 Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America. CodePings weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. Today we are broadcasting in partnership with the Alliance for Global Justice, Chicago Alba Solidarity, Friends of Latin America, Friends of the ATC, Task Force on the Americas. We'll be in conversation today with Paul Oquist, Minister, Private Secretary of National Policy in the Presidency of the Republic. And Paul is joining us today from Managua Nicaragua and we're so honored to have him with us. We're going to be talking today about Hurricane Eta and its effects on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua and also how the hurricane's strength was related to climate change and the policies that the Nicaragua government has in place regarding both hurricane response and its adaptation to climate change. So that will be our conversation today. Welcome for joining us, Paul. I'm so pleased to have you back on our program and I'm thankful for you accepting our invitation. Thank you for the kind invitation. I'm very pleased about that. Well, we're pleased to have you back. So let's start our conversation today with last week's hurricane that was profoundly devastating to the Atlantic coast of several Central American countries, including Nicaragua. It's a story that unfortunately did not make much splash in the US news due to the coverage of the presidential elections in the United States. But let's talk about the hurricane and where it hit and how the people responded and how the government responded. Well, thank you very much for saying last week's hurricane because this allows me to underscore this hurricane season because we have last week's hurricane entering in the Northeast of Nicaragua, the North Caribbean Autonomous Region. And I mentioned last week's hurricane because next week's hurricane is scheduled to hit on Monday at 7 a.m. It's not a tropical depression off the coast of Columbia, but it will strengthen going across. It's a tropical depression number 31 and it is going to hit in the very same area as last week's hurricane. So it's gonna be a one-two punch from the hurricane season. And this hurricane season was 29 hurricane seasons have been named to date. The last time to set the amount was in 2005, it was 28. So this is the record hurricane season and the hurricane hit just south of Bilwe, also known as Puerto Cavesas, the poorest area of Nicaragua. And the damage was centered on social infrastructure. 1,890 houses were destroyed. 8,030 houses were partially damaged. 16 health centers were damaged. The New Dawn Regional Hospital, which is a very new hospital was damaged also. 45 educational centers, the drinking water treatment plant, 66 bridges, public building, stadiums, sports centers, parks. And 49,000 houses were electric power interruptions. And on the production side, there was two processing plants were damaged. 10 seafood collection centers, 12 boats and 38 bangas, which are the artisan small boats, the bangas were damaged. And it affected 39% of the total of the national system of protected areas. And then moved into the Bosa-Was reserve biosphere. So there there was damage to the forest. The preliminary quantification of damages is $172 million. The need for replacement and immediate restoration amounts to $36.4 million. And among the highlights with regard to the immediate needs, there is a situation of food insecurity. There's a need for $2.9 million to supplement the food that has already been sent, which is truckloads of food from Managua. $14.7 million for the most urgent housing replacements and $6.1 million for the educational sector, $4.2 million for the health sector to rehabilitate the health unit. Of course, this is all happening right in a pandemic too. So we have all of the scourges of the apocalypse hitting us here, the storm, the pandemic, the economic depression. This is a reason that there's basically off of the fishing and the seafood sector as you've been attentive to that mention. There's 6.4 million needed to repair bridges and roads and the municipal dock for water and energy at $893,000 needs to reestablish the primary and secondary energy supply. You know, the preparation for this was excellent. There was evacuations were timely there was a total of 71,145 people were evacuated, 47,297 were kept in 325 emergency centers and no human lives were lost. This stressed enormously for hurricane critics, a category five hurricane that struck the same region in 2007. In 2007, this government didn't have its act put together yet. We had just arrived into power the 10th of January of 2007 and there was 101 people died in that hurricane. Now, 20 years later, we have Sina Pred, which is our emergency service, emergency civil defense system, which is well integrated with the climate change effort as well, it's all integrated. And there is lots of training and even exercises undertaken. So people have been through several exercises of what to do in a hurricane and even mock medical attention, mock evacuations. And so people were ready and people were evacuated, especially from the highly vulnerable mosquito keys, which are some low lying waters off the coast, where people build on sticks on poles, these very precarious houses, which are just temporary while the art they're catching a lobster it's a very rich area and lobster. So and critics, people left that area too late trying to get to the mainland and many of them were killed trying to do that. This time everyone was evacuated promptly with a good lead time and almost two million people were exposed to this hurricane, mostly in the Northern Caribbean coast autonomous region in the mining area and River Segovia, Hino-Tega, Chinandega that also got a lot of heavy rainfall. Then as you know, it went into Honduras and Guatemala and Guatemala, there was a lot of people killed, over a hundred people were killed in Guatemala I guess 120 something were killed in Guatemala. And then it went through Yucatan out back into Cuba, took a little spin around and then came up into the Gulf and made landfall in Florida, cross Florida and was now moving up the East coast. This new tropical depression 31 is scheduled to make landfall at 7 a.m. on Monday, right at the border between Honduras and Nicaragua, which is the Cocoa River, known in the Mesquito language as the Wonky River. You know, the hurricane season, we have Eta on the East coast, we have Santa further out in the Atlantic, we have this tropical depression 31. There's some people here already calling Hurricane Ayota, thinking that it's going to strengthen to be a hurricane before it reaches. This Eta was also a tropical storm and it strengthened very rapidly to a category four, almost at the limit of category five in a very short period of time before it made landfall in Nicaragua. So the news is that the storm was strong, the damage is significant, but that the civil defense systems in Nicaragua are now in place, people are trained, evacuations have been practiced and were executed smoothly. And this saved lives, this saved lives. And now the government is sending supplies to meet the emergency situation. There were even 2000 people evacuated on the Cocoa River, thinking there could be flooding, but it turned out that didn't happen, but no problem. They were sheltered in case it might happen. And the government is sending 17,200 sheets of zinc, which is the housing in that area for re-getting shelter and it sent four traders with 88 tons of food to Bilby, the main city of the other region for immediate assistance. And four trucks loaded with first response items such as mattresses, plastic hygiene kits and more were unloaded in Suna and Bilby, Suna's in the mining region. And with the support of members of the Nicaraguan Naval Force, dozens of families who were engaged in fishing in the mosquito keys were evacuated. And the local fishing fleet was used also for that evacuation from the mosquito key area, which made all the difference between Hurricane FedEx in 2007 and ETA in 2020. And you know, the best civil defense system in the world is Cuba's. You get a hurricane come through the islands and you have a hundred people dead here, 200 people dead there, 50 people dead in other place. And it goes through Cuba and if there's one death, there's a national scandal. What happened? Why wasn't that person evacuated? What was the situation that this tree fell on this person being in an area that was that dangerous? Because they not only have that, but their adaptation is incredible. And it's something that we're trying to replicate here. And that is that their reservoirs are over dimension. They make the reservoir with a lot more capacity so that when a hurricane comes along, you can get two or three years of water from the hurricane and these reservoirs that fill up to capacity. And stop the flooding. Yeah, and manage flooding as well. Exactly. And use it as a catchment system. And you have this catchment and you have this water supply. We have a lot of work being done when you talk about adaptation in the dry zone. We've been working with over 5,000 small water harvesting works have been built, such as reservoirs 5,523 to be exact, lagoons, microjams, and rainwater collection systems on the bruises of houses. Prioritizing the communities in the dry zone, this Corridor Seco, the ghosts of Nicaragua, the Honduras, the Guatemala, and in Southern Mexico. And Paul, is that Corridor Seco, is that growing? Is that expanding due to climate change? Yes, it is. It's becoming more and more arid. It's becoming more and more arid. And it's one of the biggest problems in Central America. And it's something that's not on the US radar yet, but sooner or later it will be. Because if the Campesino subsistence economy in Central America collapses, it's in Mesoamerica collapses. Because this would conclude Southern Mexico. Exactly, yes. Right, so, you know, the Oaxaca, Chiapas, you could done very indigenous, high indigenous population areas, then Guatemala, high indigenous population, then Honduras, Nicaragua, Nicaragua, the indigenous population primarily on the Caribbean coast. If this Campesino subsistence economy collapses, you'll have 18 million people walking towards the major cities of the region, or marching north to climb over, dig under, or blast through any wall they might find on the way. I want, I'd like to, well, so we can see in this again, I think, you know, this is something we should talk about on yet another conversation with you is, you know, how climate change is one if not the largest root causes of migration that is not recognized in the United States. But while we're talking about adaptation, Nicaragua's capability to recognize climate change and adapt to it, I have the good fortune of being on a delegation in August of 2014. I went with one of our partners today, Alliance for Global Justice, and we went to study renewable energy and how the Nicaraguan government, the current government was adapting and responding to climate change. And it was so wonderful for me personally to be on that trip, talking to people who completely recognized as a government and as a society climate change. Whereas in the United States, we still have this conversation, you know, as to whether or not climate change is real. But it was profound, you know, the projects and the programs that the government has in place to adapt to climate change and also the enormous renewable energy projects that you have, I think in August of 2014, it was 52% renewables and it's 77 plus percent at this point. That's right. It started out in 2007 at 26% when we get off and then it is now 77% and it's going, it's going to be 90% by 2023 and we'll leave some backup with gas. But we also have a very nice mix of hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, solar, biomass. We have a canasta with everything. And so, and you have that and as you just said, you have, following the example of the Cubans having these oversized reservoirs for to control floodwaters and to gather water in dry zones and a catchment system. We're working on that especially in the dry zone, in the Caribbean coast, you know, there's no water problem. There is abundant rainfall. As a matter of fact, south of Bluefields to the Costa Rican border is one of the rainiest areas in the world. They get 5,000 milliliters of water a year. That's five meters of rainfall. That's a lot of rainfall. On top of hurricane rain. So they're very vulnerable. Well, hurricanes tend to go a bit further north but they're completely unpredictable these days. They can go anywhere. And how are those Atlantic communities dealing with, and the islands, you mentioned some of the smaller islands, how are they and the government managing rising sea level? Well, in Corn Island and Little Corn Island, which are inhabited areas, we are doing some water protection systems for their water supply. Because you know, in the South Pacific, the islands don't die when they're completely underwater. All you need is for the sea water to penetrate their aquifers and the islands dead, but they no longer have fresh water. So that's what's being done on Corn Island and Little Corn Island, which are populated. The mosquito keys are already underwater. The houses are on stilts because it's a very low-lying area and the people don't reside there permanently. They go out there to fish for lobster and they go back to Puerto Cavesas or Prince of Polaca or wherever they live. Wow, it's really, I mean, it's fascinating and encouraging. I mean, it's all, and it's devastating too all in one thought, how what's happening regarding climate change, the increasing number of storms and the increasing magnitude of the storms, rising sea level, which we simply do not talk about in the United States, particularly as to how rising sea level is affecting our immediate neighbors and specifically those living on Caribbean island states. And even in the keys of Florida. Yep, we unmuted you. Stop, stop. We can't hear you. Unmute yourself. Can you hear me, Matt? Yeah, sorry, thank you. Every time I have a very high tide in Miami Beach, they get water. Yes. Yeah. And, you know... We don't talk about that in the States though, do we, about Florida? There's a map that the National Geographic has that is of the world with a five meter increase in sea level. Now, a five meter increase in sea level is perhaps some centuries away. But when you do the half a meter of the meter, it's hard to see the real impact. But with this five meter, even though it's far off, you see where the vulnerable areas are. And Florida ceases to exist. It becomes completely underwater. The Mississippi goes all the way up to maybe St. Louis as a big lake, very broad lake, that whole basin goes up. And in Europe, of course, you know that Venice is going to go under in that region, but also it's the Netherlands, of course the low lands, the Netherlands, the low countries, and Denmark also, and Northern Germany. So you get really huge impacts. And these are the areas that we have to watch even now as the sea level does rise, as global warming continues and the ice and Antarctica and in Greenland and Arctic becomes scarcer and scarcer as it melts with global warming. You know, I hope that this COP26 in Glasgow turns out to have a different storyline than COP25 in Madrid, which failed as you know. And with the US coming back in the Paris Agreement, it would be interesting to see what implications that might have for moving forward because it's nice to have the US back, but what we need is real action on ambition and more real action on finance where there's a lot of big entry to do the climate change. So we just mentioned the Paris Accord. So this is talk that we're hearing, reading in the US media that assuming Joe Biden is the next president of the United States that he is talking about having the US rejoin the Paris Accord. But now this is an accord that, and yes, we would hope that the United States elevate the discussion on climate change and help push for financing for vulnerable countries to make the necessary changes and adaptations. But Nicaragua also has its opinion on these accords that they don't go strong, they're not strong enough. Well, they're not. The US says they're too strong and Nicaragua, of course, Nicaragua is a very vulnerable country relative to storms. Secretary General Antonio Guderres of the United Nations, called the Madrid Code 25 Summit the Ambition Summit. Because he hoped that the countries would raise their level of ambition of greenhouse gas reduction to the points that the objectives of the Paris Agreement could be met. Because as it stands, you're not going to get to 1.5 degrees centigrade with the commitments the countries have made or even two degrees centigrade. It would go up to something like 3.74 degrees centigrade. And that is on a worldwide average. So that worldwide average would come out in the tropics and in the desert in the Arctic areas, somewhere between four and six degrees, which is catastrophic. So we really need to get into serious ambition if we're going to achieve the necessary goal, which was spelled out by the International Climate Panel on Climate Change, the scientific study of October 2018 that pointed out to be able to keep the lid on climate change and maintain a global warming of 1.5 degrees, world average in this century. We need to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 and achieve a global net zero emission society by 2050. So the- We don't have much time. No, we don't. We don't at all. And the objectives are ambitious. They are feasible. This can be done, but you need real serious policy decisions. So, Paul, what can we do in the United States? What can we as voters, as citizens, what do we need to do, you know, as you representing a voice of a country that's particularly vulnerable? What can we do to influence our government to recognize climate change and effectively act on it? Well, the thing would be, you know, there was at the Pope 25 and before, there were people from the United States showing up that had a movement called We're Still In, which included California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington. And there was an entire series of cities which were making the commitment. And these are important cities. It was the most important cities in the United States, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and in between, they were saying they were gonna meet the commitments required by the Paris Agreement. So there's something to build on there in terms of getting into the thing. But I think that the political restrictions on this were evidenced in the campaign on the issue of the oil and gas industry and fracking that politically was an explosive topic. So I think that the consciousness that the green economy is not a great depression, but the green economy is just another way to organize the economy and to achieve even greater prosperity in the long run is a big political battle in the United States because you can see that it was an asthma to many politicians who talk about serious action with regard to oil or gas or fracking. Maybe we ought to start by organizing the people in Florida, particularly in the Keys. They can overtly, they're overtly experiencing rising sea level and they may be a really good place for us to start as far as personal living conditions. But you know, you asked about what can be done to improve the situation here. Well, the situation in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua is that the unilateral coercive measures that are illegal really restrict the capacity of the societies to react to climate change, to react to the Great Depression and even to react to the pandemic of COVID-19. And according to article seven, numeral one, literal K of the statute of Paris that constitutes elevating the illegality of the course of measures to the level of a crime against humanity. If you are affecting the preventive health capacity and the health service capacity of a society during a pandemic, that is a crime against humanity. And these things are really ridiculous. I think they should be struck down in a court of law in the United States and perhaps there's some lawyers who could get together and work on this because they say that they're defending human rights but these measures violate all the human rights in the world. Exactly, yeah. There's no human rights at all with regard to the military measures. And in those countries that are trying so desperately to battle COVID-19 and don't have access to international medical supplies and relief, it's basically a form of genocide against them, the populations. It's catastrophe. At proposed lifting the measures during the pandemic and they paid no attention to him. But you know, these measures are heavy stuff because if you look at what the mentality behind them is it's that the United States government and the European Union government and the UK and Canada, and I don't know why Switzerland wanted to join that club, but they did recently, think that they're morally superior to everyone else in the world. And this moral superiority allows them then to self-appoint themselves as vigilantes to police corruption and human rights in the rest of the world. And this means that the rest of the world should fall in line with their mandates, fall in line with their imposition. Well, that's particularly true in the global south. This is the imperialist, colonialist, neo-colonial mentality of wanting to run the rest of the countries in the world according to their wishes. And so this is the battle against neo-colonial mentality in the 21st century are these types of measures. You know, there's one measure in one of the ordinances on Nicaragua and one of the decrees. It says that anyone who's been in the government since 2007 is subject to these illegal coercive measures. I don't like to use the word sanctions because the only sanctions that are legal are those of the Security Council of the United Nations. These are illegal, coercive, unilateral measure. And so this means that the US by saying that anyone who is in the government can be subject to this is not recognizing the 2016 election in which President Nartega was re-elected with 72% of the vote congruent with all the polls that were taken at that time with all the political sectors. So it's violating the right to free speech. It's violating the right to political participation, to choose the political party of your choice, the right to serve in the government, the right to have representatives in a government. So the violation of rights is across the board. But there's a last point I wanna make on this and that is that, you know, these things are completely administrative actions with no judicial recourse and they last forever in the United States. And they create a cast of people who are civilly dead. They can have no transactions of any kind. And so it's like a cast of economic untouchables. And I think I would like to see a group of lawyers in the United States get together and take this to task for violating freedom of speech, freedom of political choice and cruel and unusual punishment. The US constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. And making this cast of economic untouchables is cruel and unusual punishment. Punishing an entire society politically is cruel and unusual punishment. You know, when the Germans would do extra additional killings of people in the village because a German soldier had been killed. This is the equivalent of that in terms of an entire society being deprived of its economic wherewithal of medicines. And we're talking about Venezuela now, but also to a certain extent the Caraguan Cuba of its economic capacity being punished for political reasons by a foreign power. That is cruel and unusual punishment also. Well, you use the term unilateral coercive measures and unilateral being from a legal perspective, unilateral being the key word that, you know, these are sanctions as they're commonly called in the United States, economic warfare, hybrid warfare, but unilaterally designated by the United States, not by the UN National Security Council by majority vote within that council. It's a do-all- They're in Versailles' illegality. The only things that are legal are from the Security Council. Yeah. So one thing I do wanna share with you and our viewers is that Code Pink and many other activist groups in the United States have representatives in Washington DC and we have several coalitions that lobby regularly in Washington DC to lift sanctions for the longest time, North Korea and Cuba, but that does now include Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran and on and on and on. I believe the list of countries is about 39 countries, 33% of them are not. Exactly, 39 countries with two billion people in population have been affected by the illegal coercive measures. Was it the United States, European Union, UK, a little, one less to extend Canada? So that number is about 33% of the world's population. I mean, just to get our viewers to understand how many people are suffering and there and making that number of people on the planet vulnerable only makes the population of the United States more vulnerable, particularly to disease, the COVID-19 pandemic specifically. So, Paul, I'm looking at the time and I know I promised you only 30 minutes and I'm always so happy when you can stand more time with us. Is there anything else we should talk about before I let you go? Is there anything we did today? Yes, given the fact that the world is facing simultaneously the corona, the new corona virus and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Great Depression 2020 largely derived from the great lockdowns and this has generated, accelerating extreme inequality. And in addition to that, we're saying the initiation of a second cold war, the situation for the developing country becomes very desperate. That is a complete overload of external shocks for the developing countries. And therefore I think that it would be reasonable and the interest of everyone to condone the debt for the period 2020-2024 because it's better to have a debt holiday for these four years as part of the solution than to have country after country default on its debt as part of the problem. And this excessive line of defaults will undermine the economic recovery also. So I think it'd be who's in the entire world who seriously consider the debt issue with regard to developing countries. You know, look at how many trillions of dollars are being thrown at the problem in the developed countries. The United States, Europe, the other developed countries. So how are the developing countries going to deal with this when their resource base is shrinking because of the depression? They have less resources and they have to pay the debt on top of it. It's not sustainable really. That's not sustainable. I think in historic terms, we used to call debt forgiveness on that scale a jubilee, correct? Is that a debt jubilee? And it is pretty, I'm sitting here in Mexico City since September and been living here and just watching, you know, there are no tourists here right now. And you can just see just that alone, that one industry's effect on the overall economy of Mexico. And Mexico has a fairly strong economy. It's very precarious. You walk down the street and there's so many vendors who are used to selling to tourists and there are no tourists here. And you just, for me personally, I wanna buy something from everyone every day and that is not financially sustainable on my part. But it's very, very precarious. It's really important that you brought this up. The default of so many developing countries is gonna create a major problem for the entire world. But I think you could also argue that that is in horrifying terms, a desired effect for neoliberal governments, neoliberal capitalists to come in and grab resources, infrastructure, natural resources and that what do we call that? Naomi Klein Klein calls that disaster capitalism, correct? Well, you know, I was really struck by Antigua Barbuda. You know the item of Barbuda was not flat as were Dominica, the Grand Bahamas and Abacoa islands in the Bahamas also. And I know people from there. And you had people in some of the developed countries saying, well, why do these people wanna live on those little islands so prone to hurricanes? And then the prime minister of Dominica, Skewrit Roosevelt, Roosevelt Skewrit, he came out and said, oh, we're not going to give up 350 years of history, 350 years of communities, 350 years of our forging a nation here just because of the weather. And at the same time as he was saying that, developers were moving into Barbuda, offering money to the people who are flat broke, have lost everything, trying to buy up the entire island for a tourist development. So there you have your disaster capitalism. Well, we could, gosh, that's a whole another thing for us to talk about. I have a list of three, maybe five things I would love to have you come back and talk about as individual topics. One thing Paul, I wanna share with you and our viewers before I let you go is that CodePink in conjunction with the Sanctions Kill Coalition, which is at sanctionskill.org, we are developing a delegation for late January, early February, 2021 to come to Nicaragua and study renewable energy, study climate change adaptation, and to study the effects of unilateral course of measures on the country, its people and its government. So we will be bringing a few people. We'll be bringing them with open arms. Well, thank you so much. We're very excited to be putting this project together and we so look forward to coming in late January. We're looking at January 30th to February 9th, but for our viewers and for you, just stay tuned. I'll send out the formal flyer once everything is confirmed. So Paul- This is what I need you to think about. So thank you for joining us today. I wanna ask our viewers to turn into what the F is going on in Latin America every Wednesday. We're going to be broadcasting at 7.30 p.m. Eastern, which is 5.30 p.m. Pacific. This will be Wednesday, November 18th, which is today going forward. And also to tune in to Code Pink Radio, WBAI, WPFW, which was New York City and Washington, DC, which 11 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific every Thursday. So thanks again, Paul. Look forward to seeing you early 2021 and hopefully having you back in conversation. I so appreciate your time. Okay, thank you, bye-bye. Okay. Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America, Code Pink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We are now broadcasting every Wednesday, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, 5.30 p.m. Pacific. This episode is part two of Hurricane Eta and Climate Change and governmental responses in both Nicaragua and Honduras. From Honduras, I'm speaking today with Gerardo Torres-Dalea. Gerardo is the International Secretary of the Libre Party. Welcome, Gerardo. And I'm so pleased that you had time to join us today, especially given that Honduras is literally in between two major hurricanes, one last week and one arriving tomorrow. Thank you, Terry, for the invitation. Hi to all the people in Code Pink and to all the people that are listening and hearing and seeing this program. Thank you for the invitation. And I hope that we can talk about what's going on in Central America, what happened with Hurricane Eta and what's looking forward to happen with Eota. Well, why don't we start with last week's Hurricane Eta? That whole event, unfortunately, was buried by the presidential elections in the United States, unfortunately, because it's such an episode related to climate change and that is one of the things that those of us in the United States really have to focus on getting in front of the incoming administration. But let's talk about how the hurricane affected Honduras and how the people versus the government are responding. And from your position as a member of the Libre Party, what you would propose be managed differently. Okay, well, first of all, we have to say that the reason why these hurricanes are called Eta and Eota and Eta is because there are so much hurricanes in this season that all the letters of the alphabet were covered. So according to the hurricane naming system, once you ended all the letters of the alphabet from A to Z, then you start with the Greek alphabet. So Eta and Eota, and if we have another hurricane, it will be called Kappa, are letters of the Greek alphabet. So that's starting there. It's like the first signal that things are not going well when you have more hurricanes than the letters of the alphabet. So we've got more than 26. Yeah, so you have to have so many hurricanes that there's not enough letters to name them. And the reason of that is climate change. And people that deny it or people that don't want to look at it, there are really strong samples of what's going on and changing in the planet. This enormous quantity of wind and water is the production of the change in our climate, in the temperature of the planet. And we're in November. The hurricanes don't last so long in the year. Hurricanes normally end in September or beginning of October. It's really rare to see a hurricane in late October. And we're now in November the 16th and we're looking forward for one hurricane and probably two more. So we may have hurricanes until December and that will be like the first time in history that we see something like that. And the reason is not- So we're having more hurricanes and a longer season, both. More and longer, yeah. Yeah, you have more and a longer season and that is not a coincidence or that is not a miracle. That is a direct consequence of climate change. So I think that the United States, that's one of the world's biggest industries and one of the biggest producers of the things that affect our climate should start the conversation and be part of the conversation. Because Honduras, we don't produce a CEO as the industrial countries do, but because of our position because we're so faced toward the Caribbean and because we're so poor and we have been under the control of so many corrupt governments, we are one of the world's more vulnerable and fragile countries facing climate change. So 10 years ago, we were already saying that Honduras and Haiti and some other countries that are not producers of CO2, carbon dioxide, we are, on the other hand, one of the most fragile and vulnerable countries for climate change. We don't have evacuation plans. We don't have alarm systems and we don't have them because of our government and we can talk about that a little bit more ahead, but to say about climate change is that the countries that they don't want to discuss climate change, like the United States are not helping and are not stopping it. When you start seeing that ETA was able to cross all the Caribbean and hit the United States, you can see that we're talking about stronger hurricanes of these super storms that some of people, I have read some things in the United States, that people said that those are apocalyptic literature but you're now seeing super storms one after the other and they're affecting a lot of people and they're destroying a lot of cities and this is not going to end until we face the consequences that we are producing to the planet. So climate change will continue and we will continue suffering its impacts and not being part of the conversation is not solving nothing, it's only making the problem worse and bigger and most dangerous. One of the things we emphasize at Code Pink because we're so strongly anti-U.S. intervention, anti-war, anti-military spending is that the United States military is the largest carbon footprint on the planet. There's 800 that we know of, U.S. military bases on the planet and it's the largest carbon footprint of everything else combined and of course you are living in Honduras with the results of U.S. interventionism specifically the coup in June of 2009. Let's talk a little bit about the government that is basically sponsored by the United States and it's process of privatizing the economy and what responses that has allowed or prohibited and what a Libre party perspective would be. Right now, most of the things I'm reading and seeing is people are pretty much on their own responding, they're responding at a community level and fundraising from all over, there's no government resources and no government coordinated response. Well, first about the military forces, we have the headquarters of the cell come in Honduras. We have a military base called Palmerola, 80 kilometers from the Guzigalpa, that is the main office in the region of the cell command that is the U.S. Army's office for Latin American and the Caribbean. It's a huge base that it's an example of that occupation the United States has all around the world. But it's not only a military presence, it's also a political presence because the National Party, that is the ruling party of Honduras has lost two elections, 2013 and 2017. And now you see the United States and you see people that are beginning to be concerned or even afraid that they see that President Trump is not willing to leave the office even though he lost the election. And they are asking questions like, what would happen if he doesn't want to leave? Well, you can see Honduras and see what happens when a president doesn't want to leave. And it's very hypocritical that many people that in the United States are pointing out to President Trump that he doesn't want to leave, supported the National Party in Honduras when they didn't want to leave in 2013 and 2017. And we have to say that in 2013, the United States government was Democrat. In 2017, the United States government was Republican. So they have each one done the same thing. They didn't want that a socialist party asked the Libri Party that had won the elections got to office. So they supported a government that without winning the elections stayed using the force and the military. So this is the consequence of that. The National Party lost against us in 2013 and then lost against us in 2017 and they stayed because of the support of the United States Army and the United States Embassy in Tegucigalpa. What happens to a government that doesn't have any kind of support or doesn't respond to a political structure? Well, that government loses contact with the people. They live in a place where the people's opinion is not important because they're not in office because of the people's support. They have to have good relationships with the United States government and with the United States military forces. If they have that, they'll stay in power. So that lack of connection of the government with the people can be shown and can be seen in moments like we saw in ETA. The government of Honduras knew that ETA was coming that because they had an agreement with some part of the private sector, especially the ones that control the hotels that have been closed for the last seven, eight months, they have decided to create this big holiday a week long vacation. So that people all around Honduras and in countries nearby could go to these hotels with biosecurity to help tourism and help these private companies. So we have been knowing about this holiday in the first week of November since a couple of months ago. And we have been saying, it's ridiculous to open the hotels. It's ridiculous to give a holiday when we have a coronavirus pandemic that Honduras has over 100,000 confirmed cases and 3,000 dead people because of coronavirus. So this means that we have a death rate of 3% one of the highest in the region and 100,000 people in a population of nine million is a really high number of people that are currently suffering of the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. So we were saying, don't do the holiday, don't open for vacations, it's a really bad idea. But they continue because they don't hear the people. They don't care about the people. They don't hear the people and they support the private sector. Yeah, and it was a really bad coincidence for them and really bad luck because the day that they were going to start the holiday, people were traveling from many parts of Honduras to the Atlantic coast to their vacations because people wanted to go to vacations with their masks and everything. The Florida Hurricane Investigation Center warned the Honduran government that there was a hurricane coming when on Monday of that week, they resisted to stop the vacation. And they said, well, maybe the hurricane stops in Nicaragua, maybe it detours, maybe it gets really soft. Don't forget to wear your mask and enjoy your vacations. On Tuesday, we had already the city of La Lima in the Sula Valley of Honduras, completely flooded. And the highways completely covered with waters and many bridges falling down. So you had on Tuesday and Wednesday, not only the people that lived there, but the people that had trouble trapped in the Atlantic coast of Honduras. And then you had people that had escaped of the high waters and the rivers to the roof of their houses that had to wait 48 to 72 hours to be rescued because the Honduran government had no response, no evacuation plans. And once the hurricane had passed, there were no actions to rescue people. So what people started to do was to hire small boats and the community started gathering money to pay for small boats and to go to rescue people. So the people that were rescued weren't rescued by the Honduran military forces, but they also weren't rescued by the United States military forces. Because if we have 3,000 Marines and Bravo troops and the US Army deployed in Honduras, you should expect that if they'd assured that they are a human saving service in our country, then they should have gone. We only have a video of a helicopter of the United States base rescue in a family and then never coming back because they decided not to go and take out the people. And the Honduran military forces didn't go. So what's the point of having two military forces in your territory? I mean, it's amazing to me to hear you say that. When you're facing a hurricane and you don't count with them to go and take you out of the roof of your house. It's amazing to be listening, hearing you say this, because presumably the United States is in Honduras to protect human rights. I mean, that's generally the purpose stated for US deployment of troops, correct? That's what we hear, human rights. And absolutely no human rights assistance in the case of this hurricane. None, what you're telling, or one helicopter deployed. But then what you heard in the news was that they couldn't do it because they were not coordinated with the Honduran military forces. So one said that they didn't have enough helicopters and the other one said that they didn't have the permission. The thing is that none of them did nothing and the people that were rescued weren't rescued because of the community raising money of some private companies putting money to hire these boats. And we're talking about thousands of people that have now been declared disappeared that most likely died because you have the official count that is about 100 people dead by ETA but they're not counting thousands of people that their family says, I don't know nothing more about them. They weren't the roof of their houses. They lost the signal or the battery of their cell phone. We expect that they were rescued, but you don't know. You don't know if they probably weren't rescued because there weren't enough boats. And the other thing, and this is the most incredible thing is that when people got the boats, hired the boats, paid the gasoline for the boats and were about to save people, the Honduran police force that is mainly used to kill opposition leaders started stopping the boats and asking for the permission of the boats to save people. And if you didn't have a permission that they gave to you, you weren't able to go and rescue people. So they were not only not helping, but they were trying to get money from the people that were trying to help. So all of these together, and now you have hundreds of Honduran families living in the streets of San Pedro Sula trying to look a place to sleep and you only have really few shelters. And people are trying to go back to where they used to live and trying to rescue something and creating a big chaos. This just hours from the impact of another hurricane because of the same thing of the climate change. So we had Eta and less than 15 days from Eta, we're going to have Yota that has now entered the Nicaraguan territory and the night of this Monday and the tomorrow Tuesday will be striking Honduras and going through the capital and the south of the country. So you still have people that have no shelter, people that are disappeared, people and families looking for the relatives, people that don't have food and many people trying to find things, crowd funding, putting what you have to take food to people because the government literally doesn't move a finger. And it's a combination, it's a really sad and pathetic combination of people that first didn't want or care to do and now even if they want, they don't know where to start because they have no capacity to facing something like this. And we had our first lady went going to some shelters and giving the little kids popcorn and plastic balls for them to play and you're like, they lost everything. They lost their house, they don't have food and you're giving them popcorn because that's what your head is able to think of in a crisis like this. So let me, finding it hard to breathe. It's just so devastating. I mean, the circumstances you're describing are just really beyond words, quite frankly. So as I'm listening to you talk, there's a couple of things that come to mind. This series of hurricanes being the most and the strongest that we've seen so far. What does this, so I'm thinking one, given the lack of response by the Juan Orlando government, the US backed government, is Honduras considered when we talk climate change, we sometimes use the term sacrifice country, sacrifice country, sacrifice population. So I'm thinking sacrifice country, I'm also disaster capitalism and the opportunities for the private sector after the floodwaters recede. And then once the floodwaters receive, what sort of food production will remain? The crops have most certainly been flooded, I would imagine. It's like- What do we think about this? Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. Well- I've thrown a lot at you in one sentence. No. About our situation as a pretty vulnerable and endangered country of population because of climate change. It seems like this authorities or the people that are in the head of the United States government and the governments of the world don't seem to understand or not willing to, is to make that connections between natural phenomenons and their impacts and migration, for example. The temporary protection system, the TPS, that Honduras have in the United States and have been fighting to keep started exactly because of the hurricane Mitch in 1998. The country was destroyed, there was no capacity for food production, houses were neighborhoods were completely blown out of the map in the hurricane of 1998. And then we had in 1999, one of the huge or the biggest migrations to the United States. And then the government in that time, I think it was still Clinton's or the beginning of the Bush government, they decided to create this temporary protection system because of the huge amount of people from Honduras that were freed in the country because there wasn't food here. So you have the caravans right now in Honduras, you have thousands of Honduras that are going away from the country because of crime, because of violence, because of corruption, because of poverty, add to this to hurricanes. What is going to happen next year? You're going to have hundreds of thousands of people of Honduras trying to enter the United States. So the consequences of the lack of actions, the consequences of this capitalism way of seeing the world in which you try to take over all the national resources without any regards on the consequences of destroying the river, of destroying the mountain and not being able to see ahead of your nose or your wealth has consequences. And all the things that they have done in Central America and all the corruption and all the governments, the military and the violence that they have been sponsoring in Honduras has consequences and are the caravans. And now the lack of action from climate change would also have a really great consequences because of the impacts of ETA and YOTA and we hope not another hurricane in the, but it's left of this 2020. So there's going to be consequences. There's going to be a huge migration to the United States and that's what the United States will have to face in 2021. It's not people that are trying to attack the United States. It's people that are escaping from a country, from a place that is really violent and it's really vulnerable and it's really high risk to try to raise a family, especially if you're poor in Central America, specifically in Honduras. So, well, this gives us our work as U.S. citizens at home, gives us our work to certainly on a number of levels to influence the incoming administration to engage the world, re-engage the world regarding climate change. But also, this is, I mean, for me personally, climate change is the number one root cause of migration and everything, not to diminish all the other things you just mentioned as causing people to flee. But when you have a physically uninhabitable country, it's flooded. The floods have caused crop production failure. How do you, there's no coordinated government response. There's no coordinated, we're not even talking about aid from the United States, even though there are military, there is a substantial military U.S. force in Honduras. These are all things that really, we in the United States need to start taking responsibility for and to understand what U.S. economic and foreign policy is doing, particularly in physically vulnerable countries. I would argue principally throughout the global South, but also in countries, low-lying countries, or in the case of Honduras, you have two coastlines, Atlantic and Pacific coast. So you're vulnerable from both directions regarding storms and rising sea level. So what can we do as U.S. citizens? What would you, on your best day, on your primary wish list, what would you ask, what action can we take here in the United States? What would you like to see us do? Okay, in order, not of political interests, but of human interests, you have to push toward your government to understand that the conditions of the people that you have in the Mexican border that are from Honduras are not criminals. They're asking for asylum because... I'm sorry, everyone, it seems that we have lost our Wi-Fi connection with Gerardo in Tegucigalpa, and we hope that that is not a negative consequence of the impending hurricane. So before we sign off on today's episode, I just want to let all of you know that there's a couple organizations through which you can make donations specifically to Honduras as the people of Honduras are getting absolutely no assistance, as Gerardo said, from their government. And you can make donations for the Honduran Solidarity Network at afgj.org and or through the Emergency Response Fund at SHARE, which is a capital, all capitals, S-H-A-R-E. I will post both links in the comments to this particular episode. And also I will include a couple links for donations to Nicaragua specifically for the Caribbean coast. But in one last thing before we go, I want to thank our partners, co-sponsors for today's episode, Alliance for Global Justice, Chicago Alba Solidarity, Friends of the ATC, Friends of Latin America, and Task Force on the Americas. Again, please check the comments below for links to donation sites. And we thank you so much for joining us today. We had a really compelling conversation regarding this year's hurricane season and the climate change devastation it's bringing upon Central America. And I'd like to remind you that we broadcast this program, what the F is going on in Latin America, every Wednesday, 7.30 p.m., that's our new time, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, 5.30 p.m. Pacific on Code Pink YouTube. And also don't forget to listen to Code Pink Radio every Thursday, 11 a.m. Eastern and 8 a.m. Pacific on WBAI New York City, WPFW Washington, D.C. Thanks again and we'll see you next week.