OMOA, Honduras (AP) — At a converted seaside hotel, more than 200 Honduran migrants stepped off six buses, weary from traveling overnight across Guatemala after being deported by Mexico.

Their journeys ended somewhere in Mexico, short of the U.S. border, and now early Friday morning they were back in Honduras making arrangements to return to where they started.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection last month reported more than 41,000 encounters with Hondurans at the U.S. southern border. That was some 12,000 more than during March 2019.

The reasons Hondurans continue to flee their country have been well documented: pervasive violence, deep-seated corruption, lack of jobs and widespread destruction from two major hurricanes that struck the region last November.

Here at one of the Honduran government’s reception centers for returnees, their documents were reviewed, they received medical checks and with the help of the Red Cross, they were screened for whether they could safely return to their communities.

Gilles Carbonnier, vice president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, visited the center Friday during a weeklong visit to El Salvador and Honduras. Among its efforts, the Red Cross works to support people displaced by violence.

On Saturday, Carbonnier told of meeting a Honduran cobbler who had a shop in a market in Tegucigalpa. One of the region’s infamous street gangs was extorting him and when he could no longer pay, the gang severely beat him.

The man saw no choice but to close his shop and migrate to the U.S. He was deported more than a year ago, screened at another of Honduras’ reception centers and eventually referred to the Red Cross. The humanitarian agency helped him relocate and gave him some money.

“With the pecuniary help we gave him, he bought the material to restart his cobbler activities and right now he has two shops, six employees and was able to restart his life,” Carbonnier said.

Hondurans and others around the world feel the need to migrate because of “a lack of opportunity and a lack of hope,” Carbonnier said. “And a lack of opportunity with a lack of hope results in you saying, ‘There’s no space for me in this country and I’m going.’”

For Eugenio Sosa, a sociologist at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, the assorted factors pushing Hondurans out of the country have contributed to a general hopelessness.

“The people don’t go just because it’s really bad,” Sosa said. “The people go because it’s bad and because they are certain that it is going to continue to be bad and that the country has rotted forever.”

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been charged with addressing the root causes of the region’s migration, struck a similar note this week.

She said Wednesday that the U.S. wants to use its resources — the Biden administration has spoken of $4 billion in aid — to provide the people of the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras “with some hope that if they stay at home, help is on the way and they can have some hope that the opportunities and the needs that they have will be met in some way.”

Sosa said even small signs of things beginning to turn around would make a difference, even if monumental challenges in the areas of health, education, jobs and corruption won’t change overnight.

“If the people begin to see small changes they begin to think that it’s worth more to stay than to go,” Sosa said.

Honduran migrants set out from San Pedro Sula in caravans in December, January and March. All of the attempts to travel safely in large groups fizzled by the time they entered Guatemala. But the caravans of recent years only represent a minute fraction of the daily migration that goes mostly unseen as families or individuals strike out on their own or with the help of smugglers.

The Trump administration pressured Mexico and Central American governments to more aggressively work to stop migrants. The Biden administration has sent a more compassionate message that in many cases has been mistaken as an invitation, or at least a sign of a friendlier reception. The reality however continues to be that the U.S. government quickly expels most of those arriving at its southern border.

When White House officials said this week they had reached agreements with Northern Triangle governments to deploy soldiers to help combat migrant smuggling at their borders, advocacy groups criticized the administration for trying to make it more difficult for people seeking international protection.

Carbonnier said countries have a right to control their borders, but also must treat migrants humanely and with dignity.

“What we’ve seen in the Sahara desert, what we’ve seen in the Mediterranean Sea, what we’ve seen in parts of Asia, is that when stricter measures are taken to restrict the possibilities of migrating through more official ways, migration continues,” Carbonnier said. “The migrants take more risks because they have to find alternative means.”

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The food assistance agency of the United Nations announced Monday that it will begin operations in Venezuela after reaching an agreement with the South American nation’s government.

The efforts of the World Food Program will focus on feeding children in the areas with the highest prevalence of food insecurity. The agency plans to gradually expand programs to reach 1.5 million children by providing school meals, spending on remodeling school cafeterias and training staff on food safety standards.

“The children and the schools will be at the centre of our operation,” World Food Program executive director David Beasley said in a statement. “We believe the school is the most appropriate platform for WFP to reach communities in an independent manner.”

The announcement comes as Venezuela grapples with soaring food prices amid four-digit inflation, making it challenging for families to afford nutritious meals. The Rome-based agency has estimated that one of every three Venezuelans is struggling to consume enough daily calories.

Unlike recent years, when food insecurity was mainly a consequence of basic food shortages, the fundamental cause now is the high prices set in dollars. The average salary is less than $5 a month, which in most cases includes minimum wage and bonuses, but a chicken costs $2.40 per kilo (2.2 pounds).

A joint analysis by World Food Program and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in October included Venezuela among 20 countries that were “likely to face potential spikes in high acute food insecurity” over the following three to six months and required “urgent attention.”

The agency’s goal is to reach 185,000 students by year’s end and 1.5 million by the end of the 2022-2023 school year. It estimated the food assistance program’s annual budget at $190 million.

“We are relying on the support of the international donor community to back our operation in Venezuela,” said Beasley, who traveled to Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, to meet with government officials.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Beasley met at the presidential palace. Maduro in a televised event expressed his satisfaction that a first step of many others has been taken as part of “a set of ambitious projects that include food support for the entire people of Venezuela” following three years of “approach, encounters, disagreements.”

Miguel Díaz-Canel was never a guerrilla fighter and was for only a few years, like all Cubans of his generation, a soldier. He rose peacefully and diligently through the approved channels. And he isn’t named Castro.

On Monday, Cuba’s Communist Party congress — as expected — chose Díaz-Canel to be its leader, adding that crucial post to the title of president he assumed in 2018. In both cases, he replaces his mentor Raul Castro, 89, sealing a political dynasty that had held power since the 1959 revolution.

Díaz-Canel, who turns 61 on Tuesday, is a relative youngster compared to members of the generation that accompanied Fidel Castro in his battle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and then stayed on in power for decade after decade while cementing a Soviet-style political system.

Born a year after the revolution in the west-central city of Santa Clara, he reportedly dabbled as a youth in minor unconformities — wearing long hair and following The Beatles in a communist nation tightly aligned with the Soviet Union that then frowned upon them as an instrument of cultural imperialism.

He earned and engineering degree and dedicated himself to official politics, rising to a senior post in the Union of Young Communists and then through a series of bureaucratic positions in Cuba’s provinces, where he gained a reputation as a pragmatic administrator with an amiable, informal manner in dealing with the public.

In 2009, a year after Raul Castro formally replaced Fidel as Cuba’s president, Díaz-Canel became minister of higher education. In 2012 he rose to one of Cuba’s vice presidencies and soon thereafter was named first vice president.

A string of other promising young officials over the years had been seen as heirs apparent to the Castros, only to fall because they pretended to too much power too quickly, dabbled in questionable deals or were caught in unguarded moments making indiscreet comments about the leadership.

But Díaz-Canel did not appear to push, and he did not stumble. He steadfastly defended the system against dissidents and U.S. hostility while appearing open to pushes for limited reforms bubbling up from the populace — and at a pace that didn’t alarm his bosses.

Taking over from Raul as president in 2018, he nudged the accelerator forward on some reforms that the government had already begun to open the once-wholly state-dominated economy- Cuba allowed more small private businesses and made life a little easier for some small-scale entrepreneurs.

In recent months, he has overseen the end of a clumsy system of dual currencies and a further opening to small business. The new party congress was expected to go further. Crucially for many, Cuba has finally allowed widespread use of the internet.

But there’s been no opening at all to dissident political movements, even if control — as in recent years — has leaned toward harassment, surveillance and short-term jail spells rather than sending people to prison for decades.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines made a heartfelt plea Monday to the international community to help his country recover from a volcanic eruption that has displaced 20,000 people, saying the island nation is “in its midnight hour of need.”

“Across our land, the faces of men and women are strained and anxious. They’re hurting badly,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told the U.N. Security Council, saying his country is confronting “a monumental challenge of humanitarian relief.”

La Soufrière, the volcano on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, unleashed its first big eruption of ash and hot gas April 9, a day after the government ordered people to evacuate homes nearby. Subsequent explosions have followed.

Thousands of people have been living in government shelters, some of which have been struggling to provide basic supplies, and water systems are shut down in many parts of the island.

The U.N.’s resident coordinator for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean said last week that the island was facing “a humanitarian crisis that is growing and may continue for weeks and months.” It is happening as St. Vincent and the Grenadines contends with the coronavirus pandemic and the approaching hurricane season.

A Venezuelan navy ship has delivered water and other supplies to St. Vincent, and Caribbean island nations are sending aid. The U.N. has released $1 million from an emergency response fund, according to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ office, and the world body will soon be launching an emergency appeal for money to fund the humanitarian effort and the early phase of recovery for the next six months.

Speaking at a virtual U.N. Security Council meeting about regional organizations, Gonsalves praised them and the U.N. for their assistance so far but said much more is needed.

“Without effective cooperation between our country, the United Nations and our regional and sub-regional organizations, our life and living will be wholly unbearable,” he said and urged the global community to be generous.

“Please help St. Vincent and the Grenadines in its midnight hour of need,” he said.