The caravan of refugees that is moving slowly from Honduras to the Mexico-US border is gaining quite a bit of media exposure, not least from the aggressive rhetoric of Donald Trump. The families in the group have been portrayed as a threat to US national security. Such ill-conceived language serves only to heighten ethnic and national divisions in the US and elsewhere.

The following brief video looks at the reasons why a refugee crisis exists in the first place. From the United Fruit Company and its exploitation of the workers of Latin America through to its evolution to Chiquita Brands International, and then to the many CIA plots designed to (and succeeding) destabilize socialist Central American governments, the US government and its corporations have had a continuing hand in fomenting trouble in the region.

Rebel Voice asks if it is any wonder that citizens of Honduras are trying to flee that nation for a better life elsewhere? The ‘subjects’ of the British Empire did exactly the same thing when they left India and Pakistan and Jamaica and Bangladesh for England. The people of Ireland left their homes for work in Britain, even as the insatiable colonial machine plowed through the rights of the Irish in Ireland. The English Establishment was not happy to receive the Irish any more than they were to see thousands of arrivals from the Indian sub-continent. But they’re there now and are changing the nature of British society. Karma?

In 2009, a military coup ousted left-wing Honduran President, Manuel Zelaya. The military intervention, although completely illegal, was supported in a clandestine fashion by the government of Barack Obama, especially his Secretary of State at the time, Hilary Clinton. Zelaya stated, ‘On the one hand, they condemned the coup, but on the other hand, they were negotiating with the leaders of the coup.’

US Federal facilitation of military coups in Latin America has long been a hallmark of successive DC governments. They have spread violence and disaffection across the region. Now, when the victims of that chaos seek shelter in the United States, the Feds and their corporate cohorts  have the audacity to complain. Perhaps they would do well to remember the old adage, you reap what you sow.

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