Migration is born as a result of different rights becoming elusive in 21st century Honduras: the right to housing, the right to a dignified source of income, and more recently, the right to grow old. The following five part photo documentary attempts to answer why Hondurans have taken to the US-bound migrant route, where they come from, how they do it, what happens when they cross into other countries, the threats they face along the route, what life is like for those who succeed and what happens to Hondurans who return willingly or otherwise.
A small farming community outside of Juticalpa, Olancho; one of the regions most affected by economic migration. Contemporary migration in Honduras has many sources. Unlike neighboring countries of the Northern Triangle (Guatemala and El Salvador), Honduras did not go through a civil war. Instead, migration increased after government assistance and market access for rural farmers became limited due to neoliberal reforms that disproportionately affected rural communities. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
Farming family in Kurpa, Gracias a Dios struggle to make it through a historic drought. Potential migrants typically abandon their traditional communities, heading first towards the major urban centers of the country. Their nature as outsiders relegates them to the dangerous informal neighborhoods that surround Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
Tegucigalpa’s urban sprawl has grown considerably since internal migration patterns started being tracked in the 1950s. Many rural to urban migrants gathered around the mountains that surround the city illegally in improvised housing, with little to no access to services. These early instances of informal urbanization set the stage for many of the city’s current social issues. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
Women looking towards the financial heart of Tegucigalpa from one of the informal mountainside barrios. Most people that migrate to Tegucigalpa come from the southern regions where they face unbearable economic hardship. Newly arrived migrants typically first enter the informal workforce and more often than not move in with family friends and other members of their community’s diaspora in the major Honduran cities. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
An issue many migrants and locals face daily is the threat of crime and violence. Street gangs who first came to Tegucigalpa because of the mass US deportation programs in the early 1990s had become criminally radicalized in the prisons of Southern California. Twenty years after the fact these street gangs , known locally as maras, have become powerful criminal enterprises, wielding absolute control over many of these densely populated barrios of the cities. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
A woman from a gang controlled barrio shows off her newborn nephew. People in these neighborhoods are often forced to pay extortion fees to the gangs. If they refuse or miss a payment they run the risk of being killed. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
The barrio of Habitat is a former refugee camp turned village built by Habitat for Humanity after Hurricane Mitch destroyed much of the country in 1998. Hurricane Mitch is considered the event that triggered the migratory outflows we see today. Currently Habitat is controlled by one of the maras. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
Two families, whose fathers have migrated, pose in Habitat. A major factor in the current migratory crisis is the threat of direct or indirect violence. Death threats or botched murder attempts are considered direct violence, while forceful gang recruitment or excessive extortion is considered indirect violence. Both are causes of migration. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
The increased levels of violence in Honduras have caused private security firms to grow exponentially. Gerson, who originally migrated from the southern departments to Tegucigalpa in search of a better life, said that “It’s work. I am a military man with training. But it’s too dangerous to commute to work if a criminal knows I work in security. They’ll kill me to get my weapon.” Gerson made it clear that he will migrate to the United States once he has enough money to pay a coyote. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
In other places like El Porvenir, migration happens because of man-made disasters. El Porvenir is one of the main sources of migration in Honduras after a now-shuttered Canadian-owned mining company poisoned the groundwater serving several neighboring communities. As a result many crops failed and cattle died, leaving many people without a way to survive. Since then thousands from the surrounding valley have turned to migration. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
A bus full of migrants from Tegucigalpa is checked by the military at the Agua Caliente crossing between Honduras and Guatemala. The migrant route towards the US usually begins in a migrant’s own community. The human trafficking networks have a coyote in nearly every county of Honduras. Local coyotes’ services include planning, transportation, lodging, facilitating border crossing (licit or illicit), and connection with other coyotes in countries along the route. The going rate hovers around $7,500. It is common practice for coyotes to offer up to three attempts. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
The triple border of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Migrants often travel independently in order to avoid becoming a victim of the myriad of criminal groups that prey on groups of migrants. However, if they are turned back or deported they often turn to coyotes who know the “blind spots” where they can be illegally smuggled across. These mountains have around 60 “official” blind spots that are patrolled by two soldiers on the Honduran side. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
We gave a hitchhiker a ride on the way near the border as we made our way to a meeting with an migration officials on the Guatemalan side. The officer immediately asked us what we were doing helping out one of the local coyotes of Agua Caliente. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
“When 9 buses with 45 agitated people cross, we simply don’t have the manpower to stop every instance of human trafficking.” A border officer at the Corinto crossing between Guatemala and Honduras. When Mexico deports Hondurans on a one-way 36 hour bus ride, they are dropped off in Corinto to find their way home. The Honduran government has been unable to cope with the waves of deportation, with only a Red Cross field station doing cursory processing. The coyotes set up their networks to pick up people who have every intention of immediately getting back on the migrant route. (Copyright © 2014 Tomas Ayuso – Noria Research. All rights reserved)
