In reality, Honduras ranks second, after Syria, among the most dangerous nations in the world which is being followed by El Salvador (6th), Guatemala (11th), and Mexico (23rd). Furthermore, San Pedro Sula, in Honduras, has the highest rate of homicide in the world.
This is a human rights crisis and a regional tragedy. As far as the United Nations and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre are concerned, it is the wrong people who are the ones to blame.
But this popular knowledge about the violence that occurs within Central America and Mexico overlooks two important facts.
The two regions are filled with natural resources that include high-quality forests (such such as mahogany) and precious metals (such as lead, iron as well as nickel, gold zinc and silver). The violence that is affecting the region is related to gangs. it also covers the murder of women as well as the murder of environmental activists as well as politically motivated murders as well as disappeared by force.
The argument I am making is the use of criminal violence, although powerful, is merely a part of a deadly mix that is used to “cleanse” places where local communities are fighting for their home area.
Necropolitics: A killer agenda
It’s not an elaborate conspiracy theory and this theory is not solely mine. Data suggests that in countries with abundant resources that the combination of forced displacement and politically motivated, criminal and misogynistic violence can’t be an accident.
This deadly combination is the policy of forced depopulation to achieve “conflict-free” exploitation of natural resources that are becoming increasingly important in the current global economy, including minerals that are used in new technologies as well as renewable or clean energy sources.
In order to implement this strategy there are a number of Armed actors – including gang members and drug traffickers as well as mercenary killers security personnel as well as ” sicarios” – across Mexico as well as Central America are selling their killing techniques to powerful organizations, from government agencies that are repressive and transnational companies (or the two, working in tandem). Cameroonian the philosopher Achille Mbembe has referred to this phenomenon private Indirect Government.
The concept of “necropolitics” – the politics of death – is the brutal basis of what the scholar Bobby Banerjee defines as necrocapitalism which is death driven by profit.
Why would you negotiate with the poor indigenous communities that are atop precious water, oil, wood and mineral resources if they are able to be driven off their land by secret police, political, and misogynistic forces?
Central America’s resources curse
Nearly all Latin American country confronting high murder rates also contains precious metals, woods and hydrocarbons. For the sake of this argument, we’ll take a look at the legal and illegal logs within Honduras, mining across Central America and hydrocarbon extraction along the Mexican-US border. These instances show the extent to which the repression of political forces, forced displacement as well as gender-based violence in the resource-rich regions of the world are connected.
The case of Honduras, displacement patterns suggest that violence might not be the primary driving reason for displacement. According to an report from 2016 from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) The number of people displaced increased by more than 600 percent from 29,000 to 174,000 between 2014 and 2015.
It’s odd that this is exactly the time when homicide rates have declined. The report’s language is unclear about the paradox, implying that the increase could be related to the deterioration of economic conditions.
I would argue that the increasing violence suppression of environmental activism rather than criminal violence was the principal force for displacement in that time.
Between 2010 and 2014, over 100 Honduran environmentalists were murdered. In 2014, the country was witnessing massive protests against the activities of corporations in the Rio Blanco – the same river that was protected from environmental activists Berta Caceres who was shot dead in the year 2016.