I drive Uber(R) in Austin, Texas. Recently, I picked up a nice Nicaraguan girl, a student at U.T. Her family is living in Las Vegas, but she has close ties with relatives in Nicaragua. She gave me a very plausible explanation of why her countrymen are charging the Mexico/US border to get into the United States.
The U.S. has had a strong presence in Nicaragua since we occupied the country from 1912 to 1933. It seems that the main reason for this involvement, even to this day, is to PREVENT any other country from building a canal through the country that would compete with the Panama canal.
But there are other issues.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Nicaragua)
The U.S. still has at least two large military bases in Nicaragua today.
Now, Daniel Ortega is the President.
He’s been a foe of the U.S since back in the Reagan years. Remember the Iran-Contra thing? Yeah, he was in that. It’s all very complicated.
There’s another ex-president in the mix as well, Bolanos who was kind of pro- U.S. and he’s still around, causing Ortega a lot of grief. Educated in the U.S., he tried to root out the corruption and mostly failed.
The country is riddled with and pretty much controlled by drug cartels. They have infiltrated the government. Even the president’s own brother Humberto is a known drug trafficker.
Other anti-American dictators in Central and South America, in particular, Maduro in Venezuela, have always wanted more influence in Nicaragua, with the main goal of getting the US out of Central America entirely.
When Trump took office, and started insulting Mexico and pretty much all those brown people in their “shit hole” countries south of the border, the anti-American influences in the region saw a chance to bring their issues to the national stage.
Socialist shadow groups, and possibly even Bolanos, started recruiting people to create a caravan to the US border to demand asylum in the U.S. With dreams of freedom in America, good jobs, and the promise of support all along the way to through Mexico to the U.S. border, they preyed on poor, desperate, people who are sick of war, drugs, crime and corruption. It was an easy sell, and it was all lies. The rosy picture of a great life in the U.S., in particular, was a ruse. It’s not at all that great being an alien in the real USA, legal or illegal.
The migrants never got much support on their trip. The people who bought into the dream – mostly farmers, construction workers, blue collar workers with little understanding or interest in world politics – are like pawns in a big nasty game that has been going on for over 100 years.
All through the campaign and now his presidency, President Donald Trump has been playing right into the hands of the socialist governments in Central America who want us out of their region, totally.
Maybe this is what Trump wanted all along: to end U.S. involvement a “down there”, because it was so darn expensive! Bad Deal!
The last time we thought we could stop speaking softly and carrying a big stick, and “pull out” of our hemisphere ended up with Russians trying to place ICBMs in Cuba that could land on American cities in about 30 seconds.
(Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of the Kennedy administration?) It took us to the brink of nuclear war.
Its Déjà Vu all over again.
But. If we go there again, given the current crop of twitchy psychopaths with nuclear toys, I fear they’d breeze right past the brink.
Game Over.
The poor, hungry folks at the Mexico/US border in Tijuana are just fodder for the gun. Nobody wants them. Not the U.S. Not Mexico. And, not even their own country.
NOBODY in a position of power has any compassion for them.
They’re just people. Not “bad
Trump’s lies about the migrant caravan have become a self-fulfilling prophecy, thanks to his constant goading on Twitter, at rallies, and impromptu interviews on under Marine 1.
Trump’s limited knowledge of world history and bully, loose cannon persona are both a real problem here. He’s an amateur at this, and pretty much everything he says or does makes it worse.
Of course he’ll get his stupid wall now. Maybe that’s all he wanted all along. But now, it may be at the cost of an actual massacre, with dead people on the streets.
If this happens, it’s all on Trump. His complete lack of diplomacy and limited understanding of history and government has put us all in a real pickle.
