El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, known as the Northern Triangle, are some of the deadliest countries in Central America and a leading source of migration to the United States. A report by the UN Refugee Agency found “epidemic levels” of violence due to the increasing control exerted by organized crime groups, such as drug cartels and gangs, whose control sometimes stretches across country borders.  Honduras has the highest homicide rate in the entire world, followed closely by El Salvador and Guatemala.  Their governments and police frequently collude with the criminal groups in control of local areas and infrequently if ever protect their citizens against the severe violence that pervades the area. 

 

Women and children make up a majority of the refugees fleeing the Northern Triangle due to extreme gender violence (and violence in general) such as rape, assault, extortion, threats by members of criminal groups, threats, disappearance of family members, and attacks occurring on what the UN report termed a “near-daily basis.”  64% of those fleeing fled due to a direct threat or attack.  Occasionally the police themselves are responsible for the violence that causes a family to fear for their lives and leave.

 

Many men are pressured into joining the local gang or cartel, and so the violence perpetrated on the street leaks into domestic life.  Violence against women comes from public and private places: The Northern Triangle has seen a dramatics increase in domestic violence, such as rape, sexual assault, and violent physical abuse, characterized in the UN report as “beatings with baseball bats and other weapons.”

 

Refugees from the Northern Triangle usually do not leave after a single event.  Those interviewed had generally experienced multiple traumas until a “breaking point” occurred.

 

Recently, the government of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador teamed up with the Inter-American Development Bank to create an “Alliance for Prosperity.”  A newspaper article on the Alliance noted that “the IDB has history of supporting large infrastructure projects that too often displace populations from their places of origin rather then rooting them through sustainable livelihoods.”  Joe Biden then got involved and through the “Biden Plan” supported the Alliance with a million dollars.  However, the investment of that money was more in line with US goals rather that the needs of the people in the Northern Triangle.  It actually had the effect of destroying local markets and remaking the region into an economic colony of the US.