Donald Trump is not entirely responsible for the humanitarian crisis at our southern border, but there is little room for honest doubt that he is deliberately exacerbating the crisis to the hilt for his own political gain. As Samantha Bee, of full frontal, and many others have convincingly pointed out: "We might not have started the fire, but America TOTALLY started the current crisis at the border by propping up military dictators in Central America."
How US Meddling in Central America Created the Modern Day Border Crisis | Full Frontal on TBSThanks to President Reagan's paranoia about Communism, he was readily persuaded to support would-be despots claiming to be anti-communist, and helped set up and support despotic rulers and thereby cause brutal civil wars and revolts that tore El Salvador apart. This was what the Iran Contra scandal was all about. Later on he helped create or exacerbate the MS13 menace by deporting gang members, after years of being brutalized and hardened in American prisons, back to El Salvador, the country we had helped to make unlivable in the first place, where they promptly used what they had learned in American prisons to take over and terrorize significant sections of the already weakened country to make things even worse there. It is important to realize that MS13 was created, not in El Salvador, but in the streets of Los Angeles. Sending them back to El Salvador only made things worse there, and increased the pressure and motivation to flee that country and seek asylum in ours.
I and others have already talked about how the U.S. Government conspired with the United Fruit Company to overthrow the legally elected government of Guatemala in the 1950s. Both Democrat and Republican administrations were involved in this travesty, leading to the conditions contributing to the outflux of Guatemalan Refugees today. We could have a whole thread about that alone. Again, Trump had nothing to do with the appalling conditions in Guatemala, but he helped to exacerbate the plight of the refugees from there trying to escape those conditions by both his treatment of those migrants and cutting off of aid to Guatemala that could help improve those conditions, that were largely a product of past U.S. Government actions and policies.
Then there is Honduras, which has also suffered from ill considered U.S. Actions and policies, in this case due to Hillary Clinton, and (I admit) Barack Obama.
Honduras and Hillary Clinton.In 2009, Secretary Clinton supported an illegal coup in Honduras against the popular democratically elected progressive President, Manuel Zelaya. She did it despite her ambassador calling the situation an “open and shut case” of an illegal coup, and in the face of world opinion:
The United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the European Union condemned the removal of Zelaya as a military coup. On 5 July, the OAS, invoking for the first time Article 21 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter voted by acclamation of all member states to suspend Honduras from the organisation.
She did it, sadly, with Obama’s acquiescence.
Why? Well, the chief lobbyist hired by the Hondurans behind the coup was Lanny Davis, Hillary’s old friend and loyal supporter for decades who had supported Bill Clinton during the impeachment. (Let that sink in for a minute. The establishment Democrats who love the Clintons have made a lot of money doing really terrible things.) And because, some say, Zelaya was an advocate for higher wages. Salon:
NYU history professor Greg Grandin, author of a number of books about Central and South America, boiled the coup down to a simple economic calculation by the Honduran elite: “Zelaya was overthrown because the business community didn’t like that he increased the minimum wage. We’re talking about an elite that treats Honduras as if it was its own private plantation.”
Grandin was echoed by a Honduran Catholic bishop, Luis Santos Villeda of Santa Rosa de Copan, who told the Catholic News Service, “Some say Manuel Zelaya threatened democracy by proposing a constitutional assembly. But the poor of Honduras know that Zelaya raised the minimum salary. That’s what they understand.”
None of the above, however, justifies the Trump administration's barbaric inhumanity towards these migrants--especially their children. Our government owes these countries big time for what our country, under various administrations, both Democrat and Republican, has done to them at the behest of greedy and powerful corporate donors and lobbyists. Our past actions and policies towards these countries are a big reason why many Latin American countries resent and distrust our country.