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.