Behind the Migrant Caravan: Ethnographic Updates from Central America by Jennifer Burrell and Ellen Moodie

 

"Central America is again in the news as a region in crisis. In October 2018, a group of migrants gathered in a bus station in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and began marching north. They quickly became the largest caravan yet to travel through Mexico from Central America. In response, building up to the U.S. midterm elections, President Donald Trump mobilized thousands of active-duty troops to await what he called an “assault on our country.” These were the first moves in a political standoff over an invented emergency of border security that led to a record-breaking shutdown of the U.S. government—while thousands of migrants waited in Tijuana, determined to apply for asylum. In mid-January 2019, another caravan began making its way through Mexico. The contributors to this series, social scientists of (and many from) Central America—some longtime ethnographers, some new to the field—take readers beyond the border. They offer glimpses of what is happening now in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, seeking to show some of the reasons why so many migrants are fleeing their homes."

Read more online, from Cultural Anthropology: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1653-behind-the-migrant-caravan-ethnographic-updates-from-central-america