IMA Statement on the Honduran Migrant Caravan

Honduran migrant caravan is the people’s resistance against imperialist exploitation and control

 Their march is their defiance against imperialism.The International Migrants Alliance expresses the strongest solidarity to the 7,000-strong Latin American migrants who have caravanned through Central America and are now in Mexico with the target of landing at the US-Mexico border.The Latin American migrants, many of whom come from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and with half of them being women and children, do not only live in abject poverty but are exposed to violence, exploitation and government neglect. These conditions they face are caused by continued adherence of their governments to neoliberal impositions and militarism with the intent of defending the interests of monopoly capitalist corporations.With the intensification of neoliberalism in Central America, corporations ravage agriculture and natural resources while the military and paramilitary forces, fuelled with international aid, assault peasants or campesinos, women, and people who resist these projects. Human rights violations like extrajudicial killings, disappearances and massive arrests of peasants, activists and other advocates are alarmingly high in all three countries. Both governments and corporations are party to the conditions that push the people to leave their countries and find greener and safer ground abroad.The US government under Donald Trump on the other hand deserves the strongest condemnation for threatening to use any means possible to deligitimize, disperse and destroy the migrant caravan. It is hypocritical of the Trump administration to use thug tactics against the Central American governments for “not preventing their people to leave” while the former funnels financial support to military and security development of the latter.While it is has similar characteristics with the Mediterranean exodus of African migrants, the migrant caravan in Latin America clearly presents the growing people’s resistance to imperialist exploitation to the point of defying US militarism, especially at the US-Mexico border.The Trump administration is obviously scared to the bones of the migrants who are now expressing their determination to live and to fight. He and his ilk are afraid that the migrants will spark the fire of struggle in the hearts of the Mexican people and other nationalities, whom the US government has deported over the past many years. How can imperialism nip at the bud a movement of people who are now opposing any more impoverishment, any more slave-like conditions, any more inequality brought about by imperialism itself?Forced migration does not happen overnight. This is the result of continued imperialist control over underdeveloped nations, their peoples and resources. It is the result and will continue to be aggravated by a global system that premiums on capitalist greed for profit while enslaving, exploiting and stifling the rights and freedoms of peoples.The migrant caravan that started in Honduras is an expression of the people’s resistance to a world of inequality, poverty and class exploitation. It is people’s defiance against neoliberal impositions and the challenge posed on governments not only in Central America but in all of the world to heed the people’s demands. It is the people’s stand against imperialism.The IMA will continue to monitor the migrant caravan and will coordinate with our partner and friend organizations assisting them. We demand the US government to retract its threats against the migrants, and instead heed to demands and find just means to address the migrants’ plea.No walls or borders should stop our solidarity. No person should be shunned away in shame or harmed because they speak their mind. No migrant should be cast away.No one is illegal.Welcome all migrants.End forced migration. 27 October 2018 StatementReference: Eni Lestari, IMA chairpersonima.sect@gmail.com