Centroamérica / Migration

Climate Change: Another War Hondurans Are Fleeing


Friday, August 14, 2020
Jennifer Ávila y Martín Cálix

Emilio Rodriguez was the first in his family to migrate to the United States. He left two months ago with his 9-year-old son, who is one more name on the list of 2,300 children separated from their parents under President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy to discourage migration. Emilio is being held in a Miami prison while his son lives in a children’s shelter in New York. Emilio fled with his son for a very different reason than the widespread gang violence that plagues the cities near the coastal community where he grew up. Emilio was driven out by the effects of the climate change that Trump has blamed on China.

“Since the fishing is no longer any good, he went to work in construction to support his three children. But the oldest one was already in high school and he couldn’t make enough money to support his family,” says Emilio’s older sister. She is one of three sisters who are now trying to earn a living from the sea, which is getting closer and closer to their community. Less than 10 kilometers away, two coastal communities are disappearing, as the ever-advancing sea has ruined around 30 houses and forced their occupants to evacuate.

Emilio left the Las Flores community in Masca, Omoa (Cortés department), one of the municipalities most affected by the coastal erosion caused by the rise in sea levels from global warming. A group of peasant families arrived in Las Flores in 1983 to make their homes in these lands between the mountains and the sea. This was Emilio’s family, migrants from the more depressed areas in western Honduras. There is also a Garifuna community in Masca that is being affected by the lethal yellowing of coconut palms, according to Fabricio Herrera’s study “Climate Change and Justice in Honduras”.

José Isabel Rodríguez (Emilio’s uncle), fisherman and resident of Las Flores, Omoa, Cortés. Photo: Martín Cálix
José Isabel Rodríguez (Emilio’s uncle), fisherman and resident of Las Flores, Omoa, Cortés. Photo: Martín Cálix

Fishermen hauling in their nets even though there is a ban on fishing at this time of year. Photo: Martín Cálix
Fishermen hauling in their nets even though there is a ban on fishing at this time of year. Photo: Martín Cálix

Young fisherman (neighbors of Emilio and his son) in the Las Flores community of Masca, Omoa. Photo: Martín Cálix
Young fisherman (neighbors of Emilio and his son) in the Las Flores community of Masca, Omoa. Photo: Martín Cálix

José Rodríguez Rodríguez, Emilio’s uncle, remembers what the community was like, sad that so much has changed. What hasn’t changed is the indifference of politicians of every stripe.

“The lawmakers don’t know what life is like in these communities”, says the old fisherman. The sea doesn’t provide what it used to, and daily survival has become more difficult, he declares.

“A lot has changed here. See all those houses over there? There are more people around here nowadays, so there is more to lose. There are a lot of people who just live day-to-day and don’t think about the future,” he says.  And people can no longer earn a living from fishing or farming. “Those who can work in construction have left to find those jobs,” he adds.

Some houses have already been overtaken by the sea. There used to be three kilometers of land between the sea shore and the houses. But everything got worse after Hurricane Mitch (1998), Rodriguez remembers. The 2009 earthquake accelerated the whole process, leaving communities at or below sea level, and now affecting farmland as well as housing. 

His brother José Isabel says that the only way to survive is to get out, to leave a community that is a peaceful oasis with no crime, no gangs, no homicides. According to the national university’s Violence Monitor (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras, Observatorio de la Violencia), Omoa had a rate of 57.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2016. So while it is not completely crime-free, this is much lower than the homicide rates in nearby cities like San Pedro Sula and Choloma.

So now they have to leave Omoa to find jobs in the terrifying city, although the violence there will probably force them out again. “The thing to do is to learn another trade and find work somewhere else. But my brother and I are old, so we’ll stay here until we die – maybe of starvation,” he says stoically. The only option for young people will be to head to the United States, like Emilio and his son.

Children walk to a nearby village in Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix
Children walk to a nearby village in Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix


Communities Under Water

Doña Martina is lying in a hammock, trying to rest but the sounds of the sea are no longer soothing. She’s afraid of it. It’s become more of a warning than a relaxing sound. Her whole family is gone, their houses under water. Only she is left and two of her front steps are already under water. “We’re just waiting for the sea to come in,” she says wearily, while a puppy sleeps peacefully at her feet and her granddaughter listens intently.

Her brother and nephews took off for the United States because it was the only way to help their parents move into a decent home in a nearby town. They lost all their belongings and their homes, so the only option was to head to the United States, find work, and send dollars back home to buy property in a less vulnerable area.

“I don’t give this place more than a year before it disappears,” declares Gustavo Cabrera, a biologist from a local conservation organization (Cuerpos de Conservación de Omoa), as he shows us the ruins of the Barra (sandbar) de Cuyamel community.

Ruined houses in Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix
Ruined houses in Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix

Ruined houses in Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix
Ruined houses in Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix

The inhabitants of Barra de Cuyamel live on money sent by family members in the United States. Photo: Martín Cálix
The inhabitants of Barra de Cuyamel live on money sent by family members in the United States. Photo: Martín Cálix

The communities on the Motagua and Cuyamel river sandbars are the last two towns in Honduras in the northern coastal area next to Guatemala. About 800 meters of coastline have eroded away over the past 10 years.

Cabrera began measuring the beach in 2006 when he went there with a group of students from La Ceiba to plant a mangrove forest. When he returned a year later to see if the mangrove had grown, it had disappeared into the sea. Alarmed, he warned the people and the mayor’s office that the community would disappear in 10 years. “I was close – it took 12 years,” says Cabrera.

“Climate change is irreversible and it’s going to affect the entire coastline. But it’s happening much more quickly here. It’s not easy to predict what’s going to happen in other communities because we haven’t taken any measurements there. If a cold front or some other extreme weather hits this place, everything will be lost in three hours. People will die because they live on the sandbar between the river and the sea – it’s a death trap,” says this biologist who is now helping with fundraising efforts to pay for the relocation of these people, estimated at 10 million lempiras. Government officials are avoiding the issue, says Cabrera, because they’re partly to blame. He’s been talking about this for 12 years and they haven’t listened.

Doña Martha, Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix
Doña Martha, Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix

Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix
Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix

Encroaching sea in the Las Flores community in Masca (Omoa, Cortés). Photo: Martín Cálix
Encroaching sea in the Las Flores community in Masca (Omoa, Cortés). Photo: Martín Cálix

Fabricio Herrera’s study “Climate Change and Justice in Honduras” (Cambio y Justicia Climática en Honduras) demonstrates that warming air temperatures are reaching dangerous thresholds. Human activity continues to release large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Higher concentrations of these gases trigger a chain reaction that changes air temperatures, ocean currents, rainfall patterns, cold fronts, and dry seasons.  These in turn destroy crops, and disrupt the lives of people, animals and plants, thereby increasing poverty, misery, disease and hunger.

In their 2011 study “Migration and Climate Change” (Migración y cambio climático), Etienne Piguet, Antoine Pécoud and Paul de Guchteneire determined that while low coastal areas (10 meters or less above sea level) only represent 2.2% of the earth’s land mass, 10.5% of the world’s population (602 million people) live in such areas. Of these, 438 million live in Asia and 246 million live in the world’s poorest countries. Their hypothesis is that future CO2 emissions based on continued economic growth with only lightly moderated use of fossil fuels (scenario A1B of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) will result in a worrisome increase in sea level (0.3-0.8 meters) by the year 2300. Some more recent calculations determine that this increase could happen much more quickly than previously thought. As such, it seems reasonable to believe that people living in an area less than a meter above sea level will be directly vulnerable within a few decades. According to Anthoff (2006), 146 million people would be affected.

As a signatory to the Paris Agreement accorded by the Conference of the Parties during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Honduras committed to a 15% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the energy, industrial, agriculture and waste sectors by 2030. However, the area protected by the Cuyamel nature preserve was cut back after a 2010 land use planning effort in Omoa. This nature preserve covered coastal and mountain areas, as well as the Cuyamel River valley. The valley was opened up for agro-industrial development, and monocultures such as African Palm and King Grass (for biofuel) were planted on more than 2,000 hectares.

While such developments flout the commitment to the Paris Agreement, Nancy Cálix, head of the environmental unit for the Municipality of Omoa, points to other culprits: the peasants who have migrated to this area, and use fishing and farming tools and methods that harm the land, water and fauna, thereby contributing to the environmental damage that leads to global warming.

Garbage in Barra del Motagua where about 50 families still live. Photo: Martín Cálix
Garbage in Barra del Motagua where about 50 families still live. Photo: Martín Cálix

Las Flores beach (Masca, Omoa, Cortés). Photo: Martín Cálix
Las Flores beach (Masca, Omoa, Cortés). Photo: Martín Cálix

Las Flores beach (Masca, Omoa, Cortés). Photo: Martín Cálix
Las Flores beach (Masca, Omoa, Cortés). Photo: Martín Cálix

The at-risk communities were declared uninhabitable in 2012, but the government decree doesn’t address the resident’s need for land to build houses and raise crops. The mayor’s office didn’t implement a relocation plan at that time, but now that this has become a humanitarian crisis, it offered to purchase some land in a nearby town for relocation. But it’s not enough to accommodate the 86 families that remain out of the original 150 families.

“We have been severely affected by climate change, not to mention the garbage coming down the river from Guatemala, which is an enormous pollutant and burden. Right now we only have one community that we are going to evacuate, the community on the sandbar, which is a high risk area. We already have the land, which is being donated by the municipality, and the first lady is promising to build 100 houses for about 80 families or 150 people. But every day a new baby is born”, laughs Omoa’s mayor, Ricardo Alvarado (National Party), who has held office for nine years.

Ricardo Alvarado, Mayor of Omoa, Cortés. Photo: Martín Cálix
Ricardo Alvarado, Mayor of Omoa, Cortés. Photo: Martín Cálix

“The people who have migrated away from here left years ago for the United States. They all left about five years ago when they heard that a border wall was being built. A lot of people here live on remittances from family members abroad – lots of money comes in. We’d like to fix the world, but it’s not so easy… we’re working hard. Our municipality’s environmental unit (Unidad Municipal Ambiental – UMA) has a nice program focusing on environmental issues and reforestation – we’re against African Palm cultivation here,” says the mayor. Yet this long-time mayor was warned about this unresolved environmental disaster when he first took office, and could provide no answers beyond the standard political rhetoric.

Nancy Cálix, Omoa’s environmental unit director, says there are several theories about the principal cause of the rapid coastal erosion in this area. “Many of Omoa’s coastal erosion problems are the result of climate change that caused the flooding seen in some areas. This and other events have caused migration away from here. The 2009 earthquake shifted the whole area down by about 10 centimeters, leaving a depression in the land surface. Another problem for the sandbar areas are the changes at the mouth of the Motagua River. The river has shifted towards Guatemala, leaving a sandy beach area in the Motagua sandbar that has aggravated the erosion problem.

Other areas in the municipality are experiencing coastal erosion caused by poorly designed structures erected along the Puerto Cortés coastline.

Gas del Caribe built breakwaters that affected the beaches of adjacent communities. Its environmental permit has been renewed. Photo: Martín Cálix
Gas del Caribe built breakwaters that affected the beaches of adjacent communities. Its environmental permit has been renewed. Photo: Martín Cálix

Investors in tourism began to build structures to protect their investments, but which ended up damaging the surrounding communities. Breakwaters that were built to enhance these properties contributed to a series of erosion problems for the municipality’s coastal areas, including the loss of beaches,” explains Cálix. She points to the 90-million-lempira project financed by Gas del Caribe to restore Centeno lagoon, which was negatively affected by the company’s harmful practices. Gas del Caribe recently had its environmental permit renewed on the condition that it implement measures to counteract the coastal damage caused by its breakwaters.

Cálix also notes that Omoa made international news in 2017 due to the vast patches of trash floating offshore and littering its beaches. She says the solid waste was dumped into the Motagua River in Guatemala and floated downstream to Omoa. “We’re cleaning this up and monitoring the problem. We produce reports about the ongoing impact of the trash problem that they have not been able to mitigate, and we want results. With Mi Ambiente (the government entity responsible for sustainable development), we are monitoring the problem and cleaning up the municipality. We have tourism and many visitors to the municipality, so we need to present a good image. We have to invest a lot of money that we don’t have to mitigate this situation,” explains Cálix.

Walking along the beaches of the Motagua and Cuyamel sandbars can be hazardous. Littering the sand are syringes, broken glass, sharp plastics, and even plastic containers still full of Guatemalan paint. The local communities have created clean-up committees because the garbage also affects them.  Dredging efforts have been hampered by all the floating trash, and make the area even more susceptible to flooding. This also stirs up the waters, making everything even more difficult. The sea bears the symbolic burden of the devastation suffered by Omoa’s coastal communities.

House buried in the sand, Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix
House buried in the sand, Barra de Cuyamel. Photo: Martín Cálix

Near Doña Martha’s house is the Barra de Cuyamel school, which no longer functions because most of the children from that community swallowed by the sea no longer live there. The sea sounds loud and close. The school building became home to three families whose house was buried in the sand after the fifth cold front that hit the area in February 2018. Before the sea displaces them once more, they wait for the municipality to set up a shelter that a Christian aid organization, Centro de Acción Social Menonita (CASM), is building in the Los Achiotes community. They hope to be relocated there once and for all.

Doña Nolvia Pérez has lived in the Escuela Patria school building since February 2018, along with her elderly parents and newborn grandson – seven people in all. They managed to get some things out of their house before it was swallowed up by the sand, and have built a small, smoky kitchen where her daughter-in-law cooks lunch.

Families living in an old, seaside school building in the Barra de Cuyamel community. Photo: Martín Cálix
Families living in an old, seaside school building in the Barra de Cuyamel community. Photo: Martín Cálix

Families living in an old, seaside school building in the Barra de Cuyamel community. Photo: Martín Cálix
Families living in an old, seaside school building in the Barra de Cuyamel community. Photo: Martín Cálix

Families living in an old, seaside school building in the Barra de Cuyamel community. Photo: Martín Cálix
Families living in an old, seaside school building in the Barra de Cuyamel community. Photo: Martín Cálix

“A strong, northern cold front hit us and the house was flooded everywhere.  So the municipal board said to come here. We’re hoping that one day they’ll relocate us. We’ve lived in this area all our lives and have nowhere to go”, she says anxiously. The local communities are trying to help, which is why two or three families live in the few houses that remain. Those who have lost their homes first go to their neighbors, schools or churches before they find their way out of the city or the country.

According to Nancy Cálix, no data has been collected on how many people have been displaced to other departments or countries because of this problem. “It would be good to conduct a community survey to find out why this or that person has left the area, and to better understand how the country is being affected by climate change”.

On the way to the sandbars, one can see large, fenced properties with grazing cows. These are properties seized by the Honduran government’s forfeited assets office (Oficina Administradora de Bienes Incautados – OABI) from drug cartels that had land and investments in Cuyamel. These properties have not been considered as potential relocation areas for the 86 families.

 

Chico’s Ark

There is a large, wooden barracks-style building in the Barra del Motagua community. The latest emergency visitors were members of 11 families who lost everything during the latest cold front to hit the country. The building is known as “Chico’s Ark” after Francisco “Chico” Díaz, the community leader who works full-time helping families with their displacement and flooding problems.

“You know, this work is very tiring, but I have to tell you that this community is an example of how to survive storms. Chico had to migrate to the United States in 2015 due to the economic instability of his community. However, he had a mission: to make money to build a big house to accommodate the refugees, and to buy a boat for emergency rescues.

“If we get hit by a hurricane, we’ll all die within three hours,” says Chico. The ark and the boat he was able to buy from working in the United States are not enough; he’s worried about the complacency of the government officials. A neighbor tells him not to complain about the mayor, that the officials are doing what they can, and that it’ll be hard to move forward if they don’t work together.

Francisco Díaz, Barra del Motagua community leader. Photo: Martín Cálix
Francisco Díaz, Barra del Motagua community leader. Photo: Martín Cálix

Chico’s Ark is the largest house in the community, and home to many who have been flooded out of their homes. Photo: Martín Cálix
Chico’s Ark is the largest house in the community, and home to many who have been flooded out of their homes. Photo: Martín Cálix

Chico suffers from the respiratory problems that are very common in his community, where the heat is even more oppressive because of the humidity from the many lagoons that surround the houses. People are always wet. Children splash around having fun in what looks like a soccer field that has become a swamp. Their mothers gently scold them for having fun in a bad situation, where there is no way of avoiding all the puddles.

Chico has shown several journalists around his trapped community, looking for support so he can keep buying boats and training people for the worst. “Organizations like CASM have come to help us deal with emergencies, but also to teach us better ways of fishing, of surviving,” he says. He goes on to tell how the Motagua River keeps bringing more and more garbage, and sometimes bodies. He has buried at least 25 bodies that float down the river from Guatemala along with the garbage. The water brings only death – there are no fish and the flooding prevents them from planting crops. 

José Elvin Rodríguez has been a fisherman and farmer all his life. Now he builds the CASM-funded boats that the community uses for transportation and fishing. “If another Hurricane Mitch hits this part of the coast, it would disappear in less than a year. We have had so many disasters here – we’d be lucky to save a few lives. I’ve told government officials that they need to send the army if we have to evacuate these communities in an emergency. There are only two boats here – how are we going to evacuate more than 300 people? When the sea is rough, there’s no way out,“ he explains. He’s Chico’s friend, and works with him to plan ways of saving his community.

José Elvin Rodríguez, Barra del Motagua community leader. Photo: Martín Cálix
José Elvin Rodríguez, Barra del Motagua community leader. Photo: Martín Cálix

Coconut palms overtaken by the sea, Barra del Motagua. Photo: Martín Cálix
Coconut palms overtaken by the sea, Barra del Motagua. Photo: Martín Cálix

Relocation of the community is a tricky process. If not done properly and with respect for the people’s way of life, they’ll suffer psychologically, says José. He only knows the life of the sea, and if they are relocated, they expect it to be somewhere along the coast.

“People are desperate – they don’t know what to do anymore. They cry and the women beg to be moved out of here. Ten million lempiras is nothing compared to the lives of 350 people. The governor of Cortés told the mayor of Omoa that he has to solve this problem, because if one person dies, then the mayor has to answer for it,” says Gustavo Cabrera, the biologist who has been monitoring and supporting these communities.

The families living in Chico’s house managed to build some elevated wooden shacks and chicken houses. Four families live there now; the women take care of the children while the husbands go out to fish. They have painful bites from mosquitoes as big as flies, and flies as big as beetles. The women spend their days looking out to sea, seeing how close it is now. They remember when it seemed far away, when their community was a peaceful haven.

Makeshift houses in the Barra de Motagua community built by families flooded out by the sea. Photo: Martín Cálix
Makeshift houses in the Barra de Motagua community built by families flooded out by the sea. Photo: Martín Cálix

Makeshift houses in the Barra de Motagua community built by families flooded out by the sea. Photo: Martín Cálix
Makeshift houses in the Barra de Motagua community built by families flooded out by the sea. Photo: Martín Cálix

Makeshift houses in the Barra de Motagua community built by families flooded out by the sea. Photo: Martín Cálix
Makeshift houses in the Barra de Motagua community built by families flooded out by the sea. Photo: Martín Cálix

Children walking through the Barra del Motagua community. Photo: Martín Cálix
Children walking through the Barra del Motagua community. Photo: Martín Cálix

The United States no longer accepts people displaced by domestic violence, much less those displaced by climate change, even though the struggle in these communities is just as dramatic. Trump’s attitude towards global warming is more serious than a simple tweet blaming China. It has led to more severe consequences, such as the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. It was not a good deal for American citizens”.

***

An hour from Cuyamel, on the border with Guatemala, is the town of Corinto. There’s a center for returning migrants (Centro de Atención al Migrante Retornado – CAMR) in Corinto where various organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Migration Institute provide services to deportees from Mexico arriving in buses from Chiapas. Every day there are two or three buses of Hondurans who are being sent back to the nightmare they were trying to escape. And every day there are hundreds of Hondurans passing through Corinto on buses and on foot, heading north.

A group of six people, two women and four men, walk out of the CAMR center, already planning how to get back on the road to the United States. They promised the CAMR staff they would try to stay in Honduras, all the while knowing that their country has become unlivable for them. The group includes Nadia, a 36-year-old woman who lived in the U.S. for eight years under Temporary Protection Status (TPS), but was deported when the Trump administration suspended the TPS program. She was returned to Honduras where her husband had been murdered by a gang, to a place where she no longer had a home because the gang had taken it over.

“I can’t return to Tegucigalpa, where I’m from. I’ve already tried seven times this year to go back to the United States, and now I’m going to try again,” she says. Every time she travels to the U.S. she claims that she can’t go back to Honduras, not even to the neighborhood where she grew up, where her mother and daughter live. She soon joins up with a young man from Santa Barbara who said he can’t live on the five dollars a day he earns doing field work, along with a Cuban-Honduran who seems to be in the business of escorting migrants on their journey north. They are following the Honduran with a Cuban accent because he knows how to move around. And they all head back to the border in a caravan.

Nadia doesn’t know that there are people nearby who are also fleeing – not from the gangs – but from the sea. They are running from the sea, an angry sea, they say.

*This article was originally published in July of 2018.

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