Recent articles have discussed how both enforcement and development are required to address mass migration to the United States from Central America. However, other issues are at work as well, one of them being the rule-of-law—or its absence. This came to a head in the last Honduran election.
In November 2017, Juan Orlando Hernandez was reelected president of Honduras. The election was so fraught with irregularities that the Organization of American States called for the election to be redone. After the (some would say rigged) Supreme Electoral Tribunal upheld the election, protests broke-out across the country. Over 30 protesters were killed by police. However, the United States recognized Hernandez as the victor so the opposition candidate, Salvador Nasralla, gave up his bid.
Hernandez first came to power in 2014. He began using the army to crackdown on gangs ravaging the country and reduced a murder rate that had been the highest in the world. He cut the Honduran deficit and boosted economic growth. However, not everything went so well. Sixty percent of population remains in poverty. Gangs still operate with free reign in many parts of the country. The police force is notoriously corrupt. His National party was implicated in the theft of millions from the nation’s social security fund. Honduras remains a conduit for smuggling cocaine into the US, and the president’s own brother was arrested by the US DEA for drug trafficking. To have a chance for a second term, he even had to change the Honduran constitution.
It is impossible to deal with Central American immigration without addressing the primary cause of it—the absence of rule-of-law. Many Hondurans who had pinned their hopes on a democratic system (after a 2009 coup d’état) lost faith in it during this most recent election; now they pin their hopes on migration instead. When the Trump Administration recognized the 2017 election, it lost a major opportunity to address perhaps the primary cause of the immigration issue it so heartily campaigned to address.
References:
Amelia Frank-Vitale, “The home of a real national emergency,” Washington Post, 17 Feb 2019, A23.
“U.S. backs re-election of Honduran president despite vote controversy,” Reuters, 22 Dec 2019.
“Honduran president sworn in amid protests after election chaos,” Reuters, 27 Jan 2018.
Wikipedia, “2017 Honduran general election,” accessed 11 Nov 2019.