My Name Preceded Me in the Capital

The House didn’t end up discussing HB 287 on Monday, March 4, 2019. I don’t know why. For some reason, even though there were dozens of bills on the agenda, the Speaker skipped ahead over some of them in fits and starts that were unpredictable to a mere observer.

I’m sure there’s an explanation for which bills got a hearing that day and which didn’t, but everyone working there was busy and I didn’t have a chance to inquire about it. Unfortunately I didn’t even have the opportunity to say hi to Representative Gonzales before he was off to his next committee meeting and I had to catch my train back to Albuquerque.

Oh, well. I’ll look into it later.

Oh—one last “what a small world” moment for my day in Santa Fe yesterday. The Albuquerque Alibi has a few boxes around the city to distribute their alt weekly. On my walk back from the Roundhouse to the Rail Runner station to ride home for the night, I had to take a quick look. Yup: my name preceded me to the capital by a few days, and will be available in print there until the next issue comes out on Thursday.

Excellent. “And get a mind of your own!!!” Cracks me up every time.

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This Is What Happens in New Mexico

REPRESENTATIVE
Roberto “Bobby” J. Gonzales
D-Taos

I saw his name plaque on the House floor and did a double take.

I’ve met Representative Gonzales. More than met him—I’ve eaten his wife’s homemade wheat tortillas hot off the pan in his sister’s Albuquerque kitchen. That was after I spent a September morning with the Gonzales family peeling fresh-roasted Hatch green chiles. They were such gracious hosts, they sent me home with a Taos community cookbook so I could learn more about their hometown and try to cultivate the beloved flavors of northern New Mexico myself.

Of course. I knew that I knew a state representative. I knew that before I showed up at the Roundhouse to sit in the gallery as an anonymous observer of a floor session. I just forgot until I spotted his profile, then his plaque, that he would of course be one of the legislators at work in the House today.

My face cracked into a grin.

Of course.

Antelope Wells is hardly a place.

Albuquerque is a small world.

Santa Fe es familia.

This is what happens in New Mexico. In some places, there aren’t a lot of people. But in the places where there are, you meet people who know people who love people who are related to people who introduce you to other people who work with the people who pass our laws. You keep looping back on the same communities, interlacing and overlapping and linking together. New Mexico is, I guess, as perfectly circular as its name and pledge imply.

I walked into the Roundhouse expecting to see distant strangers participate in a formal process. I expected it to be alien and complex and opaque.

Then I looked up and thought oh, it’s Bobby! I danced at his son’s wedding a couple years ago. I peeled chiles with his wife and sister. I have plans to get lunch with his daughter-in-law tomorrow in Nob Hill. Tomorrow. These legislators—the people we chant at and call and lobby, the all-powerful button-pushers who make our laws—they’re fleshy familial people like the rest of us.

Symbol of Perfect Friendship Among United Cultures

At about 11:25am on Monday, March 4, 2019, the Speaker of the House announced that enough representatives had arrived in the New Mexico House of Representatives’ chambers: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a quorum.”

All rose for the opening prayer, an inclusive invocation read by a young woman in a clerical collar. When she concluded, many of the representatives and staff members on the floor promptly crossed themselves in the Catholic tradition.

Everyone gathered was then prompted to place their hand over their heart and face the American flag for the pledge of allegiance. I could hear a chorus of young voices behind me—a tour group of young students was still in the House gallery. “…indivisble, with liberty and justice for all. Yo prometo lealtad a la bandera de los estados…”

I smiled to myself. The dozens of adults in the chambers fell quiet at the end of the English-language pledge, but the children must be in the habit of reciting both the English and Spanish versions in school each morning. They quickly trailed off into silence when they realized things were different in the House of Representatives.

A moment later, however, the House caught up to them—the Speaker invited all of us to repeat ourselves in Spanish after all.

Lastly, the Speaker announced that we would all recite the New Mexico pledge of allegiance. We shifted from facing left with hands over hearts to facing right with hands outstretched, palms up as if in offering to the red sun symbol on the yellow field. I didn’t know the words to this pledge—I didn’t grow up here—so I simply listened along and looked up the words later. “I salute the flag of the state of New Mexico, the Zia symbol of perfect friendship among united cultures.”

It wasn’t until we were all invited to take our seats again that I scanned the chamber and realized I recognized one of the men below.

Inside the Santa Fe Roundhouse

I arrived at the Roundhouse about half an hour before the New Mexico House of Representatives was scheduled to convene. The lobby and central rotunda were bustling with people when I strolled through—legislators, aides, lobbyists, reporters, activists.

There were also school groups taking tours in every direction. In one hallway I got cornered between two groups of elementary schoolers and smiled when one of their harried teachers asked if they were in my way. No, I joked, I was happy to overhear some of their guide’s presentation! She looked vaguely exasperated; I guess I was the one in their way. I slipped my way through the kids and past them to the House chambers. The gallery overlooking the floor was mostly empty, so I took a seat up at the front.

The floor below was mostly empty, too. Representatives were still scattered across the building in various conference rooms, concluding the morning’s committee meetings. It would take a while for them to trickle in and take their seats. Meanwhile, more school groups came and went behind me, so I was still able to overhear bits of their tours.

The Roundhouse is New Mexico’s fifth capitol, built from 1960 to 1965, first used 1966.

The building is round in honor of the shape of the Native American structures that have been in the region going back at least a thousand years, Pueblo kivas. Kivas are very special ceremonial buildings where important community gatherings take place. The House and Senate chambers are sunk into the ground in imitation of kivas’ sunken structures.

The House is the larger of the Roundhouse’s two sides, the smaller being the Senate, which is where we’ll go next—single file, be sure your shoes are tied.

Over the next twenty minutes or I also heard intermittent explanations of the Zia symbol on the state flag, which is taken from Zia Pueblo iconography, and the Great Seal of the State of New Mexico, in which a large American bald eagle overshadows a smaller Mexican eagle while clutching three arrows in its talons, one for each of the state’s three principal Native peoples: the Pueblos, Navajos, Apaches.

Between eavesdropping, I gazed down at the House floor, where representatives would shortly be seated at long desks arcing around the raised seats of the Speaker and Clerk. Each legislator’s seat was marked by a large name plaque and a little panel of buttons.

Those buttons are how they cast their votes. They’re wired to a central system that’s in turn linked to large black screens at the front of the chamber. The screens lists the representatives’ names and, eventually, depending on whether they press the red or green buttons before them, will display whether they voted yea or nay for each measure.

Eleven o’clock came and went, and the House wasn’t yet called to session. I found myself zoning out as I waited, mesmerized more and more by those buttons…

Those precious dice-sized cubes of color waiting to be pressed…

The blip of electric signal they’ll send when they are…

The simple binary of yea/nay, pass/fail, law/no law…

That’s where the power ultimately lies, the power for which speeches and marches and rallies and petitions and phone banks and letters and conversations all lobby. Those little plastic buttons and the hands we’ve elected to press them on our behalf, bill by bill.

I tapped my pen impatiently, counting the minutes till a few dozen state representatives determined whether or not New Mexico’s state land and resources could be barred by law from serving the construction of a wall on our miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

House Bill 287: No Use of State Resources For Border Wall

When it comes to international politics and national borders, the federal government in D.C. has more power than state governments. But I took the train up to Santa Fe anyway, partly because it’s so close—a ride on the Rail Runner takes just an hour and a half from Albuquerque. And partly because I’m interested in a particular piece of legislation that was on the House’s calendar for the March 4 floor session—House Bill 287: NO USE OF STATE RESOURCES FOR BORDER WALL.

State Representative Angelica Rubio, a Democrat from the southern city of Las Cruces, introduced this bill in the House back in January. Here’s the text of the bill in PDF form courtesy of the New Mexico legislature’s website.

In February, HB 287 was reviewed by two House committees, both of which voted favorably to forward the bill to the House floor. Now, on March 4, it was item 2 of the House of Representative’s daily calendar, meaning the full legislative body was set to debate its content and bring it to a vote.

The capitol building is the people’s house. It’s a public place. We’re all allowed to go inside, wander the halls, speak to our representatives and senators in or around their offices, attend committee meetings, offer public comments at the appointed times, and sit in the galleries overlooking the Senate and House floors.

And yet the building is so monumental, and the processes so formal, that it can feel intimidating to show up and watch for ourselves how our representatives our representing us. In years past it’s never even occurred to me to try.

This seemed like a perfect opportunity for me to show up. For HB 287, rather than just read about how the House voted in the paper the next day, I could walk into the capitol and witness our representatives’ discussions in person.

Here are some photos I took as I made my way into the Roundhouse for the first time yesterday, explored its central rotunda, peeked into the Senate chambers, and took a seat in the gallery overlooking the House floor just before they were scheduled to return from recess at 11am.

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From Remote Desert to the State Capital

If the last couple weeks of research and reading have confirmed anything for me, it’s that the issues at the U.S.-Mexico border aren’t really issues about the U.S.-Mexico border. They’re about the colonial history of the Western Hemisphere, the entrenched patterns of violence that continue to play out the length of the continent, and the ongoing exploitation of Central America by the United States.

Colonial land grabs, military and political interventions, trade policy—these systems don’t just spring up naturally or accidentally. They’re the direct result of the decisions made by politicians in places of power.

In other words, the source and heart of today’s border crisis can be traced not to remote stretches of desert, but to cities.

To capitals.

To capitols.

I’m glad I took the time to travel south to New Mexico’s Bootheel a couple weeks ago to see the U.S.-Mexico border firsthand—the dry, wide-open land where people are crossing into the country.

But now I want to refocus on where policy is made. So, yesterday morning I caught the commuter train from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, to walk the halls of the Roundhouse and watch our state legislature in action.

The Reactions Would Be Different Were All These Children of a Lighter Color

This past weekend I lost myself for a few hours in reading Valeria Luiselli’s gorgeous, tragic book Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions. Beginning in 2014, Luiselli has volunteered as a Spanish-English translator for children who’ve migrated north from Central America and are attempting to make a legal case to stay in the U.S. rather than be deported. The book is structured around the forty questions she must pose to each child to understand their stories and complete their immigration paperwork.

As a followup to my critique of Sean Hannity’s language, here’s an excerpt from page fifteen of her 2017 paperback:

In varying degrees, some papers and webpages announce the arrival of undocumented children like a biblical plague. Beware the locusts! They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen—these menacing, coffee-colored boys and girls, with their obsidian hair and slant eyes. They will fall from the skies, on our cars, on our green lawns, on our heads, on our school, on our Sundays. They will make a racket, they will bring their chaos, their sickness, their dirt, their brownness. They will cloud the pretty views, they will fill the future with bad omens, they will fill our tongues with barbarisms. And if they are allowed to stay here they will—eventually—reproduce!

We [the author and her husband] wonder if the reactions would be different were all these children of a lighter color: of better, purer breeds and nationalities. Would they be treated more like people? More like children? We read the papers, listen to the radio, see photographs, and wonder.

Get Your News From Other Sources Too

I assume that when Gonzalez Gonzales implored me to “get my news from other sources,” he meant I should ignore “CNN, ABC, CBS and all the other traitors” in favor of… Fox News? Breitbart? I don’t know, Infowars?

Breitbart and Infowars: hard pass. But I do make a habit of reading Fox News, often in split-screen with other newspapers as a way to see how they frame the same stories in different language.

Take, for instance, the Border Patrol story that I quoted a couple days ago. Their original, bare-bones media release was picked up and reported on by the El Paso Times—which makes sense since Sunland Park, New Mexico, is only about eight miles west of El Paso, Texas, so it constituted local news. From there, the El Paso Times story was picked up and rehashed by Fox News host Sean Hannity’s staff for his website—they don’t appear to have done any further reporting, just quoted a few lines from the El Paso article between their own summary.

Let’s see how the story evolved along the way…

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Almost 200 apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol in New Mexico

Border Patrol Media Release
Date: February 27, 2019
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/almost-200-apprehended-us-border-patrol-new-mexico

SUNLAND PARK, N.M. – U.S. Border Patrol agents working near Sunland Park apprehend 180 illegal aliens in the early morning hours of February 26. This group, like many others before, is comprised primarily of Central American families and unaccompanied juveniles.

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Border Patrol detains 180 Central American migrants in Sunland Park, NM

Daniel Borunda
El Paso Times
Published 3:25 p.m. MT Feb. 27, 2019
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/immigration/2019/02/27/border-patrol-detains-180-central-american-migrants-sunland-park-new-mexico/3007370002/

The U.S. Border Patrol detained a group of 180 undocumented immigrants who crossed the border early Tuesday morning in Sunland Park, N.M.

The apprehension was the second in Sunland Park involving a group of more than 100 migrants in the past three weeks.

The Border Patrol said that the migrants were mostly families and children from Central America.

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MANUFACTURED CRISIS? Agents Arrest 180 MIGRANTS Crossing US-Mexico Border at ONE TIME

posted by Hannity Staff
March 1, 2019
https://www.hannity.com/media-room/manufactured-crisis-agents-arrest-180-migrants-crossing-us-mexico-border-at-one-time/

The United States Border Patrol detained approximately 180 Central American migrants at a single location this week; arresting the giant group as they rushed the Mexico border into the southern US.

“The U.S. Border Patrol detained a group of 180 undocumented immigrants who crossed the border early Tuesday morning in Sunland Park, N.M.,” reports the El Paso Times. “The apprehension was the second in Sunland Park involving a group of more than 100 migrants in the past three weeks.”

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A giant group? At a single location? Rushing the border? Thank heaven our brave men in the Border Patrol uniform were there to meet the invading force before their strategically concentrated onslaught allowed them to infiltrate the country, right?

Of course, the ALL CAPS headline and trumped-up language were conjured from thin air by Hannity’s right-wing spin doctors. The migrants didn’t rush the border as a mob; people gradually slipped through fencing, then deliberately turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents to begin the process of applying for asylum. But you wouldn’t know that from the Hannity retelling, which also deftly skips over the detail that most of the migrants were “families and unaccompanied juveniles” and lets readers fill in their own image of who might be in the group (criminals and terrorists, anyone?).

Long story short—we should all make a habit of getting our news from multiple sources, and keeping a close, critical eye on the language and details they each choose to use. Thank you, Mr. Gonzales, for the reminder.

Please, Karie, Do Some Research

Oh, my lord. I basically did a spit-take when I saw the latest issue of Albuquerque’s weekly Alibi.

Thank you, Gonzalez Gonzales! I needed a good laugh this weekend.

ALIBI V.28 NO.9 • FEB 28-MARCH 6, 2019

https://alibi.com/news/57989/American-People-Are-Not-Stupid.html

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Dear Editor,

I was watching this program about the MSM. They compiled a video of headline soundbites of all the major news outlets. And all of them were word for word the same. Most citizens would not know they were being duped unless they were able to watch all of the news at the same time. A lot of close friends of mine have been turned into “Useful Idiots” because they believe every word of mainstream media. What really strikes me is Karie Luidens letter [Alibi v28 i4] was “exactly” the same as CNN, ABC, CBS and all the other traitors.

Please, Karie, do some research and get your news from other sources too. And get a mind of your own!!!

I was born here 68 years ago and this is my story and I’m sticking to it.

Obama is the one who created the hostility and hatred I read in your letter. He is not the Messiah.

Gonzalez Gonzales,
Albuquerque

Well then! [Wiping tears of laughter.]

Did my letter to the editor in January really contain hostility and hatred? I hope not. I was going for… facts and frustration.

Incidentally, I’ve seen the video he’s referencing, in which reporters in the MSM (mainstream media) deliver a message that’s “word for word the same.” The eerie footage was compiled by the video editor at Deadspin in April 2018, and the phenomenon does represent a real threat to the integrity of contemporary media—just not the one Mr. Gonzales fears.

The incident didn’t reflect widespread liberal groupthink so much as centralized conservative control. Those news announcers, longtime purveyors of independent local reporting, were contractually required to read that script by the company that’s bought up more and more of their stations over the years, the telecommunications conglomerate Sinclair Broadcast Group.

And who or what is Sinclair? This article in The Guardian summarizes it nicely:

“Sinclair’s probably the most dangerous company most people have never heard of,” said Michael Copps, the George W Bush-appointed former chairman of Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the top US broadcast regulator. […]

The New York Times refers to the group as a “conservative giant” that, since the Bush presidency, has used its 173 television stations “to advance a mostly right-leaning agenda”. The Washington Post describes it as a “company with a long history of favoring conservative causes and candidates on its stations’ newscasts”. […]

Sinclair forces its local stations to run pro-Trump “news” segments. In April, they hired Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump campaign spokesman and member of the White House press office, as its chief political analyst. His “must-run” 10-minute political commentary segments unsurprisingly hewed closely to the Trump administration’s message. The news and analysis website Slate, referring to Epshteyn’s contributions, said: “As far as propaganda goes, this is pure, industrial-strength stuff.”

Ugh.

I’m not laughing anymore.

Oh well.

At least Mr. Gonzalez and I agree that Obama is not the Messiah. I’ll leave it at that and get back to my research—which, of course, includes diverse news sources as well as firsthand experience. I already have a mind of my own!!! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Just in the Last Week

Over the last few days, I’ve been doing a lot of reading to establish some context for myself. I wanted to be sure I understand how the last century’s worth of history has brought us to the current crisis or crises (economic, social, humanitarian, political) in Central America, through Mexico, up to the U.S. border, and in our D.C. politics.

Meanwhile, as I’ve been busy reading older material, just in the last week more groups of Central Americans have continued to make news arriving in the borderlands.

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On Sunday evening…

CBP officers in riot gear deployed after migrant group arrives at El Paso area border

Daniel Borunda
El Paso Times
Published 3:01 p.m. MT Feb. 25, 2019
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/immigration/2019/02/25/cbp-officers-deployed-migrant-group-arrival-tornillo-border-near-el-paso/2981924002/

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in riot gear were deployed Sunday [2/24/19] when a a large group of migrants arrived at the Tornillo international bridge outside El Paso, officials said.

More than 30 migrants showed up at the Tornillo border after a continuous influx of migrants from Cuba, Central America and other countries arriving in Juárez in recent weeks. 

The migrants seeking asylum arrived just after 6 p.m. at the Tornillo port of entry, southeast of El Paso, CBP said.

"CBP officers were able to accommodate a small number because of port processing capacity limits but the majority were not allowed to make entry at that time," CBP said in a statement. "CBP mobile field force officers were deployed to Tornillo to help manage the queue."

Since October, El Paso CBP and Border Patrol agents have been conducting "mobile field force" training exercises using riot gear [as seen in the above photo], in preparation for the possibility that migrant caravans attempt to rush the border. 

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After midnight on Monday…

Almost 200 apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol in New Mexico

Border Patrol Media Release
Date: February 27, 2019
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/almost-200-apprehended-us-border-patrol-new-mexico

SUNLAND PARK, N.M. – U.S. Border Patrol agents working near Sunland Park apprehend 180 illegal aliens in the early morning hours of February 26. This group, like many others before, is comprised primarily of Central American families and unaccompanied juveniles.

U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested the illegal border crossers for violating the immigration laws of this country. Border Patrol EMT’s conducted initial medical screenings and determined that some of the subjects required additional attention. Sunland Park Emergency Medical Service responded to the scene where they provided medical attention and determined that some of the illegal aliens needed further medical treatment. Those in need of further medical attention were transported to a local hospital.

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Then on Tuesday…

El Paso's Caminos de Vida church helping 150 immigrants dropped off by ICE on Tuesday

Daniel Borunda
El Paso Times
Published 5:49 p.m. MT Feb. 26, 2019
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/immigration/2019/02/26/caminos-de-vida-church-gets-150-mostly-honduran-immigrants-ice/2997584002/

Saira Lara wiped away tears as her toddler son tugged at her leg begging for a cookie.

Inside an El Paso church turned into a temporary immigrant shelter, the Honduran mother sobbed, saying it was painful to hear her child "crying for a little bit of food," she said. "They go to sleep crying and they wake up crying. For us, it's suffering."

On Tuesday evening, Lara and her 2-year-old son were among about 150 migrants that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released at the Caminos de Vida church in the Lower Valley.

Lara and her boy, Kenner Steven Lara Martinez, left their home in Honduras 15 days ago. On Sunday night, they crossed the U.S. border seeking asylum.

"There is no opportunity in Honduras, only crime," said Lara, a 23-year-old single mom who graduated after studying to be a teacher but found only a job in a kitchen.

The Caminos de Vida church at 7822 San Jose Road is asking the community for donations of blankets, jackets and other clothing, canned food, hygiene products and baby formula.

"We know they have been through so much; we can see it on their faces," Pastor Paul Cabrera said of the migrants, who are mostly from Honduras. […]

"We only had a three-hour window of knowing these people were coming," Cabrera said. "They had no other place to go. Nowhere to be housed. No one to take them in. So, we opened the doors of our church.

"We have no place for them to actually sleep other than maybe the floor. I mean it’s better than the streets but the Red Cross will be bringing cots soon."

What Happened to the Migrant Caravan

Yesterday we saw one story of what it’s like these days once you’ve decided to make the journey north from Central America through Mexico to the U.S. in search of a better, safer life.

So what’s it like once you arrive at the border?

Well, here’s how things have gone overall in the last few months, as crowds of asylum seekers have bottlenecked at the Mexican side of the U.S.’s artificially metered ports of entry.

Here's what happened to the migrant caravan that arrived in Tijuana last year

Rafael Carranza and Daniel González
El Paso Times
Published 8:00 a.m. MT Feb. 11, 2019
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2019/02/11/what-happened-last-years-migrant-caravan-tijuana/2831764002/

[There were] 6,000 migrants from Central America who flooded into Tijuana in November [2018] after traveling through Mexico in caravans, overwhelming local authorities, and drawing the wrath of President Donald Trump, who in response deployed several thousand activity-duty military troops to the southern border.

Three months later, most of the 6,000 migrants are gone. Nearly half chose to wait in line for a chance to ask for asylum at the San Ysidro port of entry [into San Diego], despite the long waits. Most have already seen a U.S. immigration officer.

The remaining migrants chose to stay in Mexico, return home, or travel to other areas of the border, where they either attempted to enter the U.S. illegally or asked for asylum at other ports of entry, according to initial estimates from the Mexican government. […]

With shelters at capacity, the [Tijuana] city government opened a makeshift shelter at a sports complex to house the waves of Central Americans who arrived weekly for nearly a month.

But as more migrants arrived, living conditions began to deteriorate, and small groups of asylum seekers started crossing the border illegally.

Many Have Perished Along the Way

You’re a citizen of a Central American nation who’s started getting death threats from a gang in your neighborhood, or who’s been persecuted by a corrupt government, or who despairs over whether you’ll be able to feed your children since a foreign mining company secured rights to your ancestral farmland and the sparse local work doesn’t pay a living wage.

You may or may not have any concept of the historical connection between the United States’ exploitation of your country’s soil, water, minerals, and politics. Maybe you know that their corporations’ manipulations, backed by U.S. policy and the U.S. military, are in large part what’s driven you and your neighbors to your current state of poverty and vulnerability to both gang and state violence. Or maybe you don’t.

Either way, you do know that the U.S. is supposed to be the land of opportunity. Isn’t it a nation of immigrants, immigrants who erected a Statue of Liberty to light the way for those who would follow? You know there are jobs, at least, and safety from the dangers that threaten you and your family at home.

What do you do next?

Well, here’s one story among thousands that began this way.

One family’s ordeal

Unable to enter the United States and unwilling to return to El Salvador, the Yanes family waits in Mexico
by Sophia Lee
Post Date: February 25, 2019 - Issue Date: March 16, 2019
https://world.wng.org/2019/02/one_family_s_ordeal

Kenny Yanes and his wife Ezequiel lived in a gang-infested, poverty-wrecked barrio in El Salvador. A full day’s labor in the fields earned them $7 each. “There’s no freedom,” Kenny told me. “The gangs watch every move you make. What kind of life is that? Forget about finding a job. Forget about living life. That alone should make anyone want to leave the country.”

But they stayed, because they’d heard horrific stories about the migrant’s journey to the United States. Throughout the years many Central Americans have headed north for a better life, and many have perished along the way. Drug cartels, bandits, and corrupt police extort, abuse, kidnap, rape, and murder migrants. Coyotes (smugglers) rob, abandon, or sell their clients to sex traffickers.

Last October a Facebook page, since deleted, and a WhatsApp group, “Caravana Santa Ana,” mobilized Salvadorans to head 2,700 miles to the Promised Land together in a caravan. Migrant caravans provide safety in numbers: With big numbers come media attention and international scrutiny, which pushes authorities to behave and evildoers to look for victims elsewhere.

When Kenny and Ezequiel heard about the upcoming caravan, they stuffed two changes of clothes into a backpack and scraped up all their cash—about $80 in all. Together with Kenny’s nephew Alexis and Ezequiel’s cousin Marcos (they only gave their middle names, stating fear of harm from authorities), they showed up on Oct. 31, 2018, at the capital of El Salvador and joined 2,000 others.

They began on foot: Most wore hats or draped T-shirts over their faces to keep the blazing rays away. They walked what seemed like endless miles, lying down when the sun set and continuing the journey when dawn broke.

A few days later, the caravan crossed the border to Guatemala, where the Yanes family hitched rides from passing vehicles. When they reached the Guatemala-Mexico border, the Guatemalan and Mexican police let them through to Chiapas. Throughout the trip, they relied on charity from local residents and priests. In some towns, people offered them tortillas, bread, snacks, and bottled water. In others, residents glared and slammed their doors. On those days, the Yaneses went hungry.

Their caravan did not take the shorter, northeastern route to Texas, which crosses precarious, crime-ridden Mexican states. It took the longer but safer northwestern route to reach Tijuana, which has more shelters and nonprofit volunteers than any other border city and is adjacent to California, a “sanctuary state.”

The Tijuana the Yanes family entered on Nov. 27 was a city already buckling under the burdens of housing thousands of migrants like the Yaneses. Ezequiel said she assumed when they reached Tijuana they’d breeze right through, just as they did at other border cities. Instead, “everything came to a halt,” Ezequiel said with a despondent smile: “I’m disillusioned.”

Following Their Stolen Resources

The powers that be in the United States spent the last dozen decades royally exploiting the people of Central America. What options do they have now?

They could stay home and try to scrape by each day as they watch our corporations continue to deplete and pollute their countries. But to me it makes perfect sense that they would see how powerless they were there and instead follow their stolen resources to the U.S.

I mean, what would you do if you were in their position?

But that’s not the sort of empathetic thinking a lot of us are expressing toward would-be immigrants in the last few years.

We in the U.S. love eating Honduras for breakfast. For over a century now, we’ve been happy to take their soil, water, fruit, coffee, and minerals.

When it comes to taking their people, though: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems.”

We in the U.S. have profited so easily for so long because we’ve sent actual invading forces to Central America to prop up our commercial endeavors there. When the people whose countries we invaded started walking unarmed toward our land in search of better lives, though: “This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!”

We have not stopped eating Honduras for breakfast. The U.S. continues to exploit the land and people of Central America for our own benefit. We’ve done nothing to address the root causes that drive them to despair of the conditions at home and migrate north in hopes of finding refuge and opportunity here.

Instead, in an overwrought defensive frenzy, we’ve started deploying troops to our southern border to back up an ever-more-militarized branch of law enforcement. We’ve put up physical barriers as if to ward off an attacking army.

We took their land.

Then when they suffered as a result, we barred them from our land.

That’s where we are today.

The Products and Profits of Their Land Flowed Directly to the U.S.

Suppose we reversed the clock a hundred and thirty years, back to the 1890s, when a greed-driven Gilded Age United States began to insert itself into Central America’s affairs.

Suppose the U.S. never noticed that the continent’s long tail from Mexico to South America was rich in fertile, tropical land lined with easy seaports on both coasts from which to ship produce back to the States.

Suppose the politicians in D.C. weren’t tempted by the vulnerability of that land’s population, since it was governed by a collection of small, weak nation states that were still disheveled in the wake of throwing off Spanish colonial rule.

Suppose our government and the United Fruit Company never conspired to deploy a military-corporate complex to that foreign soil and begin feasting on its resources. Suppose U.S. forces didn’t commandeer huge swaths of territory, forcing people off their countries’ best farmland so that our private corporations could create sprawling banana and coffee plantations and toxic mining operations.

Suppose, once we’d usurped all of the region’s best natural resources, we hadn’t then implemented devastating free trade policies that ensured all the resulting revenue could flow unimpeded straight back to the U.S. forevermore.

If, over the last hundred and thirty years, the U.S. had minded its own business, the citizens of Central America might be just fine today. They’d still have access to their own fertile soil and clean water. They’d be in a position to manage their homeland’s natural resources in ways that benefited their own communities’ health and wealth. They’d be self-sufficient and in control of their own destinies.

But that’s not what happened.

As we’ve seen summarized in the last few articles and essays, what happened is this: those in power in the U.S. saw an opportunity to make money and decided to take it, the people whose lives and livelihoods were at stake be damned. Our government and corporations conspired to strip whole populations of their sustainable ways of life, rope them into the lowest ranks of an exploitative global economy, and rig the laws and regulations to ensure that all the products and profits of their land flowed directly to the U.S.

That’s why today so many people in Central America are destitute and desperate. Not because of some moral failing or lack of effort on their part. Because of the U.S. Because of us.

We Either Stay Home and Starve or We Make the Journey

El Paso faith leaders travel to Guatemala for research

By: Susana Castillo
KTSM El Paso
Posted: Feb 21, 2019 07:12 PM MST
https://www.ktsm.com/news/local/el-paso-news/el-paso-faith-leaders-travel-to-guatemala-for-research/1800516051

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) - El Paso faith leaders shared details about their visit to Guatemala in Mid-February. HOPE Border Institute, a non-profit, coordinated the visit to understand reasons behind an increase in Guatemalan immigrants coming to the US/Mexico border seeking asylum. […]

The group said families in poverty are being forced to flee to our border because they can no longer work the land and are looking for options to provide for their children.

"So why do you put your children through this? He said, we either stay home and starve or we make the journey and try to look for a better way of life," said Rev. Jose Morales from the Holy Spirit Catholic Church.

Hope Border Institute wants changes to take place to help people while they are in Guatemala so they don't feel forced to seek help in the U.S. The group will meet with lawmakers to try to find solutions.

Why So Many Are Coming

The failure of neoliberalism

By John Tirman
The Boston Globe
JUNE 01, 2015
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2015/06/01/the-global-migrant-crisis/cQZsJl2wafcCDvwOIAnCAN/story.html

…politicians and activists argue about who and how many to let immigrate. Nativists howl about corruption of culture if they’re let in. Others worry that a humanitarian response, including permitting immigration or asylum, will only encourage more to come.

But few are asking why so many are coming. Why are so many traveling at great risk and expense to escape Libya, Syria, Mali, Eritrea, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico?

Many attribute the massive exodus into the Mediterranean as a consequence of violent actors. And many do migrate to escape civil war and repression. Likewise, the so-called war on drugs in Latin America has backfired; an illegal drug culture thrives, enforced by violence.

Much of the migration, however, results from unsustainable livelihoods, the disruption of traditional forms of agriculture, production, and government services that for decades provided adequate — in many cases, barely so — incomes in the developing world. The triumph of neoliberalism has changed all that. And such policies as “freeing” economies for direct foreign investment, movement of capital, deregulation, privatization, and reducing the size of the state were devised in Western capitals, London and Washington most prominently.

This neoliberal experiment has produced solid growth rates in some places, but the benefits tend to accrue to elites and are not widely distributed, leading to growing inequality — a growth of 11 percent in the income gap in middle- and low-income countries from the 1990s to the late 2000s, according to a UN study. Simultaneous cutbacks in education, health care, clean water availability, and the like, make life even harder for the marginalized. The demands of a globalized economy can have multiplier effects: Lack of employment opportunities for young men in particular can aid recruiters to drug gangs or jihadist organizations. The threats such groups convey is one reason people flee.

Yet a blithe narrative of free trade rules Washington and European politics, mainly due to the influence of those who benefit most — banks and energy companies, to name a couple. The downside of these policies — stubborn poverty, growing inequality, crime, and emigration — is not so apparent to those living in safety and prosperity. There’s little compassion for the victims of the globalized economy until hundreds are drowned by an overcrowded boat capsizing, or unaccompanied children appear at the border.

The politicians’ harsh responses — destroying boats or deporting children — are shocking. The impoverished and violent conditions of the migrants in their homelands, however, persist. And, desperate, they won’t stay there for long.

Displacing People From Their Rural Livelihoods

What “Free Trade” Has Done to Central America

Warnings about the human and environmental costs of “free trade” went unheeded. Now the most vulnerable Central Americans are paying the price.

By Manuel Perez-Rocha and Julia Paley
Foreign Policy In Focus
November 21, 2014
https://fpif.org/free-trade-done-central-america/

In 2004 and 2005, hundreds of thousands of protesters filled Central America’s streets.

They warned of the unemployment, poverty, hunger, pollution, diminished national sovereignty, and other problems that could result if DR-CAFTA were approved. But despite popular pressure, the agreement was ratified in seven countries—including Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and the United States.

Ten years after the approval of DR-CAFTA, we are seeing many of the effects they cautioned about. […]

Contrary to the promises of U.S. officials—who claimed the agreement would improve Central American economies and thereby reduce undocumented immigration—large numbers of Central Americans have migrated to the United States, as dramatized most recently by the influx of children from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras crossing the U.S.-Mexican border last summer [2013]. Although most are urgently fleeing violence in their countries, there are important economic roots to the migration—many of which are related to DR-CAFTA. […]

One of the most pernicious features of the agreement is a provision called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism. […] These perverse incentives have led to environmental deregulation and increased protections for companies, which have contributed to a boon in the toxic mining industry—with gold at the forefront. A stunning 14 percent of Central American territory is now authorized for mining. According to the Center of Research on Trade and Investment, a Salvadoran NGO, that number approaches 30 percent in Guatemala and Nicaragua—and rises to a whopping 35 percent in Honduras. […]

Warnings about the crises that “free trade” would bring to Central Americans were, unfortunately, correct. Central America is facing a humanitarian crisis that has incited millions to migrate as refugees from violence and poverty, thousands of them children. One push factor is the environmental degradation provoked by ruthless mining corporations that are displacing people from their rural livelihoods. […]

We must work to help Central American people regain their livelihoods lost to ruthless extractive projects like mining. And we must change trade and investment agreements to stop these excessive lawsuits that devastate communities, the environment, and democracy itself.

Eating Honduras for Breakfast

So. Trump says the U.S.-Mexico border is in a state of emergency.

People who live near the U.S.-Mexico border say it is not.

Those who are knowledgeable about the historical context and the current realities on the ground say the true emergency is actually in the Central American countries from which the majority of border-crossers are fleeing, like Honduras.

Last week I drove along the U.S.-Mexico border from El Paso to Antelope Wells to see with my own eyes the miles of remote desert where so many hundreds of these asylum seekers have crossed into our country in recent months. But that land is actually beside the point. Our national conversation is only fixated on the border because Trump has been banging his “wall” drum for the last few years as a way to rally his base.

If we really want to understand what’s going on in our borderlands—who’s trying to migrate to the U.S. and why—we should start at the beginning.

And the beginning is bananas and coffee. Because basically, for the last hundred and thirty years, we in the U.S. have been eating Honduras for breakfast.

How US policy in Honduras set the stage for today’s migration

Joseph Nevins
The Conversation
October 25, 2018 7.19am EDT
https://theconversation.com/how-us-policy-in-honduras-set-the-stage-for-todays-migration-65935

U.S. military presence in Honduras and the roots of Honduran migration to the United States are closely linked. It began in the late 1890s, when U.S.-based banana companies first became active there. […]

By 1914, U.S. banana interests owned almost 1 million acres of Honduras’ best land. These holdings grew through the 1920s to such an extent that, as LaFeber asserts, Honduran peasants “had no hope of access to their nation’s good soil.” Over a few decades, U.S. capital also came to dominate the country’s banking and mining sectors, a process facilitated by the weak state of Honduras’ domestic business sector. This was coupled with direct U.S. political and military interventions to protect U.S. interests in 1907 and 1911. […]

The Reagan administration also played a big role in restructuring the Honduran economy. It did so by strongly pushing for internal economic reforms, with a focus on exporting manufactured goods. It also helped deregulate and destabilize the global coffee trade, upon which Honduras heavily depended. These changes made Honduras more amenable to the interests of global capital. They disrupted traditional forms of agriculture and undermined an already weak social safety net.

These decades of U.S. involvement in Honduras set the stage for Honduran emigration to the United States, which began to markedly increase in the 1990s.

In the post-Reagan era, Honduras remained a country scarred by a heavy-handed military, significant human rights abuses and pervasive poverty. Still, liberalizing tendencies of successive governments and grassroots pressure provided openings for democratic forces. […]

The 2009 coup, more than any other development, explains the increase in Honduran migration across the southern U.S. border in the last few years. The Obama administration has played an important role in these developments. Although it officially decried Zelaya’s ouster, it equivocated on whether or not it constituted a coup, which would have required the U.S. to stop sending most aid to the country. […]

The Trump administration’s recognition, in December 2017, of President Juan Orlando Hernández’s re-election—after a process marked by deep irregularities, fraud and violence. This continues Washington’s longstanding willingness to overlook official corruption in Honduras as long as the country’s ruling elites serve what are defined as U.S. economic and geopolitical interests.

Organized crime, drug traffickers and the country’s police heavily overlap. The frequent politically motivated killings are rarely punished. In 2017, Global Witness, an international nongovernmental organization, found that Honduras was the world’s deadliest country for environmental activists.

Although its once sky-high murder rate has declined over the last few years, the continuing exodus of many youth demonstrates that violent gangs still plague urban neighborhoods. […]

What the Trump administration will ultimately do with those who arrive at the U.S. southern border is unclear. Regardless, the role played by the United States in shaping the causes of this migration raises ethical questions about its responsibility toward those now fleeing from the ravages its policies have helped to produce.

You Want to See a Real Emergency?

You want to see a real emergency, Mr. President? Visit me in Honduras.

By Amelia Frank-Vitale
Washington Post
February 16
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/you-want-to-see-a-real-emergency-mr-president-visit-me-in-honduras/2019/02/16/4650383c-3151-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html

On Friday [2/15/19], President Trump declared a national emergency as a pretext to allow him to begin construction of a border wall. But the real national emergency is here, in Honduras.

I arrived [in September 2017] shortly before a likely fraudulent election installed Juan Orlando Hernández in a second, unconstitutional term as president. Rather than protest irregularities in the vote-counting process, the Trump administration congratulated Hernández on his victory.

Honduras was already in bad shape: a devastating hurricane in 1998; a coup d’etat in 2009; becoming the world’s most homicidal nation in 2010; and a long history of U.S. intervention. […]

The 2017 election, though, brought things to a head. There were massive protests, the country was shut down for more than a month, and at least 31 protesters were killed. Honduras has erupted in moments of insurrection since then, though the most visible aftereffects of the election have been a crackdown on dissidents, especially the young and students, and the caravans heading for the United States. People had staked their hope for a better future in a different electoral outcome. When that was taken from them, they went back to leaving the country.

Honduran migration isn’t new; what is new is that they are doing it publicly, in large groups, and asking, collectively, for protection. The real humanitarian crisis is that, mostly, Hondurans are denied this protection and deported. […]

Human history is one of migration; we are exceptionally good at moving around when the conditions for life become tenuous. Neither walls nor deserts nor oceans have ever deterred us from seeking safer horizons and better opportunities for survival.

Under these circumstances, Hondurans’ drive to seek safety elsewhere is not an emergency; that there may be no place in the world where they are allowed to find refuge is the real crisis.

This Is Not an Emergency

On Wednesday evening, the Trump White House insisted, again, as always, that the U.S.-Mexico border is a “national emergency in plain sight.” (They illustrated the claim with a photo of the White House looking pretty removed from reality.)

On Thursday morning, Albuquerque’s alt weekly happened to offer the perfect response. Below is another affirmation of what people actually think here in the border state of New Mexico:

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This is Not an Emergency

State sues over Trump’s power grab
By Carolyn Carlson
ALIBI V.28 NO.8 • FEB 21-27, 2019
https://alibi.com/news/57967/This-is-Not-an-Emergency.html

In an effort to check the power of an absurd and dangerous president, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham along with Attorney General Hector Balderas led New Mexicans in joining 16 states that filed suit to block the Trump administration’s unconstitutional use of emergency powers to fund a border wall.

The complaint was filed on President’s Day [2/18/19] in US District Court for Northern California. […]

“There is zero real world basis for the emergency declaration, and there will be no wall,” Gov. Lujan Grisham said. Lujan Grisham has challenged Trump's narrative of a security crisis on the border head-on. She recently withdrew most of the state's National Guard contingent, leaving a small group of troops along a well-traveled corridor to help cross-border migrants. The real emergency is the humanitarian crisis at the border, which most folks agree has been caused by Trump policies.