In the United States, the sky is the limit when we think of solving problem through technological fixes but we lack imagination and confidence when it comes to dealing with social problems.
When someone suggests cheap space travel to Mars no one would roll their eyes and say, “That will never happen.” But when we discuss solving social problems that is exactly what happens. In fact, when I began to research solving the migration crisis in Central America, my search immediately reveals, “Why a Marshall Plan in Central America will never happen.” We believe we can cure diseases, go to Mars and understand the nature of the universe – but no way can we end homelessness, child poverty, functional illiteracy or the opioid addiction crisis.
We simply shrug our shoulders and say, “Like Jesus said, the poor are always with us.”
We need to drop our powerlessness and take on the issues of migration.
As long as people have no way to stay home, as long as extreme inequality, poverty and land concentration continues to exist, we will continue to be plagued with major waves of migration. And the causes are old. The Spanish and Portuguese disrupted and destroyed communities through haciendas, encomiendas and mining that was based on extractive industries and plantation agriculture. The U.S. continued these policies at the turn of the 20th century, working to create so-called banana republics. U.S. economic policy supported agribusiness and brutal regimes that suppressed land reform, unions and community development.
Throughout the 20th century, words that indicated land reform would get you killed. We called land reform in the United States the Homestead Act but in Latin America someone advocating for land reform ended up tortured and in a mass grave. Yet, as Oxfam points out, there will be no stability in Latin America until we address the issue of land concentration.
After returning from Tijuana with four other Fort Lewis Professors and seeing firsthand the level of pain and trauma that asylum seekers are experiencing, I am convinced that after centuries and centuries of the same old story, it is time for our country to drop the communism-versus-capitalism debate and create a coherent plan to support Central American and Mexican communities to rebuild. And this plan needs to put the direction and leadership in the communities themselves.
The Old Testament repeatedly instructs God’s followers to observe a jubilee every 50 years. The land is to lie fallow and all debts are to be erased to ensure a rebalancing of power in the community and to make sure no one begins to play God.
So what does this plan look like?
Immediate end of the war on drugs. While most of us know that it has been a catastrophe for poor and minority neighborhoods in the U.S., we may not know the level of violence, environmental destruction, community disintegration and narco-culture it has created in Latin America. Part of the ending of the war on drugs must be to disarm the narcos.Stop economic support of regimes that kill and torture their own citizens and line their pockets with money stolen from their own citizens. “He’s a son of a bitch but he is our son of a bitch” is no longer (and never was) a good way to engage with the world.All economic programs and free trade pacts must support communities and small farmers.Support Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s program to create a Central America Marshall Plan and/or work with community leaders and NGOs to provide block grants that will help residents buy land, raise food and stay at home. Such communities would also stop a myriad of other problems like deforestation and soil erosion.I can feel what you are thinking: “Oh, Janine, that will never work,” or, “It is so much more complicated than that,” or “You are so naïve.”
But I ask you: Do you believe we can send probes to Mars? (We have.)
Do you believe we can cure AIDS? (We have just cured two people.)
Then why can’t we promote peace and stability in Central America and Mexico?
I urge us all to encourage our political parties to quit arguing about walls and instead work to create party platforms that help transform Central America and Mexico.
Janine Fitzgerald is a long time resident of Bayfield. She teaches Sociology at Fort Lewis College and is one of the architects of the new Borders and Languages major.
