Proposing solutions to the Crisis on the US and Mexican border

The Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez said in a recent speech that he was convening at very short notice a meeting of experts to discuss how to solve the problems of the children at the US Mexican border. His view and I agree with him, is in order to return the children, their mothers, and the youth back to Honduras it is necessary to help make Honduras liveable again, and if we do that, it will probably require a fairly global solution of how to make Central America and Mexico liveable again. The Honduran president had some concrete suggestions such as about training and job opportunities for the youth. The UNAH's newspaper also said the Honduran government was willing to abandon its Plan of the Nation which was developed by 40 people, in an attempt to be open to suggestions of perhaps a more consensual agreement. The purpose of this blog is to try to encourage people to make suggestions as to resources to look at to consider what might be good ideas for solving the problem and to share suggestions for possible solutions to consider.

While I have been a fairly strong critic of some of the proposed changes in Honduras, such as Model Cities or ZEDE as currently designed, I would like to say that the Honduran president has tried to present real solutions to Honduras, and that he and his superminister Ramon Hernandez Alcerro have shown themselves open to suggestions. When I visited Washington, DC last year I made a number of concrete suggestions to then Honduran Ambassador Ramon Hernandez regarding principally about education and culture. In the few months the government of Juan Orlando Hernandez has been in power, almost all of them have been made official policy and some are concretely being implemented. For example, I suggested asking for Fulbright scholars to help with their crisis to train people in second language education and in fact this was done and the deadline for applying for the Fulbright is August 2014, but it does not begin until February 2016 as hopefully by then Honduras will be more liveable.

We also discussed the importance of teaching values and the Garifunas and Pech and Miskitos and UNAH university teachers all agreed this was important and teaching values and a positive Honduran identity are all official Honduran government policy. The Indians and Garifunas wanted bilingual intercultural education to be concrete and do something with the remaining funding including USAID funding through Eduaccion, and things are being done with this project and there is a monthly newsletter on the Internet. We discussed combining culture and new technologies and these types of policies were on the Ministry of Culture website and I received notifications of funding for film projects in Honduras and interest in the Ministry of Education to work with traditional medicines, values, and crafts, etc. So it is exciting that the government in Honduras seems open to suggestions, and in the US people are saying we need more information. We do not have a clear picture yet of the problems and possibilities to be able to propose solutions and the librarians of the Reforma movement of bilingual Spanish and English speaking librarians has already voted to make available more information on the situation in Honduras for the library using public.

We are trying to use different Internet technologies to gather information about materials that would help people understand the many layers of issues in Honduras, and to be able to share possible solutions. We will make available the Internet addresses or other social media where the suggestions or  suggestions of  materials to look at will be posted, and comments can be made. These will be available as raw materials for people to write articles or make suggestions or try to understand the issues of development and how the difficult situation in Central America affects Americans whether or not there are Honduran children camped on their border.

We are also trying to propose a few simple donation projects to help the mothers and children spend their time more productively while they are on the border and also to eliminate boredom and reduce psychological  shock to the Central American children and women. It might also let us who are not on their side of the fence understand them if we hear of their lives and their realities and their hopes of what type of future they would like their countries to have. I have never met a Garifuna who given the opportunity to live in dignity in their own villages would not a hundred times prefer that to living in big US cities like New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago.  I recommend looking at the movie El Espiritu de Mi Mama for sale on the Garifunainperil.com website and from Amazon.com to compare inner city Los Angeles and a traditional Garifuna villages full of love and sunshine and family and beauty and fresh air.    Many many Garifunas both men and women say, I have never wanted to go to the US. The Pech Indians used to  say,  We are in glory here in Olancho. The Maya Chorti say that God planted us here and here he is going to look for our souls. Ladino singer Guillermo Anderson who is Honduras's Cultural Ambassador has a song on his blog Alo mama about the phone call of a Honduran immigrant saying life is very different here than what it was painted before I left and I work hard with my hands and my feet ready to flee, and the hardships to arrive here, better I should not tell you. This beautifully filmed video done in Europe and accompanied quietly just by guitar, was described by one Garifuna as worthy of a Grammy or an Academy award as a short video. It was very beautiful and very true.     

We will make available the information in English and in Spanish so that Hondurans and US people  can be in dialogue.  There will probably be several different places that the information is available, as the topics are complex and different people are interested in different ones and there are all of the countries of Central America and Mexico and the immigrant population in the US involved. As different people agree to be in charge of different parts, they will be made available here.