20th Century Migration

20th Century Migration: Escaping Economic Poverty and Political Violence

The United States has had a historical background of colonizations and liberations in which caused many foreign Europeans to clash for more power by extracting valuable resources. It seems to be more clear as to what the United States wanted to accomplish through their constant involvement with their neighboring Central American countries and Mexico. The U.S. has searched for different ways to extract the goods of nations and to send them back to boost their own economy. At this point, we can already make the assumption that the U.S. was more interested in the wealth and goods of Central America rather than the actual nation they are involved with. The U.S. Cold War policies

New products like cotton was introduced to make more profit and to expand export to the rest of the world. On the other hand, it also decreased the production of corn. This made it difficult for the Nicaraguan indigenous population to get corn because money was needed to purchase it from other countries. Many El Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, and Costa Rican plantation workers were forced to begin migrating up north in countries like Honduras where there was an expansion of numerous goods such as “coffee, tobacco, sugarcane, grain production” (Hamilton and Chinchilla, 83). This was specifically attracting to them. El Salvador, especially, experienced mass migration due to capitalism. Their production of Indigo slowly disappeared but coffee still expanded because their was a demand for higher prices in the world market. El Salvador was dependent on the world economy and the based their production through the demands of other countries. This began an increasing amount of unemployment because mass productions of goods had to be accomplished to stay in the world

Nations like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua relied on the U.S. markets to export their goods. El Salvador Was newly intervened by the U.S. government unlike Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica where there were U.S.-owned banana plantations. The 1960s and 1970s opened more doors for Central American states to have U.S. relations with their manufacturers. Since the U.S. owned several plantations in Central America, it was more accessible for workers to migrate to the U.S. It was the many work and educational opportunities in the United States that prompted Latin Americans to move there. Another factor that caused large migrations during the 1960s and 1970s was the fact that the Central American governments “targeted groups seeking to organize around issues and problems” (Hamilton and Chinchilla, 91). There was too much violence, killings and mass murders. There was also a significant growth of migration in the United States knowing that many Latin Americans seeked for a better livelihood than in their country of origin. This situation caused a rising concern for the American government because they were not aware of the growing number of illegal immigrants. As a result, mass deportations was used to limit the number of Latin Americans entering the