By Óscar Chacón, Executive Director of Alianza Américas.

San Salvador, October 18, 2018

Around 3,000 Honduran migrants started a caravan last weekend with the aim of crossing Central America and Mexico to seek asylum in the United States. Multiple press reports state that these people are fleeing poverty and violence in their country. As expected, President Donald Trump has followed the line of his anti-immigrant narrative and has threatened to suspend economic aid to Honduras if it doesn't stop the caravan, and to Guatemala and El Salvador if they allow these people to transit through their territories.

The living conditions of millions of people in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and many parts of Mexico continue to be far from optimal. In addition to very oppressive economic conditions, which have been in place for many decades, citizen insecurity, combined with the negligence of the private sector and governments in creating dignified living conditions, push many people towards emigration as the only alternative. The United States government has been an active accomplice in the lack of economic opportunities, as well as in the lack of optimal conditions for democratic governance genuinely committed to the interests of the majority.

The national and international political order regarding the management of human mobility in the region - which links the countries of Central America, Mexico, and the U.S. - is obsolete and increasingly conducive to the violation of the human rights of migrants.

As long as public policies continue to be based on the idea that migrants are a threat, instead of recognizing that migrant people have mostly been a gain for sending and receiving countries, these policies will only continue to deepen the systematic violation of people's rights.

For all the above reasons, the caravan that originated in Honduras represents a form of collective protest against a national and international political regime that lacks moral legitimacy as it economically, socially, and politically oppresses so many people, and also denies them the legitimate right to seek a better life for themselves and their families through migration.

Regardless of who organized it, or how well it has been planned, the caravan also represents an act of protest against the multibillion-dollar smuggling industry that extracts juicy profits from unauthorized migration, and which also abuses migrant people. It is also a protest against official actors who join the pattern of abuse of migrant people.

It has been shameful how the governments of Mexico and Central American countries have largely submitted to the misguided political line dictated by the U.S. regarding human mobility. Instead of joining Trump's whims, these governments should unite in articulating an alternative strategy to positively resolve the challenge of human mobility, while setting new directions in addressing the factors that give rise to human mobility in this geographic corridor.

We must reject the opportunistic use by the U.S. Republican Party of the caravan, which proves once again that policies seeking to suppress human mobility are a real failure, in addition to representing a waste of U.S. taxpayers' money. The caravan is further evidence of the misguided way in which the Trump Administration and previous governments have dealt with the reality of human mobility in this region.

The caravan reminds us of the imperative to focus on truly new solutions that are based on overcoming economic inequality, inclusive and sustainable social development for all, the urgency of reinventing honest, transparent democracy capable of solving problems; and that at the same time recognizes migrant people as social subjects to whom we owe appreciation, admiration, and respect for their thousand and one contributions to the well-being of all.

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