber Ladek, head of the International Organization for Migration’s office in Mexico. “They suffer from poverty, violence, hurricanes, unemployment, domestic violence, and with that dream of a new (US) government, of new opportunities, they will try (migrate) again and again.”

The last few attempts at caravans have been thwarted, first in Mexico and later in Guatemala, but the daily flow of migrants moved by smugglers continues and shows signs of increasing. The hope and misinformation associated with the new US administration is also helping that company.

“The traffickers are using this opportunity of desperation, of political change in the United States to spread rumors and false information,” said Graber Ladek.

In January, San Pedro Sula was buzzing with plans to migrate.

Gabriela, 29, felt like she had nothing to lose, headed north just days before a few thousand Hondurans left San Pedro Sula on January 15. She had lost her cleaning job during the pandemic and the rest of her life from the hurricanes. She asked to remember her full name because she had reached southern Mexico and was afraid of becoming a target.

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

She had lived in La Lima, a suburb of San Pedro Sula. Small businesses have begun to reopen there, but in remote neighborhoods the streets are still full of debris, dead animals, hoses and burning mattresses.

“Everyone wanted to get out,” said Juan Antonio Ramírez, an elderly resident. His children and grandchildren were among some 30 people who were stranded on a corrugated iron roof for six days in November, surrounded by floods. “A lot of people left here, but they all came back. The problem is there is a barrier and they are sending them back from Guatemala. “

Following the 2018 caravans and rising numbers of migrants at the U.S. border in early 2019, the U.S. government pressured Mexico and Central American countries to do more to slow migration across their territory. The numbers fell in the second half of 2019 and Mexico and Guatemala effectively stopped caravans in 2020. In December, a caravan from San Pedro Sula did not even come from Honduras.

But the US is reporting an increasing number of border encounters, showing that outside the caravans, the migration flow is on the rise again.

In September, Lisethe Contreras’s husband reached Miami. The La Lima resident said it took him three months and paid $ 12,000 to smugglers. She’s thinking of going too, but right now her small business is selling the supplies.

Biden has promised investments in Central America to find out the root causes of immigration, but no one expects any change anytime soon. Honduras’ primaries are scheduled for March and non-governmental organizations fear that any aid will come with political preconditions.

Hernández admits to being confused and disappointed. “I don’t know. … They all promise and then don’t keep,” she said. “I don’t see a bright future here.”

Halfway through her goal of reaching the US, Gabriela has no plans to return, even after 19 people, presumably mostly Guatemalan migrants, were shot and burned in northern Mexico, across from Texas.

“I will only go back to Honduras if immigration sends me back,” she said. “And if that happens, I’ll try again with my son.”