BY SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Recent U.S. entanglements in Central America and the area's reliance on a handful of crops for export created a recipe for disaster when Hurricane Mitch arrived, experts say.
The area was just recovering from decades of U.S.-funded civil wars when the ferocious storm slammed into the region, hovering for about four days the last week of October.
Honduras was the worst-hit country. More than 6,000 people died and another 1.4 million were left homeless. All together, an estimated 10,000 to 11,000 people were killed.
Because Central American countries rely on a handful of export crops, damage to fields crippled entire economies, says Ramon Layera, director of Latin American studies at Miami University in Oxford.
In Honduras, Mitch wiped out more than 70 percent of the country's agriculture, which accounts for two-thirds of its exports.
Export-driven economies helped create large pockets of poverty in Central America because small portions of the population own most of the resources, he said.
The masses were already living in horrible conditions before Mitch hit.
Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, second only to Haiti. Honduras is the third.
Also, these countries had just begun recovering from decades of civil wars, spurred by U.S. money during the Cold War.
"There were basic problems of land reform and the inequities of those who have and those who do not have anything," Mr. Layera said. "Internal problems were made worse because all these Central American countries became pawns in Cold War games."
Before 1900, foreign interest in the region accelerated as the United States and Europe sought to cut a canal through the Central American isthmus.
Eventually it was cut in Panama, but not before foreign companies began turning Central American fields into cash crops for export. It was easy to do. Unlike the United States, where settling families owned individual homesteads or pieces of property, large swaths of land in Central America were owned by the Roman Catholic Church or cliques close to the Spanish crown.
Eventually those large tracts were sold to foreign companies. Reliance on export crops stymied the growth of a manufacturing base and created a pool of poor laborers with little access to land to grow food.
During the Cold War, the United States sided with the rich and the military.
"The United States viewed struggles for social justice throughout Latin America during the Cold War as manifestations of Communist activity because that's what the local elites were telling them, that Communists were demanding land and workers' rights," said Thomas W. Walker, director of Latin American studies and professor of political science at Ohio University.
About $20 billion worth of damage was inflicted on Nicaragua's economy and infrastructure by embargoes and the U.S.-backed Contra war against the Sandinistas.
"They were already in terrible shape. The hurricane could not have come at a worse time," Mr. Walker said.
