{"id":12392,"date":"2024-07-30T19:23:45","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T19:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nuevo.cristosal.org\/?p=12392"},"modified":"2024-07-30T19:23:45","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T19:23:45","slug":"global-school-spotlights-internal-forced-displacement-in-honduras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/global-school-spotlights-internal-forced-displacement-in-honduras\/","title":{"rendered":"Una escuela global pone de relieve el desplazamiento forzado interno en Honduras."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It’s another blazing hot day in Choloma, Honduras, but Claudio Castillo is used to the heat. He leaves his new home and steps out into the bright morning, making the short journey to the municipal building. He climbs the stairs and takes his place in the circle of chairs assembled in the conference room. He grabs the microphone and begins to speak.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFirst, I want to start by saying that leaving [my home] was not my choice. If I had a choice, I would have stayed,\u201d says Claudio Castillo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claudio is a Garifuna man who has lived most of his life in the Mosquitia of Honduras. This remote, coastal forest area in Northwest Honduras borders Nicaragua and is home to six Indigenous groups, including the Afro-Indigenous Garifuna people. While Garifuna communities have dotted the shores of Central America for centuries, Claudio laments that recently, that is changing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looks out over the group assembled before him and takes a moment to compose himself before continuing to recount his story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur people and our culture are connected to the land,\u201d he says \u201cbut sadly, there are a lot of other people that want that land and they will stop at nothing to take it from us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Claudio\u2019s community, the threats began several years ago when narco-traffickers started eyeing their territory to use to transport drugs from Colombia. He says that over the last ten years, he\u2019s lost several friends and acquaintances caught in the crossfire of drug trafficking in the area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the 1980s, narcos have moved their product through Northern Honduras as it travels to the United States, but in the last decade, traffickers have changed their tactics, favoring transport over land according to Insight Crime. This in turn, has caused them to take over large tracts of Miskito land, almost always by force.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey told us if we didn\u2019t leave, there would be consequences,\u201d says Claudio, inhaling, \u201cThat\u2019s when we realized we couldn\u2019t stay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under cover of night, Claudio, his family, and several other families from his community fled their homes, resettling in the city of Choloma, located in the Valle Sula region of Honduras. Now, he works with the growing number of Garifuna families resettling in the area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claudio joined Cristosal\u2019s Global School in Honduras as one of the participants in our Roots of Migration seminar held in San Pedro Sula from June 8 – 13. We welcomed 18 participants from US and Honduran organizations to participate in our immersive seminar focused on understanding migration through a human rights lens.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Throughout the seminar, victims of forced displacement shared their experiences with participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the threats started because I\u2019m a leader in my community,\u201d says Maria de la Cruz. \u201cIt started with notes left by the local gang members, but then they started to come to our house,\u201d she adds, \u201cIt\u2019s terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maria is a local pastor and community leader in El Progreso. She has worked extensively to support people impacted by migration in her community, including both internally displaced people and returned migrants. She joined the group as another participant in the seminar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having seen the impact of gang violence around her, she was not surprised when a young man showed up on her doorstep demanding money. \u201cIt\u2019s a fairly common practice,\u201d she says, \u201cThe problem is when they keep demanding more and more money, but my family doesn’t have any more to give.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In El Progreso, members of civil society groups and the municipality spoke to the group, explaining their work to address internal forced displacement within and around the city. With the other Global School participants, they engaged in a dialogue to better understand this phenomenon and how it connects to migration to the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimates that there are about 101,000 internally displaced persons (IDP) in Honduras as of 2023, a figure that has been exacerbated not only by violence but from natural disasters. It documented 137 displacement events in Honduras since 2008, with the highest number of displacements resulting from back-to-back hurricanes Eta and Iota in 2020. Cristosal has supported 2,946 displaced persons in Honduras between 2020 and June of 2024.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis area, in particular, is vulnerable to natural disasters,\u201d says Karina Andino. Karina works with Cristosal\u2019s protection team out of the San Pedro Sula office. \u201cDuring the hurricanes of 2020, entire parts of Progreso were underwater. Many people had to move,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reports that hurricanes displaced 927,000 people in 2020. The majority were from the Sula Valley region where the seminar was held.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith climate change, we\u2019re seeing a lot more extreme weather events like Eta and Iota. This is also pushing people to migrate,\u201d says Karina.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a presentation, Karina explained a bit about Cristosal\u2019s work supporting IDPs on the ground in Honduras.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe accompany victims of displacement,\u201d Karina explains. \u201cEach case is different, meaning [how we work with them ] doesn\u2019t always look the same.\u201d She laid out the methodology which begins with a critical step: the intake process to identify what rights have been violated, the victims\u2019 immediate needs, and the initial steps toward long-term solutions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur focus is on finding a durable solution,\u201d she declares. \u201cWe don\u2019t just want to relocate people, but ensure that they are set up to continue living and, more importantly, living with dignity.\u201d    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting on her experience, participant Anahi De Jesus said, \u201cI came knowing I wanted to learn more about the context that my clients come from, but there has been a lot that has surprised me.\u201d Anahi works with the organization ProBAR, supporting unaccompanied children at the US-Mexico border by connecting them to legal resources. \u201cThe biggest take- away I got from the Global School was that people are often displaced internally before migrating to the US.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cristosal\u00b4s education specialist, Bryan Varela, believes in the value of these intercultural exchanges and opportunities for participants to learn from each other. \u201cHearing direct testimonies is such a powerful learning tool,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cActually, we\u2019re very happy with this space that we\u2019ve been given to talk about and let others learn about the social problems that affect us,\u201d says Claudio, adding, \u201cit\u2019s important that people [from the US] understand the origin of migration. That\u2019s why in this space, we\u2019ve been able to explain in a detailed manner about how migration is connected to forced displacement.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bryan adds, \u201cIn Central America, we are people with strong family connections and are very rooted in the land where we\u2019re from.\u201d Bryan closes the conversation and asks, \u201cConsidering this, can migration ever be voluntary?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s another blazing hot day in Choloma, Honduras, but Claudio Castillo is used to the heat. He leaves his new home and steps out into the bright morning, making the short journey to the municipal building. He climbs the stairs and takes his place in the circle of chairs assembled in the conference room. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12415,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cristosal.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}