“.. The major population of refugees entering the U.S. are coming from four countries in Central America: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, which comprise the “Northern Triangle.” Violence there is apocalyptically bad — especially in El Salvador, where the murder rate was an eye-popping 60 per 100,000 in 2017 (and that is itself a sharp decline from 81.2 in 2016 and over 100 the year before that.) .. ”
WHY?
“.. In brief, these countries have a severe gang problem, rooted in the drug trade and decades of political instability. The United States bears a great deal of responsibility for both. The U.S. started and then fueled a decades-long civil war in Guatemala that killed some 200,000 civilians. It fueled the 12-year civil war in El Salvador with money and arms. It armed right-wing death squads in Nicaragua that used Honduras as an operating base. Most of the big gangs are directly descended from demobilized soldiers and militias.
Then there is the drug trade, which is a major profit center for gangs. Central America is the biggest conduit for cocaine coming from growers in South America to customers in the U.S., and trafficking is both immensely profitable and the cause of violent turf wars. Again the U.S. both created the conditions for drug profits through its domestic drug prohibition policy, and directly fueled violent conflict by pushing a policy throughout the region of attacking drug gangs with the military. Disrupting existing gangs turned out to actually escalate violence dramatically, as new gangs fought to control the vacated territory and business…”
From The Week
Why won’t the US decriminalize drugs? Because the CIA skims the poppy exports from Afghanistan for its black budget ops .. this is why we are still in Afghanistan fighting an unwinnable war .. STUPID POLITICIANS .. killing our soldiers and innocent civilians in Central and South America .. what a legacy.