Some have hopes that US policy will change with a new president. But I believe that many are leaving out of desperation.
Reacting to this, I decided to write a few scattered thoughts on what may come.
I expect there will be many who will flee in the coming months, some in caravans, others in small groups, or alone.
Honduras has been buffeted by the pandemic COVID-19. The economy has been severely affected, most of all the informal sector.
Then the hurricanes hit. Many communities on the coast have been inundated; people have lost all they had. The photos from places like La Lima, Cortes, near San Pedro, have been heart breaking. When I went to San Pedro Sula last month, my heart ached as I saw people living under bridges and ramps.
In our area, people have lost homes and some crops have been devastated, mostly because of the landslides brought on by the rains, in areas that were already in peril.
Poverty has been compounded; corruption has increased. People feel robbed of hope.
All this came home to me about a week ago when I went to baptize in a rural community.
After the Celebration of Baptism, I talked to a young man whom I knew. He had fled with his wife and child from the community where he lived when his home was destroyed by a landslide. We talked and he mentioned that he was thinking about trying to go to the US to find work. His family is living with a relative in another village and he sees no way to find the funds to get land for a safe place to build and to buy the supplies needed for a home. We talked and I told him that the parish is looking at ways to help people rebuild. We hope to have a small project.
These months in our area people are working in the coffee harvest. But in late February, when the harvest is mostly over, I expect that there will be more people who will leave.
I’m hoping that we can do something significant that will offer alternatives to at least a few people.
I’d like to start in one community where many people have been affected and which will probably need to be relocated. That will be a big project. But there are also some families, without resources, in other communities who will need to find land and rebuild. I’m beginning to speak with folks in those communities to see how much interest and support we can get in the communities.
Our dream is not to build houses.
The dream is to build community, which means building houses but much more. Too many come in and give people things, creating dependence and stifling initiative. Our hope is to work in the communities, generating processes of working together.
I'll try to follow up on this.
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1 comment:
The poor and the desperate seem to be fleeing Honduras rather that seeking refuge elsewhere (El Norte). How many blows can this country take before it becomes fatal to the majority. The military drug cartel of the Hernandez group has robbed the people of Honduras, stripping the National Health Institute and other government services. It has sold out the national highways to foreign investors who are allowed to put up toll booths which only make transportation and commerce more expensive. The military and government party have connections to the vicious drug gangs and death squads. Land defenders, water defenders and human rights defenders continue to be jailed, assassinated or disdappeared (the Garifuna 5). Then the effects of global climate change brought two major hurricanes that caused huge damage and loss of life. The covid19 pandemic is rampant but no one knows the real death count as this information is denied by the dictatorship that has absconded with foreign aid. What is there to keep the people home? It is illusion or delusion that takes them to the northern border where many face death, women are raped or sold in the sex trade, and only a very few make it into the USA only to be caught and shipped back to an unwelcoming homeland.
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