The Central American scene: Links 7/9/2015

My expatriate e-mail pen-pal Jack sent me a batch of links to interesting articles concerning two central American countries—Nicaragua, ruled by the formerly anti-U.S. Sandinistas, and Honduras, ruled by a military junta covertly supported by the U.S.

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Daniel Ortega is a Sandinista in name only by Stephen Kinzer for Al Jazeera America.

Daniel Ortega Goes From U.S. Foe to Friend in Drug War Battle by Michael D. McDonald for Bloomberg Business.

Nicaraguan Canal Could Wreck Environment, Scientists Say by Brian Clark Howard for National Geographic.  This is about a deal with a Chinese company to build a canal to supposedly rival the Panama Canal.

Nicaragua canal will wreak havoc on forests and displace people, NGO warns by Mark Anderson for The Guardian.

Nicaragua’s Grand Canal: No Indigenous Consent and Probable Environmental Catastrophe by Rick Kearns for Indian Country.

A Canal Too Far: Nicaraguan Campesinos Tell Ortega to Take His Canal and Shove It by Wilfredo Miranda for The World Post.

Long silence from Nicaragua’s president as first lady keeps press at arm’s length by John Otis of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Nicaragua’s Ortega says US senator, congresswoman on official list of banned foreigners by the Tico Times.

Mitch McConnell: John Kerry visited Nicaragua in 1980s to accuse Reagan of ‘engaging in terrorism’ by Louis Jacobson of the Tampa Bay Times.

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Hillary Clinton sold out Honduras: Lanny Davis, corporate cash and the real story about the death of a Latin American democracy by Matthew Pulver for Salon.

Hillary Clinton Admits Role in Honduran Coup by Mark Weisbrot for Al Jazeera America.

Hillary Clinton Suggested Lanny Davis Back Channel in Honduras by Lee Fang for The Intercept.

Scandal in the Social Security Institute in Honduras: Key Witness Shot by Aqui Abajo

Honduras as a right-wing paradise

Eliminate all taxes, privatize everything, load a country up with guns and oppose all public expenditures, you end up with Honduras.

via Edwin Lyngar for Alternet.

The passing scene: Links & comments 7/30/14

To Address Honduran Refugee Crisis, US Should Stop Financing Repression in Honduras by Laura Raymond for TruthOut.

Hillary Clinton’s Real Scandal Is Honduras, Not Benghazi by Emily Schwartz Greco for Other Words.   Hat tip to Bill Harvey.

People in Honduras and other Central American countries suffer as much or probably more from violence by their own governments as from criminal drug gangs.

Many hand-scrabble farmers in Honduras have been pushed off their land to serve the interest of big landowners, mining corporations or hydroelectric power projects.  Many have gone broke trying to compete with cheap imports.   When they protest, or when workers try to organize labor unions, they risk what human rights organizations call “extrajudicial executions”.

I’ve written in previous posts that we Americans should be more accepting of desperate child migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.  But in the long run, what’s important is respect for basic human rights in those countries.  The U.S. government can’t assure democracy in any country, but it can stop subsidizing and propping up dictatorships.

Coal Miner Whose Brother Died on the Job Was Fired for Flagging Dangers by Dave Jamieson for Huffington Post.  Hat tip to Labor News of Rochester, NY.

In October 2011, Jeremy Coots, a coal miner in eastern Kentucky, helped carry the lifeless body of his brother, Richard Coots, out of a mine where he was crushed to death by a piece of machinery.  Now he has been fired from his job in a different mine for complaining about dangerous and correctable working conditions.

I don’t think that the United States is so poor a country that miners should have to chose between jeopardizing their lives and jeopardizing their livelihoods.

Argentina Deadline Day: Punishment for Rejecting the Neoliberal Consensus Is Nearly Complete by David Dayen for Naked Capitalism.

A U.S. federal judge overruled a deal by the government of Argentina with its major bondholders to refinance its debt.  The reason an American judge has jurisdiction is that the payments go through banks in New York City.

I think the long-range consequence of this is that foreign governments will try to do business with banks in China and other countries that don’t recognize U.S. jurisdiction.

Yes, Robert E. Lee Supported Slavery, the Confederacy and Its Battle Flag by Jonathan Ladd for The Mischief of Faction.

When Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia entered Pennsylvania in 1863, they grabbed every black person they could capture and sent them south to slavery.

The Limits of “Unlimited” by Barbara Fister for Library Babel Fish.

Why Amazon’s Kindle is no replacement for the inter-library loan system.

What would William Wilberforce do?

Refugees from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are fleeing to Mexico and many other countries, not just the United States.  But there is a particular reason, besides the obvious economic reason, why so many of the refugees are unaccompanied children.

This is the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Re-authorization Act, passed with broad Democratic and Republican support and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008.  Children were already turning up at the border then, and Central American children turned back into Mexico were easy prey for prostitution rings and other human traffickers.

William Wilberforce

It provided that any child caught crossing the border, if not from Mexico or Canada, would be granted a hearing to determine whether they were genuine refugees.

Under the international Refugee Convention, signing nations are required to give refuge to persons with a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of race, religion, nationality, group membership or political opinion, and no protection from their own government.

The law was appropriately named for William Wilberforce, the great British Evangelical Christian reformer, who campaigned for the abolition of the African slave trade and then for the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies.

I think he would have approved of the law that was enacted in his name, and I think he would have been sad to see American politicians breaking their nation’s promise to give refuge to children.

Of course once the law was enacted, word filtered down to Central America that unaccompanied children, if caught by the Border Patrol, would have a shot at being able to stay in the United States—even though somebody fleeing criminal gangs does not really fit the technical definition of refugee.

We Americans remember how in 1939 our government turned away ships carrying Jewish refugees because of our immigration restrictions, and how many of these Jewish people were later killed by the Nazis.  We will have further cause for shame if we turn away children who wind up being killed or forced into prostitution and crime.

Why so many child refugees on the border?

I try to imagine myself at age 13 or 14, leaving home by myself, jumping on freight cars for thousands of miles, and entering a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, as thousands of children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are doing.

I try to imagine the desperate situation that would make my parents think that this was the best option.

Child migrants, Ixtpec, Mexico (photo CIPA Americas program)

Why then would they do it?  Why would their parents tolerate it?  One reason is that these three countries have become hellholes of violent crime and that they are at greater risk if they stay where they are.   The other is a U.S. law, which will be the subject of another post.

Honduras has the world’s highest murder rate.  Reporters who’ve interviewed Honduran families tell of young girls who fear being raped and becoming sex slaves of criminal gangs, of boys who fear being murdered if they don’t join the gangs.

Sonia Nazario, author of a book, Enrique’s Journey, about Honduran child refugees, described the situation in an interview with National Public Radio.

The people [drug cartels] are targeting as their foot soldiers are children. Christian [an 11-year-old Honduran boy] told me about going to school, his elementary school, and how the narcos were pressuring him to use marijuana and crack at 11 years old.

And then they threatened to beat him up if he didn’t use that and work with them.  And he knew what was coming next.  These children are recruited to work as lookouts, to rob people, to extort people, and then, ultimately, to become hit men for the narcos.

In many schools, the teachers have to pay a war tax to be able to teach.  Students have to pay rent to be able to go to school.  In this elementary school — Christian’s elementary school — a 12-year-old would show up, who is part of the narco-cartels, and he would say, “I want these three 10-year-olds to help me distribute crack today.”

And the teacher who questioned him had a pistol put to her head.  So, in many of these schools, they are controlled de facto by the narco-cartels.”

via What Honduran Children Are Fleeing | Here & Now.

Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are among the world’s top five countries in homicide rates.

I think that one reason for this is that Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been ruled by dictatorships that have waged war against their own people, supported by the CIA and the U.S. military in the name of fighting Communism.

I think the result of all this violence has been the destruction of the structure of society and the elimination of all sources of authority except men with guns—the military and the drug lords.   Or so it seems to me, based on admittedly limited reading.

Nicaragua, under the pro-Communist Sandinista regime and its successors, managed to avoid this.  Nicaragua’s murder rate is less than 1/10th that of Honduras and about 1/3 that of Mexico. But I admit that it’s complicated, and there is no single reason that explains everything.

Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are battlefields of the drug war, but, sadly, ending the drug war won’t make the narco gangs go away, any more than ending alcohol prohibition in the United States made organized crime go away in this country.  I don’t have a good answer to any of this.   All I know is that teenage Central American boys and girls are not to blame for the world they find themselves in.

The passing scene: Links & comments 7/11/14

Oligarchy Blues: Without fair elections and a viable legislative process at the federal and state levels, the republic no longer exists by Michael Ventura for the Austin (Texas) Chronicle.

This writer sums up what’s wrong with the USA very briefly and very clearly.  I highly recommend reading this.  Like Ventura, I don’t have a complete answer for what to do, but, like him, I think it is necessary to break free of the assumption that the alternatives that the political system offers are the only possibilities that exist.

In Fever Dreams Begin Irresponsibilities, Texas Edition by Hendrik Hertzberg for The New Yorker.

The Texas Republican Party is part of the problem, not part of the solution.  Enemies like these make Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton look good.

Fighting for Oil by Michael Klare for TomDispatch.  [Hat tip to Bill Harvey]

It’s no coincidence that the world’s various “trouble spots” torn by “age-old conflicts” happen to be rich in oil and natural gas.

The legacy children of the Honduran coup by Dan Beeton for Aljazerra America.  [Hat tip to Bill Harvey]

It’s also no coincidence that the unauthorized child migrants sneaking into the USA come from countries such as Honduras, with its U.S.-backed military dictatorship, and not from democratic countries such as Nicaragua.

The French Do Buy Books – Real Books by Pamela Druckerman in The New York Times.  [Hat tip to Laura Cushman]

France and some of the other European governments forbid on-line booksellers to offer big discounts on book prices.  As a result, French people pay more for books, but independent bookstores are much more plentiful.

The fall of a superpower by Pepe Escobar for Asia Times.

Brazilians assumed that being Brazilian made them inherently superior in World Cup football  and were shocked at their team’s defeat by Germans.   But superiority in anything is never inherent.   Excellence takes continual hard work and hard thinking, and, even then, there’s no guarantee that a smart, determined competitor won’t out-do you.