Latin America moves forward despite coronavirus

The migration possibilities of thousands of Latin Americans are increasingly being undermined. This week, the first caravan of migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic attempting to reach the United States was recorded, the fourth in 2020. Last Wednesday, 3,500 Hondurans left the San Pedro Sula bus station for the El Corinto border crossing, which connects with Guatemala. Once there, another 3,000 people joined the caravan on its way to the United States.

The pandemic has, however, served the migration agencies of the various Central American countries to tighten border controls. A policy that is difficult to understand when, precisely because of the disease, there has been an increase in the lack of work opportunities, misery and death due to the lack of resources with which to combat the epidemic.

The free transit agreement between the four Central American countries, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, which functions as a kind of Schengen area for the region, has not prevented the Guatemalan authorities from closing the doors on them. However, the pandemic, which has exacerbated the levels of violence and poverty in these countries, has also become the main obstacle to their return.

A video recorded by local reporter Felipe Garrán shows officers asking the group if there are any volunteers to return to Honduras. In unison they answer: "No! The agents at this point in Guatemala explain to the reporter that, although they have orders to stop them, it is impossible: "We are seven and they are many".

The first caravan of Central American migrants from the pandemic has been disbanded before it touched Mexican territory this weekend. When the migrants arrived in Guatemala, the country's president, Alejandro Giammattei, promised that they would all be arrested and sent back to Honduras. 

A few days later, the government kept its promise. Guatemalan army trucks returned more than 3,500 people to Honduras on Sunday, according to official figures. The Guatemalan government, committed since last year to Donald Trump's government to stop migration, has used the health protocols for the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to carry out these mass deportations when the group was still more than 1,600 kilometres away from the usual point of entry to Mexico, the bridge that divides the country with Guatemala in Ciudad Hidalgo (Chiapas), where the size of the caravans can be seen and more pressure is exerted to enter.

In a communiqué from Guatemala's Migration Department, all foreigners of legal age from the CA4 (Central American Free Mobility Agreement) countries are informed that they need a negative coronavirus test to enter the country. Most of the migrants who made up the caravan that left San Pedro Sula (Honduras) on Wednesday 30 September, and which was joined by hundreds of others from the rest of Central America, did not have this document, as their intention is usually to travel through Guatemala in the shortest time possible and reach Mexico on their way to the United States.

In the past six months the United States has signed agreements with its neighbours which, in practice, involve moving migratory flows away from its doors. For example, last year Guatemala signed an agreement with Donald Trump's government to contain migration and even accept the status of safe third country, which means that asylum seekers in US courts wait for their applications to be processed in the Central American country. An agreement similar to the one signed with Mexico, called 'Remain in Mexico'.

"The economic crisis generated by the coronavirus will have a great impact on the flow of remittances and the income levels of their families. Latin America is also a region of transit, immigration, refuge and statelessness, and it is in this population and its relatives that the measures taken by Latin American governments are having serious consequences," says Maria Villarreal, professor and researcher at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Unirio).

Between January and July, according to the latest available data from the Ministry of the Interior, 43,306 migrants were detained, most of them Hondurans and Guatemalans. Most of them were arrested in Chiapas, the Mexican state that borders Guatemala. This is almost 70% less than in the same period last year. A migrant mass that reminds the world that violence and hunger are stalking them, with or without a pandemic.

Latin America, one of the regions most affected by the pandemic with more than 6.2 million infected and nearly 250,000 dead, is facing the worst economic recession in a century this year, with a GDP contraction of up to 9.1% and 18 million new unemployed, according to the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). "Addressing the consequences of the pandemic on the migrant population is a priority issue that needs to be thought through in terms of public policy, inclusion, social protection and human rights," ECLAC said.