The Caribbean with Simon Reeve Part 3

 The Caribbean with Simon Reeve 

    Reeve takes to the effectively war-torn nations of Nicaragua and Honduras, and what he finds is startling. At the time of filming Nicaragua had a plan for a mega-canal to cut through the nation to allow for super-ships to pass through Central America. While I understand that this would making global shipping vastly more efficient, I believe the environmental consequences of such an operation to be far too costly. The locals "don't understand how the canal would benefit them" and that's simply because it wouldn't in many ways. It takes an extended period of time for the benefits of a mega-project like this to reaped. In the near term the people of Nicaragua would see their homeland absolutely destroyed, people displaced, and major habitat loss. Down the line jobs could be created relating to the canal and it's maintenance as well as service positions due to the new traffic that would flow through the nation. I think that if such an operation were ever to come to be the natives would have to endure a massive amount of potentially unfixable pain and suffering until they saw any benefit at all. Those benefits would be strictly economical as well, the environmental damage would be catastrophic and largely permanent. For what seems like for the better this plan never came to be, the Chinese company that was funding this project fell apart and abandoned the canal idea a few years back. Nicaragua is a dangerous and impoverished nation as is much of Central America. 

    Honduras has the most murders per capita of anywhere in the world, bodies line the streets in some places in a nation run by a criminal empire. Reeve receives first-hand accounts of the atrocities occurring as he spends time with local police patrolling the area and coming up on the bodies of two murdered police officers. The true lawlessness of the area is ever-apparent in Honduras where the backdrop is paradise and the reality is murder and poverty. As Reeve brings us towards the end of his journey the common theme of the carribean is obvious, poverty and murder in paradise. It's strange how such a beautiful region of the world is so ravaged by drugs and starvation. Clearly, natural beauty and pleasant weather in an area has nothing to do with economic viability. Reeve moves on to speak to gang members in prison in Honduras as they bring to light their plea for a peace treaty with the Honduran government. The Honduran government doesn't appear to be interested in peace and pardons and seems to have a stomach for war. I'm not sure why the Honduran government doesn't take this peace treaty maybe they don't want to be seen as weak, but they are playing with lives to hold this sentiment. 

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