The Real Root Cause of Central American Migration

Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala are deploying 18,500 troops to stem migration from Central America to the United States as part of a deal the Biden administration announced April 12. In the words of the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, the agreement will ​“make it more difficult to make the journey.” It comes on the heels of the United States pledging $4 billion in development aid to address the ​“root causes” of this migration. 

This type of approach, which ties aid to securitization, has long enjoyed bipartisan support. It has also long failed to achieve the desired aim of reducing migration by reducing poverty. If President Joe Biden hopes to avoid replicating these failures, he must acknowledge that U.S. policy itself is one of those ​“root causes” of migration — and then adopt a fundamentally new approach to development aid. 

As researchers of Central American migration, we have seen firsthand how ineffective ​“development” is in addressing the needs of local communities. Frequently, aid comes with ideological strings that hinder, rather than support, local efforts to reduce poverty, corruption and insecurity. In Guatemala and Honduras, where we conduct our research, this aid is often siphoned off to subcontractors and organizations with little on-the-ground knowledge, or used to bolster military training and equipment. Not infrequently, that money finds its way directly into the hands of the same predatory elites decried by the United States as responsible for the region’s instability. 

Truly addressing the root causes of migration will be a decades-long endeavor, but it must begin with the United States owning up to its complicity in creating the very conditions it now seeks to remedy — and its sordid history of undermining democratically elected governments to advance U.S. business interests. Most recently in Honduras, for example, the United States backed a 2009 coup and then, in 2017, validated the clearly fraudulent re-election ​“victory” of the enormously unpopular Juan Orlando Hernández. By supporting Hernández, the United States continues to undermine Honduran efforts to enact local change. The ongoing situation continues to motivate many Hondurans to seek safety and opportunity outside of their country. 

Taking responsibility for the violence it has inflicted on the region also means the United States must re-examine unequal trade agreements that privilege U.S. financial interests over the well-being of Central Americans. 

The Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement — made by the United States, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic — has created a boom of extractive megaprojects that includes multinational mining, hydroelectric plants and African palm oil production. Rather than foster economic development, these projects actually displace communities, contaminate agricultural land and waterways, and exacerbate social inequality. This kind of exploitation speaks to larger trends in development: for every $1 the Global South receives in so-called aid from the Global North, it loses $14 through unequal economic exchanges. 

Meanwhile, government corruption is so widespread in Central America that it’s now functionally part of the operating system. Biden says he aims to bypass corrupt governments and channel aid directly to nongovernmental and community organizations, but he is hardly the first president to pursue such a strategy. Instead of mitigating the worst conditions, outside actors like the United States exacerbate them, co-opting grassroots associations and making them less responsive to local needs through a process known as ​“NGO-ization.”

Even if these nongovernmental organizations were more attuned to their communities, placing government functions into private hands— while simultaneously supporting, funding and training security forces under the guise of ​“development” — does little to address the urgency of long-term structural reform.