Child Refugees - The El Salvador Story

El Salvador

The Origins of the Current Wave of Child Refugees

El Salvador's colonial history begins in 1524 with the arrival of Pedro de Alvarado, a lieutenant of Hernan Cortes. The country lacked the gold and silver resources of other Spanish conquests in the New World, but it proved to be a profitable source of agricultural exports, initially of cacao, indigo (source of a popular blue dye) and, somewhat later, of coffee. The country's development followed the familiar pattern of New World colonies - a small number of families either directly descended from the colonizers themselves or connected through inter-marriage quickly came to control the land, the resources and the government. The ruling elites were able to maintain unchallenged control of El Salvador well into the 20^th century through an alliance with the country's top military leaders whose loyalties were easily purchased at a modest price. They then provided whatever was needed in the way force and intimidation to ensure that a small number of elite families maintained complete control of the wealth and resources of the country.

This arrangement prevailed until the early 1930's when the already abysmal plight of agricultural workers became completely intolerable following a plunge in world coffee prices. When Agustin Farabundo Marti organized an insurrection of the rural poor in 1932, the army responded by killing 30,000 people, targeting in particular those who wore traditional dress or spoke indigenous languages, in what became known as "la matanza." These brutal tactics in combination with a timely rise in world coffee prices were enough to shore up the old economic order for another few decades, but the but the handwriting was clearly on the wall. The revolution in Cuba 1959 and the growing threat of communism in Central and South America raised alarms, not only among the ruling elites, but in the the US as well. The initial US response was a positive one. With strong support from President John F. Kennedy, an ambitious program, the Alliance for Progress, was launched to encourage democratic reforms throughout Latin America. Membership in the Alliance required commitments by each country to implement fundamental economic, political, and social reforms but while the stated goals were laudable - they included land and political reform along with improvements in educational and health care services for the poor - they were subverted by the ruling elites in Latin America and by conservative politicians in the US who viewed many of the initiatives as socialistic. There was a steady decline in US support for the Alliance following Kennedy's assassination and over the ensuing decade, military dictatorships actually replace democratically elected governments in thirteen of the countries that were part of the original Alliance. Over the same period, an increasing percentage of US aid shifted from economic development to military assistance.

The Alliance for Progress had only a limited impact in El Salvador and the five decades that followed the suppression of the 1932 uprising witnessed an unbroken string of anti-democratic,military dictatorships and a continuing decline in civil rights and economic opportunity. Opposition grew slowly but steadily but was met with increasingly blatant manipulation of the political process by the military and increasingly harsh forms of repression. The following excerpt from a PBS history of El Salvador picks up the story in 1977 ¹.

“Following the military government's blatant manipulation of the presidential election in 1977, demonstrators gathered in the main plaza of San Salvador and were fired upon by security forces. Shortly thereafter, a reformist priest, Father Rutilio Grande, was assassinated. In response, Monsignor Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, called for an investigation, urged popular demonstrations and led a memorial mass attended by more than 100,000 people................

In 1980, after President Carter announced a $50 million aid package to support reforms - including $5 million in military aid - Archbishop Romero urged the U.S. to cease all military assistance to El Salvador. One month later, Archbishop Romero ended his Sunday sermon with this plea: 'I beseech you, I beg you, order you in the name of God, stop the repression.' Romero was assassinated the following day. Six months later, a full-scale civil war had begun.

The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States changed American policy in El Salvador dramatically. The new U.S. administration worried about Communist expansion in Central America and viewed the El Salvador military government as a potential barrier against Communism. The Reagan administration substantially increased both military and economic aid to El Salvador.

The civil war raged on in El Salvador, fueled by U.S. aid to the Salvadoran military. The government harshly repressed dissent, and at least 70,000 people lost their lives in killings and bombing raids waged against civilians throughout the countryside. The country's infrastructure had crumbled, and the nation appeared to be no closer to its goals of peace, prosperity and social justice than when the process began. Then, in 1989, the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter at the University of Central America shocked the international community into action.

With continuing reports of atrocities and murders in El Salvador, the U.S. Congress no longer accepted the State Department's assurance that things were getting better. Speaker of the House Tom Foley created a special task force to monitor El Salvador's investigation of the murders. Congressman Joe Moakley of Massachusetts was selected to head up the investigation. ..................... He discovered that from a very high level, the armed forces of El Salvador had been responsible for the murders of the Jesuits. His investigation also led to the conclusion that certain levels of the U.S. government had known about the situation long before the task force was created.”

The civil war generated created a flood of Salvadorans seeking refuge in the US the vast majority crossing the Mexican border into Southern California and settling primarily in the Los Angeles area. Accurate estimates of the ebbs and flows of illegal immigrants are notoriously difficult to come by, but a report by the Migration Policy Institute suggests that arrivals from El Salvador peaked at 129,000 in 1982 and that an additional 334,000 entered between 1985 and 1990².

The new arrivals quickly found themselves at the mercy of existing Mexican and African American gangs and quickly organized their own gangs. While initially formed for self defense, they quickly morphed into criminal enterprises driven primarily by financial incentives. One of the most notorious Salvadoran gangs, MS 13, is now national in scope with a strong presence in Washington, DC and adjoining counties in Virginia and Maryland.

When crime and violence associated with warring street gangs became a major concern in many cities across the United States, the deportation of gang members became a hot political issue. As part of his efforts to triangulate Republicans on crime, President Bill Clinton signed a 1996 law that ratcheted up deportations of immigrants with criminal records by making things like drunk driving and petty theft deportable offenses. “Shipping off  undesirable immigrants proved enormously 
popular among Democrats and Republicans alike and mass deportations continued apace under both Presidents Bush and Obama  -  overwhelmingly  to Mexico and Central America.”³              

When these deportees arrived back in their “home” countries with their impoverished economies, dysfunctional legal systems and nonexistent employment and educational opportunities they quickly resorted to the same gang activities that had proven so successful in the US.  Ironically, it has been their aggressive efforts to force young Salvadoran males into gang life that has a major cause of the current wave of children attempting to enter the US  illegally
 The trademark devil-horns hand sign    popular among 

originated with the English heavy metal band Judas Priest
Photograph: Ulises Rodriguez / EPA  

                                                                                  

 These children and their parents have decided that the perils of traveling alone through Mexico and making an illegal crossing into the US are preferable to the threats posed by gangs in their home countries.

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1 http://www.pbs.org/itvs/enemiesofwar/elsalvador2.html

2Gammage, Sarah, “El Salvador: Despite End to Civil War, Emigration Continues.”, Migration Policy Institute, 2007. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/print/4507#.U-Kw12PCf1g

3Michael-Paarlberg, “Gangs, guns and Judas Priest: the secret history of a US-inflicted border crisis”, The Manchester Guardian, 23 July, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/23/history-border-crisis-central-america-gangs

Child Refugees - The Honduras Story

The Bitter Fruits of American Neo-Colonialism

Over the past two years, the border between the US and Mexico has been flooded with thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America trying to enter the United States illegally¹. There is compelling evidence that most of them are are being driven by a fears of gang violence in their home countries - primarily Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador - fears powerful enough to make them and their parents willing to accept the risks of a perilous journey to the US.  Because of its past actions to suppress the development of democratic institutions in each of these countries, the US bears a direct responsibility for the breakdown in the rule of law in each country that has generated the current flood of desperate children seeking entrance to the US.

Anti-immigrant zealots who complain so bitterly about the terrible burden these child refugees impose on the US fail to understand that they are just one more example of “chickens coming home to roost”, which is to say that they are the long-term consequence of US interventions that go back to the late 19^th century in the case of Honduras and Guatemala and to the 1980s in the case of El Salvador. The first two countries were classic “banana Republics” where the US intervened directly to suppress the development of political and social reforms and supported oppressive military dictatorships in order to protect the interests of US corporations. In El Salvador, a tiny country with little in the way of exploitable resources, American interventions were the product of US concerns in the 1980's that communism was gaining a foothold in Latin America and must be met with a vigorous response.

The Honduran version of this story begins with Sam "the Banana Man" Zemurray, a colorful character who was born in Moldova in 1877 and emigrated to America in 1896 ending up at the age of 19 on the docks of Mobile, Alabama. After observing stevedores dumping over-ripe bananas into the sea, he came up with the idea of taking those bananas, moving them quickly to inland towns nearby and selling them at bargain prices before they spoiled. By age 21, he had already banked $100,000.

In 1910, he borrowed half a million dollars, bought a steamship and sailed to Honduras where he purchased 5,000 acres of land along the Cuyamel River². He continued to borrow money and accumulate land but soon found himself over-extended and heavily in debt. Unfortunately for Sam, his personal debt crisis coincided with a sovereign debt crisis on the part of the Honduran government which had borrowed heavily from American banks and was now unable to make its payments. The country found itself under intense pressure from the US government to come up with a plan to repay its debts and reluctantly agreed to impose a package of excise taxes, the proceeds of which would go directly to the American banks (J P Morgan being the largest) that held the loans. The plan spelled disaster for Sam since the excise taxes would have destroyed his banana exporting business. Even worse, the repayment plan called for the direct oversight of the tax collections by agents of the American banks, a provision that precluded any opportunity to avoid the taxes with the usual expedient of bribing local officials.

A desperate Zemurray appealed to US Secretary of State Philander C. Knox for help but, having considerably less influence than J. P. Morgan, he was rebuffed. Sam then turned to Plan B - the overthrow of the Honduran government. He enlisted the services of a pair of mercenaries, one with the colorful name of "Machine Gun" Molony and selected, as the future President of Honduras, Manuel Bonilla, a retired General who had seized control of the Honduran government in 1903, served as president until overthrown in 1907, and was now living in New Orleans. After formulating their plans in a New Orleans whore house and with more than a little assistance from the US Government, this ragtag posse of conspirators succeeded in seizing power and Bonilla returned in triumph as President of Honduras.

Bonilla quickly expressed his gratitude by awarding Zemurray 50,000 acres of prime banana growing land. He also gave Zemurray a unique permit allowing his businesses to import whatever they needed duty-free. Finally, he authorized Zemurray to raise a $500,000 loan in the name of the Honduran government, and use the money to repay himself for what he claimed to have spent organizing the revolution. Like so many revolutions, this one was financed by the citizens of the “liberated” country.

“ Zemurray liked to describe Honduras, which lies just across Nicaragua's northern border, as a country where "a mule costs more than a congressman." Over the ensuing decades, he bought plenty of both, and a string of pliable presidents as well. His Cuyamel Fruit Company and two others-Standard Fruit and United Fruit which he ultimately acquired - -came to own almost all the fertile land in the country. They also owned and operated its ports, electric power plants, sugar mills, and largest bank.

“After Bonilla's death in 1913, [Zemurray] controlled a string of presidents. In 1925 he secured exclusive lumbering rights to a region covering one-tenth of Honduran territory. Later he merged his enterprises with United Fruit and took over as the firm's managing director. Under his leadership, United Fruit became inextricably interwoven with the fabric of Central American life. According to one study, it 'throttled competitors, dominated governments, manacled railroads, ruined planters, choked cooperatives, domineered over workers, fought organized labor and exploited consumers.'"³

In exchange for the the early concessions granted by Bonilla,, the fruit companies had promised to build a rail network that would tie the country together. They never did. The only lines they built were the ones they needed, connecting their plantations to Caribbean ports. The Life Pictorial Atlas of the World, published in 1961, devoted exactly one sentence to Honduras: "A great banana exporter, Honduras has 1,000 miles of railroad, 900 of which belong to U.S. fruit companies." Strikes, political protests, uprisings, and attempted coups racked Honduras for decades. To suppress them, the country's presidents maintained a strong army that absorbed more than half of the national budget. When the army could not do the job, it called in the United States Marines.”⁴

Fast forward to 1958. A reformer, Ramon Villeda, is elected President of Honduras, tries to pass a land reform law, but is forced to withdraw under intense pressure from United Fruit. In the 1963 Presidential election, the Liberal candidate seeking to succeed Villeda vows to revive the law and to curb the power of the army - admirable, if not very prudent campaign promises. Ten days before the election, the army stages a coup, installs General Oswaldo Lope Arellano as President, dissolves Congress, and suspends the constitution.

Honduras remained under military/United Fruit Company rule for the next 18 years. In 1981 the ruling general, Gustavo Alvarez, was more than happy to accommodate Ronald Reagan by allowing the US to use Honduras as a base for the anti-Sandinista rebels (Contras) who were working to overthrow Daniel Noriega in Nicaragua. . From 1980 to 1984, annual United States military aid to Honduras increased from $4 million to $77 million and consolidated the military's grip on power. Alvarez's successors established a secret squad called Battalion 3-16, trained and supported by the CIA, that maintained clandestine torture chambers and carried out kidnappings and killings. The most powerful figure in the country during this period was the American ambassador, John Negroponte, who studiously ignored all pleas that the US intervene to curb the regime's excesses.

“While the contra war raged, progress toward democracy in Honduras was impossible and citizens faced a frightening form of government sponsored terror. The war had another effect, which did not become clear until years later. Thousands of poor Honduran families, submerged in grinding poverty and fearful of the military, fled the country during the 1980s. Many ended up in Los Angeles. There, large numbers of Honduran teenagers joined violent street gangs. In the 1990s many of these youths were deported back to Honduras, where they faced the same lack of opportunity that had forced their parents to flee. Soon they established in their homeland a replica of the bloody gang culture absorbed in Los Angeles.”⁵

And so, thanks in no small part to the United States and the United Fruit Company, we again have the sad spectacle of thousands of children fleeing violence⁶ in their homeland and seeking refuge in the United States. Honduras has the dubious distinction of having the highest homicide rate in the world⁶ and the US is dealing with a flood of children who are literally fleeing for their lives.

1http://online.wsj.com/articles/migrant-surge-jams-border-1402876252

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/16/biden-discourage-illegal-immigration-surge-childre/

2Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Zemurray

3Ibid. p. 77

4Stephen Kinzer, “Overthrow”, Times Books, New York, 2006. p. 100

5Ibid. p. 102

6UN Office on Drugs and Crime