There is a rather simple solution to the masses of humanity seeking asylum in the U.S., and that would be to stop oppressing the people of those countries, stop ovethrowing their democratically elected leaders, and stop the killing of environmentalists who are merely trying to keep some land for subsistence.

It doesn't appear that would be too much to ask, but such things have happened for well more than a century and they continue today. In the 21^st Century, citizens and peasant farmers of Central and South America are still trying to gain some control over the land of their country, to grow their own food and to have a market of a kind that will bring in enough money to feed their children, send them to school, clothe them, and provide decent housing, health care, and the other accoutrements of decent living.

Although the exploitation of the countries to the south of the U.S. has been going on for more than a century, it is enough to consider the history of the century just past, when American fruit companies had control over much of the countries where bananas and other fruits would grow and where the workers could be forced to work at wages that barely would provide one good meal for a long, hard day's work.

The influence of the U.S. corporations, backed up by the U.S. government, was overwhelming and the companies that decided to take over the smaller, weaker countries could always depend on the threat of an invasion of U.S. Marines. The United Fruit Company (UFC), for example, was one of the largest landowners in Colombia and their banana plantations made up the biggest part of the economy. When the workers, who were kept at starvation wages, made demands to better their lives, their efforts resulted in a massacre of unknown proporations to this day. Some estimates are that there were from 1,000 to 3,000 banana strikers murdered on Dec. 6, 1928, in Cienaga, Magdalena Department, Colombia. Because much of the press was on the side of the company and the politicians that supported most of what the company decided to do, the death toll varies depending on the source.

About 25,000 of the 150,000 banana workers in the region struck for mandatory collective insurance, compensation for work accidents, hygienic dormitories and paid Sunday leaves, a 50 percent increase in the daily pay of workers earning less than 100 pesos a month (the starvation wage), abolishment of the administrative office stores (company stores) the abolition of loans through coupons, weekly pay (instead of monthly), abolition of the contractor system, and improvement of hospital services. It doesn't sound like a terrible burden for such a powerful company as UFC, but they would not meet the demands of the workers and, it was reported, since there was no agreement, the government militarized the zone.

The strikers were in a square in the city and were reportedly waiting for some kind of signal that the governor was in their corner and not just upholding the demands of UFC. They were surrounded by the army and were told to disperse. They didn't and the shooting began and the dead and dying littered the ground. Suffice it to say that this was not the only place and the only country in which the power of the rich Americans had their way, wherever they felt they had an interest, usually economic and financial. The history of U.S. interventions is full of the same kind of maltreatment, exploitation, and murder, throughout this part of the world.

Times have not changed the treatment of the peoples of the countries to the south. Throughout the last century, it was for food or other commodities such as mining for copper and other minerals. In the last half of the last century, on into this day, it has been both for exploitation of natural resources and for ideological purposes. As in the time of the banana massacre, the strikers were charged with being revolutionaries and, forbid it, communists. Much evil has been perpetrated by those who have conjured up the specter of communism or today, socialism. Either one will do.

So it is today in Honduras, where in 2016, Berta Caceres, an outstanding indigenous leader and environmentalist, was assassinated at her home on March 2, 2016, and she was said to be on the government's hit list for a few years before that. Berta was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize the year before her death for a grassroots campaign “that successfully pressured the world's largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam.” Three of the eight arrested for her murder were linked to the former “School of the Americas,” at Fort Benning, Georgia, whose graduates have been held responsible for untold atrocities, massacres, murders, and oppression. The U.S. government, because of its sordid history, changed the name of the SOA to WHINSEC, but it cannot escape the vigilance of SOAWatch, a group founded and led by Roy Bourgeois, a former priest who has been relentless in his attempt to bring the SOA to justice and his campaign is ongoing.

At this time, there is a House bill, introduced by Rep. Hank Johnson and 43 representatives, who have reintroduced the Berta C�ceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, H.R. 1945, in the current legislative session of the House of Representatives. According go SOAWatch, the bill would suspend U.S. military and security aid to Honduras until important human rights conditions are met, including justice for the murder of Berta C�ceres, the killings of more than 100 small farmers in the Aguan Valley, the murders of demonstrators who were killed by security forces while opposing election fraud last year, and more.

Berta's murder, according to Global Witness, was preceded by the murders of 12 environmental activists in Honduras in 2014, making it the most dangerous country in the world, relative to its size, for activists protecting forests and rivers. Her murder was followed by those of two more activists within the same month.

In a statement, SOAW noted: “You may have heard on the news that (U.S. President) Trump wants to cut U.S. funding to Central America and wonder how that relates to the need for the Berta C�ceres Human Rights in Honduras Act. SOAW has consistently opposed the Alliance for Prosperity, which was the massive 'aid' package for Central America modeled after the disastrous Plan Colombia. U.S. ‘aid' to Central America serves U.S. interests by giving the U.S. leverage and control and promotes a false notion of ‘development’ that is often the imposition of neoliberal economic policies.”

The demand from the Trump Administration that Honduras or any other country block their citizens from fleeing for their lives, in exchange for U.S. money “only incentivizes further repression and violence,” according to SOAW, adding “Congress should end financial and political support of the Honduran and Guatemalan governments...until government repression against civilians, especially widespread murders of social movement and community leaders who are standing up for their rights, ceases. Furthermore, what hasn't been in the news is that Trump's Fiscal Year 2020 Budget for the Department of Defense includes enormous increases in funding for 'security cooperation' programs run by the U.S. Southern Command, which includes Central America. In fact, 'security cooperation' for the U.S. Southern Command increases in the President's budget from $38 million in 2019 to $208 million in 2020. The US Southern Command covers Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, making this enormous increase in military funding an ominous sign for the whole region.”

U.S. “involvement” in this hemisphere has been unending and usually is in support of its country's corporations which are invested in the resources of those countries and ask protection of the diplomatic corps, economic pressures, and the military, if necessary. The list of countries disrupted is long and includes the overthrow of duly-elected presidents or national leaders by the CIA and other entities. The list of military “incursions” is also long and has resulted in U.S. rule over some countries for years, such as in Nicaragua in the early part of last century.

That history apparently is unknown to those in power in the U.S. today. The Honduran political leaders and the military have murdered and tortured with impunity and continue to this day. The Berta C�ceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, H.R. 1945, would begin to slow the rate of official mayhem that exists in that country against defenseless people. Killing people who are peacefully protesting construction of a dam that would harm forests and land that the people and the planet need is what U.S. involvement has resulted in over centuries in Latin America. What is happening in Honduras is a repeat of what has happened to so many other countries over a long period. In large part, that is the reason that thousands from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are showing up at the southern frontier asking for asylum. It's just the latest wave of refugees from places that never have been allowed to, and never were assisted in, developing democratic structures that could last. Without outsiders exploiting their countries, it could be possible. SOAW is urging everyone concerned about U.S. policy to contact their representatives and other politicians to demand a halt to the military and police and corruption money that has been flowing into Honduras and join in sponsoring H.R. 1945.

The U.S. is now being run by a claque of vengeful ignoramuses. One only has to look at the chaos that has been created by chickens coming home to roost and the racist and xenophobic charges and comments and tweets that emanate from the Oval Office. The history of the U.S. in this hemisphere is there for anyone to see and learn from, but this is not going to happen, as long as white nationalists and others of a white supremacist bent are given space and, to some degree, respectability by the president and his sycophants-in-charge.