For the last few months every Wednesday afternoon, I’ve taken care of friends’ 6-month old twins. I emit all of those undignified cooing sounds that adults make when confronted with cute babies. We dance to music on my iPad (Cajun music seems especially popular). We’ve cheered on Ecuador (futilely) and Argentina (successfully… until the final) in the World Cup.
The twins are so young, but their futures promise to be bright. Their educated and financially stable parents love them and take parenting seriously. Their suburban Boston community offers excellent schools and lots of recreational and athletic programs for children. They live in a state (Massachusetts) with a healthy economy, very strong educational, health and social welfare system, and that ranks at the top in the United States on indicators positively associated with child wellbeing (AECF, 2013). They live in a country that is governed by rule of law.
Every child should have what they have. But not every child does. Over the last several months, Americans have witnessed the fragility and chaos in which many of the world’s children live as thousands of Central American children, primarily from Honduras, have arrived en masse at the United States border. These children are fleeing that country’s endemic poverty and horrific gang violence. They have been sent by their family or are traveling with their family or are seeking their family in the US. In some cases, they are fleeing their families.
Leaving home
This particular post is written per the advice of Bob Dylan—that whatever is worth thinking about is worth “singing” about. My area of expertise is education, not child migration. But as I follow in the news the odyssey of these migrant children, it’s hard not to contrast the crucible of their lives with the idyll of my Wednesday afternoon charges.
I think about my time in the 1990s working and living in migrant communities on the Texas-Mexico border where many Central American adults shared stories of how sad it was to leave home (at that time, they were only fleeing poverty, not gang violence) and how frightening to cross Mexico. I think of my father, who left Ireland at age 15 in 1934, in search of work in England to support his family. He cried for days, he told me, a teenager alone and frightened and penniless wandering the streets of Liverpool. But mainly I think about the words of kids and parents in the peri-urban communities of Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba, Honduras, where many of these migrant children are from, and where last spring, as part of a team researching youth violence, (1) these children and their parents spoke of their travails in communities dominated by violence and fear.
Children of Cain
It is hard to put into words how bereft and dystopian the poor urban and peri-urban communities of Honduras are. The lack of housing, potable water, paved roads, employment opportunities, and institutions are familiar to all who have worked in low-income contexts. Sadly, there are far poorer communities in other parts of the globe. But what makes these communities so grim is the way in which violence has permeated every aspect of children’s lives (For a deeper understanding of the warp and weft of violence in Latin America and its impact on children, see Tina Rosenberg’s powerful Children of Cain).
Violence is everywhere—in schools, in families, in entertainment, and in communities. Eighty-six percent of the hundreds of kids we interviewed knew someone who had been murdered. Almost as many knew someone in their community who had murdered someone. The greatest fear parents expressed to me was that their children would be assassinated or join gangs. Police often refuse to go into these gang-controlled communities because they are too dangerous even for the police. This is not an environment where children can grow, learn and develop their potential.
Plata o plomo (Money or a bullet)
Honduras’s weak central government, poorly functioning institutions, widespread family disintegration, and proximity to the world’s largest market for illegal drugs—the United States—create fertile soil in which gangs thrive. Children (some as young as 6 or 8 years of age) volunteer for or are recruited by gangs; others are essentially kidnapped into joining. In this netherworld, gang members earn a good income (selling drugs, extortion, kidnapping), enjoy professional mobility (becoming a gang leader or even a community leader), can support their family, and acquire a (false) sense of security and safety (guns and protection and a code of retribution) in a highly insecure world.
Sadly, given the corruption and inequality in income and opportunity that plague Honduras (CEPR, 2013), many children in poor communities cannot attain these aspirations by legitimate means. They must make the ultimate Faustian bargain—ceding their future and humanity in exchange for money and security.
More fundamentally, gangs provide the emotional and spiritual nutrition for kids that are often absent when families and communities are so focused on simply surviving. Like the children in Lord of the Flies, gang members offer one another values (however warped), love, a sense of fraternity and community, spirituality, structure, and purpose—for youth who often have none of these things. This is not my interpretation; these are the words of Juvel Miranda, an ex-gang member I interviewed last April in San Pedro Sula.
Juvel, after 12 years in a gang, left and began working with visiting gang members in prison trying to help them leave. He had recently married. He showed me photos of his two-month old baby. He wanted to open his own auto repair shop. Twelve days after I interviewed him, he was dead—assassinated in broad daylight, in his car, in front of his wife, father and baby, by other young men for reasons that will probably never be known. I’m certain no one has really bothered to investigate Juvel’s murder. In Honduras there is plenty of crime, but not much punishment.
Light amidst the darkness
Within the darkness and despair of many of these communities are thousands of points of light—youth who want to improve their country; churches; Honduran social service agencies like Ja Jha (where Juvel worked and which encourages kids to leave gangs) and Alianza Joven; schools like Cerro Grande (about which I wrote in September, 2013) and the many kids who seek out what is positive and good. Their challenges are formidable and they need support.
I typically write these blog posts with some kind of attempted solution to a perceived problem. I am not qualified to do so here. [Recognized experts, like Oscar Arias have offered advice and ideas on addressing this crisis.]
But the arrival of these children at my country’s borders leaves me pondering two thoughts. First, Honduras (and El Salvador and Guatemala) epitomize how fragility and poverty are often global or regional in nature such that “their” children become “our” children.
Teachers in schools in Honduras and in many US schools will now face similar issues—providing education and services to thousands of children with acute psychological, health and learning needs. How can we offer aid and support that is transnational, versus national, to a people versus simply a place, so we help children in Honduras as well as those in the diaspora community?
Next, raising healthy (in the broad sense) children, as my vignette about the babies suggests, happens when states, institutions and families are strong and intact. In contrast, when governments, institutions, and families fail children, as in Honduras, the result is Lord of the Flies… with assault weapons. But as horrible and disruptive as it is, the exodus of Central Americans to the United States also reminds us of the dramatic extent to which parents everywhere will choose stability over chaos and opportunity over nihilism for their children.
Yet their migration raises real questions and quandaries—both in Honduras in the United States. Those of us involved in child-related issues, like education, whether in the United States or Central America, can at least begin to try to help these families. We can educate ourselves about the formidable challenges and dangers facing these children and their families in places like Honduras. We can pay attention to and participate in the larger debate around humanitarianism, immigration, and the roles and responsibilities of governments. And we can support organizations and government policies that invest in and strengthen communities, schools and families in Central America so we create the conditions in which all children—not just those in wealthy US suburbs— can thrive in our shared neighborhood of the Americas.
Notes
- Because of security concerns, I have omitted all specific information about the project, places and people associated with it.
References
Annie E. Casey Foundation (2013). 2012 Kids Count data book: State trends in child well-being. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/p95gj4s
Center for Economic Policy and Research (2013). Honduras since the coup: Economic and social outcomes. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/o45plrw
Rosenberg, T. (1991). Children of Cain: Violence and the violent in Latin America. New York, NY: Penguin Books (“Plata o plomo” is taken from page 24 of the book)