After the “surge” in the number of unaccompanied immigrant children and immigrant families crossing the border dominated headlines in the summer of 2014, the Mexican government, at the urging of the United States, began apprehending and deporting more migrants in Mexico and cracking down on the use of Mexican freight trains (la Bestia) as a method of transportation.[1] Although the number of Central American children and families (largely composed of women and children) apprehended at the border dropped precipitously in FY 2015, it began climbing again in FY 2016 (see Table 1) as flexible and opportunistic smuggling rings developed new routes to exploit. More importantly, conditions that cause children and families to flee the Northern Triangle countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) have not improved since 2014; if anything, levels of violence are worse. The murder rate in El Salvador has increased 200 percent since a 2012 truce negotiated between rival gangs began to break down.[2] The Zetas, a violent transnational criminal organization from Mexico, appear to be consolidating control over local police and the military in Guatemala,[5] and four Northern Triangle cities—San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, and Guatemala City—recently were ranked among the top five most murderous metropolises in the world.[6] Family sponsors in Gulf South states have received over a quarter of unaccompanied minor children in FY 2014, FY 2015, and FY 2016 through June 2016. (See Table 2.) [7]

It might be tempting to shrug our shoulders and say it is up to Northern Triangle countries to solve their own problems, but to do so would require denying incontrovertible historical evidence that the U.S. has long played a role in undermining democracy and economic and social stability in the region. A case in point is the CIA orchestrated coup in Guatemala in 1954 that led to a long and deadly civil war from which the country has yet to recover.

HISTORY OF 1954 GUATELMALAN COUP D’ETAT

Following the “October Revolution” of 1944, led by Guatemalan university students and middle-class citizens greatly influenced by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the repressive regime of Dictator Federico Ponce was overthrown, with fewer than 100 lives lost. Soon a philosophy professor with moderate political views, Juan José Arévalo, well-known to the teachers who formed the backbone of the revolutionary movement for his patriotic textbooks on Guatemala, won the first free and fair election in Guatemalan history.[8]

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