If San Pedro Sula Is Murder Capital of the World, Who Made It That Way?

The American Prospect
DAVID BACON JUNE 13, 2019
Refugees flee this Honduran city, which has long been a vast, American-owned sweatshop.

A 30-second search on the internet produces at least two dozen stories from U.S. newspapers and other media about San Pedro Sula in Honduras. “Honduran City is World Murder Capital,” announces Fox News. Business Insider calls it “the most violent city on earth.”...This wave of media attention has been going on for at least half a decade, as tens of thousands of Hondurans arrive at the border seeking refuge. President Trump’s rhetoric portraying the caravans as a threat has focused even more attention on this Honduran city.

There is indeed violence in San Pedro Sula. But that violence has a long history, and is intimately tied to the city’s relationship with the U.S. That relationship is so close that the most basic decisions affecting the lives of its residents have often been made by powerful Americans.

...Conditions for women still working in San Pedro Sula’s factories have deteriorated as well, leading the Collective of Honduran Women to organize an Occupy-style “planton,” or encampment, on May Day. The group denounced the government for approving rising production quotas, “in which supervisors stand behind the workers with a stopwatch to time their movements. They prohibit them from leaving the line to go to the bathroom, much less get a drink of water, because they must continue working.”

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) sent a delegation to Honduras to take testimony on the election and ensuing protests, and found that the Honduran National Police, and special units of the security forces, the Cobras and the Tigres, had beaten and tortured people. The U.S. military has trained all three. The UUSC and other groups with ties to progressive movements in San Pedro Sula are supporting a bill in the U.S. Congress, HR 1945, introduced by Democratic Representatives Hank Johnson, Jan Schakowsky, Jose Serrano, and Marcy Kaptur. The bill would suspend U.S. military aid and discourage loans from international development banks until the Honduran government prosecutes those guilty of human rights violations.

https://prospect.org/article/if-san-pedro-sula-murder-capital-world-who-made-it-way

I can’t do this article justice. Worth the long sad read but Democratic Reps are trying to change our policies.