SUYAPA PORTILLO, Suyapa_Portillo at pitzer.edu, @SuyapaPV
Portillo is an assistant professor at Pitzer College and observed last year’s election in Honduras. She is in contact with people in Honduras who would also be available for interviews.

She just wrote the piece “An Illegitimate, U.S.-Backed Regime is Fueling the Honduran Refugee Crisis,” which states: “Honduran and other Central American immigrants are refugees and therefore should be treated as such by U.S. immigration law, border patrol and ICE as well as the Mexican government. Many are escaping weak neoliberal and militaristic governments, such as the one in Honduras, where narcotrafficking and narcomenudeo have thrived under the U.S.-backed Juan Orlando Hernandez regime and his military police.

“Juan Orlando Hernandez and the Nationalist party have stolen millions from public service agencies, such as the Social Security Administration, to run their campaigns against the opposition and now people are suffering. His presidency cannot provide jobs, healthcare, safety in their neighborhoods or food. Eating in Honduras is a luxury. For instance, minimum wage is under $400 dollars a month, but electricity, water and food, costs well over $500 a month for a household. Maquiladoras and agro-export companies are benefiting from free trade laws which maintain the minimum wage below the government’s minimum wage laws and do not allow unions to organize and protect workers.

“Since Juan Orlando Hernandez took office in 2013 and since his fraudulent elections in 2017, the country has witnessed a decline in security, becoming one of the most dangerous countries in the world, where children, women and transgender people are killed at the rate of a country in an active war.”