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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.migrantrootsmedia.org/articles/2021/01/29/destroying-the-seeds-the-cruel-origins-of-violence-toward-children-in-the-united-states-and-central-america-cristian-padilla-romero">https://www.migrantrootsmedia.org/articles/2021/01/29/destroying-the-seeds-the-cruel-origins-of-violence-toward-children-in-the-united-states-and-central-america-cristian-padilla-romero</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">“Destroying the Seeds”: The cruel origins
of violence toward children in the United States and Central America<br></h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Cristian Padilla Romero - January 29, 2021<br></div>
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<div id="gmail-item-601446dfcee52a5ae37453b1"><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_22828"><p>Content Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of violence.</p></div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_52913">
<p><img alt="My mom and I in Honduras." src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c06c18bb40b9dd78a892d2d/1611945000657-NY9VFIHYNL3JSQ1NYPOX/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kHFnmntegnVXpN4y4ldn3ixZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpxco7Gi2cI2YfBk8ZWdc_m6Xcr86dXh8TsiE3NyioNRZj9sD37Ved1vsRvl2h0UxBw/Cristian+Padilla+and+his+mom.JPG?format=500w" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="336" height="448">
</p>
<p>My mom and I in Honduras.</p>
</div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_59014"><p>I was born in an <em>aldea </em>in
rural Olancho, in the interior of Honduras, in 1995. In the early
2000s, my family and I embarked on the long journey to the United States
via land through Guatemala and Mexico, like many other Central American
migrants. My name is Cristian Padilla Romero and I am undocumented. I
lived with my working-class parents in Georgia up until I graduated high
school when I was awarded a scholarship to attend a liberal arts school
as a <a href="https://www.raicestexas.org/2020/06/12/video-heres-what-daca-recipients-want-you-to-know-right-now/?ms=raices_tw&emci=c18fe06f-d879-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8&emdi=81764d91-d879-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8">DACA</a>
recipient. In college, I was first exposed to scholarship on the
historical forces that have caused so much instability and dispossession
in Latin America, and this resonated deeply with my family’s lived
experience of poverty in Honduras. The lack of history about my own
country produced by directly affected people within the US academy
propelled me to pursue a PhD in History at Yale University, where I now
specialize in Central America, with a focus on Honduras.</p></div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_30456">
<p><img alt="“Algunos niños descansan en la carretera mientras viajan con la caravana de miles de migrantes de América Central en ruta a Estados Unidos.” Photo by Ueslei Marcelino for Reuters published in France 24 ." src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c06c18bb40b9dd78a892d2d/1611943775153-I9LHD55EHMK9LD9GTZPC/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kK8E1RtQwQg637i-Gl2w1PZZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpxkirf-1nVIQqq0YSrusm4ErmguJ37-tG5nDHWKsWBhvTOsEqVnpT8NSzaV_3P8A-o/2.png?format=500w" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="448" height="354">
</p>
<p>“Algunos niños descansan en la carretera mientras viajan
con la caravana de miles de migrantes de América Central en ruta a
Estados Unidos.” Photo by Ueslei Marcelino for Reuters published in <a href="https://www.france24.com/es/20181026-ninos-migrantes-caravana-mexico-honduras">France 24</a>.</p>
</div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_132398"><p>My
story and the story of my family are closely connected to the stories
of thousands of other Central Americans who have been and are currently
arriving at the US-Mexico border, the majority seeking asylum. The more I
study the history of where I come from in both academic and organizing
contexts, the angrier I become at the inhumane treatment my fellow
Central Americans<em> </em>are being subjected to, all of this with the support of the US government.</p><p>In October of last year, for instance, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/lawyers-say-they-can-t-find-parents-545-migrant-children-n1244066"><em>NBC News</em> reported</a> that lawyers in charge of reuniting previously separated migrant families could not account for the parents of<em> 545 children</em>. Of these, sixty<em> </em>are under the age of five and two-thirds had their parents deported without them. </p><p>A <a href="https://www.raicestexas.org/2020/06/12/video-heres-what-daca-recipients-want-you-to-know-right-now/?ms=raices_tw&emci=c18fe06f-d879-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8&emdi=81764d91-d879-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8">report published by the Office of the Inspector General</a>
reveals that the US government began separating migrant families in an
undisclosed program in November 2017, well before the 2018 Trump
administration “zero tolerance” policy, which separated parents from
their children as a way to “deter” migrants from crossing the border.
However, while many rightfully decry the Trump administration for its
xenophobic remarks and policies, it is equally important to highlight
that the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-numbers/story?id=41715661">Obama-Biden administration deported more people than any other administration</a>, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/233150241700500212https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/233150241700500212">laid the infrastructure (i.e. cages) for detaining migrant children and adults</a>, and contributed to the militarization of Central America through foreign policy like the <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/120962/alliance-prosperity-wont-help-central-american-violence">Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI).</a>
In other words, the two parties hold responsibility for upholding a
system that separates not only families, but entire communities. </p><p>The pain of being separated from their child is not uncommon for many Central American parents. <em>The New York Times</em>, for example, reported that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/10/us/politics/trump-administration-catch-and-release-migrants.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news">children often failed to recognize their parents when reunited</a>.
One mother, Mirce Alba López, remembers the excitement she felt at
being reunited with her three-year-old daughter and how that “joy turned
temporarily to sadness” upon realizing that her own child did not
recognize her. The reports do not stop there. In October of last year,
Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-09/border-agency-said-rescued-honduran-who-just-gave-birth-in-field-hours-later-officials-separated-her-from-newborn-and-detained-her">detained and separated a Honduran woman</a> from her newborn who was delivered shortly before their detention and; back in May 2019, a two-year-old Guatemalan toddler <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/05/16/723984077/guatemalan-toddler-apprehended-at-u-s-border-dies-after-weeks-in-hospital">died in CBP custody</a>
in El Paso, making him the fourth Central American minor to die in CBP
custody since 2018. There are no limits, it seems, to the negligence and
malfeasance performed by US agencies against migrant children and their
families.</p></div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_87429">
<p><img alt="Pupils at Carlisle Indian Industrial School , Pennsylvania (c. 1900)" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c06c18bb40b9dd78a892d2d/1611954443325-YE6JRMPK7AASCPSFBRS8/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kBpItR7JH2tuHgIHzt0mAwRZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZamWLI2zvYWH8K3-s_4yszcp2ryTI0HqTOaaUohrI8PIhUVVLWUPpGbOsfXaWY1MjDi8RW1WC-dOqI9_EHZj6BYKMshLAGzx4R3EDFOm1kBS/Indigenous+children+US+750px-Carlisle_pupils.jpg?format=500w" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="448" height="259">
</p>
</div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_92425"><p>The
violence that the United States has inflicted on Central American
children is not new. Various forms of violence against children have
been employed throughout US history, beginning with the genocide and
forced indoctrination of Indigenous children and their communities
during the formation of a settler colonial state. All of this violence
has been exported to other parts of the world through US foreign policy,
particularly in the Global South, where the United States government
provides funding as well as police and military training in order to
preserve their economic and political interests. </p></div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_93867">
<p><img alt="A child looks at a graffiti reading "Ríos Montt, killer" during the burial of victims of Guatemala's 1982 civil war massacre, in Nebaj, Quiché departament, some 260 km northwest of Guatemala City on July 30, 2014. (Johan Ordóñez/AFP)" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c06c18bb40b9dd78a892d2d/1611956276217-VNJHHOVGEIYC7D9F68PZ/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kN9IKVeNXB_X4x19h93Rgmd7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z4YTzHvnKhyp6Da-NYroOW3ZGjoBKy3azqku80C789l0scl71iiVnMuLeEyTFSXT3prPuVDmGIY_vvUwSZzplbTbi2cyAzCf6-yOOHRQu4efQ/Rios+Montt+asesino+140730GuatemalaMassacre01.jpg?format=500w" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="448" height="290">
</p>
<p>A child looks at a graffiti reading "Ríos Montt, killer"
during the burial of victims of Guatemala's 1982 civil war massacre, in
Nebaj, Quiché departament, some 260 km northwest of Guatemala City on
July 30, 2014. <strong>(Johan Ordóñez/AFP)</strong></p>
</div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_98339"><p>To
begin, there is an established pattern of US support for regimes that
either facilitate or otherwise produce the violence in Central America
through cruel tactics far worse than the ones we witness today. Much is
known about the so-called <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Understanding_Central_America.html?id=QdBqAAAAMAAJ">Central American conflicts</a>
that climaxed in the 1980s and which oversaw the murder of over 200,000
Guatemalans and over 75,000 Salvadorans, the majority poor <em>ladino</em> (<em>mestizos</em>) and Indigenous <em>campesinos </em>(peasants).
Lesser is known, however, about the particular ways in which minors and
children, as a social group, were targeted and fell victim to the cruel
nature of these US-supported dictatorships, including that of Efraín
Ríos Montt in Guatemala and José Napoleón Duarte in El Salvador. In
fact, “<a href="http://www3.uakron.edu/worldciv/pascher/destroyseed.htm">destroying the seeds</a>,”
was a euphemism employed by the dictatorships to refer to the
deliberate targeting of children for murder as a way of terrorizing
communities and ensuring their compliance with US-supported state
forces.</p><p>Consider, for example, some of the events recorded by a US
congressional delegation to El Salvador in 1981, a time period when
military juntas were in power and the United States was pouring billions
of dollars into the small country. The <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/central-america-1981-report-to-the-committee-on-foreign-affairs-us-house-of-representatives/oclc/7511441">delegation’s report</a>
includes graphic descriptions by refugees detailing how the Salvadoran
security forces mutilated and decapitated civilians. Furthermore, the
report reads, “Children around the age of 8 [were] being raped, and then
[the soldiers] would take their bayonets and make mincemeat of them.”
It continues, “The army would cut people up and put soap and coffee in
their stomachs as a mocking. They would slit the stomach of a pregnant
woman and take the child out, as if they were taking eggs out of an
iguana.”</p></div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_44327">
<p><img alt="Skeleton remains after a massacre in Chalatenango, El Salvador in 1984. Credit: Scott Wallace. Photo published in The New York Times . " src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c06c18bb40b9dd78a892d2d/1611943954223-ESR0Z6UT6U3VT3NNZCJ1/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kMR1yAHb8bPoH1-OdajP2rZZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpya-Yv2-AUIrtyc_1d9d84jKAfrgH35AgL5HDK7jKFTEAbkVb2mHFRzAaMt_-j0ggg/7.jpg?format=500w" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="448" height="298">
</p>
<p>Skeleton remains after a massacre in Chalatenango, El Salvador in 1984. Credit: Scott Wallace. Photo published in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2019/02/27/espanol/america-latina/fotos-guerra-civil-centroamerica.html">The New York Times</a>. </p>
</div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_50386"><p>I
cannot overstate how much of a common practice this violence was in El
Salvador in the 1980s. Human rights journalist Elizabeth Hanly, <a href="https://www.unz.com/print/InTheseTimes-1985apr17-00016/">reporting from a Honduran refugee camp in 1983</a>, described how one Salvadoran <em>campesina</em>
witnessed how her three children were chopped to pieces and fed to the
pigs by the Salvadoran National Guard. “The soldiers laughed all the
way,” the woman recalls. </p><p>Guatemala was equally, if not more,
inflicted with this sort of violence under the dictatorship of Efraín
Ríos Montt, a Guatemalan general trained at the <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/shut-down-school-of-the-americas-whinsec-ice-border-patrol">US Army School of the Americas (SOA)</a>, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in Columbus, Georgia. The <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Guatemala.html?id=Ev5KzQEACAAJ">Official Report of the Human Rights Office, Archdiocese of Guatemala</a><span>,</span>
documented the testimonies of Guatemalan refugees during this time. One
individual in San Cristóbal, Alta Verapaz, 1982, remembers witnessing
soldiers tying up his mother, sister, brother-in-law, and their three
children and locking them in a house that was subsequently lit on fire,
burning and killing everyone inside.</p><p>In fact, half of the
documented massacres in Guatemala included the collective murder of
children by incineration, machete wounds, and blunt head trauma. The
Archdiocese's report shares that one man in Buena Vista, Huehuetenango,
1981, remembers thinking that he preferred to die rather than see his
children be killed:</p><p>“I did beg God that, if they were going to
kill me, that they kill me first. I didn’t want to see what they were
going to do to my children, because they always did it like that. First,
they kill the children. It was a way of torturing the people, the
parents. And I thought about all of that but thank God it didn’t happen.
And so, someone was still able to escape. They took the baby out of the
woman. She was alive and they took out the child she was expecting, in
front of her husband and her children. And the woman died and her
children died too. They killed the others; the only one who remained was
the one who escaped.”</p></div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_101616">
<p><img alt=""I know that President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment." – Ronald Reagan, December 4, 1982" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c06c18bb40b9dd78a892d2d/1611956502726-IEGSCML6DA286TJN2VRB/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kLiMdo1pPM7_yDbvNlS8qdlZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpzKd79lNkA9OmGQEnGIkamPIgEdnbZcBN34epjC1qZUIJeEXHVdeCvLDN63i2kHWDs/Rios+Montt+and+Reagan+DoEQAJcU8AA2eBA.jpg?format=500w" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="448" height="302">
</p>
<p>"I know that President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment." – Ronald Reagan, December 4, 1982</p>
</div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_106102"><p>Despite the fact that even mainstream newspapers denounced the human rights abuses under the Ríos Montt regime, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/12/05/reagan-praises-guatemalan-military-leader/2c0aab2a-d928-4dbc-b120-68f1f93cd936/">then-president Ronald Reagan described Ríos Montt</a>
as a “man of great personal integrity” who faced false accusations and
was “totally dedicated to democracy in Guatemala.” In his
seventeen-month-reign between 1981 and 1982, Ríos Montt oversaw the
death of over 100,00 people, <a href="https://nomada.gt/rios-montt-fue-sobretodo-un-mentiroso/">accruing about 19 massacres each month</a>. Ríos Montt evaded legal prosecution for his war crimes <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/obituaries/efrain-rios-montt-guatemala-dead.html">until 2013 when a Guatemalan Court finally charged and convicted him and another officer</a> for the massacre of over 1,700 Ixil men, women, and children in the 1980s. Ten days later, however, <a href="https://www.ijmonitor.org/2013/05/constitutional-court-overturns-rios-montt-conviction-and-sends-trial-back-to-april-19/">the sentence was conspicuously overturned</a> based on some technicalities.</p><p>Even
though the armed conflicts in Central America formally ended in the
mid-1990s, the conditions that led to the war have not. As a matter of
fact, the conditions that the urban and rural poor fought for—an end to
poverty alongside a right to land and other political freedoms—have only
worsened since then.</p></div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_107541">
<p><img alt="Former U.S. President Barack Obama and Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández during a meeting at the White House, 2014. (EFE)" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c06c18bb40b9dd78a892d2d/1611956787007-IEOUWMFQR45Y60PEMEOD/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kMgg58qa6uge-_hwRap2sOwUqsxRUqqbr1mOJYKfIPR7LoDQ9mXPOjoJoqy81S2I8N_N4V1vUb5AoIIIbLZhVYxCRW4BPu10St3TBAUQYVKcvmIiNeu6JIsRlTmMGERkpNubavwoUbnoHm3oOKrDVzS00hG1Pno183HmkUG_DF2m/Obama+and+JOH+EBD2z_yXUAA4Qar.jpg?format=500w" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="448" height="324">
</p>
<p>Former U.S. President Barack Obama and Honduras President
Juan Orlando Hernández during a meeting at the White House, 2014. (EFE)</p>
</div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_113040"><p>Today, the governments of the countries in the Northern Triangle (Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador) <a href="https://www.usglc.org/faq-violence-migration-and-u-s-assistance-to-central-america/">receive billions in aid from the US government</a>,
mostly to fund the military infrastructure which has been widely
recognized as a force of political repression against dissidents and
environmental defenders. Though this aid is portrayed as altruistic, the
US government is actually preserving and <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-alliance-for-prosperity-will-intensify-the-central-american-refugee-crisis/">advancing its own business interests</a> in the region. In 2009, the United States under the Obama administration <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2012/11/29/outing-honduras-human-rights-catastrophe-making">supported and bolstered a coup regime</a>
in Honduras that overthrew democratically-elected president Manuel
Zelaya and has consistently supported the regime of Juan Orlando
Hernández since he assumed the presidency in 2014. US support has
continued despite a <a href="https://nacla.org/news/2017/12/13/honduras-holds-democracy-hostage">fraudulent election in 2017</a> and even after family connections to the top drug cartels—as the<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/world/americas/honduras-president-brother-drug-trafficking.html"> conviction</a> of the president’s brother, Tony Hernández, in a New York court—becomes more evident. It is no surprise, then, that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/11/migrants-fleeing-central-america-guatemala-honduras-el-salvador-family-taken-killed-study?CMP=share_btn_tw">over two-thirds of Central Americans</a>
who have recently arrived in the United States have experienced overt
violence, including the murder, dissappearance, and/or kidnapping of a
relative in their country of origin.</p></div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_114309">
<p><img alt="Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez and U.S. President Donald Trump during a meeting in New York City, 2019. (REUTERS)" src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c06c18bb40b9dd78a892d2d/1611956951305-KF4N7121A3KE06SLG4MF/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kFr-MCz83LG2ZqzGFu9uALUUqsxRUqqbr1mOJYKfIPR7LoDQ9mXPOjoJoqy81S2I8N_N4V1vUb5AoIIIbLZhVYxCRW4BPu10St3TBAUQYVKcf42APUzg73I6BbvkUSZBpJhcOgRzHbaVuNgQSOKA8C5AwPhW16geOHSxinwWbjVI/Trump+and+JOH+im-112773.jpg?format=500w" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="448" height="336">
</p>
<div><p>Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez and U.S. President Donald Trump during a meeting in New York City, 2019. (REUTERS)</p></div>
</div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_125715"><p>What
we are witnessing today is a continuation from the 1980s: the US
government plays a role in causing and/or exacerbating the violence in
our home countries while denying entry to migrants and refugees escaping
these conditions. Most people in the United States feel disbelief at
the fact that their government, which portrays itself as a “nation of
values,” repeatedly inflicts harm on children, both domestically and
abroad. Yet, inflicting pain on families is one of the most historically
consistent characteristics of US relations with many communities,
including those in Central America.</p><p>To this day, the United States
engages in regime change efforts, as the coups in Haiti (2004),
Honduras (2009), and Bolivia (2019) demonstrate. Nowadays, the United
States government provides economic and military aid to its allies under
<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Drug_War_Capitalism.html?id=C-QLoAEACAAJ">the excuse of fighting the drug war</a> (such as in Colombia and Honduras) and imposes <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/08/1043981">inhumane</a>, <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/US-Sanctions-on-Venezuela-Illegal-Under-UN-OAS-and-US-Law-20190605-0031.html">illegal, unilateral sanctions</a> on countries that do not adhere to its will. </p></div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_60077">
<p><img alt="Me (center) and my siblings, oldest sister (center) twins (left and right)." src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c06c18bb40b9dd78a892d2d/1611945081370-QB9BTCK2LUA5F59QULEI/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kF4fW2cGkXqsMFaTROcVtmB7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z5QHyNOqBUUEtDDsRWrJLTmmV5_8-bAHr7cY_ioNsJS_1lPb9lhMKVb9HIlHxSuLTSg2EV-8Cu2EYlY7dxJvC38/Cristian+Padilla+and+his+siblings.jpg?format=500w" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="302" height="448">
</p>
<p>Me (center) and my siblings, oldest sister (center) twins (left and right).</p>
</div><div id="gmail-block-yui_3_17_2_1_1611941576960_130306"><p>My
family and I did not simply “choose” to migrate, we did so out of
necessity. The uneven nature of the global capitalist economy increases
forced migration, disrupting familial and social relationships in
countless ways, not only at the US-Mexico border, but also when family
members are pushed to leave their communities and are unable to take
their children with them. I am determined to continue working on
addressing the root causes that created the conditions we were forced to
flee, such as US interventionism in Central America and in many other
regions around the world.</p></div></div>
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<p>Cristian Padilla Romero (he/him/his) is currently a PhD
student in History at Yale University specializing in Latin American
history with a regional focus on Central America and Honduras. His
research focuses on Honduran political history, social movements,
revolution and counter-revolution, race and ethnicity, and migration.
Cristian was born in rural Honduras to campesino parents. His family
migrated to the United States when he was 7 years old and he has
remained undocumented with DACA status since 2013.</p>
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