Interview with Honduran Immigrant:
"They send the children because they are more likely to survive the journey than they are to survive if they stay there."
August 4, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Some Revolution readers interviewed an immigrant from Honduras about his own experience and the recent flood of people fleeing the country to come to the U.S.
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Q. Where are you from?
A: I am from Honduras. From San Pedro Sula in Honduras.
Q. Why did you come here?
A: Well I lost my job. I was in a union and the company fired me because they wanted to get rid of the people in the union. I was not able to find work. I decided one day that to survive I would have to leave Honduras. My wife and children and go to the U.S.
Q. Did you have a plan? Did you have money saved up? Were others traveling with you?
A. No.
Q. Weren’t you afraid ?
A. Yes but I was more afraid of dying of hunger if I stayed. I had three children, two boys—one 9, one 12—and a 14-year-old daughter who all depended on me.
Q: How long did it take you to get here ?
A: It took a month. I had to go through El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico. I hooked up with a guy in Guatemala. We crossed into Mexico at a place called Tapachula. It was the place where people from all over Central America who are going to the U.S. cross.
Q. How did you travel once you got to Mexico?
A. There you take a train. It is known as “La Bestia” (The Beast). I don’t mean you take a train like here I mean I rode on top on the roof. You tie yourself down so you don’t fall off, but even then some people fall off, maybe because they fall asleep or they didn’t tie themselves down very well. You hear of people losing an arm or a leg or even being cut in half by the train depending on how you fall. If you fall off and get hurt you are on your own because the train doesn’t stop if you fall off.
Q: What was it like crossing Mexico ?
A: Since there was only two of us the Mexican migra didn’t pay attention to us. But others of those who were stopped were robbed, sometimes also beaten, and the women and even young girls raped.
Q. How long were you in Mexico ?
A. I stayed in Mexico City a week. There I met many others from Honduras, all on the way to the U.S. There were also others there from El Salvador and Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Q. What do you think of all the children who have been crossing the border?
A. I talk to my family on the phone. They tell me things there have gone from bad to worse. It was bad even before the U.S.-sponsored coup which took place in June 2009. In Honduras everything has gone up except the wages. You would see children on the streets with swollen bellies. They have swollen bellies not because they ate too much but because they are starving in most cases and they have parasites.
Q. How do they survive ?
A. Many of them don’t. You know the U.S. company United Fruit has a lot of banana plantations in Honduras. People are allowed to eat the rotten bananas that have fallen to the ground. You have to eat them there. You can’t carry any out; you have to eat them there.
Q. How do the workers get treated in places like United Fruit ?
A. Well they treat the workers with no respect just as they do with Honduras. The pay is very low and they make use of the country's roads and seaports to ship their products all over the world, mainly here to the U.S. In the past if anyone tried to raise their taxes they would force the government to resign.
Q, How do the workers survive?
A. People who have jobs often live in long rows of one room units. Sometimes two or three families live in one room. It has dirt floors, no bathroom, no running water. The people who live there all share a single water faucet. These people have a job.
There is a saying where I grew up: “You take care of your job like you take care of your eyes.” People work for very low wages among other things. In the factory where I worked women, especially the young women, often had to have sex with the foreman in order to keep their jobs. This was before the coup and things are worse now.
Q. What do you think about the children coming from Central America ?
A. Some people say they can’t understand why they send the children on such a dangerous journey. They send the children because they are more likely to survive the journey than they are to survive if they stay there.
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