“Central America's Forgotten History – Revolution, Violence and the Roots of Migration,” by Aviva Chomsky, 2022
Central America was a deep concern of the anti-imperialist left in the late 1970s and 1980s. It is not forgotten. Not the victory of the 1979 popular-front FSLN in Nicaragua when it overthrew Somoza. Not the following Iran-Contra scandal. Not the violent dictatorships and death squads sponsored by a series of U.S. governments to oppose revolutionary movements – in Guatemala, in El Salvador, in Nicaragua; nor the bloody U.S. invasion of Panama. Not the torture training at the 'School of the Americas' in Georgia. Or the support for the 2009 military coup in Honduras by Obama and Clinton. If this history is unfamiliar to you, then this book will be valuable. It is written by Noam Chomsky's oldest daughter, who is a specialist in Central and Latin American history. I'm only looking at the chapter on migration.
THE MIGRATION STORY
One consequence that is not forgotten because it is still going on is migration. The result of these anti-peasant, anti-working class dictatorships was a fundamental disruption of the labor communities in these countries. Land was stolen; terror was instituted against indigenous farming towns; in the cities poverty was enforced, unions destroyed and leaders killed. Rape, massacres and murder were normalized. Drug gangs protected by rightist governments consolidated control, as did local landlords and international corporations. In the 1980s-1990s it forced many peasants and workers to flee to other parts of their own country; to other Central American countries; to the United States, and some all the way to Canada.
Chomsky explains that the original immigrants and refugees who escaped these blood-baths and who made it to the U.S. sent back money – remittances - which sustained their poverty-stricken families back home. Many times it was just the father or sons who left. The lure of this 'money' economy over subsistence farming or slavish factory work was powerful. Some of it descended into bragging about wealth by those who worked in the U.S. This eventually helped lead to 'chain migration' – even just children – as Central Americans tried to patch their families back together over the years. This accounts for the many unaccompanied minors making the trek to the supposedly golden land of El Norte, something that is still going on.
Chomsky details how solutions like micro-credit programs (favored by H. Clinton) actually led to people losing their land as land prices contracted. Behind this is the fact that the migration economies are run on debt, as people pay or borrow huge sums to leave. This creates further misery down the line for whole families – repossessions, overwork, deeper poverty, even violence, when payment is difficult or impossible.
Before and after the 'reformist peace' governments in Central America that were set up in the 1990s, peasant land was abandoned by migrants. This could be due to climate-change drought, to poverty and debt or seizure by wealthy landlords, drug gangs or for a large corporate or government project. Migration resulted in a fundamental dissolution of some peasant communities and the proletarianization of these migrants at the bottom of society as they moved to cities. Given this history, Central American migration to the U.S., which has presently overtaken Mexican migration, is a clear version of class war blow-back.
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| Death squad having a laugh |
THE FACTS
In her section on migration Chomsky details the complicated patchwork of laws and border controls, waves of deportations, entities, programs, disaster relief, U.S. administrations and numbers that affected Central American migrants on the U.S. border. Like others, she contradicts Obama's statement that the U.S. welcomes immigrants. A broad point she makes is that as Mexican immigration went down after 2010, and Central American immigration began to rise in the 1990s, border militarization and obstacles grew. It did not matter whether it was Democrats or Republicans, as both had a somewhat consistent attitude. That is until Trump's even worse policy initiated a 'border war' with it's 'remain in Mexico' policy, bigger and abusive internment camps, family separations, the nullification of asylum, the 'wall' and increased desert deaths … policies which mostly have not gone away.
Chomsky discusses the numbers that fled from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. 3 million Central Americans were displaced by these wars and migrated in the 1980s. By 2017 there were 3.5 million living in the U.S. alone. The 1965 immigration law gave Mexico a quota, which made many Mexicans illegal. A 1986 law allowed a path to legalization if you arrived before 1982. Neither of these laws helped Central Americans, as they arrived later and had smaller quotas. Asylum was granted in tiny percentages. Refugees were put in detention camps and some deported back to death. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was created in 1990 due to violence and disasters in Central America, which helped. In 2014 a law on CA minors allowed a tiny group of young immigrants to be legalized. Even adoption became a political issue, as CA children were being kidnapped or sold into adoptions, mostly to North American gringos. As a commentator said: “It's the neo-liberal phase of imperialism. First we take their land, then we take their resources, then we take their workers and then we take their children.”
The establishment of ICE in 2003 vastly increased militarization, with 4K agents expanded to 21,444 in 2011, now around 20,000. Rhetoric about 'criminals' increased under Obama and especially Trump, with many deported for minor or very old infractions. One of the sad consequences was that migrants in U.S. communities like Providence, Rhode Island were living alongside commanders of death squads or bloody former government officials, who hid, lied or were protected to get into the U.S.
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| Immigrant Detention Camp |
SOLUTIONS?
Chomsky has no solutions to the migration issue. She hopes her facts will help. She does not discuss the actual differences between economic migration and asylum. She does not propose a broad immigrant work program to fill the immense gaps in the U.S. workforce. She does not propose a Central American or Latin American customs and monetary union, a la the EU. She does not suggest a new U.S. foreign policy for Central America or aide targeted only to peasants and workers. She does not address the legalization of drugs. She does not suggest the socialization of U.S. corporations in the isthmus. She does not move towards internationalism and a new policy around national borders. She does not advocate support for socialist movements in Central and Latin America. After all, the key is to improve Central America for the majority of people so they are not forced to move.
Most importantly, she does not point out that rapacious and warlike capitalism deeply damaged parts of Central America to this day. Few would have migrated if not for these primitive capitalist dictatorships and civil / class wars. Who would want to leave their home, their family, their roots unless pushed by terrible circumstances beyond their control? It is class-war blowback, just as Mexican migration is blowback for corporate Mexican governments and NAFTA. Climate change might have come for Central America finally, but that also has the same cause. To paraphrase a famous quote by Marx - academics can only show us facts; political organizations have to change them.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year “Pearls Before Swine” archive, using these terms: “American Made,” “Manufacturing Consent” (Chomsky); “Not a Nation of Immigrants” (Dunbar-Ortiz); “American Exception,” “Kill the Messenger,” “Secret History of the American Empire” (Perkins): “Washington Bullets” (Prashad); “Worn,” “Revolutionary Rehearsals,” “Tropic of Chaos” (Parenti), “Bad Mexicans,” “All the Pretty Horses”(McCarthy), “November” or “El Salvador,” “Nicaragua,” “Guatemala.”
And I got it at May Day Books used books section!
Red Frog
February 23, 2023
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