According to Vice President Mike Pence, Honduras's president, Juan Orlando Hernández, told him that the illegal migrant caravan heading from his country through Mexico on to the U.S. is the work of Chavista Venezuela, with that country's oil cash being employed to destabilize both countries.

Here's what Breitbart reported, citing an interview with the Washington Post's Bob Costa:

Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday said Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández told him that the migrant caravan marching toward the U.S.-Mexico border is "financed by Venezuela." ...

The Vice President then revealed that Hernández told him that "leftist groups" from the Central American country organized the caravan, "financed by Venezuela" to "challenge our sovereignty, challenge our border."

That's quite an equation-changer, and it squares with what I argued yesterday, here and here:

Who is it?  Is it Soros, the hedge fund leftist billionaire of chaos who vowed to shell out $500 million for migrants a few years back?  Democrats, the same people who had tens of millions to pay for a fake dossier in a bid to win an election and who have lately been struggling to win the Latino vote?  Or is it, as I suspect, Chavista Venezuelan oil money, given the Chavistas' stated desire to flood America with indigent migrants (which has been around as a threat ever since Hugo Chávez taunted the U.S. over is border in the 2000s) as a means of spreading its revolution northward?  The Chavista ties of the caravan's front-group organizers, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, as well as its known Chavez-supporting Honduran ringleaders, are rather obvious.

The one clue we have starts with the two governments of Guatemala and Honduras, both of which have conservative, anti-Chavista governments.  They also have disgustingly rabid left-wing oppositions, the kind of people who openly admire Hugo Chávez and his utterly failed socialist revolution.  They like Cuba's government, too.  They are rabid left-wingers, and they seek above all to destabilize and topple the countries of their origin in order to see those countries join their heroes.  They can't get elected anymore, so this is what they do.

Remember Honduras in 2009?  The good Honduran people and their legislators rose up to throw out a Chavista pawn, Manuel Zelaya, who wanted to make himself dictator for life, as Chávez did.  That was the guy who got thrown out of the presidency by troops in his pajamas (actually, he was naked when he was rousted for bed, but the press liked the pajama story) and wore a cowboy hat.  He then got the whole hemisphere, via the Organization of American States, to condemn the Hondurans and sanction their country (making Chávez very empowered), just because they refused to be ruled forever by a communist.  "Better a year of sanctions than 20 years of Chávez," as one of the freedom-loving Hondurans said.  The Hondurans, led by the honorable Roberto Micheletti, toughed it out, suffering Obama administration sanctions so their country could be free.

There are still all kinds of problems left in Honduras, but the big one is the presence of radical Chavista leftists and their liberation theology church- and NGO-connected sidekicks who are still stirring the pot, offering free stuff as a substitute for an economy and making things ungovernable.  Their ultimate aim, now that their name stinks with voters after the 2009 fiasco, is to destabilize what little is left of battered Honduras in the name of la revolución by force or chaos or whatever, since they can't get elected.  What better way than to launch an unpopular migrant march to put pressure from President Trump on their governments as well as teach gringo a lesson that his borders mean nothing?

We do have a concrete clue in how the caravan was set up: with an offer of free stuff on the television and by, sure enough, one Bartolo Fuentes, an out-of-work politician and "journalist" known for being a left-wing supporter of Zelaya and Chávez.

According to the Wall Street Journal's editorial page:

A Mariel replay now seems to be coming from Honduras.  Though the details are murky, we do know that former Honduran congressman Bartolo Fuentes of the left-wing Libre Party has admitted to organizing this caravan.

Libre is the party of former president Manuel Zelaya, an ally of Venezuela and Cuba who in 2009 tried to override the Honduran constitution to remain in office despite a term limit.  The Honduran congress, his own party, the Supreme Court, the national ombudsman and the Catholic Church opposed his power grab.  He was removed by the military and never returned to power despite the efforts of the Obama Administration.

But Mr. Zelaya remains active in politics.  While center-right President Juan Orlando Hernández has encouraged Hondurans on the journey to return home and even has offered them assistance, Mr. Zelaya is egging them on.

In a press release last week, he accused Mr. Hernández of a "submissive and lackey attitude" toward "the arrogant position of the empire" and criticized Mr. Hernández's efforts to "deepen failed economic policies" like privatization.  The opposition is now calling for street protests with a threat that if Mr. Hernández does not step down, the migration wave will continue.

Under pressure, he now denies that he offered any free stuff and says he has no Venezuela ties, but that seems to be belied by the television reporting.  Note also his marked use of Chavista buzzwords in his speech – calling the U.S. "the empire."  Only Hugo Chávez used to do that.

The president of Honduras knew what the game was, which is why he called up the president of Guatemala and asked him to remove the guy.  The president of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, believed him; busted the guy; and shipped him back home to Honduras, where he promptly initiated U.S. flag-burning at the U.S. embassy.

The claims of Fuentes that he offered no support to would-be migrants are rather belied by the fact that migrants were first filmed taking paychecks, as seen on Twitter.  Then there's the fact that trucks are taking the migrants northward, and trucks are expensive.  Someone is paying for that.  What's more, migrants are abandoning expensive baby strollers to get on those trucks.  Very poor people tend to be reluctant to abandon expensive things without compensation.

Meanwhile, let's go take a look at the U.S. leftists, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, who are on this side of things, and who have a base in Tijuana, on the border with San Diego, which is where the migrants are now heading, despite the fact that it greatly increases the length of their journey.  The base is there, so that's where they are going.  PSF has done previous stunts of this kind, notably last April, and its website is loaded with Chavista propaganda, as I noted earlier.  It's certainly tied to this effort.

Chávez himself, when he was alive, had a thing for using migrants to destabilize the U.S. and once said he wanted to head for the U.S. border to encourage just that.  Now, it appears, la lucha se continúa with his remaining minions, and their animating motives are to destabilize Central American countries, not just the U.S.  Venezuela is in bad shape, and it seems likely that those in power there would not have that much money to throw around at international adventurism, but they've also got quite a bit of malice toward the U.S. for its sanctions on Venezuela's top officials and a desperate desire to seem relevant, what with all the news about the country's own migrant outpouring.  Could the Venezuelan honchos cook something like this up and finance it?  Motive-wise, they could; infrastructure-wise, with all the lefty activists out there, they could; and money-wise, it's not out of the question.  Let's just remind ourselves that the presidents of Honduras and Guatemala have reason to believe it.

Image credit: Agência Brasil, CC BY-SA 3.0.