Open way for those seeking asylum and refugee due to U.S. policies
They’re coming. They’re hungry. They’re in rags. But they’re determined. They’re coming to the gates of the imperialist country, the United States. They’re asking for refuge from the disaster that capitalism has created in their home countries.
Some say that the migrant caravan that started in El Salvador was organized and it’s not a spontaneous effort of the nearly 7,000 people who are in it.
Who cares? If people had jobs and didn’t live in fear of the violence, whether from the military, the police, the gangs or the drug dealers, they wouldn’t be walking right now.
The common narrative in the migrant caravan is that they heard on the radio and/or Facebook that a caravan was being organized to come to the United States. They had been thinking of coming for years. But they didn’t have the money to pay the coyote. So, when they heard about the caravan, they packed their few belongings and joined it. As a group, they felt safer. What’s more, they didn’t have to pay a coyote.
Why are migrants coming from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras?
The three countries all have histories of being attacked, although not directly invaded, by the U.S. government. The methods used against each country were strikingly similar.
By 1980 in El Salvador, a military dictatorship was crushing the people with violence and poverty – and the U.S. government was financing this dictatorship and supporting its military.
In Guatemala, in the first half of the 20th century, the U.S.-based corporation United Fruit Co. (now Chiquita Brands) grabbed land and made the indigenous people work for almost no wages, abetted by the government there.
From 1944 to 1954, Guatemalans stood up and took over their government by democratic elections, passing an Agrarian Reform Law in 1952. Under that law in 1953, the Guatemalan government seized 234,000 uncultivated acres of United Fruit, which was by far the country’s largest landowner.
A paramilitary invasion by the CIA overthrew the president in 1954 and installed a military dictator.
More recently, in June 2009, Honduras’ democracy as smashed when President Zelaya was forced into exile after an apparent military coup. To smooth the junta’s way, the U.S. corporate-dominated government refused to recognize the change as a “coup,” throwing its support to the military and preventing international sanctions.
The United States backed “civil wars” by the military governments in each country. The worst slaughter was in Guatemala, where a U.S.-funded civil war from 1960 to 1995 resulted in 200,000 people dead, most of them indigenous people, at the hands of the military.
In El Salvador, U.S.-funded forces killed more than 70,000. El Salvador didn’t suffer a full-fledged U.S.-funded civil war. However, in the 1980s, the United States in Honduras supported the contras, fighting the Nicaraguan government.
Then came NAFTA and CAFTA, devastating their economies.
The devastation of Central American countries by U.S. intervention and economic policies are the root cause of why thousands of migrants are walking, taking trains, buses and even cattle trucks to get to the United States. These are international workers in search of jobs to feed their families.
We the workers of the United Sates, a country of immigrants, must fight to keep the gates open for our sisters and brothers. No number of U. S. troops, the 2,992 deployed before and the 5,200 more on their way to the U.S./Mexico border will deter those fleeing violence, terror and hunger.
It didn’t stop those asylum seekers and immigrants before them — English, Irish, German, Polish, Greeks, Italians …
No borders for corporations, why for workers?
