Last Polls in Honduran Presidential Election: Dead Heat

In Honduras, it is illegal to poll the last month before the presidential election.

Today El Heraldo published the results of the latest, and last, CID Gallup poll in the presidential race.

Their headline: At one month before the elections, JOH one point advantage over Xiomara.

Our headline: Honduran Presidential Election Enters Final Stage in a Statistical Tie.

Based on polling conducted October 6-15, the CID Gallup poll reportedly finds voters who intend to vote breaking 28% for the Partido Nacional (Juan Orlando Hernández), 27% for LIBRE (Xiomara Castro), 17% for the Partido Liberal (Mauricio Villeda), and 9% for the Anti-Corruption Party (Salvador Nasrallah), with 3% each for the candidacies of Andres Pavon and Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, and a reported 3% "do not know/declined to respond".

The absolute numbers in these Gallup polls are always higher than those in other polls, apparently because they are not including the voters who say they may not vote. The trends are clear when we look at the Gallup polling data over time: Nasralla continues to slide down; Villeda has drawn a small number of voters as the Anti-Corruption party declined; but the main increase tracking the decreases in the Anti-Corruption Party is in the institutional Partido Nacional.

There is evidence in this latest poll, as there was previously in the fine grained data from CESPAD, that party affiliation is breaking down. While the Liberal Party was identified as the party affiliation by 22% of those polled, Villeda draws only 17% of the vote. Similarly, while Hernández has a reported 28% of the intended vote, 35% of those polled identified as Partido Nacional members.

CID Gallup doesn't let us speculate on where those other Partido Liberal and Nacional voters are going; CESPAD, though, showed in August that 23% of Liberal Party voters then favored LIBRE, as did 7.6% of Partido Nacional voters not favoring Hernández, with almost the same number then planning to vote for Nasrallah.

El Heraldo's story reports on a number of other polls, some of which, like Paradigma, we have been steadily tracking. These minor polls range from one by Opinión y Analísis that has Hernández at 28.1%, Castro at 23%, and Villeda at 20.1%; to TecniMerk showing Castro winning with 31.9%, Hernández at 22.8%, and Villeda at 13.2%.

While these two minor polls should be questioned due to the wide margins of victory they project, not seen in other polls, they are at least consistent with the other polling that shows LIBRE and the Partido Nacional running head to head. A third minor poll mentioned by El Heraldo, from a firm called Inteligence, seems anything but credible, as it is alone in having the Partido Liberal ahead, with 34.8% of the vote, leading the Partido Nacional at 28.33% and supposedly showing LIBRE in third place at 16,15%. It is almost as if this poll inadvertently reversed LIBRE and the Partido Liberal.

One of these candidates will receive the most votes in November. If election monitoring prevents fraud-- a big if in Honduras-- that same candidate will become the next president.

The current polling data do not allow identification of a clear leader, but do tell us that the traditional two party system has been effectively challenged for the first time in Honduran history: LIBRE and the Partido Nacional are the clear leaders vying for control of the presidency, and one of these did not exist at the time of the last election.

Whatever the outcome, the political landscape has changed in Honduras.

And They're Off: Honduran Presidential Campaign Begins

San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa are festooned with vast quantities of political campaign signs this morning as Monday marked the official start of the campaign to elect a new president, congress, and 298 municipal governments.  These signs encode the party they represent through the use of colors:  red and black for Libre, yellow and red for the Democratic Unification Party, blue for the National Party, red and white for the Liberal Party, and so on.

In the most recent poll by Paradigma, Xiomara Castro maintains her lead (although almost half the electorate expressed no support for any of the declared candidates):

Xiomara Castro                19.8%
Juan Hernandez               16.7%
Mauricio Villeda                 7.0%
Salvador Nasralla               6.2%
Andres Pavon                     0.6%
Romeo Vasquez                  0.4%
Jorge Aguilar                      0.2%
Orle Solis                           0.2%
Not reporting/Not Stated    17.5%
None of the Above             31.4%

The poll,  of 2,429 individuals in 16 departments in Honduras between July 16 and July 30, has a margin of error of 2%.  Some Honduran press sources inflated Hernandez' numbers in publishing the results, rounding him up to 17% (or more).

While candidates have, so far, said little of substance, here's a list of eight presidential candidates and the positions they've adopted:

1. Juan Orlando Hernandez - National Party.  Political pundits, who uniformly dismiss the new political parties, consider him the candidate to beat.  Hernandez championed the new military police, and has indicated that we should expect more militarization of the police should he win office.  He's been an advocate of privatization of government resources and income streams during his term as head of Congress.

2. Mauricio Villeda - Liberal Party.  After nearly half of the Liberal party left to form Libre, that left a power vacuum which was filled by the extremely conservative wing of the party, typified by the leader of the coup-installed de facto government, Roberto Micheletti, and Mauricio Villeda. Villeda has come out against corruption, and for more extradition of Hondurans involved in international organized crime.  He's against gay marriage in Honduras.  Villeda promised change in 15 years, well beyond his term limit.  Most of Villeda's attention has been on disparaging Libre and Xiomara Castro.  Villeda, third in the polls, unlike Hernandez and Castro has not seen his popularity increase in the last six months.

3. Salvador Nasralla - Anti-Corruption Party.  He's told the business community in Honduras that he believes in free enterprise, but also in them paying their taxes.  Nasralla, on being asked to sign an agreement to abide by the results of the election implied he would call the electorate to insurrection should there be indications of widespread fraud.  Nasralla has intimated that election credentials were being traded and sold, causing the legal representative of PAPH (another new party, started by former Armed Forces commander Romeo Vasquez Velasquez) to demand he prove his accusations.  Nasralla has advocated for the military to return to their barracks and to cease any policing role.

4. Xiomara Castro - Partido de Libertad y Refundación. (LIBRE),  Castro would continue with the assistance programs to poor families begun under the Lobo Sosa administration.  But instead of continuing with the neo-liberal economic policies that have been dismantling the Honduran economy and leading to greater inequality and poverty, she proposes economic policies that would dismantle the monopolies created in the last 20 years and provide equal access to capital, both from private banks, and from the government.  In addition she's open to and welcomes foreign investment and technology transfer, as long as it respects Honduran sovereignty and laws.  She would re-implement the technology bonds meant to allow campesinos to modernize their farming techniques, originally introduced under José Manuel Zelaya.  Most of all, she emphasizes that this is not a campaign about leftists and rightists:

"Those that supported the coup d'etat, the constitutional crisis, the destruction of the rule of law, the destruction of democracy accusing us of being communists and radical leftists are the only ones interested in ideologically polarizing this campaign.....We of Libre, represent exactly the opposite."

This is a swipe at Hernandez, Vasquez, and Villeda, all of whom have been accusing her of being a radical leftist who is going to bring communism into Honduras.  Castro advocated that the military be returned to their barracks and cease their policing duties.

5. Romeo Vasquez Velasquez - Honduran Patriotic Alliance (PAPH) - Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, retired head of the armed forces of Honduras and a leader of the 2009 coup, is running with a promise to provide security and halt illegal activity. He says he's running to prevent chaos and bloodshed in the country.  Vasquez was mocked during the signing of an accord to protect human rights with catcalls of "murderer" by members of two other new parties, FAPER and Libre, which caused him to claim they disrespected him and to ask what happened to human rights for those who aren't leftist.

6. Andres Pavon - Frente Amplio Político Electoral en Resistencia (FAPER) and the Unificación Democratica Party (UD).  Pavon told the Cortés Chamber of Commerce that he is for jobs, security, and dialogue.  Pavon is vocally in favor of gay marriage.  He proposed small hydroelectric dams to improve electricity generation without the population displacement and investment needed for larger projects.  He is a proponent of biodiesel to decrease Honduran imports of petroleum.  Pavon agrees with the current Plan de la Nacion (a 20 year set of goals created under the current government) but proposes they need to be updated with participatory socialism (or what got Zelaya overthrown).

7. Orle Solis - Christian Democrats. Solis has promised to modernize the government and especially to bring government aid to modernizing agricultural production.  She also promised to reduce migration to the cities

8. Jorge Aguilar - Partido de Innovación y Unidad Social Demócrata (PINU).  Aguilar promised to reduce the government deficit from 13% to 3% in 2014 by making government more efficient and modern.  He proposes that there's more government income to be had simply from improving collections of taxes (something the current government has not been able to do, leaving an estimated 40% in the hands of businesses).  Aguilar also emphasized security.

There you have it. Eight candidates, nine parties, four of them new, with the lead close between the traditional party in power and the most populist of the new parties. Under Honduran law, the top vote recipient becomes the president: no run off needed, no minimum level of popular support.

The next three months should be interesting...

Honduras has a Police Problem

And, contrary to English-language media-- including the usually more critical BBC-- it is not taking effective steps to solve it.

If you read the Washington Post, you will be told that 176 cops were arrested "for alleged connections to kidnappings, extortion plots and drug trafficking". Quoting the highest level Honduran source, President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the Post said

the mass arrest is part of a nationwide crackdown on corrupt police.

A spokesman for the National police, Silvio Inestroza, went further, claiming these officers had "links with drug gangs".

Drug violence is the one narrative about Honduras that US media seem to understand, so it is no surprise that Honduran authorities repeat it, and while disappointing, not even surprising that the US media parrot it back.

But in this instance, that is not in fact what is going on. To understand what is really happening, you need to ask, "Why 176 officers, and not others? Why those 176 police officers?"

As CNN International correctly notes, the 176 are the complement assigned to one police outpost in Tegucigalpa. So, not quite so sweeping a "nationwide crackdown" of the Honduran police force-- which totals around 11,000 members.

CNN's lead paragraph falls into the trap, describing the action as part of a "a campaign to cleanse its national police."

Buried far down in their story is the fact that this station is where four police officers worked who are suspected in the murder of two university students, including the son of university rector Julieta Castellanos.

The Washington Post managed to blur that one-to-one correspondence entirely, writing only that

The detentions late Wednesday came three days after the president fired six high-ranking officers following the release by police of four policemen who allegedly killed the son of a university chancellor.

The "detentions" not only came three days after-- the detained were the colleagues who worked with the suspected killers, and who let them walk out.

Castellanos, of course, was a member of the official "Truth Commission" on which the US State Department placed much of its hopes for national reconciliation, despite Honduran skepticism. So the murder of her son is international news.

Castellanos herself used the opportunity to point out that her son's murder is part of a pattern of police complicity in violence that extends beyond the children of the socially- and politically- prominent.

This is a pattern that English-language media have not covered particularly well. And the present stories are simply additional examples of what goes wrong in the reporting process.

CNN International presents the story exactly as the Honduran authorities would like. It takes the specific, and quite limited, investigations of 176 officers at one post as evidence of a commitment to cleaning up the police force, calling it "the latest of a series of steps" taken for that purpose.

CNN described the removal of police command officers as if the impetus for this originated from within, saying "Days after the incident, the national police shook up its top ranks". But the removal of officers came from outside the police force, as a product of political calculation in the Lobo Sosa government.

CNN writes approvingly that the Honduran Congress

rewrote the country's policing laws, stripping the national police of its internal affairs department, and handing over such investigations to a new, independent force.

This claim advances the argument that there are just a few "rotten apples" in the Honduran police, and adding more, separate, police units will somehow solve what in fact is a problem rooted of abuse of power, in impunity.

If you read these stories, you would think the police killing of the two university students was an anomaly, a product of police involvement in drug trafficking.

But Honduran reports suggest the killing was an arbitrary and unconstrained abuse of power: having wounded one of the students, the officers decided not to bring them in for medical attention, which would have triggered an investigation of the circumstances of the original shooting.

It is up to Fox News Latino to give a more credible account, in a story covering the protest following the police bungling of the case. It opens with quotes from Julieta Castellanos:

"There has been a process of tampering with evidence, there has been a process of obstructing the investigation. The police have engaged in double-talk."

"they intimidate the prosecutors, the investigators and the medical examiners."

Unlike the other English media, this story goes on to report fully on the skepticism about government actions. On the changes in officers, they note

critics said the move amounted to no more than "rotations" of officers between posts.

Most astonishing are the final few paragraphs of this story, unparalleled in other US media:

Lobo, who was elected in November 2009 in a process marred by violence, media censorship and low turnout, has so far failed on his promise to improve public safety.

Few murders are ever solved and Honduran authorities routinely ascribe violent acts to "score-settling" within and among the country's youth gangs and criminal outfits.

At the same time, many of the killings since Zelaya's ouster appear to be politically motivated, as victims are often associated with the resistance movement that sprang up in the wake of the coup.

The deposed head of state returned to Honduras five months ago under a pact brokered by regional leaders, but violence against his supporters and other activists continues.

So what actually happened in the recent events? Should we see any of it as even a tiny ray of light, set against this sobering-- and entirely accurate-- account by Fox News Latino?

The Honduran National Police released the four officers under investigation for the murder of the two university students, who promptly failed to turn up for further investigation. The Lobo Sosa government shuffled appointments of officials with oversight authority for the police, and used the opportunity-- again-- to use the Armed Forces in civilian policing, in violation of Honduran constitutional separation of the missions of these forces.

When outrage continued, the remaining police officers from the post where those responsible for this one crime were assigned were ordered to report to a different post, to be individually investigated. Detained for investigation, not arrested, as was reported in the English-language media. But arrested sounds so much more effective, doesn't it?

La Prensa Latina reports comments by the pro-coup Human Rights commissioner Ramón Custodio, and by Andrés Pavón of the Comité Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, who has often been opposed to Custodio since the 2009 coup, that demonstrate how widespread Honduran distrust of the police forces actually is.

Custodio said that

"the agents of the police have license to rob, kill, extort, and we cannot do anything, because the high command practices impunity, cover-ups and other crimes."

Pavón, in turn, said that

"there are so many extra-judicial deaths and by their characteristics it is known that the Police participate everyday in those horrendous crimes".

From both sides of the spectrum, it is clear to Hondurans that the problem of the police is a problem of impunity, and that it is not limited to one bad apple.

Or even 176 bad apples in a single barrel.

Miguel Facussé Blinks

Miguel Facussé Barjum, head of DINANT Corporation, is waging a public relations campaign to try and improve his image, and that of his company.

At the same time, he is sharpening his attacks on those who criticize him.

On the PR side, he has received positive publicity for his scarlet macaw research center in Zacate Grande. A year ago he gave over 100 titles to properties in Zacate Grande for things like the town water tank, the churches, etc. with the idea that the town would protect wildlife and encourage tourism.

Today he is in a fight with about 300 campesinos in Zacate Grande over land rights and the right of their radio station to operate.

His recent actions suggest he has reached the end of his rope. In short order, he has sued prominent critics; taken out self-promoting newspaper ads, including one in which he sought to unilaterally renegotiate the terms of a settlement with the Honduran government over disputed land in the Bajo Aguan; and continued his campaign of seeking police enforcement of judicial orders against campesinos living on land he refuses to cede.

Targets of his suits against Honduran critics recently included Monsignor Luis Alfonso Santos, Bishop of Santa Rosa de Copan, and Andres Pavon, head of a major human rights organization in Honduras, the Comité para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (CODEH).

Both were sued for defamation of character and, ironically, purported human rights violations.

The case centers on comments Santos and Pavón made associating Miguel Facussé with the deaths of 14 campesinos (so far) in the Bajo Aguan.

The cases against both gentlemen were dismissed by the Tribunal de Sentencia of Tegucigalpa, though Facussé's lawyer, Antonio Ocampo, wants to appeal, or to refile the charges in Choluteca or Olancho where he has friendly judges.

Bishop Santos issued an apology for his use of the word "arabe" to describe Facussé, whose family has been Honduran for several generations after emigrating from the Middle East.

But none of his critics have been discouraged from discussing the facts Facussé most objects to having mentioned, the role of his hired enforcers in the deaths of campesinos in the Bajo Aguan.

In his latest move, on June 10, Facussé took out a newspaper advertisement stating the terms on which he would accept government compensation in return for the disputed land in the Bajo Aguan. This reverses positions he has held as recently as June 7.

Then, in an interview with radio station HRN, Facussé claimed that much of the land was worth 300,00 lempiras/hectare, but that he would sell it for 135,000/hectare to the government. A further 800 hectares he claimed were worth 400,000 lempiras/hectare, for which he wanted full price from the government.

But the land wasn't really worth what he was asking, and the government took a hard line on the price.

In today's paid advertisement, he said he accepted the government's offered price for 3200 hectares of land, at prices that vary between 76,000 and 103,000 lempiras per hectare.

But he continued to try to bargain, saying that he would not transfer three farms the government plans to transfer to the campesinos represented by MUCA. Cesar Ham, head of INA, rejected Facussé's offer since it would violate the government's agreement with MUCA.

The farms Facussé does not wish to transfer are called Marañones, Lempira, and La Concepción. Marañones, 400 hectares, he proposes to give to the Cooperativo de Empleados de DINANT, set up for the employees who will lose their jobs in this land transfer.

Lempira and La Concepción, totaling some 894 hectares, he insists on keeping. What's unclear is what's so special about these two farms, located in Tocoa proper.

Why did Facussé hold out for ridiculously high prices for the land, then give in and accept the government's much lower rate?

The newspaper advertisement offers a clue. In it he says that he seeks to collaborate with the government to establish an environment suitable for foreign investment, something that he needs to keep his business running.

Not only did his advertisement fail in his goal of getting a settlement on his terms; it also perpetuated his campaign against the campesino activists in the Bajo Aguan. In it, he announced that he had solicited and received orders from a judge in Tocoa to remove the campesinos who have occupied the farms he does not wish to sell to the government, and he was turning these judicial orders over to the police for enforcement.

Facussé's continuing conflict with campesinos and publicity about the violence against them has cost his company. Significant international financing for his biodiesel project was withdrawn this spring by two separate European sources. This biodiesel plant was to be supplied from his African oil palm farms in the Bajo Aguan.

While attempting to generate good public relations, Facussé has managed to point out that he is the impediment to a Bajo Aguan solution. The scrutiny his position in the Bajo Aguan has invited from international investors is a problem that affects all Honduran businesses, not just DINANT Corporation.

The government of Lobo Sosa knows this, and it knows it cannot go back on its agreement with MUCA and retain its own international funding. The government could simply expropriate the farms in question, and pay the appraised value of the land. It is a credit to Miguel Facussé's power that so far it has not done so.

But when Facussé began to take out newspaper ads to try to take his case to the public, it was a sign that he knows he has lost control of the message internationally, and probably nationally as well.

Strange Coincidences

On Saturday, the Special Anti-Kidnapping Unit (GEAS in Spanish, Grupo Especial AntiSecuestro) of the National Police announced they had rescued a kidnapped cousin of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

Mario Filberto Moya Lobo was kidnapped October 16, 2010 near Catacamas, Olancho. According to El Heraldo, Moya Lobo was being held on a hacienda in the mountains of La Zarzaloza, Ocotillal, in the Municipio of Patuca, Olancho. After being freed, he was returned by the police to Catacamas.

Also involved in the operation were elements of the Colombian Special Anti-Kidnapping unit of the Army, the Gaula, who are in Honduras to train its National Police. The Gaula groups specialize in breaking up criminal groups. El Heraldo reported that they have helped free 11 Hondurans kidnapped so far. The National Police spokesperson went to great lengths to explain that their role was only advisory, that this was a domestic operation.

According to La Tribuna, no one was captured during the rescue, but the Anti-Kidnapping Police were left there to "comb the countryside" to find those responsible.

Thursday morning, six bodies (seven in some reports) turned up in one small aldea in Olancho.

All six bodies were found in Ocotillal, Municipio of Patuca, Olancho, where the operation that freed Moya Lobo was carried out.

Every press account agrees they were some of those involved in the kidnapping of Moya Lobo. CODEH, the non-governmental human rights organization headed by Andres Pavon, has indicated the National Police are responsible for the deaths of these individuals. The National Police deny responsibility, explicitly stating they detained no one, and report they've opened a special investigation.

Its not the first time the Special Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the National Police has been embroiled in controversy. On November 1 a member of the unit, stationed in La Ceiba, was captured while kidnapping a San Pedro Sula businessman in San Pedro Sula.

The same officer's police-issued gun had been found in a car belonging to kidnappers "a few years ago", but "nothing came of it."

To hear the National Police tell it, it was just a coincidence that the Anti-Kidnapping Unit was combing the area where the six or seven bodies turned up, all on a single hacienda in the aldea of Ocotillal, Patuca, Olancho.

A coincidence that strains credulity, don't you think?

The business of the Truth Commission is business

What does it mean when the most accurate English language reports about the aftermath of the Honduran coup come from the business media?

Not for the first time, Bloomberg has a clear and accurate story, and it even includes new information: citing Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati, the economic impact of the coup was a reduction of 6.6 percent of gross domestic product, equivalent to $930.6 million.

Bloomberg also manages to actually cite a Honduran against the coup without describing him inaccurately as a "leftist", a "Zelaya supporter", or any of the other terms used to diminish the authority of those opposed to the Lobo Sosa administration and to the international movement to artificially impose closure on Honduran society:

Coup opponents such as Andres Pavon, head of the Honduran Human Rights Defense Committee, say they fear the truth commission, headed by former Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, isn’t qualified and will whitewash the coup.

This is the crux of the matter. And it does matter: to the extent that a major constituency in Honduras sees the "truth commission" as illegitimate, it cannot be successful in bridging polarization among Hondurans.

But then, that is not what the commission is for: Bloomberg reports that Canahuati hopes it will help the country return to the Organization of American States and reduce investor concerns over political instability:

"We want to do what we can to leave behind the shock to our economy... Our intention is to have friends and alliances.”

Which is a far cry from working through the internal fractures exacerbated by the coup and the de facto regime, which were not healed by the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

Bajo Aguan: MUCA rejects government offer-- or maybe it accepts it

A report posted three hours ago by La Tribuna claims MUCA has rejected the government offer and demanded demilitarization of the Bajo Aguan as a condition to continuing negotiation. The report cites Jerónimo Escobar, described as representing MUCA, interviewed on Radio América. At almost the same time, Radio América published a contradictory report claiming an agreement was within reach. Meanwhile, Spanish- and now English- language press alike is swallowing and reproducing the claim that the deployment to the Aguán was never meant as a threat to the campesinos, but was just the beginning of a little military repression of the general population across the country. Which, for some reason, the Lobo Sosa government seems to think makes deploying the army against the citizenry better.

Jerónimo Escobar is said to have indicated that at the meeting with Porfirio Lobo Sosa, MUCA presented

a "new and good" proposal to the governor Lobo Sosa, on the basis that the proposal that had been made would not be accepted because it would not resolve the problems of land tenancy of the campesino families.

As a reminder, the government offer reportedly is two hectares to each family, one cultivated in African oil palm (which has to be sold to the companies owned by the major opponents of the campesinos for processing) and the other in

a co-investment project that would guarantee the sale of the product to the businessmen... the government offers to the 28 campesino organizations that make up MUCA 28 parcels of land in African palm production so that by a mechanism of co-investment the farmhands can supply the processing plants.

In other words, the campesinos would become a labor force for the business community, taking on all the risks of production, while the processors could set prices in response to international markets, allowing them to make money no matter what the world market did.

Lobo Sosa spokesman Samuel Reyes continued the government's practice of assessing its own proposals as very good ones, saying that

the proposal that the government is making is attractive compared to the counterproposal of the campesino movement that demands the assignment of 4 or 5 hectares of land for each family since that is what the Ley de la Reforma Agraria calls for.

Unfortunately, according to La Tribuna, MUCA did not actually agree with the self-congratulation of the Lobo Sosa administration.

It is somewhat surprising, then, to turn to Radio América's website and find them reporting that there will be an agreement. Datelined just after 4 PM, this story says that the campesino negotiators meeting with Lobo Sosa

estaría aceptando la propuesta que les presentó recientemente el gobierno para pone fin a la lucha por la tierra

[will be accepting the proposal that was presented recently to them by the government to put an end to the struggle for land.]

The subjunctive voice here tells the most important part of the story. Radio América continues

the government delivered to MUCA a proposal that includes 10 points, which in the majority are in agreement with the demands of the fieldhands and others require revision.

The source credited by Radio América is Andrés Pavón, described as playing the role of mediator for MUCA, who is said to indicate that there is consent by MUCA to resolve the confrontation. Pavón is also said to have indicated that

for the moment they trust the word of the authorities of the government that the military and police deployed in the Aguán are to initiate a process of general disarmament and to combat the wave of criminality and not to violently dislodge the campesinos.

This is really the only position that MUCA can take: it puts pressure on the Lobo Sosa government not to turn to military violence, since that would be a public proof of falsehood. MUCA, like the Frente de Resistencia in general, is committed to non-violent protest, so they have nothing to fear from disarmament if it takes place under watchful eyes of international media, said to be in the region, and with the Lobo Sosa administration on alert not to give itself a black eye.

But it cannot be ignored that the deployment to the Bajo Aguan is a form of intimidation; nor that it serves to advance a narrative of lawlessness and violence that is dangerous and serves to legitimate greater police and military repression.

This, in fact, is how the ongoing tension in the Bajo Aguan has finally reached English language mainstream media, via an AP news wire story by Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa. Headlined "Honduran Army to help combat violent crime wave", the story advances the official storyline:

On Monday, Lobo's administration announced it was sending more than 2,000 soldiers and police officers to the Atlantic coast region around the Aguan River to seize drugs and illegal weapons. Drug cartels are increasingly using the coasts of Central America to move drugs toward the U.S. market.

Even if this militarization does not end in repression of the MUCA group specifically, let's pause to consider what it implies for the condition of civil society in contemporary Honduras. According to this story, which is rapidly being republished around the US as I write-- and others in Spanish published previously in Honduras-- the new campaign will involve soldiers assigned to search vehicles and pedestrians and pursue criminal suspects.

This is the fulfillment of the law and order promises that Lobo Sosa made in his failed presidential bid in 2005, and it is worth underlining that the means taken potentially open the doors to violation of civil rights under the Honduran Constitution, if searches take place without cause and without due process. And an open-ended military-police action against the citizenry casts a shadow over all projected mobilization by Hondurans who plan to continue protesting the situation in their country.

Armed Forces vs. campesinos: Militarizing the Bajo Aguan

News reports from Honduras today confirm that, fed up with negotiating with ungrateful campesinos, the Lobo Sosa government is proceeding to escalate the confrontation with unarmed campesinos seeking land rights on the Honduran coast.

El Heraldo reports that more than 30 military transports have arrived to quell what it calls the zozobra there-- literally, anxiety. Whose anxiety?

Even the right wing El Heraldo recognizes what is coming:

While the Honduran governor prepares to receive the president-elect of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, this Monday, the conditions for a massacre are being created.

More than 3000 families are at risk if the Honduran government proceeds with military action. El Heraldo actually quotes a spokesperson for MUCA, the campesino organization, Yony Rivas:

"Today, the Bajo Aguán has been totally militarized and we have detected at least 30 military vehicles with troops that are carrying high caliber arms... A climate of anxiety has been created in the area, because we know that the army in our country defends the interests of the oligarchy. We are living a very difficult moment."

Andrés Pavón, director of the Comité para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos en Honduras (CODEH) noted that this was unprecedented, because civilian conflicts should be resolved by police, not the armed forces.