A Lesson in Economics from Deiby's Dad

Yesterday on the bus I sat next to a father of Deiby, one of our ninth graders. He is on Flacco’s bus almost every day with his bicycle, coming from his job in La Ceiba as a night watchman. He was of average build, clad as usual in a short sleeve button down shirt, baseball cap, and blue jeans. His face was dark and moustached and his eyes sparkled with intelligence and humor. He had told me of his work before, so I asked him about how things were going. “Good,” he said. “There have been no assaults yet.”

“No violence?” I confirmed his words, and he nodded in assent. “That’s good.”

“Sometimes they leave 70,000 lempiras with us overnight,” he explained.

“70,000!” That’s about $4000 – certainly enough to be tempting to thieves. “Is it only you guarding it?”

He shook his head. “There are two of us, all day and night. It’s a good job,” he continued, “but they pay very little.” His face hardened. “They pay a lot in the States, don’t they?”

It was a common question, and I was ready to give my standard response: of course, but cost of living is high enough to negate any advantage. He didn’t give me the chance to explain, but continued with his arguments.

“In the States,” he declared, “you can get shirts for 90 cents.” He rubbed the striped polyester button down he wore and said, “I bought 30 of these shirts when I was in Indiana.”

“30!” I exclaimed.”

“Si. In the States, for three dollars, you can buy five liters of milk. For three dollars, you can buy twelve nice sweet bananas. That’s breakfast for a week!”

“Yes,” I rejoined, thinking I had discovered a flaw in his argument, “but you can get bananas here for much cheaper.” I thought of the time I had bought 100 bananas for less than two dollars.

“I wasn’t thinking of the exchange rate,” he said, a little scornfully. “What can you buy with three lempiras? Nothing! In the States, 100 dollars can buy you groceries for weeks. Here, 100 lempiras—”

I nodded. “Maybe two days.”

“Here I only get paid 4000 lempiras a month,” he said. That’s about 220 dollars. “In the States, for one month of work, I made over a thousand dollars.”

I offered up my last argument. “When one leaves, it’s hard on the family.”

“Si, but one can leave for a little bit of time in order to live here better.” And I didn’t have any response. Nor did I have time for one, because we had reached his stop. “Let me down,” he called to the driver, “from the back!” And he rolled his bicycle out the back door and hopped to the ground.

And I was left to reflect. The exodus of hard-working fathers and husbands from Honduras to the States, it seems to me, is not a positive development. The U.S. beckons, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words, as the green breast of possibility. On ever more common TV sets, in popular music, and most of all on the tongues of innumerable relatives who have made the northward journey, Hondurans hear the tantalizing good news of money to be made in the States. Out of a population of about six million, there are an estimated 900,000 in the U.S. And I believe that communities here suffer. A social structure already weakened by promiscuity, adultery, abuse, deception, and violence is further damaged by the growing absence of upstanding, hard-working men. Those who might develop industry, business, and agriculture in their home country lend their strength to foreign companies.

But as I discovered yesterday, it is hard to argue with the economics. The working wage here is 50-80 lempiras a day. Working wage in the U.S. is about 50 dollars a day. But a gallon of milk here costs close to 50 lempiras, compared to 3 dollars in the U.S. I used to say that expenses are low here; that food especially is very cheap. But that is the perspective of one who can earn more in an hour than most Hondurans in a day. It has taken me more than a year to realize that.