From gangs to coffee rust: Push factors for Central American migrants

David Agren has From gangs to coffee rust: Push factors for Central American migrants for Catholic News Service in which I am quoted. David does a good jobs looking at both the push and pull factors that are leading hundreds of thousands of Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans to flee their homes. One push factor that I hadn't thought of coffee rust.

Honduras has struggled since a 2009 coup, which ushered in instability and allowed drug cartels to subsequently take advantage of the increasing instability and impunity to use the country as a transit point.

Gangs also grew in power, while a disease known as coffee rust wiped out the most recent coffee crop, throwing hundreds of thousands of poor Hondurans out of work. But no one reason explains the exodus of children, said Juan Sheenan, country director for Catholic Relief Services, the charitable arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"It's been a combination of a number of push factors, and the new ingredient is this coffee rust," Sheenan said.

In the 1960s and 1970s, economic crisis in the countryside forced thousands of jobless and landless campesinos to flee to the urban areas of the region. The arrival of large numbers of rural campesinos overwhelmed city services and helped contribute to calls for reform and revolution. Today, you still see rural Central Americans moving to the cities to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside but you also see them heading directly for neighboring countries and the United States. 

You can read David's article here.