Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

We'd Rather Not Connect the Situation at the Southern Border to Our Own Country's Appetite for Drugs

"Opioids have killed 600,000 Americans. The Sacklers just got off basically scot-free
"Trapped by the ‘Walmart of Heroin’
2018 - "US life expectancy drops again as opioid deaths and suicide rates rise"""

But as this story out of Honduras illustrates, the connection is there regardless.

By Charles P. Pierce
Sep 22, 2021


Spencer PlattGetty Images

It is considered in some circles to be déclassé to discuss the reasons behind the immigration crisis on the Southern border. A lot of this thinking has its roots in a reluctance to explore the long-term consequences of our vigorous promotion of the Monroe Doctrine in Central America, especially the region’s role as the CIA’s test-track. However, there are answers to be found in places other than the darker corners of Matt Gaetz’s brain. Reuters .. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/honduras-crime-migration/ .. explored one of these, a fascinating tale of how a drug-dealing Honduran mayor demolished a rural economy.
-
In El Paraíso, a town of about 20,000 people, these factors were personified by Alexander Ardón, a cattle rustler turned narcotrafficker turned mayor who ruled this corner of Honduras like a fiefdom until he fled and surrendered to U.S. authorities two years ago. Striking a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Ardón confessed to participation in 56 murders, torture and trafficking as much as 250 tons of cocaine into the United States. With the help of senior officials from the ruling National Party, according to transcripts of testimony he gave a U.S. court, Ardón consolidated land and power, turning El Paraíso into a cocaine corridor for partners including Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the convicted Mexican kingpin.
-
The story goes on to become a vast narrative of how the cocaine trade disrupted an agrarian economy originally based on growing coffee for the world market. Hills were denuded of the coffee plants in favor of cattle raising, which requires less paid labor. Politics were stripped of even the pretense of accountability, not to mention ethics, and there was a scandal masquerading as a government that reached all the way to the top.
-
Ardón, now 45 years old and in federal custody, is also expected to be central to an ongoing investigation of President Hernández, himself a target .. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-honduras-idUSKBN2A8291__;!!Ivohdkk!0kN2mBWM7Lh6xkcHLOGYOC2fCtSZrckGe9u5MsmN2ItzbiMbf_wEqe5m5qzmpQtg%24 .. of a separate federal narcotics probe, according to a court filing by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In the trial against Tony Hernández, according to transcripts reviewed by Reuters, Ardón said the president and his predecessor allowed him to traffic cocaine in exchange for millions of dollars in campaign contributions. In their February filing, prosecutors alleged President Hernández sought “to use drug trafficking to help assert power and control Honduras.” They didn’t detail specific crimes.
-
The region was looted and its people impoverished, so many of them headed north to find some place that wasn’t owned and operated by organized crime.
-
Around El Paraíso – where Ardon built a rose-colored City Hall, with a helipad, loosely modeled on the White House – the mayor was all but untouchable. He and associates bought up so much land, and forced those unwilling to sell to leave their property anyway, that farms, families, and livelihoods disappeared. As he amassed wealth and power, the rate of extreme poverty, by one measure of government data, doubled in El Paraíso, where most locals live on less than $73 a month, one of the lowest income levels in Latin America.
-
The drug trade came to town because trafficking became an overland business. (Law enforcement shut down many of the marine routes.) This was a development that naturally appealed to local criminal classes as an opportunity to diversify.
-
Among those poised to take advantage were rustlers who had a long history of stealing and smuggling livestock. Ardón, then a young smuggler with a fifth-grade education, branched into narcotics starting in 2002, according to testimony he gave prosecutors. He quickly grew rich.
-
Ardon proceeded to build an empire that connected with traffickers as high up on the food chain as El Chapo Guzman. He then went into the business of buying Honduran politicians and Honduran political offices, including that of mayor of El Paraiso. The empire expanded. Life for most people within it became intolerable. They headed north.
-
In 2018, Darlín Bautista, Abel’s 15-year-old daughter at the time, fled Honduras. “I was so sad,” recalls Levin Solís, her mother. “I couldn’t sleep with her out there on those trails.” Darlín made it safely to the United States and began working in restaurants. She now wires money home from Indiana.
-
That’s how it happens, more often than not. It’s always a longer story.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a37695451/honduras-drug-trafficker-sends-migrants-north/

See also:

Putting the U.S.-Mexico ‘border crisis’ narrative into context

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=164624620

conix, U.S. Shows Progress in Moving Migrant Children From Border Jails
[...]
As for CRT you misrepresented the shit out of it when you tied it to Marxism. I see it as simply a scholarly approach to studying systemic racism in America, with some of the scholars involved Marxists and many more not. And with some Marxists disagreeing with it. You have no idea of the contractions in your black-and-white view as that's the only view you have on most all things.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=163794967

Chomsky knows it well. Trump Wants to Destroy Organised Human Life: Noam Chomsky

[...]
A Century of U.S. Intervention Created the Immigration Crisis
[...]
The liberal rhetoric of inclusion and common humanity is insufficient: we must also acknowledge the role that a century of U.S.-backed military coups, corporate plundering, and neoliberal sapping of resources has played in the poverty, instability, and violence that now drives people from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras toward Mexico and the United States. For decades, U.S. policies of military intervention and economic neoliberalism have undermined democracy and stability in the region, creating vacuums of power in which drug cartels and paramilitary alliances have risen. In the past fifteen years alone, CAFTA-DR?—...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=163253468

The number of migrant children in Border Patrol custody is down significantly.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=163545907

Pirro misinformation continues - Fact-check: Is the US-Mexico border 'open to anyone from anywhere'?
[...]
The number of migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico has swelled in recent months. But the border is not open for anyone to cross, immigration experts said, despite Pirro’s claim, which suggested that there is no legitimate enforcement at the border.
P - "That claim is patently absurd," said Nicole Hallett, an associate clinical professor of law and the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago. "The border has never been ‘open to anyone from anywhere in the world who now wishes to enter our country.’"
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=162892045