Honduran Congress Consolidates More Power

If it wasn't clear to outside observers, it certainly should be now.  The Honduran Congress is bent on controlling every aspect of the government, and by control, I mean, removing any trace of the constitutionally specified independence of powers. 

Their current obsession is with disciplining the Supreme  Court.

The new Congressional session started on January 25 of this year.  Since they started this new session they passed the so-called model cities legislation (decreto 236-2012) that gives Congress the ability to transfer territory to the sovereignty of a foreign set of investors. 

Honduran analysts note that this law includes special tourist zones that could see the transfer of the Copan archaeological site to foreign control.

Congress also passed the law of political judgement (decreto 231-2012). The US Embassy seems to believe this is an impeachment law, but it isn't: it circumvents Honduran due process guarantees.  It would allow Congress to continue to do what it did illegally in removing Supreme Court justices in December, leading to the current constitutional crisis.

Under the law of political judgment, Congress now has the authority to remove Supreme Court justices or even Presidents because Congress doesn't like their policies. It supersedes the existing law that already allowed the Public Prosecutor to bring charges against any high government official, which would be heard in the Supreme Court, and could lead to removal from office (which is why the Honduran Constitution no longer has an impeachment procedure: they provided a due process procedure in the legal code instead).

Congress also passed the new Minerals and Mines law, which allows concessions to be given to foreign governments in addition to private companies. This law is potentially unconstitutional because it presents the same kind of sovereignty issues raised by the model cities legislation that was found unconstitutional by the now neutered Supreme Court.  The new law governs concessions of gemstone (Honduras has opals and other gemstones in commercial quantities) and metallic mineral mines for a maximun of two (non-metallic minerals) to five (metallic minerals) years starting from the issuance of an environmental license.  It splits the income from such concessions between the municipality in which the mine is located, and the central government.

Congress also restricted, though changes to Article 17 of the constitution, the international treaties and agreements in which the government can participate. This pre-empts the role of the executive branch. Congress has always had to ratify treaties; this way, they do not have to pay the political price for it.

But these are almost minor violations of the Constitution, taken with impunity knowing that they have already reshaped the current Supreme Court into a rubber stamp. What they did next is bolder, clearer, and completely guts separation of powers.

This was to pass a new set of constitutional amendments that restricts what the Justices of the Constitutional branch, and only the Constitutional branch, can do. It also strengthens the powers of the Chief Justice, who, current experience shows, can be an ally of the Congress against the court. 

To understand the new law, a reminder: the Honduran Supreme Court's Constitutional branch hears challenges to laws as unconstitutional. Their decisions have to be unanimous. If their decision is not unanimous, the next step has been for the full court-- including the justices of the Constitutional Branch-- hear the matter. The full court merely needs to reach a majority decision. Since the Sala Constitucional includes one-third of the full court, the idea is, the other two-thirds will clarify the signal.

The new law passed by Congress makes a mockery of that provision. It specifies that in the event of a non-unanimous vote by the Constitutional branch on a case, those justices cannot vote on the matter when the full Supreme Court meets, or participate in the deliberations. 

This amendment was concealed in a series of constitutional amendments passed without discussion at the end of the previous session, on January 24, 2012 (Decreto 237-2012).  Maybe Congress doesn't trust the justices they just appointed?  In the opinion of most lawyers in Honduras, this amendment will undermine judicial certainty in Honduras. It certainly reshapes the balance of powers, depriving the Supreme Court of autonomy in action.

But that wasn't enough. Congress also passed legislation that deprives citizens of the right to even appeal the constitutionality of a law! 

Congress put this in place because of threatened challenges to their newly ratified replacement for the defeated model cities law, establishing Regimenes Especiales de Desarrollo. Citizen appeals of the constitutionality of the original model cities law worked as the Honduran Constitution provided.

That won't happen again.

Citizens may now only challenge the constitutionality of rules implemented by the government to enforce a law. Although Congress has shown it has no difficulty passing sweeping changes to the Constitution, apparently it irritates them to have to get it right, legally. Now, all their laws are, by law, constitutional.

Isn't democracy wonderful?

Copan Seized

Employees of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History have taken over Copan Archaeological Park, protesting the agreement signed by Africo Madrid and Helmy Giacoman, that is apparently being implemented by the Institute.

The employees reject the proposed changes to the law on cultural patrimony, changes that would give municipalities control over archaeological materials found within their boundaries, and a position on the Consejo Directivo (essentially, the Advisory Board) of the Institute.

In addition, the employees oppose the proposed bill now being considered in Congress that would give 50% of the proceeds from admissions to the park to the town of Copan Ruinas.

They have called for the immediate removal of the director of the Institute, Virgilio Paredes and other Institute employees that have supported the agreement.

The employees agreed to reopen the park at noon today.

Radio America: Virgilio Paredes Reassures Copan

More than a week before the signing of an accord that gave the municipality of Copan Ruinas unprecedented control over what by law in Honduras is a shared cultural patrimony, Radio América interviewed Virgilio Paredes, the otherwise silent bureaucrat who has been managing the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, about what was then a crisis under development. The transcript of that interview provides a window into just how the Institute let the situation escalate, ending up with a cabinet minister imposing an unprecedented agreement that guts the mission of the Institute itself.

Here's our translation of the most relevant parts of the interview, with commentary added:

Emmanuel Tercero, journalist in the booth: Carlos Rivera tells us that there are problems between the alcalde (mayor) who does not want archaeological pieces to be taken with the permission of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, to take important pieces for an exhibition in a museum in the US. Carlos Rivera from the west of the country...

Good afternoon. This morning we spoke as well with Virgilio Paredes of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia who told us that the Maya-Chorti community is in agreement that original archaeological pieces will be transported to Pennsylvania, US, for an exhibition.

[Comment: it seems that Paredes is here arguing that the Maya Chorti do have a right to have their opinions heard, and that they had agreed to the exhibition.]

... but the Alcalde of Copan Ruinas, Helmy Giacoman, who is also preoccupied, is in communication, a brief summary of what is happening, go ahead, Alcalde...

Statement of Helmy Giacoman, Alcalde of Copan Ruinas: Good afternoon, the truth is that the town of Copan is extremely preoccupied by what has been being given these days, the truth, with the exhibition of these pieces at an international level and the truth is that we are very preoccupied... the people also found out about this and the truth is that the local media well, there has been circulating a lot about this business, because there are very disastrous antecedents for the patrimony of Copan Ruinas, when pieces have been taken outside the country and were lost in foreign territory, so it is explicable, completely explicable, to think that the town is very preoccupied, because these pieces have an incalculable value since the value that they have for what is the patrimony of Honduras, and the truth is that we are really preoccupied.

[Comment: What Giacoman is referring to is an incident in 1999 when a jade object from Copan, part of a traveling exhibition that was originally in Venice, went missing in Mexico, where the second site for the installation, the Colegio de San Ildefonso, simply did not have appropriate security. This theft, and others at the site and elsewhere, have been cited since at least 2004 in arguments by the municipality of Copan Ruinas claiming a voice in management of the pieces excavated from the site, and in proceeds from visitation there.]

Well, thanks to the Alcalde of Copan Ruinas, Helmy Giacoman, for letting us glimpse this concern, now that they propose to transport archaeological pieces to Pennsylvania, US for an exhibition, but what will Virgilio Paredes of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia say on this point.

Well, thanks Carlos, as it happens we have Virgilio Paredes, director of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, how do we take away this concern of the Alcalde and the people there in Copan Ruinas, about this idea or this intention that there is, is it a reality, for how many pieces, what guarantees it, the process, the respective guarantees, the inventories so that there will not be losses of the same, Virgilio Paredes, we are listening on Radio America...

Declarations of Virgilio Paredes: Good afternoon, we want to say to you that the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia has been working on this exhibition for approximately a year, to undertake an arduous process of analysis, to see which pieces can be transported, under what conditions and in the framework of the Ley de Patrimonio Cultural de la Nacion, to establish that the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia is who will have these pieces in custody, and that in the care and restoration of these pieces, and in the framework of the same Law they also will establish the processes to loan archaeological pieces.

As you will know the Archaeological Park of Copan is patrimony of humanity, World Heritage, it isn't just national heritage, so it is in this framework in which we have Agreements... we try to promote tourism, to promote the tourist portion of all that is Maya archaeology...

So what the Law establishes has been followed, and what the Law sets up are the following processes: the Institute comes, verifies the pieces, speaks in this case with the University of Pennsylvania, with which there has been communication for approximately a year, and the pieces are identified that are going to be loaned to promote Honduras and Copan Ruinas outside the country, unfortunately we have been hearing a lot of bad news about what happened in the prison, the deaths and so many bad things about Honduras that are being promoted, this is one piece of good news for Honduras.

[Comment: notice the confusion between what properly is the role of the Institute of Anthropology-- the protection, interpretation, and sharing of information about Honduras cultural patrimony-- and what should be the work of other government agencies, like the Institute of Tourism, or even private enterprise. Most of the dialogues about Copan seem to end up really being about income that can be generated from Copan. And of course, the role of the Institute should be more than promoting Maya archaeology, since that is only one part of Honduras cultural heritage. It is also shocking to see the contrast drawn so starkly: the massive deaths caused by the prison fire in Comayagua are unfortunately "being promoted" and in contrast, the proposed US exhibition is "one piece of good news" for Honduras.]

After asking who makes up the Consejo Directivo for the Institute, the reporter asks if the proposal was discussed and "socialized", e.g., debated with the relevant public stakeholders. Paredes responds:

It has been discussed, it is approved, so that everything is in order, we came and it was approved in conformity with the Law, this passes to the President of the Republic, the President and his Attorneys determine the processes, if everything is in [agreement with the] Law, of all the enumerated pieces photos and everything.

Emmanuel Tercero: How many pieces are we talking about? Paredes: 74 pieces.

Tercero: What benefits is this going to bring? Paredes: There are various benefits, first the University of Pennsylvania, which is the warrantor that we are going to have, is going to promote Copan Ruinas, there will be publicity internationally, it is a museum that will be open for all the US, in the framework of 2012 it will come to assist in training, in institutional strengthening, in assistance for conservators, in all the team that is necessary where we do not have resources.

Tercero: Is there a guarantee that [the pieces] will return intact, then? Paredes: The guarantee is the Law itself, in our vaults there are pieces, these 74 are already classified, they are photographed, and we have the list already, they are already authorized by the President, with their photos, that is what we are going to do ourselves, and that I wanted already today to deliver formally and officially to the Alcalde, it is a shame that I could not see him, since the official note with the photos and the list, with those photos and the list the Alcalde was asked for a representative.

Then within three weeks that the insurance is approved, the boxes and everything, then I will need a representative of Civil Society and a representative of the Municipality, so that they can come and see and verify each one of the pieces when they are going to be packed, so that those that have the documentation can verify what it is that is leaving the country, there will be representatives of the DEI and they will close everything and it will go to the US, in February of the next year when the pieces arrive, I will need both the Institute with the Civil Society and the Alcalde's office to sit down, we will open each box and verify that all that went is exactly what came back, that it isn't replicas that come, and it will guarantee that all that left the country is exactly what it is.

Tercero: Well, here we should ask something don Virgilio, [the mayor?] said "well, we are also bringing tourists, so if they take away all the pieces or even just a part, well then the tourists that come here aren't going to see anything?" Paredes: Look, we have more than 5000 pieces, so 74 is nothing in comparison, the problem that we have is a grave problem notice that we do not have a museum with the international standards of climate control, of environment, of lighting and of security to be able.. the good news that we have for the Honduran people is that via the Government of Japan there is now being given us approval to build a museum of international level in Copan Ruinas.

Tercero concludes: Well, Alcalde Municipal Helmy Giacoman of Copan Ruinas and Virgilio Paredes, Director of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, about these pieces that are going to be removed and that this is in keeping with agreements and in accordance with the Law and that it is going to be approved by the Executive branch, and that [Paredes] is going to meet there with the Alcalde to clear up doubts.

[Comment: about ten days later, an accord signed by the Alcalde and, on behalf of the government, the minister of the interior, but not by Virgilio Paredes, conceded to the people of Copan Ruinas not only the degree of participation in packing and unpacking proposed here; but much more besides. Not involved in these negotiations: the Minister of Culture, who should have been the representative of the Executive branch in this case.]

Robbing Culture to Pay Copan

We've said all there is to say before, but it bears re-iterating after a January 9 article in El Tiempo noted that Congress member Julio Cesar Gamez late last year introduced a bill which would assign 50% of the income from selling admission to the archaeological site of Copan to the town of Copan.

The basis of the argument advanced by the town of Copan is that they have a right to the income from admission to the archaeological site. This would take vital funding away from the Honduran Institute for Anthropology and History, responsible for all the cultural properties in Honduras, including Copan.

It's sheer greed, combined with the decreasing budgets given to municipalities by the state government in Honduras.

According to Mayor Helmy Réne Giacoman, who leads the latest effort,

"We are only left with the trash that the tourists leave",

a statement that ignores all the benefits that the town and its residents derive from those tourists. The Mayor speaks nonsense, of course.

As Victor Manuel Ramos noted last August in his column in El Tiempo, the town of Copan

receives most benefits from the Archaeological Park, because the enormous quantity of visitors also stay in the hotels of the locality, they consume food, they buy crafts, they visit the restaurants and the shops and use local transportation. All those businesses contribute taxes to the municipality. More than that, the benefits that the Institute receives are really limited if we compare them with those that the entire community and the municipality receives, since the costs for entry are very cheap and if we do an analysis of the expenditures of the visitors we will see that a tiny quantity corresponds to the Institute in the shape of tickets since the major part of the expenditures of the tourists remains in the hands of the local business people.

Just to be clear, tourism poured $650 million into the Honduran economy last year.

A 2003 study by the UN suggests that more than $60 million of that went directly to the town of Copan.

That's some trash.

Overbuild It And They Don't Come

I think the Copan hotel owners misheard the quote from the movie "Field of Dreams".

In the movie, Ray Liotta, playing Shoeless Joe Jackson said "If you build it, he will come", which has often been misquoted as "If you build it, they will come."

The hotel owners in Copan Ruinas seem to have taken this to heart, building hotels to offer today some 1500 beds. If one bed is equal to 1 visitor for one night, then that's the equivalent of a built environment for 547,500 visitors per year (365 * 1500)!

Now the reality is that they are experiencing something like a 35-40% occupancy rate (it varies depending on the month) in Copan Ruinas, according to CANATURH data. Using the 40% occupancy rate, that means at best about 219,000 visitor nights actually are being passed in Copan Ruinas.

But that doesn't mean 219,000 visitors.

Individual visitors usually stay more than one night. The average stay reported in 2010 was 2.7 days, stays that would require two nights in a hotel.

That yields an estimate of around 109,500 visitors per year. That's a pretty good match to the actual reported visitor numbers for the last few years.

Not anywhere near the capacity of hotel rooms in the town, which would support 273,750 visitors spending the average 2 nights.

And nowhere near the 300,000 projected visitors wistfully contemplated in tourism stories promoting the celebration of the Maya calendar cycle ending in 2012. Who, if they actually materialized, would presumably have to double up in some of those currently under-utilized hotel rooms.

Welcome to the End of the World (Or Not): Honduras Maya Edition

2012.

Other than the title of one of the world's worst films ever, what does it mean to you?

If you are an archaeologist working in Mexico or Central America, it is likely to bring a sigh of resignation about a conversation no one wants to have. Yes, the prehispanic Maya inscriptions include mention of a date in 2012. Yes, that date "ends" one cycle of the "Long Count" calendar, the 13th cycle of approximately 400 years.

What comes next? Well, not the end of the world. Sorry, but there is nothing to suggest any Maya inscription predicts an apocalypse. In fact, if there were still Maya using the Long Count, we do not really know what they would do on December 22, 2012. There are two main possibilities.

One is that, since most Maya time cycles run in groups of 20, baktuns also should be counted in sets of 20-- which would mean December 22, 2012 would be 13.0.0.0.1, and some day 400 years or so from now, the dial would turn over to 14.0.0.0.0. Like the odometer on your car.

Another possibility is that a new cycle would begin: December 21 would be 13.0.0.0.0, and December 22 would be 0.0.0.0.1. This would be consistent with mythological texts from Palenque that tell of world-beginning events long in the past, which happened the day after a cycle 13 ended, and initiated a new Long Count starting at 1.

Based on confusing mythology about the beginning of time with a prediction of the end of time, a very large group of people have developed popular proposals that the ancient Maya predicted the end of the world, and it will come a year from now. For those who believe it, December 21, 2012 is not just an end of time, it is the end time.

Which brings us to Copan on Wednesday. As El Heraldo writes,

Some fear that it will be the beginning of the end. Others assert that it deals with a new era. What is certain is that together we all began this Wednesday to walk the path that will take us to see the truth face-to-face. The date is 21/12/12.

The clock began ticking. Within exactly one year the world will discover the truth about the enigma that will close the Maya calendar and for that, since yesterday the eyes of humanity turned toward Copán Ruinas, the Maya heart of Honduras.

In case the prose isn't purple enough, take a look at one of the images that accompanied their story:What you are looking at here is spectacle, the outright exoticization of the history of an indigenous group. Read carefully through the coverage and you will not find the names of any representatives of the Chorti, descendants of the authors of the inscriptions on Copan's monuments.

El Heraldo assures us that

Never before in the history of humanity has a generation been present at the beginning or the end of a cycle of baktuns, and therefore 2012 will be a unique moment, in which for the first time humanity will be witness to a change of epoch according to the Maya measurement of time.

That would be news to the ancestors of the Maya who lived lives as hunter-gatherers in 3114 BC, when Palenque's inscription record the beginning of our current era. But of course, what the passage means, other than asserting a universalizing claim to Mayaness as a unique Honduran heritage divorced from any actual Maya people, is that never before has any human being seen the kind of shows and spectacles that are being trumped up for this manufactured event.

On hand to start the festivities off was Porfirio Lobo Sosa, quoted by El Heraldo as saying:

"This is the countdown of this era that we all are waiting for and during these 365 days that today begin we have proposed to celebrate many events of an academic nature. We hope that the world will come to know the marvels of the Mayas and the impressive studies that have been done."

"We hope that the world will come to know": that of course is what this is all about: the desperate need to revive the tourism industry and get it to yield more money for the Honduran economy.

El Heraldo, again, is clear about making the connections:

In Copán Ruinas they are conscious that this opportunity cannot be let past and they want to take advantage to the maximum to revive national and foreign tourism...

Juan Ángel Wélchez, president of the [organizing committee, Comité Copán 2012], affirmed that they would do everything in their power so that Copan would be the center of attention of the world. "It is of greatest importance, this year coming, it is an excellent opportunity to relaunch Copan as a tourist product of high quality for the world. These last years have been difficult, but we believe that now it can change..."

The secretary of tourism, Nelly Jerez, also underlined the importance of promoting this tourist destination in the world and boosting enthusiasm for the Maya civilization that inhabited the zone. "This is the best opportunity and the best window that our country could have, our Maya culture. This is the moment of Honduras".

News reports say that the hope is for 300,000 tourists to visit Copan this year.

Of course, Copan is not alone in trying to exploit 2012. International news coverage gave Honduras shared billing with Guatemala, undercutting the repeated claim in Honduran media that Copan had a special role in astronomy and calendars, based on a now-discredited interpretation of the figures and dates on Copan's Altar Q as a reunion of astronomers.

Starting the festivities, Copan witnessed an enactment of a so-called "fire ceremony" and ballgame, as El Heraldo said, "following the traditions of the Maya". In other coverage, they describe the "new fire ceremony" presented during the recent festivities more accurately, as a hodge-podge of Mexican indigenous ritual and Euro-American New Year's ideologies:

This ceremony comes from the moment in which the calendar of Anahuac was invented, around 4,000 years ago, and has been maintained to the present, being celebrated by many indigenous peoples, although adapted to Catholic festivities.

So where are the Chortis as Honduras inaugurates this celebration of a badly misunderstood, garishly exploited version of their historical legacies?

On December 15, eighty Chorti families were evicted from land in the municipality of Copan Ruinas by police and members of the armed forces:

The Chortis, located in the community, asserted that they had lived for twenty years on the properties where they built their houses. Nonetheless, the sale of the property to another owner initiated the conflict that ended with their eviction.

Men, women and children remained in the street, with their petates, bundles of clothing and other belongings they left the property and set up in the middle of the street. The eviction was peaceful, but tears were visible among the women and children who remained without a roof.

Since five months ago the new owners of the property had appealed for the Chorti to move out of the lands; in the face of the conflict, directors of the National Council of Indigenous Chorti Maya (Consejo Nacional Indígena Maya Chortí) asked the government to assist in purchasing other lands. The government committed on the 12th of October of this year to give 8 million lempiras (about $445,000), but the money did not arrive and the campesinos were evicted.

The government promise made on October 12 came, of course, in response to Chorti occupying the Copan archaeological site. This is a tactic, as we noted at the time, that has been used by Chorti for some time to enlist the visibility of the site to make their own contemporary lives, poverty, and dispossession, visible.

Don't expect to see that authentic reality of Honduran Maya culture covered with the tourism festivities. After all, we don't want the international tourists to feel guilty, now do we?

"Copan misses the tourism heydey of yesteryear"

So says La Prensa in an article published Sunday, July 17.

Tourism is undoubtedly down at the Classic Maya archaeological site, one of the main engines of this sector of the Honduran economy: from 200,000 in 2007 to 110,000 in 2010.

Disentangling the contributions of the world economic crisis and the coup d'etat of 2009 to this drop in visitation is tricky.

A global decline in tourism began in 2008. Central America was hit hard, with a 10% decrease in the first six months of 2009, reflecting fears of the H1N1 virus on top of the economic downturn.

Then came the coup d'etat. Honduras ended 2009 with a total of fewer than 100,000 visitors to Copán, a 50% decrease from 2006-2007. (We have not found data for 2008.)

The 10% increase in visitors to Copan in 2010, to 110,000 visitors, is right in line with the recovery rate of Central America as a whole for that year reported by the World Tourism Barometer.

But Copan hotel owners and tourism operators aren't happy with that. They blame their government for not doing enough to promote Copan.

Udo van der Waag, owner of Don Udo's in Copan, is quoted by La Prensa as saying

"They are not promoting Copan for the world. The occupancy rate has not gone above 42 percent..."

In fact, Nelly Jerez, the Minister of Tourism, has been promoting Copan: most recently, with tie-ins to the supposed Maya end of the world prophecy for 2012. So why the sense from the business community in Copan that the government isn't doing enough?

Copan businessmen have submitted a 2 million lempira proposal for events in Copan, with the expectation that the Tourism Ministry would fund it. Jerez is looking for them to commit capital to this project.

Meanwhile, Jerez has been promoting tourism to other areas of the country, through the Ruta Colonial and Ruta Lenca. She told La Prensa

"We have met with various publicity agencies with whom we work and their consultants to bring about a better strategy, so that people come not only for what Copan and the archaeological sites signify, but also to the other touristic sites of the country."

Copan businessmen, who see tourism lagging, must feel this is happening at their expense: if the ministry of tourism spends money promoting something other than Copan, it's not doing enough for Copan. This kind of Copan-centrism notoriously figured in the illegal dismissal of the former director of the Institute of Anthropology and History, Darío Euraque, discussed in his recent book about cultural policy and the coup d'etat.

So why is tourism recovering so slowly at Copan?

A critical study of the social impacts of Central America tourism by Ernest Cañada, published in April of 2010, suggests that tourists to Central America increasingly focus on "sun and sand". Cañada notes that tourists, especially from North America, are taking shorter vacations, spending less on food and drink, and buying fewer things to take home. None of this is good news for Copan tourism operators.

Are Copan businessmen justified to expect that tourism will recover to pre-2009 levels ?

A reading of the World Tourism Barometer suggests they should expect growth in 2011 of only 4 percent over last year's numbers; that would mean a rise to around 115,000 visitors, far below pre-2009 numbers.

It may be that the old days were truly the heydey of Copan tourism.

Privatize Copan?

That's effectively what sources in Honduras say is under serious discussion at this very minute.

They have provided us with a copy of a document dated June 8, 2011, issued by the Union of employees of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia.

The statement is motivated by news that "private individuals with partisan ambitions intend to restructure the IHAH"... and "place in danger the Cultural Patrimony of the nation".

They reiterate the charge that the current head of IHAH has hired unqualified people for political motives, objecting that IHAH, with its unique mission, "should not be handled as if it were an employment agency for private individuals and/or political agreements."

Then comes the punchline:

By means of official information we know that today there will be submitted for discussion in the National Congress a project that includes as one of its points the sale of entry tickets to the Parque Arqueológico de Copán by the municipality of Copán Ruinas, a situation contrary to the survival of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, since the funds obtained from this park are those that sustain the labor of protection and conservation of the Cultural Patrimony of Honduras.

Based on details published by Darío Euraque in his book, El golpe de Estado del 28 de junio de 2009, el Patrimonio Cultural y la Identidad Nacional provides income critical for the Institute in pursuing its mission. Transferring that income to the town of Copan is a shocking proposal on many levels.

It would presumably leave the IHAH with the responsibility for management and preservation of the site, without the resources needed to do so.

It would turn this World Heritage Site into nothing more than a money-making tourist attraction. While it may shock international readers who enjoyed visiting Copan, the purpose of the Institute of Anthropology and History is to manage historic sites as points of reference for the population of Honduras in their understanding of their history, heritage, and identity.

And of course, it is the ultimate demonstration-- both in the sense of most recent and most unimaginable-- of an erosion of the management of cultural patrimony that started when the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti politicized the Ministry of Culture and the Institute in particular.

Tourism or Development?

UNESCO is scheduled to deliver its third opinion on establishing an airport in Rio Amarillo, Honduras in June, but Nelly Jerez, the Tourism Minister, isn't going to wait for that opinion for guidance. She announced yesterday that the government would go ahead and fast track the construction of an airport at Rio Amarillo to be finished in 2012. We've outlined elsewhere some of the politics of this decision.

Jerez announced that the Institute of Anthropology has approved the move. Jerez stated unequivocally

"It will not cause any damage to the ruins of Copan. Therefore we'll go ahead and build the Copan airport."

Really? We've already pointed out that both UNESCO, and several previous incarnations of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia (IHAH) believe the aircraft engine noise would, over time, damage Copan if the airport was built at Rio Amarillo, but Jerez isn't waiting for the UNESCO report in June. Maybe that's because the previous two UNESCO reports strongly advised against building an airport in Rio Amarillo.

Jerez's announcement comes amidst UNESCO re-evaluating Honduras's treatment of another world heritage site in Honduras, the Biosphere of the Platano River. UNESCO is concerned about environmental degradation within the biosphere. It also has questions about possible effects on the biosphere of three recently approved dam projects on the Rio Patuca, or at least, that's how the Honduran government is spinning it.

Why is Jerez rushing this through? To support Tourism's initiative to bring tourists to Copan for the Maya "end of the world celebration" in 2012. Jerez, quoted in today's Tiempo, said

"The [Maya] prophecies of Copan and the end of the Maya calendar in December 2012 are opening the doors so that Europe will come to our country."

She plans spectacles with concerts and other performances both inside and outside the archaeological park.

So what are the costs and benefits of this decision, because any decision involves trade offs.

The benefit of building an airport in the region are tangible. Right now it takes 4 hours to drive from San Pedro Sula, with the nearest airport, to Copan Ruinas, the town where the ruin is located. This means thousands of tourists who visit Honduras cannot make the trip. These tourists are mostly cruise ship passengers whose tour includes a stop at the Bay Islands and Puerto Cortés, usually for 24 hours or less.

The propsed airport is designed to host turbo-prop 50 passenger planes similar to those in use today between Roatan and the mainland. Cruise ships range from small (50 passengers) to enormous (4000+ passengers). Carnival Cruise lines ships, which call at Roatan, all hold 2000 to 4000 passengers. If 10% of the passengers choose an option to fly to this new airport and tour Copan, this would require 4-8 round trip flights between Roatan and Copan daily. By comparison, there are currently only 3 round trip flights daily between San Pedro Sula and Roatan, none of them non-stop. Add the San Pedro Sula (to support local tourists and those docking in Puerto Cortés) and Tegucigalpa airports into the mix and you need tens of round trip flights daily in and out of this new airport.

No one has explained where the the airplanes and staff necessary to fly in and out of the new airport will come from. If you build it, they will come? There's been no public explanation of how the government will handle concessions to fly there, nor where the operations budget for the airport will come from, or how it will be operated. Is private industry going to fill the gap? Where are the committments?

Cruise ships don't dock every day. What will these private airlines do the other days, when there aren't sufficient passengers to financially justify all these flights? Or does the Honduran government envision this working on a charter model, with the cruise lines chartering planes to fly to the new airport, in which case the question becomes, where will the planes come from, since they don't currently exist in the country? Who will set up and finance these charter companies?

You see the problem? The business case for how this will operate financially, to pay for the airport its operations, and that of the air service companies, has not been made or discussed.

These, then are the advantages: greater access to the ruins of Copan than exists now and tourism related development around it. What is Jerez giving up with this choice?

Jerez is making the decision to not develop the second largest Maya city in Honduras for tourism, ever. While the argument advanced in favor of the airport is that the runway itself will not destroy any ruins, that's a red herring; the main acropolis of the Rio Amarillo site is less than 100 meters from the planned runway. Have I mentioned these planes are loud? Tourists won't come to a place where deafening noise is part of the experience many times a day. It would be irresponsible to excavate and consolidate the ruins since they would certainly degrade over time from vibration and be subject to the corrosive fumes of airplane exhaust. The Rio Amarillo ruins won't be developed. Tourists will have no reason to spend additional time in the region. Honduras forfeits those additional tourist dollars.

The Rio Amarillo location only serves tourism development at Copan, not the wider economic development of the the department of Copan. So Jerez is focusing just on tourism at Copan, which is her purview, rather than the wider economic development of Honduras. She says she would support building the La Concepción airport only if there's enough money to be found after building the Rio Amarillo airport. Perhaps she should take a larger view? As we pointed out in our earlier post, the La Concepcion location can contribute to both the tourism development of Copan and the wider economic development of the same region for about the same cost.

Santa Rosa de Copan is a business center in Honduras. It is one of two centers of Honduras's world famous cigar industry. Many world-class cigars are either made in this part of Honduras or made from tobacco grown in this part of Honduras. Yet there is no way for its businessmen to interact easily with people outside of Honduras. Companies are forced to establish offices and warehouses in San Pedro Sula, with its local airport, and more reliable communications and electricity, rather than keeping their money and jobs in the region. This keeps development centralized, focused on the larger cities of Honduras rather than spread out; it exacerbates the differences between the cities and the rural areas of Honduras.

The advantage of the La Concepcion location for an airport is that serves equally well the development of tourism to the ruins of Copan, being only 29 km away, and the economic development of the whole Department of Copan. Its a much more sustainable economic model because airport passenger traffic is increased with demand from both tourists and businessmen. In turn, that demand provides a more sustainable model for regular air service to the region, reducing risk for the private businesses that choose to operate such service.

Jerez's announcement is the triumph of politics and short term gains over the long term development in Honduras, and the continued overemphasis on the Maya ruins of Copan as a driver of development in the region, as documented so eloquently by Dr. Dario Euraque, among others.

Jerez is advocating an unbelievably short-sighted decision that only serves the political and economic interests of those focused exclusively on Copan Ruinas.

An airport should be built in the region; just not the one at Rio Amarillo.

The Politics of an Airport

Nelly Jerez, Minister of Tourism, announced that the construction of an airport in the valley of Rio Amarillo, to provide access for tourists close to Copan, would be her priority this year. This reverses a decision made under the Zelaya administration to locate the airport at Concepcion, Copan.

This airport was first proposed in 2003 during the Maduro administration. At that time the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia opposed locating the airport in the Rio Amarillo valley.

The World Heritage committee of UNESCO studied the issue in 2003, and again in 2005. Its study, and decision, are both available at the UNESCO website here. They reference the Institute's report opposing the Rio Amarillo site, dated to 2004.

In 2003, ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, recommended closing the airstrip that up until then was located at La Estanzuela, less than 2 km from Copan ruins. Nonetheless, the government continued to allow it to function, with 187 flights recorded in 2004.

At the time, ICOMOS noted that Honduras should develop the ruins of Rio Amarillo for tourism, as it is the second-largest Classic Maya city in Honduras.

Finally, ICOMOS noted that the government maintained a helicopter landing strip within the Copan archaeological park, where 23 helicopters landed in 2004, something that raised their concern.

So in 2003, ICOMOS recommended that Honduras

1. establish a no fly zone over the core area of the Copan Ruins.

2. close the airstrip at La Estanzuela

3. reconsider the location for a replacement airstrip.

They were clear about their concerns and what was at risk:

ICOMOS adds to this that the properties of Piedras Negras, Rio Blanco and Rio Amarillo must be protected due to their important scientific value for the overall understanding of the the cultural system of Copan and its potential role as a state.

In 2005, the committee again

1. reiterated its call for establishing a no fly zone over the core part of Copan Ruins.

2. encouraged the government to reconsider its decision to locate an airport at Rio Amarillo

3. requested, should the government decide to ignore the relocation request, that it conduct an environmental assessment and develop a comprehensive Public Use Plan for the world heritage site of Copan and submit that plan to the committee for consultation.

4. requested the government update the committee with a progress report by 1 February, 2006.

The Río Amarillo airport plan was subsequently approved by the Maduro administration. SICA reported on July 11, 2005 that the BID approved financing for the airport at Rio Amarillo. Press reports linked the dismisal of archaeologist Carmen Julia Fajardo from her position as Head of Investigations of the Institute of Anthropology and History to her opposition to this plan.

In the election of 2005, of course, Manuel Zelaya Rosales was elected president, turning out the Partido Nacional and replacing it with a Liberal party administration when he assumed office in 2006.

Under Zelaya, the new government decided the airport should be built at La Concepcion, Copan, instead of the previously favored Rio Amarillo site. The advantage of the La Concepcion location is that it can both serve business development around Santa Rosa de Copan, while also providing access for international tourists to Copan Ruins.

In 2007, Zelaya promised an 18 month time frame for the construction of the airport. To make the Concepcion location work, Honduras would have to pave 8.75 km of road from Santa Rosa de Copan to the airport, and a further 29.5 km of road from the airport to Copan Ruins.

The airport itself was to be financed by the government of Taiwan, with funding contingent on Honduras building and paving the roadways. The Zelaya administration began the grading of the road from Santa Rosa to Concepcion, and then everything stopped. Nothing more happened.

Now Nelly Jerez, the Tourism Minister, wants to resurrect the Rio Amarillo location yet again.

It's still a bad idea. And it seems unlikely to be a coincidence that it is being revived under the first National Party government since Maduro left office.

"Every Stone in its Place": Marvin Barahona

Why does cultural policy and historical knowledge matter in a place like Honduras?

Honduran historian Marvin Barahona, author of a number of books about Honduran identity and 20th century history, provides some answers in a long presentation of Dario Euraque's recently published book El golpe de Estado del 28 de junio de 2009, el Patrimonio Cultural y la Identidad Nacional ("The coup d'Etat of the 28th of June of 2009, Cultural Patrimony, and National Identity").

Barahona's essay is too long to translate in its entirety here. But it is worth citing how Euraque's important work is being received in Honduran intellectual circles, and why it is, more than a commentary on the coup, a critical work in Honduran historiography.

Barahona starts by saying he is resisting the temptation to either begin with the Honduran Congress discussing the Ruins of Copan at the beginning of the 20th century, or with words drawn from a magazine commenting on "the visit to the Copan Archaeological Park in January 2010 by the president of the de facto government, Roberto Micheletti Bain, invited by the Asociación Copán to show him the bounties of the site."

He then goes on:

The underworld of the tunnels designed by generations of archaeologists seem to have been waiting, in the last three decades, for a retinue like this, that emerged from the underworld of politics, as knowledgeable experts of the most ancient caverns of politics and as architects of the latest coup d'Etat that shocked the national conscience by its historical anachronism, and left a trail of instability and chaos in the governability of the country.

What links these two subjects-- archaeology and the de facto regime? Read on:

For that, if it were possible, I would want to extend an historic bridge between the most distant past and the most recent past, to link deeds that at first glance don't seem related, such as the use of official culture to make the collective consciousness forget its past and the abuse of the State to favor the interests of a minority to whom culture and the past has been of interest only as merchandise for tourists, as a business in which they could enrich themselves.

Barahona, following the lead of Euraque, identifies the commodification of national culture as yet one more regrettable product of the reactionary politics of contemporary Honduras.

The trajectory is complicated, but it includes the elevation of one part of the precolumbian Honduran past-- that of the Maya of western Honduras-- to stand for the entire nation, a process Euraque called "mayanization". In this process, Euraque's book shows that all political parties in Honduras and academics, both national and foreign, have played a part. The result is a failure to connect most contemporary Hondurans with a deep past of their own:

And when we recognize this incredible disproportion between the many books written about the Ruins of Copan and the few studies about the peoples and cultures that are still alive, such as the Tolupan or the Pech, the Tawahkas and the Miskitos, the Lenca and the Garifuna, then it is required to think that the cultural policies of the State are as unjust as the form in which national income is distributed, dedicated in the last two centuries to benefit a few wealthy families, to the detriment of thousands of meztizo, Indian and black families that don't fit in the official culture and still less in the economy and the national budget.

As Barahona notes, Euraque's book argues that the antidote to this poison lies in

a new cultural policy of the State, concretized in projects to rescue the cultural diversity of the peoples that give it flesh, to rescue national history in local archives, to give to archaeology its rightful place, to reconstruct the characteristic features of popular culture and provide communities with people qualified to recover local historical memory and that of the population marginalized by official culture.

Barahona argues that

the goal of giving to Honduras a democratic, inclusive, participatory cultural policy capable of responding to the challenges of the world today, continues to be a valid effort and an inescapable responsibility of the State and society...

Therefore it won't suffice, in the present day, to insist on mayanizing Honduras to sell to foreign tourists the bounties of our past, nor less will it do to continue privileging the value of the stones of the distant past...

And even putting each stone in its place, there remains no doubt that Honduras needs this new cultural policy to avoid letting the study of its archaeology continue in the hands of the same foreign institutions as at the beginning of the 20th century..

The alignment of archaeology, especially foreign archaeology, with conservative politics, in other words, may not be new but it is not to be supported in the future.

Knowledge of history, Barahona concludes, is indispensable, and democratization of history continues to be critical for Honduras:

every effort to reconstruct the national identity, including all its protagonists without exclusions of any kind, implies a large scale effort to re-elaborate national thought, to put it into action and place it at the level of the requirements of our time.

But the final words should go to Darío Euraque, whose summary account of his motivation in writing a memoir of his experiences during the coup d'Etat has also been published now:

Today there exists a new government in Honduras: nonetheless, the authorities imposed on the management of the Institute of Anthropology and History by means of the coup d'Etat, lacking in experience or intellectual vision of our culture, continue in their offices. I suspect that they continue violating the cultural policy that I promoted since 2006 in coordination with the Secretariat of Culture. Not only the Cultural Patrimony of Honduras suffered, but also our National Identity, the fragile institutionality of the State, and ironically even the support given to cultural tourism promoted by the Institute of Tourism and Chamber of Tourism of Honduras decreases.

“Alta es la noche y Morazán vigila.”