Weaponized mass migrations across southern U.S. border, a narco-terror elite in Honduras

 The New John Batchelor Show on CBS Audio Network has been chronicling the latest mass incursions across the U.S. southern border, most of which are passing through Mexico from Central American countries. 

A JBS segment from the other night is headlined, Honduras said to be dominated by narco-terror-linked elite led by the presidency. John's discussion with Joseph Humire and Colombian Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal highlights that U.S. authorities have been seeing "more and more high-ranking officials in Latin America being involved with drug trafficking." 

Humire explains that U.S. authorities are aware of the connection between the narco-crime wave in Honduras (and other Central American states) and the mass incursions across the American southern border. 

Humire also mentions indications that the migrations are now "weaponized," and that the U.S. military is well aware of this. Listen to the discussion for more explanation but in brief the weaponization of mass migration means the incursions are being constructed and used by foreign entities as a weapon against the United States.

My concern is that the weaponization aspect will fix U.S. attention to a militarized response to the mass incursions happening over and above the million legal immigrants to America annually.  

I see weaponization, along with other factors usually cited. as causing the incursions -- extreme poverty, corruption, and cartel/gang violence -- as consequences of farmland theft that has been steadily escalating in Latin America for at least two decades. With regard to the land grabs in Honduras, a 2017 article reported:

According to Tanya Kersson, author of Grabbing Power: The New Struggles for Land, Food and Democracy in Northern Honduras, a few powerful landowners grabbed more than 21,000 hectares in a short period between 1990 and 1994. This accounted for 70 percent of peasant lands in the Lower Aguan Valley, one the most fertile areas in the country and the site for much of the land conflict in Honduras.

Land grabs and violence against rural Hondurans have gotten worse since the 1990s. The 2009 military coup gave the large landholders even more flexibility in expelling small landholders from their land.

From the report, much of the expulsion has been done through legalistic machinations against farmers who for generations didn't have or need written proof they owned their property. When farmers and their activist supporters organize protests against the chicanery, they are murdered. 

So my suggestion is that actually stopping the cross-border incursions depends on returning dispossessed farmers and their families to their rightful lands. Unless this is done, militarized tactics and bribing corrupt or outright criminal regimes with 'development' projects will produce only the most temporary relief from the incursions. Focusing entirely on the land grabs would be too much to ask of the American government and indeed of all Americans who want action now. Yet unless the root cause of the incursions is dealt with, they will continue.   

But is the solution I propose doable? I'd say it's more doable than continuing to go in circles, which has been the American response for years to what is obviously a crisis, both for the U.S. and the countries the émigrés are fleeing.  

For now, listen to what John Batchelor and his guests have to say about the mass migrations. Another JBS segment on the crisis is PacificWatch: Special Report: San Diego refuge at $6500 per child per day (Audioboom podcast). There are additional recent podcasts on the border incursions. See the JBS Audioboom page.

I'd also recommend that you read the entire 2017 article I quoted above. The caveat is that the title of the report states the land grabs are "partly" to blame for the "skyrocketing" violence that has driven so many Hondurans to flee their country. Yet I think the article itself makes clear there is a direct, cause-and-effect link between the violence and large-scale ousting of Honduran landholders.

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