Authoritarianism – obedience to authority at the expense of freedom – is as bad as it sounds, and it is gaining ground in the Americas. It is a temptation leaders struggle to resist, if not embrace. At the same time, too many citizens of the Americas are willing to relinquish their freedoms in exchange for what the authoritarians are offering. El Salvador is this article’s case in point.

For decades, personal security has been an enormous problem in El Salvador. With the end of the civil war, the country was optimistic that violence they had known was behind them. Those hopes were dashed as the post-conflict period dealt with the reintegration of soldiers from both sides of the conflict, combined with deportees from the US who had been educated in the ways of LA street gangs. Those gangs, most importantly MS-13 and Barrio 18, began in Los Angeles where young Salvadoran migrants whose parents had sought shelter in LA during the war, organized to protect themselves from local LA gangs. As those youth were arrested and deported back to El Salvador, they brought the gangs with them and changed El Salvador.

Over the next two decades El Salvador was plagued by violence and extortion, most of it gang and organized crime related. For years the country had one of the highest murder rates in the world. The government tried varied strategies to bring the homicide rate down, negotiating with the gangs, programs for at-risk-youth and often the most popular – mano dura. The mano dura approach jailed gang members and others caught up in broad sweeps. The post-implementation analysis of this approach was that jail became a finishing school for criminals, making the problem even more complex.

Fed up with the constant violence and the extortion that reached down to the smallest of businesses, Salvadorans elected President Nayib Bukele. Under his watch the country has become demonstrably safer. The homicide rate, which was 106 people per 100,000 in 2015, plummeted to 7.8 in 2022.

He accomplished this feat by implementing drastic measures. He declared a state of emergency and deployed the army to the streets. He suspended the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial. He built the largest prison in Latin America and jailed 70,000 people in 16 months. Two percent of the population is now in jail. That is more than twice the percentage of those jailed in the United States, a record anyone should want to beat.

To provide a semblance of due process, the Congress recently passed a law that will allow hundreds of those jailed to be tried simultaneously – up to 900 people at once. There is no doubt that innocent people have been caught up in the sweeps to arrest gang members. But with hundreds tried at a time, the odds of the innocent being freed are not good.

The government seems to have decided that the problem with past attempts at mano dura was that criminals eventually got out of prison. So, they are constructing a system where the accused don’t return to the community.

The tactics employed to control violence have obliterated individual rights, but they have received widespread support. President Bukele declared the state of emergency, but the Congress has approved its implementation, and the people support the policies. Bukele has an enviable approval rating, coming in lately at between 80-90 percent.

It is a failure of democratic governance when people are willingly to trade their rights in exchange for feeling safe. In a democracy people should be able to have both personal security and freedoms.

Remember, authoritarians can be elected. They can also use the democratic process to take away freedoms and dismantle democracy. Bukele has successfully changed the constitution to allow himself to run for president again. With his approval rating, he is a shoo-in. Salvadorans should be careful what they wish for.

*First published in MexicoToday.com, the English language site of Mexican newspaper La Reforma. 9/5/23

In the US today, who do we treat like less than human? It is an offensive yet important question, because therein lies the heart of modern-day discrimination and human rights abuse. One of these groups, and I would argue there are others, is undocumented migrants. Both policy and practice make clear that the US is treating migrants, especially those who have crossed or are attempting to cross the border illegally, as less than human.

Earlier this month, a member of the Texas Department of Public Safety lodged a complaint with superiors saying that while serving border duty he was instructed to deny migrants water and push migrants, even children and some injured by barbed wire, back to the Mexican side of the Rio Grande river. These accusations are under investigation.

Texas Governor Abbott has placed massive orange buoys in the Rio Grande between Piedras Negras, Mexico and Eagle Pass, Texas. The buoys, accompanied by razor wire, are intended to keep out undocumented people, including asylum seekers. Federal and local authorities report that they were not consulted about these policies. Efforts are now underway to sue the Governor into removing the obstacles.

While not commenting on the specifics, the Texas governor’s office justified these practices saying, “Texas is deploying every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings between ports of entry…”  It is pretty clear that extreme cruelty is one of those tools.

These are only the most recent obstacles to migration placed under the deterrence-based theory of migration control. A theory for which cruelty is a central component. The idea is that if migrants suffer enough, word will get home and people will stop coming.

Consider a few of the past deterrence-based policies.  

The Wall – the construction of the wall started decades ago.  Every year it gets longer or higher.  It has done little to stop undocumented migration to the United States. It has however, resulted in the death of hundreds each year as people are forced to circumvent the wall by crossing in remote and dangerous areas. Migrants regularly fall crossing the wall resulting in deaths and severe injury.

Family Separation – This was the forced separation of children from their parents after being apprehended crossing the border. This heinous practice was only stopped after it was used hundreds of times. When it started around 2018 the US government didn’t even track where the children were sent after separation. The US government still hasn’t figured out how to reunite some of these families, meaning that children were basically stolen from their parents.

I know that there are many US border officials who act with humanity toward migrants, but the scale of reported abuse and the lack of institutional response to hold abusers accountable tell us that there is a cultural problem and that the lack of accountability means that it just keeps rolling along. 

Accountability for Abuses at the U.S.- Mexico Border: How to Address Failures and Protect Rights, a report about to be released by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the KINO Border Initiative showcases thousands of cases of migrant abuse by border officials. Abuses range from fatalities to physical and verbal abuse during detention.

Reading the report, one is overwhelmed by the quantity of cruelty: people who had been kidnapped in Mexico being deported back; those severely injured by falling off the wall being returned across the border to places with few services; people being needlessly lied to; regular reports of identification documents being confiscated and not returned; and excessive use of force while being detained. It also documents how extraordinarily difficult it is for anyone to achieve redress when abuse charges are filed. This lack of accountability creates a culture of cruelty.

In the US there is a growing awareness and documentation of police abuse and the excessive use of force. While police abuses still happen, as a society we are more aware and less tolerant of these actions. Citizens video encounters with police, reports are made to the press and authorities are expected to investigate and prosecute.

Those who cross the border between ports of entry, seem presumed to have lost their right to humanity. If they are disrespected and abused as if they deserve it. 

There are so many examples in US history where different groups of people have been treated as less than human, not deserving rights: Native Americas, African Americans, Chinese Americans, Braceros, Japanese Americans, to name a few. Looking back, we now decry their treatment as acts of extreme prejudice and like to think that we are better people now.

But, ask the question:  Who do we treat as people less deserving than us? Who do we deny the right to compassion and human dignity?  Clearly, we accept the abuse of migrants. If not, where is the outrage?

* First published in MexicoToday.com 7/31/23

Hope is an amazing thing. You don’t even know that it is missing until suddenly you have it.

On June 26th, hope unexpectedly descended upon many Guatemalans in exile. The day before was election day in Guatemala. There were three top Presidential candidates, none likely to dramatically challenge the status quo. But the final results sent a shock wave of hope.

Here is a little context. In 2007, after years of effort, Guatemala established the CICIG, the first of its kind international body to accompany the attorney general’s office in the investigation and prosecution of corruption cases, in particular cases that involved organized crime and the state. In the context of the CICIG’s presence, the Guatemalan justice system held accountable a president, a vice-president, corrupt officials, and a former dictator responsible for genocide. In turn, these justice officials did their work in the context of activists and journalists who investigated and made public acts of corruption. At incredible personal risk, these actors, each in their own lane, did the seemingly impossible. They created an environment in which the rich and powerful were held accountable.

However, after a little more than a decade, the rich and powerful regained their footing and struck back. First, they dismantled the CICIG, undercutting international support for those investigating and prosecuting cases. Then, one-by-one they went after prosecutors, lawyers, judges, journalists and activists who sought to end corruption and impunity. Some were jailed and too many others were driven into exile.

It has been painful to watch these energetic and once power forces for good in Guatemala be sidelined outside of their country. What role is there for a former Guatemalan judge or prosecutor living in another country? This is a question that too many have asked. Despair was setting in.

Coming into this year’s presidential election hope for change has been difficult. In the lead-up, four presidential candidates who might have challenged the status quo were ruled ineligible. Recently, the founder and publisher of the El Periodico newspaper, one of the country’s most important independent voices, was sentenced to six years in prison. The paper, known for its investigation of government corruption cases, was shuttered.

While more than 20 candidates were on the ballot, the outcome was assumed to be between three from the traditional elite. In Guatemala, a presidential candidate must win with over 50% of the vote to avoid a run-off.

The unexpected was the outcome. Frustrated with all of the shenanigans leading up to the election, voters left nearly a quarter of the ballots cast blank or spoiled. The result will be a run-off on August 20th between Sandra Torres, from the National Unity of Hope party (UNE) who came away with 16% of the vote; a traditional candidate, she has run for president three times before. And, Dr. Bernardo Arévalo, a dark horse candidate from the Movimiento Semilla (Semilla), who came in second with 12%. Semilla formed as a result of massive anti-corruption protests in 2015 and Arévalo, has promised to allow those exiled from the justice sector to return. The party’s original candidate, former Attorney General Thelma Aldana, was ruled ineligible and is currently in exile.

The second-round election on August 20th will be a real race, one where the winner is not preordained.

The morning after the Presidential election, as I spoke with one of those Guatemalans living in exile. I heard both hope and an overwhelming sense of relief. Relief from a reality that one has been forced to but can’t change from the outside of the country. A hope that Guatemala can change and that one day those exiled can go home.

*First published in MexicoToday.com 6/27/23.

Attempting to address undocumented migration and the southern border, the US has contorted immigration policy into a pretzel. This has happened because almost everyone has given up on comprehensive immigration reform. It is time to examine the world as it is and design an immigration policy to fit reality.

President Joe Biden came into office decrying Trump-era immigration policies that had created migrant camps in Mexico, separated families, and used immigration policy as a foreign policy weapon. But unwinding the Trump-era policies was harder than expected, in large part because going back to the previous system would not work.

The last major immigration reform in the US was in 1986 –37 years ago. Remember what was happening in the 1980s? Computers were just catching on, the Cold War ended (mostly), and the average monthly rent in the US was $385. These were different times.

Back then, undocumented immigration at the Mexico/US border consisted mostly of Mexicans, many of whom worked part of the year in the US and then returned home to their families in a cyclical flow. The big change in border migration in the 1980s was that Central Americans fleeing civil wars at home, made their way north.

Passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) was a bitter battle. No one involved in drafting the bill was thrilled with the outcome. It represented the compromise that could be reached at that time. Nonetheless, it recognized the reality that millions of people were living illegally in the US and that fact alone was bad for citizens as well as the undocumented. The 1986 reform established new pathways to citizenship and new punishments for employers who sought out undocumented workers that they could exploit.

It was not an idyllic time. New problems were created that still need addressing. For example, in the 1980s many Central Americans fleeing civil wars applied for asylum. While this was a time of death squads and massacres in the region, asylum approvals were in the low single digits. Asylum could have been used to address that migrant flow, but it was considered politically unsavory to grant asylum to people fleeing governments backed by the US during the Cold War.

Because asylum law was not used to protect those fleeing Central America, a stopgap measure called Temporary Protected Status (TPS) came into being. Today, more than 350,000 people benefit from this status, but it must be renewed (by nationality) every few years. TPS does not have a path to citizenship and is very stressful for the families who have “benefited” from this status for decades with the threat of deportation hanging over them.

Then there are a few million “Dreamers” brought by their parents to the US as undocumented children. Astonishingly, they are STILL waiting to have their status legalized.

In the last few weeks, the Biden Administration has announced more immigration stopgap measures. People crossing into the US between points of entry and requesting asylum will be presumed ineligible unless they have requested and been denied asylum in any other country they passed through. Contrary to international legal commitments, this restriction is already being litigated.

In other measures, those seeking asylum through legal border crossings, must seek an appointment online prior to entering the US, using the new CBP One mobile application. Some people report having tried unsuccessfully for months to secure an appointment. Mexico has become the waiting room for US asylum seekers.

As an incentive for legal migration, the Biden Administration has also announced new programs for families and sponsors in the US to bring people in under humanitarian parole. This is positive, but it is a status that will expire in a few years. Without comprehensive immigration reform you can see the next crisis from here – what to do with those awarded humanitarian parole, like the Afghans brought to the US when the US pulled out and their country collapsed. Right now, there is not a long-term solution.

Almost 40 years ago –more than a generation- has now passed. We live in a world that is vastly more mobile and connected, while US immigration law remains frozen in time.

In lieu of change, the US has created is a mishmash of stopgap measures that are constantly challenged in court. There is a way to greatly fix this –comprehensive immigration reform. Many will say that it is too politically complicated to achieve. I would say look at the twisted pretzel of a mess we have created by not doing comprehensive reform. How much harder can it be?

*First published in MexicoToday.com the English language site of Mexican newspaper La Reforma 6/1/23.

I spent about 10 days (end of April/early May) with my WOLA colleagues traveling Honduras and talking with people about migration. We witnessed exhaustion, trauma, and hope.

On Sunday morning we saw hundreds of people outside a migration office in Danlí under an intense sun, waiting for a chance to register for a migration permit. The permit lets them stay in the country for five days, plenty of time to cross Honduras. People register because without it they can’t buy a bus ticket that will take them to their next destination, the border with Guatemala. 

Those we met had just spent 11 hours on a bus that crossed Nicaragua. They looked exhausted.  All those we spoke with had crossed the greatly feared Darien Gap – the mountainous jungle between Colombia and Panama (CNN documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOWthjWmS2s) once considered impassable. People had been traveling for days, weeks, even months. How long they had been on the road depended on how much money they had, and how many times they had been robbed or extorted by police or government officials along the way.

People knew, at least theoretically, the risks ahead. They had already been through the Darien Gap, and Nicaragua – which some described as a worse experience than the Darien. Guatemala is known for police extortion. Mexico is known for extortion as well, but also for robbery, kidnapping by criminal organizations and if you run out of funds, deportation. If they made it to the US border, they would wait in Mexico, many without housing, for a chance to cross legally into the US to request asylum. There is a new phone app, CPBOne, that migrants must use if they want to legally enter the US to apply for asylum. Each morning a limited numbered of slots become available. The thing is, people have been waiting in Mexican border cities for months, unsuccessfully logging in daily in search of the elusive timed entry. 

I have trouble wrapping my mind around what it takes to choose to take this journey.  If everything works out, most of these migrants are looking at minimum wage jobs in the US. 

Maybe people don’t fully appreciate the danger, even worse, maybe they do and choose to come because it is better than what they face at home. People are fleeing countries that don’t function and where they can’t feed their families – Haiti, Venezuela, and Cuba; or Honduras where gang violence and extortion threaten lives and eliminate livelihoods.

It must be some combination of despair and hope.

In the past I have written about the idea of hope and its relationship to migration.  A Honduran journalist we interviewed made an insightful comment.  He said, “People say that they leave because their country doesn’t have a future, not because they don’t.”

Much of US migration policy, in particular the “reforms” coming in the next few days, is based upon the concept of deterrence.  If we make it hard enough, people won’t migrate. What you learn from people’s stories it that they will endure unbelievable hardship to migrate. How much harder can you make it for people who are willing to walk the Darien Gap?

Deterrence might be an effective strategy when it comes to nuclear warheads, but it is not when it comes to people who don’t see a future.

The US has a drug crisis. This is not an overstatement. Understanding the international components of the fentanyl crisis are important to finding ways to confront it. But political fear mongering, often built around the word “cartel”, obscures solutions.

Fentanyl killed over 107,000 people in the US in just a year. A tiny bit can kill. It is mixed with other drugs or pressed into pills that look like prescription medications. It doesn’t just kill junkies or addicts. It can kill casual drug users, too. This is not what is typically thought of as a traditional overdose where someone takes a large quantity of drugs and dies. A person can take one pill and die. Fentanyl is the leading cause of death in the US for people between the ages of 18 and 49.

In February of this year the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing about fentanyl and US attempts to control its flow into the United States. The Committee’s jurisdiction is foreign affairs and it focused on China and Mexico.

US officials described the problem like this. China produces the precursor chemicals and ships them to Mexico. In Mexico, drug cartels process the chemicals into fentanyl and combine it with other drugs or press it into pills. Two Mexican cartels, Jalisco and Sinaloa, are the main source of fentanyl coming into the US. Officials said that 85 percent of fentanyl seized by US authorities is confiscated at official ports of entry. There are two ports of entry where most fentanyl is confiscated, one in California and one in Arizona.

This is important because defining the problem defines the solution. Lethal fentanyl can be transported in tiny quantities making it extremely difficult to detect. From this testimony we know that fentanyl is mostly coming through official border crossings in two states, not being brought by drug mules or undocumented migrants through the desert.

Other aspects of the hearing did less to clarify the problem. The word “cartel” was used 90 times (Steven Dudley from Insight Crime counted). Dudley’s conclusion was that the word “cartel” should be retired. It is thrown around so often that it has lost meaning and is not helpful in understanding or addressing the complex criminal organizations, drug distribution and financing systems that are involved in the fentanyl trade.

Understanding the problem is made even harder by how the fentanyl crisis is used politically. Leading Republicans like Governor DeSantis of Florida and Senator Cruz of Texas have decided that the US/Mexico border is President Biden’s Achilles heel, and they are exploiting this perceived vulnerability. They have coined the phrase “Biden’s border crisis”, lumping together the crisis of fentanyl deaths in the US with undocumented migration. During the hearing Senator Cruz, a former presidential candidate, used his time to define the root problem as what he called Biden’s “opening” of the border.

Again, how you define the problem defines the solution. By this definition, an “open” border – to be clear the border is not open – is at the heart of fentanyl deaths. Defined this way, the solution is to defeat President Biden and his border policies. This classic political demagoguery does nothing to direct solutions toward the fentanyl crisis.

Amid the politicking at the Senate hearing, Dr. Rahul Gupta, the head of the US Office on National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a man who clearly understands the drug problem in the United States, reflected quietly that this problem doesn’t begin or end at the border.

No question, there is a crisis of fentanyl deaths in the United States. That is why it is critical that we use language and define the problem in ways that lead to effective, not political solutions.

* First published on MexicoToday.com 4/25/23.

“Why can we name a lot of Mexican drug cartels, but not any cartels in the US?” A friend, who is well versed in Mexico/US issues, recently asked. While a number of answers came to mind, none seemed adequate to the question. I realized that I didn’t really know the answer. In the US, we don’t ever talk about US drug cartels. We talk about Mexican cartels. The following series of columns is my attempt to do justice to this question.

The first answer is technical. We don’t know the names of US drug cartels, because US drug trafficking organizations are called just that – drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), not cartels. Sometimes US gangs who sell drugs like the Crips or MS-13 are called DTOs, but they are not called cartels.

By definition of the internet, a cartel is an association that comes together to control the supply and price of a product, not just drugs, but things like oil. Cartel is an economic term.

Going deeper, in 2010 a US Justice Department document defined drug cartel as “large, highly sophisticated organizations composed of multiple DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] and cells with specific assignments such as drug transportation, security/enforcement, or money laundering.” To my surprise it went on to say that, “Drug cartel command-and-control structures are based outside the United States.” Drug trafficking organizations were defined as similar, but less complex in structure and not limited to being foreign.

In other words, if you can’t name a US cartel it’s OK because definitionally, they don’t exist.

That was just one document. Other experts make the case that the Mexican cartels (and the Colombians before them) are qualitatively different from drug trafficking organizations in the US. The foreign cartels produce, package and/or create drugs and move them across borders. They corrupt governments and at times seek to establish territorial control, making them qualitatively different from US DTOs which are considered distribution networks moving drugs to retail sellers and money back to the cartels.

Every year the Office of National Drug Control Policy produces the National Drug Control Strategy. This document says a lot about the federal government’s approach to drug policy at any given time. Interestingly, the most recent document, from 2022, only used the word cartel when referring to specific Mexican trafficking organizations with the word cartel in their name, the Sinaloa Cartel for example. This document intentionally favors the term Transnational Criminal Organization (TCO) instead of cartel.

The word cartel certainly conjures images. Like the Netflix show Narcos, we think of cartels, as violent, lawless, and a threat to government and society. Defining cartels as foreign does seem rather handy. It makes them outsiders and the US the victim of something external.

The technical definition of a cartel gives us a reason why we can’t name any US cartels, but it is not a satisfying answer to the question, why can we name Mexican and not US cartels? Future columns will consider why, or at least how, this use of language shapes our thinking and our responses to the problem of illicit drugs.

My communications guru, a former congressional hand named Kathy Gille, has drilled into me this phrase, “defining a problem defines the solution.” What that means is that a solution is pre-determined by how a problem is articulated. How we ask a question greatly influences the answer. Defining cartels as “foreign” shapes how we think about the problem of illicit drugs and addiction. It also influences the solutions that we do and do not find.

*First published in MexicoToday.com, 3/29/23

After the recent trinational meeting between the US, Mexico, and Canada, a US government official emphasized that this was a domestic policy discussion. One assumes the official was attempting to emphasize that in this international discussion with neighbors, the Biden Administration was seeking to promote its domestic policy agenda. In reality, when it comes to migration, the US and Mexico are in an abusive relationship where Mexico facilitates US immigration policy while taking the hits.

Mexico’s role is so key, that it is now the determining factor in the proposed changes to US immigration policy that the Biden Administration seeks to implement as Covid-19 based restrictions end.

Getting Mexico to do the dirty work of US immigration policy is not new. Under the Trump Administration Mexico implemented a number of “domestic” policies to restrict the access of migrants and asylum seekers to the US southern border. When the Mexican National Guard was first formed, it was sent to the Guatemalan border to stem the migrant flow in 2019. That policy was implemented because Trump threatened to impose new tariffs if Mexico did not do more to stop migration. After that policy change, one Mexican official said to me, “We have now proven that Mexico can control the flow of migrants to the US. There is a cat we can’t put back in the bag.”

That official was correct, and the relationship has continued down this path. When the Trump Administration implemented the “Remain in Mexico” policy – forcing asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases were processed – Mexico allowed them to stay.

When Covid-19 hit, the US implemented Title 42, a policy that pushed migrants, who entered the US without permission, back into Mexico before they could request political asylum. Mexico allowed the US to do this, even though there is a Mexican law that prohibits the country from receiving non-Mexican deportees. Technically those “expelled” under Title 42 are not deported.

Mexico has had a creeping policy of allowing the US to expel people from other countries into Mexico. At present, Mexico accepts nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti.

In preparation for the end of the Covid-19 immigration restrictions, the US has introduced a new app-based system requiring those seeking entry to apply for asylum get an appointment while outside of the United States. As a result of this recent change, asylum seekers are waiting in Mexico as they try to secure an US appointment.

And this is the policy before Title 42 ends! Once the Covid-19 restrictions are lifted this May, the US has proposed new regulations that would demand even more of Mexico. It would consider migrants who have passed through Mexico without requesting asylum, to be presumed ineligible for asylum in the US, putting the asylum burden even more firmly on Mexico.

The only way this cascade of changes work is if Mexico facilitates the process by being a holding/deportation ground for those who want asylum in the United States. These policies will undoubtedly be challenged in US courts.

The US needs to reform its immigration laws. The current piecemeal approach is not coherent policy. It is barely intelligible. Until the US develops a functional, rights respecting overall immigration policy – not just for asylum seekers but for foreigners who want jobs and US companies who need them – this chaos will continue.

Since the cat was let out of the bag, Mexico’s acquiescence to US demands facilitates this disfunction. The US needs to stop considering Mexico an extension of its domestic immigration policy. But that will only happen when Mexico demands the respect it deserves and stops serving as a staging area for US disfunction.

First published in MexicoToday.com, the Mexican paper La Reforma’s English language site, 2/27/23.

In 2022 we lost someone of true influence, Ena Esperanza Becerra S. You don’t know her, but everyone called her Doña Ena.  She lived for many years in the town of Quebrada Larga, about an hour outside of Danlí, in southern Honduras. She was a health care provider, an entrepreneur and a gem of a person.

I don’t think that she went to high school, but I don’t really know. People did not seek out Doña Ena because of her academic record. They went to her because she was a woman who helped and got things done.

When she saw a problem and there wasn’t anyone else to fix things, she figured out what she could do. She didn’t solve problems with money or political connections, because she didn’t have either.

My husband and I first met Doña Ena when we lived in Honduras in the mid-1980s. We didn’t have a washing machine and she scrubbed our laundry. She had kids to support and no husband to help, so she worked where she could. Doña Ena was a hard worker and had a terrific sense of humor. During that time, she started a small business selling batana, a hair oil made from palm nuts, door-to-door.

Being educated, yet ignorant, North Americans in Honduras, we owned a copy of “Where There is No Doctor.”  Pre-internet this was a must read for Peace Corps-types. When we moved on from the problems of Honduras, we left the book with Doña Ena. Many years later she requested another copy because hers had worn out.  She really used it.

For many years, there was no medical assistance available in her town. She took it upon herself to become a mid-wife. But she didn’t stop there. She studied the book and put it to use.  People from this rural community and surrounding countryside came to her home with their illnesses and injuries, like machete cuts they got while farming. She would clean the wound and sew them up. She learned to identify basic illnesses and provided injections and anti-biotics. She gave dehydrated people IVs. When she thought that a problem was beyond her capacity, she would try to get the sick or injured to go to a doctor or hospital in Danlí. But many couldn’t afford the journey or the doctor and begged her to help.  They called her la doctora del pueblo or the people’s doctor.

She stocked her house with basic medicines and provided them to those in need. At her memorial service, people joked that if she bought a medicine for US $1, she sold it to those she served for 75 cents. She didn’t do it for the money, she did it to restock for the next person.

About ten years ago, she and four other women in town, all in need of work, started making plantain chips for sale. It started as a very small business, but they figured it out. The company, called Del Racimo, now employs 20 people.  They make the best plantain chips I’ve ever tried.

I knew these things about Doña Ena and greatly admired her. But I did not know that other people did as well.

Doña Ena passed away in September. Her family received over 1,000 visitors upon learning of her death. As her coffin proceeded past the local school to the cemetery, the school children lined the street to sing her a final farewell.

At year’s end, as we contemplate endings and beginnings, I rejoice in having known Doña Ena, not a saint, but a woman of true influence and an example of how to live.

*First published in MexicoToday.com 12/31/22.