Sunday the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP)in Honduras voted to form a political party, called the Frente Amplio de Resistencia Popular (FARP) to participate in the 2013 elections. The party will be completely separate from the FNRP, which will remain a force for social change within the country.
Manuel Zelaya Rosales told the press that this new party will not seek to become a party by Congressional decree, but rather will go through the process of collecting signatures and becoming authorized in the usual way with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
One interesting quote from Zelaya suggests that membership in the new party will be by voluntary association, and that members will not be asked to abandoned their current party affiliations. How exactly that will work for things like internal elections was not made clear.
Candidates will be nominated by local assemblies, then elected by internal elections in FARP to run in the general elections.
This separation of the FNRP from the FARP would seem to resolve the essential tension between those in the Frente that want to become a political party, and those who want it to remain focused on social reforms. The press reported this was a consensus decision on the part of the delegates to the meeting.
The next step will be to hold another extraordinary session to define the party's governing rules and charter, and to collect around 47,000 signatures to register as a political party with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
Showing posts with label Frente de Resistencia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frente de Resistencia. Show all posts
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Reactions to the Cartagena Accord, Part 3: Artists in Resistance
The Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular is not homogeneous. It does not speak with one voice, as we previously noted.
We have special affection for Artists in Resistance who made the phrase "culture and politics" in our title something other than a contradiction in terms. Performing artists, writers, poets, have been at the forefront of the resistance from its inception.
They have now issued a characteristically poetic response to the Cartagena Accord, in the form of a statement addresses at Mel Zelaya, never mentioning the words "Cartagena Accord", and explicitly denouncing the administration of the co-signatory of that document, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, for continued aggression against the people of Honduras at sites such as the Bajo Aguan.
It is worth visiting the original to get a sense of the poetics, even if you don't read Spanish. Luckily for the non-Spanish reader, Adrienne Pine has provided a translation at quotha. While she leaves the statement to speak for itself, I cannot resist pulling out some threads and noting where they lead.
The first thread is given by the addressee: this is a communication to Mel. But it places on record the fact that Mel's return is not just a personal success, and further, underscores that it does not make him the body of resistance even though he came to embody "the dignity of Honduras":
The tone is restrained. While congratulating Mel on being able to return to Honduras, and promising to be part of the crowd greeting him, Artists in Resistance refrain from being part of a carnivalesque celebration:
"Cathartic euphoria over a success that we have yet to achieve": nothing could be clearer. The Cartagena Accord has not, and will not solve the entire political situation; it does not even undertake to address many glaring issues.
Can the Frente survive the Cartagena Accord? In part, it seems to us, that will depend on whether those who thought they spoke for the entire heterogeneous group get back to work engaging internally.
We have special affection for Artists in Resistance who made the phrase "culture and politics" in our title something other than a contradiction in terms. Performing artists, writers, poets, have been at the forefront of the resistance from its inception.
They have now issued a characteristically poetic response to the Cartagena Accord, in the form of a statement addresses at Mel Zelaya, never mentioning the words "Cartagena Accord", and explicitly denouncing the administration of the co-signatory of that document, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, for continued aggression against the people of Honduras at sites such as the Bajo Aguan.
It is worth visiting the original to get a sense of the poetics, even if you don't read Spanish. Luckily for the non-Spanish reader, Adrienne Pine has provided a translation at quotha. While she leaves the statement to speak for itself, I cannot resist pulling out some threads and noting where they lead.
The first thread is given by the addressee: this is a communication to Mel. But it places on record the fact that Mel's return is not just a personal success, and further, underscores that it does not make him the body of resistance even though he came to embody "the dignity of Honduras":
Your return to Honduras is only the first step for which we took to the streets....
We will go to welcome you as you deserve, compañero Manuel Zelaya, with the pride of knowing that we did everything within our reach to defend to dignity of Honduras that you embody...
The tone is restrained. While congratulating Mel on being able to return to Honduras, and promising to be part of the crowd greeting him, Artists in Resistance refrain from being part of a carnivalesque celebration:
We will be there, compañero Manuel Zelaya, but we will not provide the spectacle. Our song and our voice is political and not simply backup for a cathartic euphoria over a success that we have yet to achieve.
"Cathartic euphoria over a success that we have yet to achieve": nothing could be clearer. The Cartagena Accord has not, and will not solve the entire political situation; it does not even undertake to address many glaring issues.
The Artists in Resistance, like the Political Committee of the Frente, do not believe that Lobo Sosa can be trusted to safeguard human rights, as he promised in the accord:
While much of this part of the statement could be generalized to others in resistance, the outrage by the Artists in Resistance about the failure of the Lobo Sosa government to recognize "the deaths of poets of universal standing" speaks volumes about the cultural divide opened up by the coup.
On one side stand those for whom culture, in the famous phrase of Myrna Castro, also includes fashion, but not the distribution of what she considered subversive books; and on the other, those who were, under the Zelaya government, seeing public recognition of poets and authors reflected in many aspects of policy, advances now lost.
(The Honduran literary blog mimalapalabra has an appreciation of Roberto Sosa for Spanish readers. Feministas en Resistencia produced a statement on the death of Amanda Castro, reproduced on voselsoberano.)
Nothing in the Cartagena Accord deals with the retrogression in Honduran cultural affairs that came about in the coup and has continued under Lobo Sosa.
Artists in Resistance reserve harsh language-- I would have said, the harshest, had their statements about Lobo Sosa not been so severe-- for others in the Frente de Resistencia:
we will not forget that the Lobo regime is murderous, that it continues murdering the campesinos of Aguán and Zacate Grande; that this very week it has ordered police to stomp on the necks of the students of Luis Bográn, that it ignores the martyrs and desperate hunger strike of the teachers, that it permits the targeted assassinations of artists like Renán Fajardo and Juan Ángel Sorto, that it carelessly ignores the deaths of poets of universal standing like Roberto Sosa and Amanda Castro, that it continues ordering protection for the murderous businessmen of the coup d'état and that it attacks and persecutes its people and has sold off our territory piece by piece, with the help of a police force and army converted by the empire into occupation forces within our country.
While much of this part of the statement could be generalized to others in resistance, the outrage by the Artists in Resistance about the failure of the Lobo Sosa government to recognize "the deaths of poets of universal standing" speaks volumes about the cultural divide opened up by the coup.
On one side stand those for whom culture, in the famous phrase of Myrna Castro, also includes fashion, but not the distribution of what she considered subversive books; and on the other, those who were, under the Zelaya government, seeing public recognition of poets and authors reflected in many aspects of policy, advances now lost.
(The Honduran literary blog mimalapalabra has an appreciation of Roberto Sosa for Spanish readers. Feministas en Resistencia produced a statement on the death of Amanda Castro, reproduced on voselsoberano.)
Nothing in the Cartagena Accord deals with the retrogression in Honduran cultural affairs that came about in the coup and has continued under Lobo Sosa.
Artists in Resistance reserve harsh language-- I would have said, the harshest, had their statements about Lobo Sosa not been so severe-- for others in the Frente de Resistencia:
we did everything within our reach to defend to dignity of Honduras that you embody, an extraordinary effort that has brought us, in the course of two years of painful struggle, to organize our understanding and watch it grow within the legitimate structures of the FNRP. Nonetheless, all of our enormous effort, from every corner of Honduras and from all of our people's artistic expressions, does not seem to be sufficient to ensure that the FNRP at all levels of its hierarchy also advances in terms of decisive dialectic understanding and of accepting internal criticism and its own diversity...
[speaking of their refusal to perform as part of a premature celebration]: This is a fundamental stance for us that has not been understood by those who have been incubating orthodox hegemonies from within the FNRP leadership.
Can the Frente survive the Cartagena Accord? In part, it seems to us, that will depend on whether those who thought they spoke for the entire heterogeneous group get back to work engaging internally.
The Artists in Resistance close with a call to recognize that they, and the rest of the heterogeneous resistance, can be the leaders in the continuing political struggle:
This is not quite the conventional view that sees the Cartagena Accord as bringing an end to the need for resistance, viewing Zelaya as the leader of the Frente. The resistance remembered by the Artists is something bigger:
The enormous weight that now lies on your shoulders—and that we are willing to bear—can be summarized in the fact that, with each of your actions, the voice of our martyrs and exiles will remind you of the sacrifice that so many have made to give life to the National Front of Popular Resistance.
This is not quite the conventional view that sees the Cartagena Accord as bringing an end to the need for resistance, viewing Zelaya as the leader of the Frente. The resistance remembered by the Artists is something bigger:
we have been witnesses to the growth of thousands of voices and faces of leadership, leaders of neighborhoods, municipalities, towns, collectives and organizations—an immense demonstration of the strength and will accumulated over decades in the bowels of a humiliated Honduras.
Couched in poetry, what this statement does is make clear that José Manuel Zelaya Rosales matters as a symbol of what has been done to Honduran society generally; and perhaps even a warning to him not to mistake that for a mandate for leadership.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Reactions to the Cartagena Accord, Part one: the FNRP
Signing agreements is easy; anyone out there forgotten the San Jose/Tegucigalpa Accords, and how they ended the coup d'etat in 2009 and restored constitutional order?
So, as we previously said, we think that there will need to be close scrutiny of the reactions of differently positioned parties to the Cartagena Accord.
Porfirio Lobo Sosa was strongly motivated to do whatever he could to allow Honduras back into OAS. Other hemispheric governments had the same motivation. José Manuel Zelaya Rosales could not be seen to stand in the way of some sort of step forward and retain any international credibility.
But neither Lobo Sosa, nor Zelaya, nor the governments of Colombia, Venezuela, the US or other OAS member states can compel the people of Honduras, far from reconciled, to follow through. The question then will be: how is this playing at home?
After surprising silences, responses are beginning to trickle in. We want to give each serious consideration, so this post treats just one: the official statement of the Comité Político of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular.
In this statement, the Political Committee of the Frente recognizes the advances made
To characterize what follows as supportive to the Cartagena Accord would be to miss more nuances. The Political Committee takes a point by point reaction to the four agenda items it recognizes in the new accord.
On the return from exile of Zelaya and others, such as Padre Tamayo, the Frente endorses the agreement but notes it will actually be fulfilled when they are back in the country. Caution may seem overdone, but remember the Tegucigalpa Accord: I guarantee you everyone in the Frente does, and the bitter disappointment.
That the Frente does not trust Lobo Sosa becomes clear in their reaction to the second agenda item, general human rights issues:
In other words: we see your lips moving but what don't see you doing anything.
The third agenda item, as described by the Political Committee of the Frente, reads
We are now at the heart of a question debated within the Frente: should it become (or give rise to) a political party? or should it remain a social movement with political aims? "Beligerante" in this context could be glossed as "militant", as in "a militant political movement". "Fuerza", literally force, is not to simply be reduced to "party" (partido).
So it is interesting that in analyzing this third agenda item and what was achieved in the Cartagena Accord, the Political Committee of the Frente does not use the word "partido" at all:
What the laws alluded to here govern is not just political parties, but broader advocacy groups. Returning to the language of the Accord, we note that the rapid translation we posted here interpolated the words "political party" because that is how this part of the agreement was parsed by those negotiating it. But it does not seem to us that the response by the Political Committee of the Frente endorses a full conversion to a political party.
Finally, the Political Committee pronounces on the fourth of Zelaya's agenda items in negotiating the Cartagena Accord and again, comes down in a more mixed way than simple outright endorsement of the language of the accord itself:
In other words: we showed that if you document broad public desire for constitutional change and more direct political participation, the other side eventually has to give in. But notice: no ringing endorsement of the mechanism, characterized with such self-congratulation in the Cartagena Agreement itself, by which the kind of popular consultation that Zelaya wanted to undertake is now possible.
So we would score this as 1 overt endorsement (of return from exile); 2 muted recuperation of their own agenda from that embodied in the Cartagena Accord, with a pause to remind people that these achievements came from the Frente's actions; and 1 outright rejection, of the human rights items, based on lack of trust for Lobo Sosa.
In a related post, political scientist Greg Weeks makes an interesting set of comments about the potential role of the Frente. He notes that the literature on how resistance movements become political parties probably does not apply here, as the Frente never was a guerrilla movement, and thus has none of the obstacles to overcome when a militarized opposition becomes a political one.
He then adds that there is a literature on how ethnic movements become political parties, suggesting this also does not apply here.
We agree, although for slightly different reasons than he gives: there is a pan-ethnic movement at the heart of the Frente, represented among other things by the prominence of Bertha Oliva, and the symbolic location of Frente assemblies in the heart of traditional Lenca territory.
But the Frente does not speak solely or uniformly with this voice; we pay attention to when COPINH issues statements in order to understand how at least the indigenous faction within the Frente understands things. But there are other voices, including those that represent reform tendencies within the Liberal Party, and those that are mobilized primarily out of belief in Zelaya himself.
Where we think Greg may slightly miss a nuance is when he suggests that the challenge for the Frente is moving from taking positions against the government to taking positions for certain policies.
The Frente has a robust and clear agenda. It is just an agenda that is either not reported in mainstream media, especially in the US, or not taken seriously by them. It starts with constitutional reform. Constitutional reform, through the direct convocation of a popular assembly, is a position for a policy: it is a position for changing a political system that has demonstrated its incapacity to protect the weak from the powerful.
So, we will be interested to hear what broader segments of the Frente say, especially about the modest steps toward popular consultation in the Accord; and we await some specific statement from COPINH or its leadership on this point in particular.
So, as we previously said, we think that there will need to be close scrutiny of the reactions of differently positioned parties to the Cartagena Accord.
Porfirio Lobo Sosa was strongly motivated to do whatever he could to allow Honduras back into OAS. Other hemispheric governments had the same motivation. José Manuel Zelaya Rosales could not be seen to stand in the way of some sort of step forward and retain any international credibility.
But neither Lobo Sosa, nor Zelaya, nor the governments of Colombia, Venezuela, the US or other OAS member states can compel the people of Honduras, far from reconciled, to follow through. The question then will be: how is this playing at home?
After surprising silences, responses are beginning to trickle in. We want to give each serious consideration, so this post treats just one: the official statement of the Comité Político of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular.
In this statement, the Political Committee of the Frente recognizes the advances made
With respect to the agenda proposed by the ex-President of the Republic of Honduras (2006-2010) and General Coordinator of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales.Nuance matters in statements like these. The Political Committee is not disavowing Zelaya, but they are pointing out that the Cartagena Accord follows his agenda, not one outlined by the Frente.
To characterize what follows as supportive to the Cartagena Accord would be to miss more nuances. The Political Committee takes a point by point reaction to the four agenda items it recognizes in the new accord.
On the return from exile of Zelaya and others, such as Padre Tamayo, the Frente endorses the agreement but notes it will actually be fulfilled when they are back in the country. Caution may seem overdone, but remember the Tegucigalpa Accord: I guarantee you everyone in the Frente does, and the bitter disappointment.
That the Frente does not trust Lobo Sosa becomes clear in their reaction to the second agenda item, general human rights issues:
In the sphere of human rights there are no advances, because the regime of Lobo Sosa did not commit to, nor guarantee the application of justice to the violators of human rights, nor the guardianship of the human rights of the people in resistence, this is a challenge to achieve for the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular.
In other words: we see your lips moving but what don't see you doing anything.
The third agenda item, as described by the Political Committee of the Frente, reads
The recognition of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular as a political and belligerent force ("fuerza política y beligerante")
We are now at the heart of a question debated within the Frente: should it become (or give rise to) a political party? or should it remain a social movement with political aims? "Beligerante" in this context could be glossed as "militant", as in "a militant political movement". "Fuerza", literally force, is not to simply be reduced to "party" (partido).
So it is interesting that in analyzing this third agenda item and what was achieved in the Cartagena Accord, the Political Committee of the Frente does not use the word "partido" at all:
En cuanto al reconocimiento del Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular como una fuerza política y beligerante, se logra un avance en el sentido que el régimen se compromete, a cumplir las garantías para la inscripción del F.N.R.P. ante el Tribunal Supremo Electoral a la luz de las leyes para la participación democrática en los procesos políticos electorales de Honduras y para que pueda integrar los organismos oficiales de carácter político electoral en igualdad de condiciones.
[In regard to the recognition of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular as a political and militant force, an advance was achieved in the sense that the regime committed itself to comply with guarantees for the registration of the FNRP before the Tribunal Supremo Electoral in light of the laws for democratic participation in the electoral political processes of Honduras and so that it can be integrated in the official organizations of a political electoral character in equality of conditions.]
What the laws alluded to here govern is not just political parties, but broader advocacy groups. Returning to the language of the Accord, we note that the rapid translation we posted here interpolated the words "political party" because that is how this part of the agreement was parsed by those negotiating it. But it does not seem to us that the response by the Political Committee of the Frente endorses a full conversion to a political party.
Finally, the Political Committee pronounces on the fourth of Zelaya's agenda items in negotiating the Cartagena Accord and again, comes down in a more mixed way than simple outright endorsement of the language of the accord itself:
En el tema de la constituyente que es uno de los grandes objetivos del Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, se logra el derecho a la consulta para la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente; de esta forma se ratifica que con la fuerza de los principios y las ideas del soberano se vence a los intereses mezquinos de los grupos de poder que le han negado el derecho a la democracia participativa.
[In regard to the constituyente which is one of the major objectives of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, there was achieved the right to a consulta (poll or referendum) for the Asamblea Nacional Constituyente; in this form was ratified that with the force of principles and the ideas of sovereignty the avaricious interests of groups in power that have denied the right to participatory democracy are defeated.]
In other words: we showed that if you document broad public desire for constitutional change and more direct political participation, the other side eventually has to give in. But notice: no ringing endorsement of the mechanism, characterized with such self-congratulation in the Cartagena Agreement itself, by which the kind of popular consultation that Zelaya wanted to undertake is now possible.
So we would score this as 1 overt endorsement (of return from exile); 2 muted recuperation of their own agenda from that embodied in the Cartagena Accord, with a pause to remind people that these achievements came from the Frente's actions; and 1 outright rejection, of the human rights items, based on lack of trust for Lobo Sosa.
In a related post, political scientist Greg Weeks makes an interesting set of comments about the potential role of the Frente. He notes that the literature on how resistance movements become political parties probably does not apply here, as the Frente never was a guerrilla movement, and thus has none of the obstacles to overcome when a militarized opposition becomes a political one.
He then adds that there is a literature on how ethnic movements become political parties, suggesting this also does not apply here.
We agree, although for slightly different reasons than he gives: there is a pan-ethnic movement at the heart of the Frente, represented among other things by the prominence of Bertha Oliva, and the symbolic location of Frente assemblies in the heart of traditional Lenca territory.
But the Frente does not speak solely or uniformly with this voice; we pay attention to when COPINH issues statements in order to understand how at least the indigenous faction within the Frente understands things. But there are other voices, including those that represent reform tendencies within the Liberal Party, and those that are mobilized primarily out of belief in Zelaya himself.
Where we think Greg may slightly miss a nuance is when he suggests that the challenge for the Frente is moving from taking positions against the government to taking positions for certain policies.
The Frente has a robust and clear agenda. It is just an agenda that is either not reported in mainstream media, especially in the US, or not taken seriously by them. It starts with constitutional reform. Constitutional reform, through the direct convocation of a popular assembly, is a position for a policy: it is a position for changing a political system that has demonstrated its incapacity to protect the weak from the powerful.
So, we will be interested to hear what broader segments of the Frente say, especially about the modest steps toward popular consultation in the Accord; and we await some specific statement from COPINH or its leadership on this point in particular.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Lobo Sosa and Honduras' Garifuna: CNN swallows propaganda
CNN headlined its story on the marking of 214 years of Honduran Garifuna history Hondurans honor African heritage.
But their story qualifies as propaganda for the Lobo Sosa government. It even includes, as if it were news or even a fact, this line:
The Garifuna are an African-descendant group formally recognized as one of the multiple groups making up Honduran society under the International Labor Organization's Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (ILO 169), which was ratified by Honuras in 1994.
So if there is any credit to be claimed by Honduran governments-- which is debatable, as it was indigenous activists who pushed for recognition-- it would be earlier Honduran governments that deserve credit for recognizing the Garifuna.
In fact, since the 2009 coup, existing independent Garifuna activities have been under constant attack.
In 2009, in a statement on the Dia de la Raza, indigenous organizations noted attacks on the independent Garifuna community health center that had been staffed by Cuban doctors, and was Garifuna run and managed. Dr. Luther Castillo, the director of that clinic, was specifically targeted. The UNHCR noted that the project was supported by funding from Honduras' ALBA initiative, and that "Garífuna students who have traditionally had difficulty gaining entry into the medical faculty of the Honduran National University" were as a result "able to obtain their medical training at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) in Cuba". The clinic was credited with treating over 140,000 cases prior to the coup. After the coup, the Micheletti government moved to take over the clinic.
Reports in 2009 also mention the reversal by the Micheletti government of Zelaya administration "authorization to teach in the Garifuna language in school and to teach the language itself". Santiago Jaime Ruíz Alvarez, in a study of Garifuna language transmission, noted that the production of text books in the language during the Zelaya administration was
So it is beyond ironic for Porfirio Lobo Sosa to be given credit for promising that, maybe in six months he will "sign an agreement to give indigenous people and Honduran blacks a preferential right to choose teachers and doctors from their own villages". These are things they have and have had, that the coup and its aftermath removed.
And there is plenty of evidence of continuing threats to Garifuna existence that are hardly being countered by the pro-business Lobo Sosa government.
Garifuna community radio, like that of other local groups, is threatened by new policies of the Lobo Sosa government, policies that drew statements of concern from UN officials. Garifuna station Faluma Bimetu has been repeatedly threatened. In 2010, during the transition to the Lobo Sosa administration, their station was vandalized and they were taken off the air by government forces. Now, through new licensing procedures, the Lobo Sosa government itself can clamp down on this and other independent voices.
Coverage of the Garifuna anniversary from resistance sources was, shall we say, somewhat different.
First of all, they called it a protest, not a celebration. These reports noted that Garifuna protestors who marched in Tegucigalpa were accompanied by other representatives of COPINH, the Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígena de Honduras (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras), and that the demonstrators "demanded a halt to the dispossession of the lands of the Lenca and Garifuna peoples". COPINH is, of course, a core part of the Frente de Resistencia, something not evident in CNN's story.
Prominent in this account is Miriam Miranda, coordinator of the Organización Fraternal Negra de Honduras (OFRANEH) who was recently rescued from illegal detention due to international pressure on the Lobo Sosa government. OFRANEH, again, was one of the organizations that denounced the coup d'etat of 2009 and continues to engage in activism against the repressive actions of the Lobo Sosa government.
In a statement released after her detention, Miranda said
She reportedly added that more than a toast in the Casa Presidencial, what the Garifuna people need is the respect for their human rights and access to the lands of their people.
CNN, it would appear, hasn't heard that Garifuna voice. It is too easily taken in by the kind of meaningless symbolic gestures that count as "recognition" of minorities in US politics.
The real political story, the one about land rights, rights of self determination, and resistance to economic exploitation that is displacing the Garifuna from their traditional communities in the name of development-- the actual legacy of the Lobo Sosa government in Garifuna territory-- CNN cannot be bothered to cover.
But their story qualifies as propaganda for the Lobo Sosa government. It even includes, as if it were news or even a fact, this line:
Lobo predicted that he would be recognized as a defender of the rights of Afro-Hondurans by the end of his term.Well, how likely is that to actually happen? What would be the basis of such a claim?
The Garifuna are an African-descendant group formally recognized as one of the multiple groups making up Honduran society under the International Labor Organization's Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (ILO 169), which was ratified by Honuras in 1994.
So if there is any credit to be claimed by Honduran governments-- which is debatable, as it was indigenous activists who pushed for recognition-- it would be earlier Honduran governments that deserve credit for recognizing the Garifuna.
In fact, since the 2009 coup, existing independent Garifuna activities have been under constant attack.
In 2009, in a statement on the Dia de la Raza, indigenous organizations noted attacks on the independent Garifuna community health center that had been staffed by Cuban doctors, and was Garifuna run and managed. Dr. Luther Castillo, the director of that clinic, was specifically targeted. The UNHCR noted that the project was supported by funding from Honduras' ALBA initiative, and that "Garífuna students who have traditionally had difficulty gaining entry into the medical faculty of the Honduran National University" were as a result "able to obtain their medical training at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) in Cuba". The clinic was credited with treating over 140,000 cases prior to the coup. After the coup, the Micheletti government moved to take over the clinic.
Reports in 2009 also mention the reversal by the Micheletti government of Zelaya administration "authorization to teach in the Garifuna language in school and to teach the language itself". Santiago Jaime Ruíz Alvarez, in a study of Garifuna language transmission, noted that the production of text books in the language during the Zelaya administration was
the first time that the Ministry of Education of Honduras, at the very official level, has produced culturally and linguistically appropriate textbooks, teaching and support materials for school children in indigenous and Afro-descended communities.
So it is beyond ironic for Porfirio Lobo Sosa to be given credit for promising that, maybe in six months he will "sign an agreement to give indigenous people and Honduran blacks a preferential right to choose teachers and doctors from their own villages". These are things they have and have had, that the coup and its aftermath removed.
And there is plenty of evidence of continuing threats to Garifuna existence that are hardly being countered by the pro-business Lobo Sosa government.
Garifuna community radio, like that of other local groups, is threatened by new policies of the Lobo Sosa government, policies that drew statements of concern from UN officials. Garifuna station Faluma Bimetu has been repeatedly threatened. In 2010, during the transition to the Lobo Sosa administration, their station was vandalized and they were taken off the air by government forces. Now, through new licensing procedures, the Lobo Sosa government itself can clamp down on this and other independent voices.
Coverage of the Garifuna anniversary from resistance sources was, shall we say, somewhat different.
First of all, they called it a protest, not a celebration. These reports noted that Garifuna protestors who marched in Tegucigalpa were accompanied by other representatives of COPINH, the Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígena de Honduras (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras), and that the demonstrators "demanded a halt to the dispossession of the lands of the Lenca and Garifuna peoples". COPINH is, of course, a core part of the Frente de Resistencia, something not evident in CNN's story.
Prominent in this account is Miriam Miranda, coordinator of the Organización Fraternal Negra de Honduras (OFRANEH) who was recently rescued from illegal detention due to international pressure on the Lobo Sosa government. OFRANEH, again, was one of the organizations that denounced the coup d'etat of 2009 and continues to engage in activism against the repressive actions of the Lobo Sosa government.
In a statement released after her detention, Miranda said
Repudiating the Lobo Sosa administration's official event that was all too closely covered by CNN, Miranda is quoted as sayingIn Honduras the chaos by which the country was subsumed due to the 2009 coup d'etat perpetrated by the judicial and legislative powers and the armed forces, under the instructions of the U.S. right wing and of course the Pentagon, continues.
Despite the plastic smiles of state functionaries and their eagerness to achieve international recognition, the criminalization of social protest has sharpened with the regime of Porfirio Lobo, who with his sinister ways discredits his administration in the eyes of human rights organizations.
“we did not come to the Presidential Palace to ask to be received by a person who has not been able to resolve, through dialogue, a conflict with the teachers, we do not want to celebrate, nor do we even have reason to do so”.
She reportedly added that more than a toast in the Casa Presidencial, what the Garifuna people need is the respect for their human rights and access to the lands of their people.
CNN, it would appear, hasn't heard that Garifuna voice. It is too easily taken in by the kind of meaningless symbolic gestures that count as "recognition" of minorities in US politics.
The real political story, the one about land rights, rights of self determination, and resistance to economic exploitation that is displacing the Garifuna from their traditional communities in the name of development-- the actual legacy of the Lobo Sosa government in Garifuna territory-- CNN cannot be bothered to cover.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Department 19: A new political player in Honduras?
Over the past few months, a new phrase has cropped up repeatedly in postings from the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular: Departamento 19.
I knew what it indexed right away, because (among other things) I was on a PhD dissertation committee that introduced me to El Salvador's attempt to reincorporate Salvadorans living in the US in post-civil war politics and culture, as a 15th political division outside the boundaries of the national territory.
After reading the latest notice that mentioned the representation of Hondurans abroad as a new, 19th department, I wondered when and how this became a political reality?
Resistencia, the official web site of the FNRP, first mentions Department 19 on November 22, 2010, in an article about increasing the size of its representative assembly, including adding four delegates "of Hondurans who live outside the country".
On November 24, 2010, Vos el Soberano carried an update called "Camino al Constituyente" that seems to be the first mention of representation for Hondurans abroad on that site, in an interview with a Los Angeles based resistance member.
On January 19 of this year, in its coverage leading up to the February 26 Asamblea of the FNRP, Vos el Soberano published an entire article about how Departamento 19 would be well represented in the assembly. This report includes the entire document formalizing participation by Department 19 in the FNRP's political assembly, starting with a description of the composition of delegates:
In general terms, 17 delegates were approved for the so-called Departamento 19 (12 for the US, 3 for Spain, 1 for Canada and 1 for France) with the possibility of being augmented in a future national assembly.And then came a post-Assembly report by Gerardo Torres Zelaya, that included the news that in the interim assembly, Carlos Mejía from California and Lucy Pagoada of New York represented this bloc.
Contained in Torres Zelaya's report is a statement that claims a higher significance for Department 19 than merely representation:
D19 is more than a territorial expression and has turned into one of the principal symbols of the will of an entire people to refound their country and has demonstrated that when we are speaking of struggle, frontiers are obsolete.
So where did the idea come from in the first place? Is it inherently, as Torres Zelaya suggests in this quote, revolutionary?
The earliest mention I can find for this concept, using Google, is an essay by a Honduran poet, Fabricio Estrada, called Broza de esmeril first published in February 2008. In November 2008, Estrada republished it on his own blog under the slightly revised title Brozas de esmeril, Honduras (roughly, an emery brush-- a brush that grinds).
This version includes the striking image I link to here, which embeds a map of the US inside the territory of Honduras (credited at the original site to Hugo Bautista). The text accompanying this map vividly summarizes facts which together demonstrate the potential significance of Hondurans in the US in Honduran politics. In a preface to his essay, Estrada wrote that
What follows is a description of the situation of being a poet in Honduras in a time when with the internet "no one lives regionally".In the beginning, I created this proclamation or manifesto, believing in a "Paíspoesible" [a pun: poetically possible country], but given the boisterous failure of this collective proposal...I reclaim the words that are still valid beyond elitism and pawing in which has ended what originally was a revolutionary vision, a generational revolution, dream, fist, prodigy of the brotherhood among cannibal poets, an esthetic that overflowed the confinement of ego..."
Included in this essay, which takes the form of a numbered list, reflecting, among other things, on Honduras as a territorial entity and as a state of identity (see my translation of items 5 and 8 at the end of this post). Estrada critiques the fragmented historical identity of territorial Honduras, each part except Tegucigalpa, the capital city, yearning for a geographic other; and even the framing of Honduras as patria in Tegucigalpa the poet sees as a mystical illusion.
He ends his vision of fragmented identity by saying "that is without speaking of all that country in transit in Department 19".
So for more than two years before the FNRP took it up as a real entity, the idea that Honduras has the equivalent of a 19th state made up of the Honduran diaspora was already circulating in they cultural imaginary, specifically as part of writing that challenged the coherence of the nation-state as the grounding of identity.
The term seems to be used sparingly in economic writing over the last two years; for example, an editorial by sociologist Ricardo Puerta about guest workers programs, published online by Proceso Digital, unfortunately undated but on internal grounds from the first half of 2010, includes this description:
The so-called "Departamento 19" of the new Honduran nation, in "this globalized era of information", will continue being relevant at the macro and micro levels, for the desired local, regional, and national economic revival that is sought, and has not begun to arrive. A product of that, the Department 18, better characterized as "the Department with the growth growing for lack of generalized welfare", today already counts a total estimated population of 1.5 million compatriots, "scattered throughout the world", that represents almost 20% of all those born in Honduras and that can be found living within or outside of Honduras.
An article in May 2010 in Proceso Digital on extending access to the national public health system to Hondurans in the US (allowing them to pay into the system for the benefit of their family members in Honduras) used "Departamento 19" but followed it immediately with a gloss (los connacionales en el exterior, "those who share nationality living abroad"), indicating that it is by no means in wide use or of automatically recognized meaning.
The language of a 19th department was there to be taken up by political actors. But it has not been uniquely associated with a revolutionary vision. In fact, the largest cluster of references to it, prior to the recent surge in its use by the Frente, comes from the Nationalist Party.
Already in October 2009, Honduran media used the term in covering Pepe Lobo's "satisfaction" with support from Hondurans living in Miami. This coverage made reference to the "leadership" of the Nationalist Party in "Department 19". Just last week, coverage of the lead-up to the Nationalist Party convention, under the slogan of "Nationalists united for Honduras, underlined the inclusion of Hondurans abroad:
“We have invited the 1000 attendees from the 18 departments as well as those of department 19 that symbolically represent the Hondurans resident in the US".The contrasts between the two political groups in their approach to Department 19 are subtle: the Nationalist Party describes this as a symbolic gesture, and recognizes only Hondurans in the US; the FNRP is adding representatives porportional to the estimated residents abroad, from the four countries with the largest Honduran expatriate populations.
What the inclusion of Department 19 in texts from the extreme right to the left, from sociology to poetry, says overall is that we are seeing the emergence of a new consciousness of the global Honduran diaspora.
Salvador's Departamento 15 has become, in the analysis of Ana Patricia Rodriguez, Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Maryland, a medium for the creation of a trans-national "salvadoranness" in its disaporic community, mobilized by post-civil war Salvadoran politics. Will Honduras see something similar in the wake of the political upheaval begun by the coup d'etat?
*******
From Brozas de esmeril:
5- W live in Honduras, we assume it and that is what leads to us avoiding putting together $5,000 and going with a trustworthy coyote to the north. For one reason or another, Honduras retains us, it is an earthy, precambrian magnetism, full of contraries and premonitions... and nonetheless, we can bet what remains to us whether any Latin American wouldn't feel the same. We are in continual formation, this existential mobility is a beautiful broth, unstable, but definitely it is our essence. We look at the State from a position of mockery, everyone knows it, not even we ourselves believe in the task of national conformation, and nonetheless we intuit a country of the mind, much more open and grand than the anachronistic limits suggested by jurists in The Hague. Our country is a steppe and we are its untiring horses!
8-Honduras is a ball of steel wool... an emery brush... the fruit of the knives that Rubén Izaguirre visualized by means of his poetics... Honduras is attracted and dismembered from four historic magentic poles: those of the coast dream that in New Orleans there still live their patron-bosses, the gringo banana men who gave them keepsakes from La Lima to Olanchito.
Those of the Mosquitia still walk intoxicated with their Misquito Empire and their toasts continue giving halleluias for Queen Victoria of England.
Those of the East live buying and selling cheeses in Nicaragua... those of the West consider that they are an extension of Guatemala and those of the Southwest play with El Salvador. Only in Tegucigalpa does there survive a mystical Honduras, made visionary by the word "patria"; and that is without speaking of all that country in transit in Department 19.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
"Explosive, but no longer set in stone"
That's how Upside Down World subtitled a post by Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle on the effects and reception of recent action by the Honduran Congress.
As we wrote in a previous post, the Honduran Congress passed a law that, once ratified by being passed by the next session of Congress, explicitly makes it legal to hold public referenda on constitutional reform. We wrote that what the Honduran congress did
But only an insider to Honduran politics like Pastor Fasquelle could provide a clear analysis of who wins, who loses, and the opportunities that this legislative move provides.
Pastor Fasquelle notes that Lobo Sosa had spoken in favor of constitutional reform before the coup. Lobo Sosa has made statements in the same vein since his election as president. So from that perspective, his advocacy for this is not entirely surprising, and in the present situation, it is politically expedient.
As Pastor Fasquelle writes
This is the side of the argument that sees the congressional action as an attempt to preempt real constitutional change emerging from the will of the people.
But Pastor Fasquelle thinks that the political establishment has unleashed more than it intended:
He points to the endorsement by former President Zelaya of the action by the Honduran Congress as part of his evidence that the unintended consequences may be broader than the intended ones:
Writing as a member-- not a spokesman-- of the Resistance, Pastor Fasquelle notes the FNRP
This is where the experience that the Resistance gained in mobilizing a drive for signatures on a petition for a constitutional assembly might be seen, in retrospect, as a more significant form of political action than forming a conventional political party would have been.
Not that Hondurans can expect that the consequences of this legislation will unroll without additional drama. The right-wing Unión Civica Democratica has voiced fierce opposition to the measure, and has every possibility of being more influential in Washington than any of the other positions Pastor Fasquelle outlines, because as he notes the UCD
US policy toward Honduras has hardly been coherent or progressive even before the elevation of a more right wing House of Representatives brought about by the 2010 elections. The indications that House members will politick on an overly simplified storyline of right wing nightmares are already clear. How will the recent action of the Honduran Congress that has been promoted by the US right as guarantors of constitutional integrity factor into this going forward?
Thanks to Quotha for reposting Pastor Fasquelle's published essay and ensuring it came to our attention quickly.
As we wrote in a previous post, the Honduran Congress passed a law that, once ratified by being passed by the next session of Congress, explicitly makes it legal to hold public referenda on constitutional reform. We wrote that what the Honduran congress did
is in no way a substitute for what the Zelaya government was proposing, and what the Frente de Resistencia has continued to advocate. Both the Zelaya government and the Frente have pursued completely revisiting the constitution through a participatory forum, an assembly, not [just] via amendment by the Congress, which these bodies argue is not truly representative of the will of the Honduran people or its broader interests and needs.In a separate post, we pointed out the hypocrisy involved, since merely talking about asking the populace if they wanted to be asked their opinion about constitutional reform was equated, after the coup d'etat, to advocating for changes to the "set in stone" articles of the constitution, while this new legislative move was defended from the same charges.
But only an insider to Honduran politics like Pastor Fasquelle could provide a clear analysis of who wins, who loses, and the opportunities that this legislative move provides.
Pastor Fasquelle notes that Lobo Sosa had spoken in favor of constitutional reform before the coup. Lobo Sosa has made statements in the same vein since his election as president. So from that perspective, his advocacy for this is not entirely surprising, and in the present situation, it is politically expedient.
As Pastor Fasquelle writes
It should also be obvious at this stage that the National Party believes it has created the superficial changes necessary to prevent real, profound change from taking place.
This is the side of the argument that sees the congressional action as an attempt to preempt real constitutional change emerging from the will of the people.
But Pastor Fasquelle thinks that the political establishment has unleashed more than it intended:
A critical analysis of the amendment, in context, needs to take into account the dangers and should recognize its opportunistic and partisan intent. At the same time it must also recognize there has been an opening and that opportunism has created an actual opportunity.
He points to the endorsement by former President Zelaya of the action by the Honduran Congress as part of his evidence that the unintended consequences may be broader than the intended ones:
The amendment has changed the rules, and opened possibilities for the Resistance, despite the intentions of its authors.
Writing as a member-- not a spokesman-- of the Resistance, Pastor Fasquelle notes the FNRP
needs no official recognition to call for a referendum for a Constituent Assembly and to demand the repeal of amnesty for human rights violators on the day the law is officially passed. And soon the Congress may be facing an even bigger challenge: a drive to collect the one hundred thousand signatures needed to call a referendum on the abolition of the Armed Forces has already been announced.
This is where the experience that the Resistance gained in mobilizing a drive for signatures on a petition for a constitutional assembly might be seen, in retrospect, as a more significant form of political action than forming a conventional political party would have been.
Not that Hondurans can expect that the consequences of this legislation will unroll without additional drama. The right-wing Unión Civica Democratica has voiced fierce opposition to the measure, and has every possibility of being more influential in Washington than any of the other positions Pastor Fasquelle outlines, because as he notes the UCD
also has increased its presence in Washington, where it has now ever more powerful congressional allies, to pressure the Obama Administration against what its members believe to be an action as criminal as they claimed Zelaya’s poll to be.
US policy toward Honduras has hardly been coherent or progressive even before the elevation of a more right wing House of Representatives brought about by the 2010 elections. The indications that House members will politick on an overly simplified storyline of right wing nightmares are already clear. How will the recent action of the Honduran Congress that has been promoted by the US right as guarantors of constitutional integrity factor into this going forward?
Thanks to Quotha for reposting Pastor Fasquelle's published essay and ensuring it came to our attention quickly.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
No More Standards at All: So Much for Unalterable Constitutional Clauses
Honduran congress-members overthrow the myth of the "untouchable" articles of the Constitution.
Say what?
That's the headline on an AFP story by Freddy Cuevas, which notes that
The AP article includes an interesting characterization of the original motivation for including the language in the constitution that seems to block any revision of the constitution:
But there is not, otherwise, any evidence that elected Honduran leaders in the 20th century took part in any "vicious cycle" of "perpetuating themselves in power for years". What actually dominated the post-Carías Andino period is a pattern of repeated military interventions removing elected leaders from office, and ruling as dictators or juntas.
Juan Manuel Gálvez was elected to succeed Carías Andino (and, it must be said, with his support); after the 1954 election did not produce a clear outcome, his vice president, Julio Lozano Diaz, seized control; he was in turn forced out by the military in 1956. A year later, elections under this military government gave Ramón Villeda Morales a six year term of office. This was cut short, again, by a military coup in 1963.
The military held power-- albeit with shifting leadership-- from 1963 until 1971, and again from 1972 to 1982. (Ramón Ernesto Cruz Uclés was elected in 1971 and removed from office less than two years later by the general who preceded him, Oswaldo López Arrellano.) So what would have helped stop the "vicious cycle" of perpetuation of power in the creation of the constitution of the 1980s would have been reducing the influence of the armed forces-- following the model, for example, of Costa Rica, which abolished the military after a devastating civil war ended in 1948.
All throughout 2009, the strongest argument the de facto regime could come up with to justify the coup d'etat was that it was necessary to protect the constitution against an attempt by the President Zelaya to prolong his term in office. Some US pundits agreed that changing term limits was one of the most dangerous things a Latin American government could do. Often these same commentators cited such moves by left of center governments, while staying silent on right of center governments doing the same thing. The occasional US scholar argued that we could assume that the only reason a sitting president in Latin America wanted to promote a constitutional assembly would be to allow re-election, rejecting Manuel Zelaya's repeated denials of this intention and ignoring the many other goals of constitutional revision advanced by his government.
The new congressional action needs to be voted on a second time, by a second congress, to be considered valid, so we won't know until after January 25 whether this symbolic gesture ends here.
To be clear, what the Honduran congress just did is in no way a substitute for what the Zelaya government was proposing, and what the Frente de Resistencia has continued to advocate. Both the Zelaya government and the Frente have pursued completely revisiting the constitution through a participatory forum, an assembly, not via amendment by the Congress, which these bodies argue is not truly representative of the will of the Honduran people or its broader interests and needs.
Juan Barahona of the FNRP said in comments to the AFP that what Honduran politicians
Say what?
That's the headline on an AFP story by Freddy Cuevas, which notes that
There is a measure of irony in the changes approved Wednesday night...Well, yeah...
The AP article includes an interesting characterization of the original motivation for including the language in the constitution that seems to block any revision of the constitution:
The permanent ban on re-election was imposed as the country emerged from a military dictatorship, and it was meant to break the vicious cycle of Honduran leaders perpetuating themselves in power for years...This is a worth thinking about. The implication would be that Honduras had a history of elected presidents overstaying their welcome prior to the writing of the new constitution in 1982. The archetype for this in the 20th century would have to be Tiburcio Carías Andino, who maintained his position as head of state after being elected in 1932 until 1949.
But there is not, otherwise, any evidence that elected Honduran leaders in the 20th century took part in any "vicious cycle" of "perpetuating themselves in power for years". What actually dominated the post-Carías Andino period is a pattern of repeated military interventions removing elected leaders from office, and ruling as dictators or juntas.
Juan Manuel Gálvez was elected to succeed Carías Andino (and, it must be said, with his support); after the 1954 election did not produce a clear outcome, his vice president, Julio Lozano Diaz, seized control; he was in turn forced out by the military in 1956. A year later, elections under this military government gave Ramón Villeda Morales a six year term of office. This was cut short, again, by a military coup in 1963.
The military held power-- albeit with shifting leadership-- from 1963 until 1971, and again from 1972 to 1982. (Ramón Ernesto Cruz Uclés was elected in 1971 and removed from office less than two years later by the general who preceded him, Oswaldo López Arrellano.) So what would have helped stop the "vicious cycle" of perpetuation of power in the creation of the constitution of the 1980s would have been reducing the influence of the armed forces-- following the model, for example, of Costa Rica, which abolished the military after a devastating civil war ended in 1948.
All throughout 2009, the strongest argument the de facto regime could come up with to justify the coup d'etat was that it was necessary to protect the constitution against an attempt by the President Zelaya to prolong his term in office. Some US pundits agreed that changing term limits was one of the most dangerous things a Latin American government could do. Often these same commentators cited such moves by left of center governments, while staying silent on right of center governments doing the same thing. The occasional US scholar argued that we could assume that the only reason a sitting president in Latin America wanted to promote a constitutional assembly would be to allow re-election, rejecting Manuel Zelaya's repeated denials of this intention and ignoring the many other goals of constitutional revision advanced by his government.
The new congressional action needs to be voted on a second time, by a second congress, to be considered valid, so we won't know until after January 25 whether this symbolic gesture ends here.
To be clear, what the Honduran congress just did is in no way a substitute for what the Zelaya government was proposing, and what the Frente de Resistencia has continued to advocate. Both the Zelaya government and the Frente have pursued completely revisiting the constitution through a participatory forum, an assembly, not via amendment by the Congress, which these bodies argue is not truly representative of the will of the Honduran people or its broader interests and needs.
Juan Barahona of the FNRP said in comments to the AFP that what Honduran politicians
"want is to cleanse themselves of the coup d'Etat"."For us, you cannot reform a constitution that does not exist; it was nullified on the 28th of June of 2009; since then, we have been in a de facto period".
So don't expect this to end advocacy for a constitutional assembly.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Kidnapped Campesino Leader Escapes
The good news came through late yesterday: Juan Chinchilla, kidnapped leader of the peasant movement under attack in the Bajo Aguan, was free.
Now the details are coming out, and it is critical that they not be passed over lightly.
The article in today's Tiempo is headlined Director of MUCA escapes from his captors.
"Escapes" is the key word here. Despite massive mobilization intended to apply pressure on the Lobo Sosa government to seek his release, there is no reason to give credit to them, as Adrienne Pine suggests is happening in email communications.
Chinchilla was kidnapped on Saturday. His motorbike was found, riddled with bullet holes, near Tocoa.
According to Tiempo, he was found after his escape on the highway near Trujillo, the major city on the north coast of Honduras nearest to the Bajo Aguan settlements. Tiempo says Chinchilla has declined to talk to the police and has yet to take part in a press conference.
So for more detailed coverage, readers need to turn to the website of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, of which Chinchilla is also a leader.
There, Wilfredo Paz, another leader of the FNRP, is quoted as saying Chinchilla
Paz is quoted as saying Chinchilla is being kept safe in an undisclosed location. He went on to explain that Chinchilla untied himself while his guards were asleep.
Perhaps most troubling is that Paz reported that Chinchilla's guards were not all Honduran:
I originally wrote the following paragraph as the conclusion for this piece:
Then, before posting, I checked for more Honduran news stories. Turns out I could not even imagine how bad the spin would be. This is from El Heraldo's story:
Don't be fooled.
Now the details are coming out, and it is critical that they not be passed over lightly.
The article in today's Tiempo is headlined Director of MUCA escapes from his captors.
"Escapes" is the key word here. Despite massive mobilization intended to apply pressure on the Lobo Sosa government to seek his release, there is no reason to give credit to them, as Adrienne Pine suggests is happening in email communications.
Chinchilla was kidnapped on Saturday. His motorbike was found, riddled with bullet holes, near Tocoa.
According to Tiempo, he was found after his escape on the highway near Trujillo, the major city on the north coast of Honduras nearest to the Bajo Aguan settlements. Tiempo says Chinchilla has declined to talk to the police and has yet to take part in a press conference.
So for more detailed coverage, readers need to turn to the website of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, of which Chinchilla is also a leader.
There, Wilfredo Paz, another leader of the FNRP, is quoted as saying Chinchilla
"is in good condition, although very worn for the beating and torture they applied.”
Paz is quoted as saying Chinchilla is being kept safe in an undisclosed location. He went on to explain that Chinchilla untied himself while his guards were asleep.
Perhaps most troubling is that Paz reported that Chinchilla's guards were not all Honduran:
"Some spoke English, while others spoke a language he could not understand."
I originally wrote the following paragraph as the conclusion for this piece:
Watch for the Honduran police to dismiss this crime as unrelated to the political circumstances in the Aguan; to blame Chinchilla and to try to imply that he was engaged in drug trafficking; or to blame it on a generalized climate of violence. And don't be fooled.
Then, before posting, I checked for more Honduran news stories. Turns out I could not even imagine how bad the spin would be. This is from El Heraldo's story:
In relation to this act of delinquency, the legal advisor of the Instituto Nacional Agrario (INA), Marco Ramiro Lobo, asserted that what those who grabbed Chinchilla were attempting was to 'boycott' the negotiations [with Miguel Facussé, in which he was a participant].Confused about who these people were, who might have been motivated to promote a breakdown in the negotiations? Read on:“We are concerned that this act will provoke distortion in the negotiations", said Lobo.
Ramiro Lobo did not directly accuse the businessman Miguel Facussé for the disappearance of the campesino leader, although he stated that “the primary suspects probably come from this sector”.Maybe there is another way to read this, but I doubt it: the INA representative is subtly implying that this was an inside job-- by MUCA. Think I am reading too much into the way Heraldo presented the story? read the first (and at the moment, only) comment on the story:
I don't know why this sounds like a sham to me, an invented kidnapping that didn't yield the outcomes that they wanted...Well, I know why it sounded like a sham to you. Because that's how Heraldo wants you to react, and they carefully chose their words to give the impression that it wasn't really a kidnapping.
Don't be fooled.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Tale of Two Polls
November's news from Honduras has brought us piecemeal reporting on the results, though not all the data, from two different opinion polls in Honduras. These show an interesting evolution in opinion in Honduras, though you couldn't tell that from the press coverage.
The first poll, carried out by Vanderbilt's Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), is covered in recent stories in El Heraldo and La Prensa. Press coverage was sparked by the public release of the LAPOP report Cultura politica de la democracía en Honduras 2010, part of their Americas Barometer series. [While the link to the PDF appears to be working erratically, the technical information page establishes the information used here.]
This report is based on data from a poll carried out in January and February of 2010, just after Porfirio Lobo Sosa was inaugurated. LAPOP describes it as a stratified and clustered sample of 1596 respondents, with a margin of error of 2.75%. Previous commentary on the poll appeared in LAPOP's Insights series in August.
LAPOP has been issuing press releases based on analyses of the data since at least April. We covered an earlier one in this post.
On November 8, El Tiempo reported the results of a Centro de Estudios para la Democracia (CESPAD) poll carried out in September, 2010. This poll, carried out by a European polling agency and funded by OXFAM, surveyed 800 respondents and bears a reported margin of error of 0.07%. Their report can be downloaded here.
Polls measure sentiment at the time they were carried out, which can stay relatively stable or change in response to changing knowledge or conditions.
Poll results can also be influenced by the way questions are asked, which is why analysts always need to see the specific wording of a question. At its extreme, so-called "push-polling" involves asking questions in ways that, while purporting to solicit opinion, actually seek to change opinion. This verges from spreading outright falsehoods to simply framing an issue in ways likely to give people a bad impression and raise negative feelings.
Push-polling is considered a political strategy, a way to distort people's ideas. But there is a broader literature on polling that asks whether polls themselves can influence opinion, either through "bandwagon" effects (or contagion-- moving to the winning side), or through what in elections is called "strategic voting": making a choice that is not the one you really most support because your assessment is that what you most support has little potential of happening. Research results do support the existence of such strategic opinion shift.
So polls need to be considered historically and with attention to the specific questions asked.
In the wake of the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the LAPOP poll from January/February question PN4 asked "In general, would you say you were very satisfied, satisfied, unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with the form of democracy in Honduras?" La Prensa reported that 53.6% of their respondents were satisfied with Honduran democracy, and a further 12% were greatly satisfied. 31.6% told LAPOP they were unsatisfied, and a further 2.9% were very unsatisfied.
In its poll, taken in September, CESPAD obviously did not ask precisely the same question. Instead, it included two questions that generate comparable opinion; and those opinions completely reverse the picture of satisfaction LAPOP's earlier poll presented.
CESPAD found a huge level of dissatisfaction with the condition of democracy in Honduras. In answer to the question, "Are you satisfied with the current democracy or think that things should become more democratic?", only 14% of respondents reported that they were satisfied. A full 86% reported that they were unsatisfied and felt things should become more democratic:
In September, only 15.4% of the respondents felt that Honduras had overcome the crisis set off by the 2009 coup, with a further 8% thinking Honduran democracy was functioning normally. The remainder either felt that Honduran democracy was in crisis (50.0%) or felt Honduras had no democracy (21.4%) or weren't interested (5.1%).
Compare this to the January/February LAPOP survey question HONCRSPOL7: "How satisfied were you with the solution to the political crisis of 2009?". Note that this question contains the assumption that the political crisis had ended, presumably with the election of Lobo Sosa in November 2009. In early 2010, LAPOP reported that 59.6% of respondents were satisfied with whatever they saw as the solution to the political crisis.
If we take these two questions as measuring about the same thing, then sentiment about whether the coup of 2009 has been resolved has eroded from 59.6% in January/February to 23.4% in September. A much higher proportion of the population in September thought the democracy was in crisis or there was no democracy in Honduras (71.4%) than believed in February that the crisis had been resolved (23.4%).
In January/February LAPOP followed their question about how satisfied with the "solution" to the crisis people were with another (HONCRSPOL8) that asked respondents what their preferred solution to the crisis was. The questionnaire provided a predefined list of answers that were to be scored, along with the instruction that the list of potential answers was not to be read to the respondents. The list of preferred solutions to the crisis did not include holding elections.
Here, 42.2 percent of the LAPOP respondents preferred reinstating Zelaya in some way for a period of time (31.2 % until the end of his term in January 2010, while a further 11 % said restore Zelaya and allow his reelection).
29.8% thought Micheletti should continue in power, another 11% thought a third party should be appointed to head the government as a solution.
Finally, 8.1% thought the solution to the crisis of 2009 involved trying those who broke the law.
All of the other proposed solutions were favored by under 2% of those surveyed.
In contrast, CESPAD found that in September, 76% of their respondents felt that a solution to the crisis would require an agreement among all the actors in the crisis. 65% felt that this was the only way to solve the crisis, and a further 11% felt that it was necessary but would not resolve all the underlying issues.
These respondents didn't feel the crisis was over in September, and it is likely that they would define "the crisis" differently than respondents did in January and February. Then, the proposal being put forward politically by everyone from the newly elected Honduran government to the US State Department was that the November 2009 elections had put the coup behind. Now, half a year further on, people can see that has not really happened.
Changes in popular opinion between the two polls suggest the campaign to promote a constitutional assembly by the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP) is bearing fruit.
In January/February, LAPOP asked "Are you in favor of forming a constitutional assembly?" (HONCRSPOL5). A largely majority of their respondents were not in favor of a constitutional assembly (70.5%) with only 29.5% in favor.
In September, CESPAD found that things had turned around, so that when they asked "Are you in favor or against convening a constitutional assembly?", a majority of their respondents, 55%, were in favor, with 45% opposed.
As we have noted in other posts, in recent months politicians from all the major parties have begun to single willingness to talk about changing Article 5 of the constitution to allow polling the public to find out their opinion, and Lobo Sosa is willing to talk about holding a constitutional convention.
Public opinion changes.
LAPOP's press releases this week were based on old data. There is newer, and therefore, more relevant, opinion research available, which tells a different story.
That's the tale of these two polls.
The first poll, carried out by Vanderbilt's Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), is covered in recent stories in El Heraldo and La Prensa. Press coverage was sparked by the public release of the LAPOP report Cultura politica de la democracía en Honduras 2010, part of their Americas Barometer series. [While the link to the PDF appears to be working erratically, the technical information page establishes the information used here.]
This report is based on data from a poll carried out in January and February of 2010, just after Porfirio Lobo Sosa was inaugurated. LAPOP describes it as a stratified and clustered sample of 1596 respondents, with a margin of error of 2.75%. Previous commentary on the poll appeared in LAPOP's Insights series in August.
LAPOP has been issuing press releases based on analyses of the data since at least April. We covered an earlier one in this post.
On November 8, El Tiempo reported the results of a Centro de Estudios para la Democracia (CESPAD) poll carried out in September, 2010. This poll, carried out by a European polling agency and funded by OXFAM, surveyed 800 respondents and bears a reported margin of error of 0.07%. Their report can be downloaded here.
Polls measure sentiment at the time they were carried out, which can stay relatively stable or change in response to changing knowledge or conditions.
Poll results can also be influenced by the way questions are asked, which is why analysts always need to see the specific wording of a question. At its extreme, so-called "push-polling" involves asking questions in ways that, while purporting to solicit opinion, actually seek to change opinion. This verges from spreading outright falsehoods to simply framing an issue in ways likely to give people a bad impression and raise negative feelings.
Push-polling is considered a political strategy, a way to distort people's ideas. But there is a broader literature on polling that asks whether polls themselves can influence opinion, either through "bandwagon" effects (or contagion-- moving to the winning side), or through what in elections is called "strategic voting": making a choice that is not the one you really most support because your assessment is that what you most support has little potential of happening. Research results do support the existence of such strategic opinion shift.
So polls need to be considered historically and with attention to the specific questions asked.
In the wake of the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the LAPOP poll from January/February question PN4 asked "In general, would you say you were very satisfied, satisfied, unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with the form of democracy in Honduras?" La Prensa reported that 53.6% of their respondents were satisfied with Honduran democracy, and a further 12% were greatly satisfied. 31.6% told LAPOP they were unsatisfied, and a further 2.9% were very unsatisfied.
In its poll, taken in September, CESPAD obviously did not ask precisely the same question. Instead, it included two questions that generate comparable opinion; and those opinions completely reverse the picture of satisfaction LAPOP's earlier poll presented.
CESPAD found a huge level of dissatisfaction with the condition of democracy in Honduras. In answer to the question, "Are you satisfied with the current democracy or think that things should become more democratic?", only 14% of respondents reported that they were satisfied. A full 86% reported that they were unsatisfied and felt things should become more democratic:
|
| Satisfied/Very Satisfied | Unsatisfied/Very Unsatisfied |
| LAPOP |
66% |
34% |
| CESDPAD |
14% |
86% |
In September, only 15.4% of the respondents felt that Honduras had overcome the crisis set off by the 2009 coup, with a further 8% thinking Honduran democracy was functioning normally. The remainder either felt that Honduran democracy was in crisis (50.0%) or felt Honduras had no democracy (21.4%) or weren't interested (5.1%).
Compare this to the January/February LAPOP survey question HONCRSPOL7: "How satisfied were you with the solution to the political crisis of 2009?". Note that this question contains the assumption that the political crisis had ended, presumably with the election of Lobo Sosa in November 2009. In early 2010, LAPOP reported that 59.6% of respondents were satisfied with whatever they saw as the solution to the political crisis.
If we take these two questions as measuring about the same thing, then sentiment about whether the coup of 2009 has been resolved has eroded from 59.6% in January/February to 23.4% in September. A much higher proportion of the population in September thought the democracy was in crisis or there was no democracy in Honduras (71.4%) than believed in February that the crisis had been resolved (23.4%).
In January/February LAPOP followed their question about how satisfied with the "solution" to the crisis people were with another (HONCRSPOL8) that asked respondents what their preferred solution to the crisis was. The questionnaire provided a predefined list of answers that were to be scored, along with the instruction that the list of potential answers was not to be read to the respondents. The list of preferred solutions to the crisis did not include holding elections.
Here, 42.2 percent of the LAPOP respondents preferred reinstating Zelaya in some way for a period of time (31.2 % until the end of his term in January 2010, while a further 11 % said restore Zelaya and allow his reelection).
29.8% thought Micheletti should continue in power, another 11% thought a third party should be appointed to head the government as a solution.
Finally, 8.1% thought the solution to the crisis of 2009 involved trying those who broke the law.
All of the other proposed solutions were favored by under 2% of those surveyed.
In contrast, CESPAD found that in September, 76% of their respondents felt that a solution to the crisis would require an agreement among all the actors in the crisis. 65% felt that this was the only way to solve the crisis, and a further 11% felt that it was necessary but would not resolve all the underlying issues.
These respondents didn't feel the crisis was over in September, and it is likely that they would define "the crisis" differently than respondents did in January and February. Then, the proposal being put forward politically by everyone from the newly elected Honduran government to the US State Department was that the November 2009 elections had put the coup behind. Now, half a year further on, people can see that has not really happened.
Changes in popular opinion between the two polls suggest the campaign to promote a constitutional assembly by the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP) is bearing fruit.
In January/February, LAPOP asked "Are you in favor of forming a constitutional assembly?" (HONCRSPOL5). A largely majority of their respondents were not in favor of a constitutional assembly (70.5%) with only 29.5% in favor.
In September, CESPAD found that things had turned around, so that when they asked "Are you in favor or against convening a constitutional assembly?", a majority of their respondents, 55%, were in favor, with 45% opposed.
As we have noted in other posts, in recent months politicians from all the major parties have begun to single willingness to talk about changing Article 5 of the constitution to allow polling the public to find out their opinion, and Lobo Sosa is willing to talk about holding a constitutional convention.
Public opinion changes.
LAPOP's press releases this week were based on old data. There is newer, and therefore, more relevant, opinion research available, which tells a different story.
That's the tale of these two polls.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Reworking Symbolic Capital: Francisco Morazán
Why block access to a statue of Francisco Morazán?
That detail in stories about Wednesday's attack on marchers from the Frente de Resistencia in San Pedro Sula may not have resonated with readers who are not from Honduras or Central America.
But it is important, both because of the intent of the marchers to stop there, and the fact that this is where the chief of police chose to draw his line in the sand.
The attack itself started later, when the marchers were reaching the
Parque Central via the alternate route of 2a Calle. But it was reportedly preceded by a "dialogue" between the police chief and the Frente. This concerned whether the marchers would be allowed to reach the statue of Francisco Morazán that stands on 1a Calle, which is more generally known in San Pedro as Bulevar Morazán. The statue is located near the main soccer stadium on 1a Calle.
The most detailed descriptions of the route followed by the FNRP marchers says they began at the Mercado Dandi at around 10th Avenue east-- the southeast quadrant of the four quarters of the city. From there, they marched west, reportedly along 7th Calle south, a total of 24 blocks to 14th Avenue west. At that point, they turned north and proceeded to within one block of 1a Calle.
The reported moment of confrontation with the chief of police came at this point, when the marchers wanted to go to the statue to leave what the news media called "a floral tribute" to Morazán. The police claimed that doing so would interfere with the official march down 1a Calle.
This is not particularly surprising. What is interesting is that the chief of police of San Pedro Sula, who immediately afterward ordered the use of disproportionate force against the marchers as they proceeded down 2nd Calle south, walking east toward the Parque Central, apparently offered to let a dozen or so people from the Frente go to the statue to place their tribute to Morazán.
Why even offer a compromise, when it is clear that he was prepared for an all-out assault on the marchers?
And why was this a goal of the Frente in the first place?
The answer, it seems to me, lies in the symbolic importance of Morazán, revered in Honduras as the leader who tried to forge Central American unity and died in the attempt. When you are trying to refound a nation, you return to the imagery of the founders. In previous posts we have drawn attention to the citation of Lempira, the Lenca resistance leader of the 16th century, in a similar fashion. Like that case, the historical resonances are not vague, but quite specific.
Francisco Morazán won election as president in 1830 against a conservative opponent. As a Liberal, he advocated for federalism: autonomy within unity. His legislative agenda was to promote equality, freedom of religion, and public education. The policies he encouraged challenged the standing of the church as a civic power, and gained him a powerful enemy.
In 1839, during his second term in office, the independent states making up the union withdrew from it. In 1840 Morazán went into exile in South America. In 1841, reportedly motivated by dangers to local autonomy he saw in the British presence on the Moskito Coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, he returned to Central America. He rapidly overthrew the head of state of Costa Rica, and began to plan a campaign to reunify Central America. Opposing forces captured him and on September 15, 1842, he was executed in San José, still insisting that union should be the goal of the region.
His last will and testament is a widely cited expression of patriotism in Central America. In it he says in part:
These resonances may be part of the reason the FNRP in its "Proclamation of the 15th of September" invoked a different anniversary than the 189 years of independence from Spain:
That detail in stories about Wednesday's attack on marchers from the Frente de Resistencia in San Pedro Sula may not have resonated with readers who are not from Honduras or Central America.
But it is important, both because of the intent of the marchers to stop there, and the fact that this is where the chief of police chose to draw his line in the sand.
The attack itself started later, when the marchers were reaching the
Parque Central via the alternate route of 2a Calle. But it was reportedly preceded by a "dialogue" between the police chief and the Frente. This concerned whether the marchers would be allowed to reach the statue of Francisco Morazán that stands on 1a Calle, which is more generally known in San Pedro as Bulevar Morazán. The statue is located near the main soccer stadium on 1a Calle.The most detailed descriptions of the route followed by the FNRP marchers says they began at the Mercado Dandi at around 10th Avenue east-- the southeast quadrant of the four quarters of the city. From there, they marched west, reportedly along 7th Calle south, a total of 24 blocks to 14th Avenue west. At that point, they turned north and proceeded to within one block of 1a Calle.
The reported moment of confrontation with the chief of police came at this point, when the marchers wanted to go to the statue to leave what the news media called "a floral tribute" to Morazán. The police claimed that doing so would interfere with the official march down 1a Calle.
This is not particularly surprising. What is interesting is that the chief of police of San Pedro Sula, who immediately afterward ordered the use of disproportionate force against the marchers as they proceeded down 2nd Calle south, walking east toward the Parque Central, apparently offered to let a dozen or so people from the Frente go to the statue to place their tribute to Morazán.
Why even offer a compromise, when it is clear that he was prepared for an all-out assault on the marchers?
And why was this a goal of the Frente in the first place?
The answer, it seems to me, lies in the symbolic importance of Morazán, revered in Honduras as the leader who tried to forge Central American unity and died in the attempt. When you are trying to refound a nation, you return to the imagery of the founders. In previous posts we have drawn attention to the citation of Lempira, the Lenca resistance leader of the 16th century, in a similar fashion. Like that case, the historical resonances are not vague, but quite specific.
Francisco Morazán won election as president in 1830 against a conservative opponent. As a Liberal, he advocated for federalism: autonomy within unity. His legislative agenda was to promote equality, freedom of religion, and public education. The policies he encouraged challenged the standing of the church as a civic power, and gained him a powerful enemy.
In 1839, during his second term in office, the independent states making up the union withdrew from it. In 1840 Morazán went into exile in South America. In 1841, reportedly motivated by dangers to local autonomy he saw in the British presence on the Moskito Coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, he returned to Central America. He rapidly overthrew the head of state of Costa Rica, and began to plan a campaign to reunify Central America. Opposing forces captured him and on September 15, 1842, he was executed in San José, still insisting that union should be the goal of the region.
His last will and testament is a widely cited expression of patriotism in Central America. In it he says in part:
I declare: that I have not deserved death, because I have committed no more fault that to give liberty to Costa Rica and to procure peace for the Republic.Morazán exemplifies dedication to the cause of reforming government, even in the face of overwhelming odds. The reforms he called for were intended to broaden civil participation in Central American society. While the region has not reunified, the form of government he championed largely has provided the blueprint throughout the region. It surely provides one of the main statements of founding values.
...
I declare: that my love for Central America dies with me. I rouse the youth, that are called to give life to this country, that I leave with regret for its remaining in anarchy, and I desire that they should imitate my example to die with fortitude before they leave it abandoned to the disorder in which unhappily today it is found.
...
I die with regret for having caused some evils for my country, although with the true desire of procuring it good...
These resonances may be part of the reason the FNRP in its "Proclamation of the 15th of September" invoked a different anniversary than the 189 years of independence from Spain:
Today the 15th of September of 2010, it is 168 years since the assassination of our hero, Francisco Morazán, with his example and that of all the women and all the men that gave their lives to achieve justice and equality, we will continue to victory.
Friday, September 17, 2010
A cry of moral outrage over repression in San Pedro Sula
From Nuestra Palabra on September 16, by the Jesuit-run Radio Progreso:
On the evening news on the 15th of September on a radio station of national scope, the news presenter was precise: "In San Pedro Sula the so-called resistance did its thing [hizo de la suyas]". There was nothing missing from the press release: the leaders of the resistance, among them the youthful group of music with a social message, Café Guancasco, provoked the police, promoted disorder and violence. The police had no choice but to act in their defense. There was no mention of the death nor of the wounded, much less of the threats to journalist colleagues.
The media siege continues its course and its implacable format. There doesn't exist even the slightest shred of opening for a journalism of minimum ethics. And this is so because the behavior of the Honduran elites in relation to those who oppose their privileges continues unimpeachable. Their decision is invariable and implacable: to make use of that which they can, without concern for the human costs, with the goal of preserving their privileges. There is no possible road unless it is that of their earnings and using the State for the strict advantage of their interests.
The case of the country continues intact. Here there is no commission of truth that is worthwhile, and if it has worth it is because it says things in such a way that it leaves intact all the case of the country. So yes, the spokespeople of these elites, in full tune with the tightrope walkers and the prudent, shout themselves hoarse speaking of reconciliation, of peace and of unity. And with pleasure they will accept and promote the embraces-- with all the photos for circulation-- of those opponents that guarantee that the case of the country will continue intact.
In the logic of these minorities, the good are the people who promote individual moral change without ever questioning the state of things that sustains and justifies exclusion and structural inequality. The ideal is to have the top businessmen and politicians whose goodness is expressed in donations to support works of charity in parishes or religious ministries of the prudent and the tightrope walkers, without upsetting anything deep that would place at risk the model producing inequalities.
But when the people and groups demand structural changes that break with exclusion, and when they demand a new structuring of the country that breaks with the control of the State and of the society by wealthy and privileged minorities, then to the fire with them, because they incarnate wickedness, attempt against democracy and the laws, they are servile to international slogans and enemies of reconciliation and peace.
In San Pedro Sula there was a repression with evident signs of premeditation and calculation, and an abusive use of force that only confirms the reality: the small wealth and power elite understands that what is happening in Honduras is a war, and from their privileged trench, they don't value compromises: the resistance is their enemy and only its extermination is worthwhile.
All the rest, call it reconciliation, dialogues, State of Law, respect for human rights, Truth Commission, unity, Plan for the Nation, are interesting themes to fill agendas that distract the unwary and entertain the prudent, the tightrope walkers and the international community. For them the case is more than clear: here we are at war, and the media siege is an essential part of the trench from which is launched the mortal attack against everything that promotes minimal consensus that would save the country from the galloping barbarism in which we are now trapped.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Mobilization and Repression on Independence Day
[Revised: minor edits to correct grammar and spelling]
Two stories in El Tiempo tell the story:
The first story, time-stamped 9:41 am reported that "tens of thousands of people" marched in San Pedro Sula, attempting to stop at the statue of 19th century founding father Francisco Morazán before proceeding to the lovely main plaza of San Pedro where a concert was planned.
The second headline, posted at 11:23 am, sadly, leads a story of brutal violence used to shut down a concert with popular pro-Resistance performers, Cafe Guancasco. The photos and videos are shocking, recalling the most violent moments of the de facto regime's attacks on the people of Honduras.
Revistazo reports 12 people wounded and 37 arrested.
Andrés Pavón, president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH), reported that Efraín Hernández Villalta, a lottery ticket salesman who habitually worked in the Parque Central, died of the effects of the massive tear gas attack. Others were badly injured by beatings, with witnesses reporting not just the use of the batons issued to riot police (which are bad enough) but of wooden clubs.
Revistazo quotes the rationalization provided by the police:
It is not clear what this might mean. With even less credibility, an unnamed police member is quoted as saying
What seems really to have happened is somewhat different. The Artists in Resistance had set up a stage for a concert. The police attack was unprovoked and coordinated, with tear gas shot into the plaza from the banks that line the north side. Water cannons were used on the stage and the band, destroying the equipment and instruments there.
While El Tiempo reported the violence in San Pedro promptly, other Honduran news media, while at least admitting that "thousands" of members of the Resistance marched in Tegucigalpa, downplayed the incident. La Prensa wrote that in San Pedro Sula "some incidents without major consequences were registered."
La Tribuna presented the most complete account of the rationalization by the security forces of the attacks in San Pedro Sula:
El Tiempo has now updated its website with a long article that effectively refutes this account. They write that "The indiscriminate dislodging provoked chaos and confusion".
They report that the attack in the Parque Central was by the dreaded Special Squadron Cobras and even members of the Armed Forces.
Among those injured and affected by tear gas were onlookers, members of the press, and reportedly, some students.
Members of Cafe Guancasco have issued their own statement describing the unprovoked attack on the stage.
Videos of the moment of confrontation show resistance members attacked without provocation. The Roman Catholic church that faces the square appears prominently in the background, with clouds of gas floating into the crowd.
So let's be sure we understand this: the repression was, as has become normal, disproportionate. The primary victims were musicians and those waiting for a concert, one of the activities through which members of the resistance have continued to express solidarity.
And one harmless vendor died.
Two stories in El Tiempo tell the story:
The FNRP Demands True Independencereads one; the other
The Police Dislodge the FNRP
The first story, time-stamped 9:41 am reported that "tens of thousands of people" marched in San Pedro Sula, attempting to stop at the statue of 19th century founding father Francisco Morazán before proceeding to the lovely main plaza of San Pedro where a concert was planned.
The second headline, posted at 11:23 am, sadly, leads a story of brutal violence used to shut down a concert with popular pro-Resistance performers, Cafe Guancasco. The photos and videos are shocking, recalling the most violent moments of the de facto regime's attacks on the people of Honduras.
Revistazo reports 12 people wounded and 37 arrested.Andrés Pavón, president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH), reported that Efraín Hernández Villalta, a lottery ticket salesman who habitually worked in the Parque Central, died of the effects of the massive tear gas attack. Others were badly injured by beatings, with witnesses reporting not just the use of the batons issued to riot police (which are bad enough) but of wooden clubs.
Revistazo quotes the rationalization provided by the police:
they said that they were obligated to disperse the demonstrators, in the face of the intrusion that they made in the marches of the schools in the patriotic festival.
It is not clear what this might mean. With even less credibility, an unnamed police member is quoted as saying
"We had to disperse them because among them there were people carrying firearms and they tried to make disturbances."
What seems really to have happened is somewhat different. The Artists in Resistance had set up a stage for a concert. The police attack was unprovoked and coordinated, with tear gas shot into the plaza from the banks that line the north side. Water cannons were used on the stage and the band, destroying the equipment and instruments there.
While El Tiempo reported the violence in San Pedro promptly, other Honduran news media, while at least admitting that "thousands" of members of the Resistance marched in Tegucigalpa, downplayed the incident. La Prensa wrote that in San Pedro Sula "some incidents without major consequences were registered."
La Tribuna presented the most complete account of the rationalization by the security forces of the attacks in San Pedro Sula:
The march coordinated by the Frente in San Pedro Sula was detoured at 10 AM, apparently because it had presented disturbances, according to the report of the National Police.There are familiar strategies here. Claiming to have "intelligence reports" of violent intentions to justify a pre-emptive attack; the police as reasonable actors offering a compromise (one that limits the freedom of assembly and speech of the citizenry); vague claims of disturbances, and minimizing the actual security violence and injuries.
The Police intervened when the two marches coincided in the city center, with the result of various people beaten and detained, but then both continued along separate streets, according to local media.
...
In San Pedro Sula, the resistance began its march, walking from the Dandi market along 14th avenue, nonetheless one block before arriving at 1st street [more commonly called the Boulevard Morazan after the statue located there] it was diverted.
The chief of police of San Pedro Sula, Héctor Iván Mejía, spoke with one of the directors of the FNRP and would have allowed a commission of 12 to 15 people to go to place a floral offering at the statue of General Morazán, but they did not accept this and continued their walk along 2nd street until they arrived at the Parque Central.
“We used the human and material resources that the State assigned us to maintain order. They wanted to install themselves next to the other march and according to intelligence reports they wanted to do damage to intimidate those that were peacefully marching", said Mejía.
El Tiempo has now updated its website with a long article that effectively refutes this account. They write that "The indiscriminate dislodging provoked chaos and confusion".
They report that the attack in the Parque Central was by the dreaded Special Squadron Cobras and even members of the Armed Forces.
Among those injured and affected by tear gas were onlookers, members of the press, and reportedly, some students.
Members of Cafe Guancasco have issued their own statement describing the unprovoked attack on the stage.
Videos of the moment of confrontation show resistance members attacked without provocation. The Roman Catholic church that faces the square appears prominently in the background, with clouds of gas floating into the crowd.
So let's be sure we understand this: the repression was, as has become normal, disproportionate. The primary victims were musicians and those waiting for a concert, one of the activities through which members of the resistance have continued to express solidarity.
And one harmless vendor died.
Refounding Independence Day
What would press coverage be like if 16% of the US population called for a new constitutional convention? Don't you think there would be analysis, coverage of rallies calling for constitutional reform, and more?
This week in Honduras, the equivalent happened: in a country with an estimated population of 7.8 million, 1.26 million signatures were gathered on petitions to begin the process of writing a new constitution. But don't hold your breath waiting for this to be covered by the mainstream media.
Even in Honduras, only El Tiempo actually reported this development fully. Other newspapers chose only to mention that the Frente de Resistencia had called for marches, always in the context of reporting that security minister Oscar Alvarez was prepared, as he said, to prevent any vandalism, with 3000 police deployed in Tegucigalpa.
The marches called for are counter-demonstrations to the annual observance of September 15, celebrated throughout Central America as the anniversary of Independence from Spain in 1821. This year, September 15 was also the deadline chosen by the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular for the completion of its drive to obtain 1.25 million signatures on a petition for a national constitutional assembly, the asamblea constituyente. In linking the two, the Frente advanced a powerful symbolic claim to following in the footsteps of Honduras' founding fathers.
According to the announcement by Eulogio Chávez, president of the Colegio de Profesores de Educación Media de Honduras (COPEMH), and attorney Rasel Tome, who have been supervising counting of the signed petitions at the office of the beverage workers' union (STIBYS), on Sunday the count reached 1,269,142 signatures. This set the Frente to proceed to mark the anniversary of Independence Day as the beginning of the next phase of their campaign for a constitutional assembly, with a call for nation-wide demonstrations and marches apart from the official celebrations of Independence Day.
In Honduras, whose flag still features a star for each of the countries that once made up the República Federal de Centroamérica, Independence Day is marked particularly by marches by school children who for weeks before have practiced, accompanied by children's marching bands, literally bandas de guerra or military bands, drum corps beating rhythms more appropriate to the armed forces than schools.
This is a festival of nationalism exhibiting a melange of symbols of identity that makes me, as an anthropologist, want to spend pages in thick description.
So to spare you that, take a look at how Wikipedia describes the annual celebration:
On this anniversary of Honduras' first foray into self-governance, it is underlining that the call for a constituyente is neither a call for anarchy nor for dictatorship.
The basic questions anyone might have about how, under existing Honduran law, such a process might be initiated are simple enough that they could be addressed in straightforward prose in a series of pamphlets, described on the website Revistazo.
This series was published by a group of religious organizations dedicated to community service, the Organismo Cristiano de Desarrollo Integral de Honduras (Christian Development Organization of Honduras, OCDIH), CARITAS, the Instituto Ecuménico Hondureño de Servicios a la Comunidad (Honduran Ecumenical Institute of Community Services, INESHCO), and Radio Santa Rosa (the radio station of the Santa Rosa diocese). It is a reminder that support for debate about Honduran governance is not, as authorities in Honduras and the US would like to insist, a project of extremists.
If there ever emerges serious discussion of the signature drive for the constitutional assembly in English media, we can expect that the news media will attempt to minimize the achievement. After all, 16% of the population is not a majority. But recall my first analogy: the equivalent in the US, given the 2010 census population estimate of 308 million people, would be more than 49 million people. As another comparison: in January of this year, Gallup reported that nationally, only 27% of US voters identified as Republican; yet no one would argue that Republicans can, or should be, ignored in national policy debates.
International commentators (if they ever pay attention) are also likely to argue that the number is of unknown (or questionable) reliability, because the count was kept by adherents of the cause. This, in fact, is one of the most apparent reasons that the coup d'etat against Manuel Zelaya had to take place on June 28, 2009, to prevent any assessment of the level of support for a constitutional assembly to take place under governmental supervision, even by a government whose credibility had been systematically undermined by media editorializing.
And if, working on a grass-roots level without government or international NGO support, the signature campaign was able to achieve this level of participation, perhaps we have a better idea of what the authors of the coup did not want the world to know: that disillusion with the present form of Honduran government has reached a significant level, one that would need to be taken into account in a truly democratic society.
Which is one thing September 15 is without a doubt about: the first steps taken in Honduras toward government by the Honduran people. Which makes it a good date to take another step along that long road.
This week in Honduras, the equivalent happened: in a country with an estimated population of 7.8 million, 1.26 million signatures were gathered on petitions to begin the process of writing a new constitution. But don't hold your breath waiting for this to be covered by the mainstream media.
Even in Honduras, only El Tiempo actually reported this development fully. Other newspapers chose only to mention that the Frente de Resistencia had called for marches, always in the context of reporting that security minister Oscar Alvarez was prepared, as he said, to prevent any vandalism, with 3000 police deployed in Tegucigalpa.
The marches called for are counter-demonstrations to the annual observance of September 15, celebrated throughout Central America as the anniversary of Independence from Spain in 1821. This year, September 15 was also the deadline chosen by the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular for the completion of its drive to obtain 1.25 million signatures on a petition for a national constitutional assembly, the asamblea constituyente. In linking the two, the Frente advanced a powerful symbolic claim to following in the footsteps of Honduras' founding fathers.
According to the announcement by Eulogio Chávez, president of the Colegio de Profesores de Educación Media de Honduras (COPEMH), and attorney Rasel Tome, who have been supervising counting of the signed petitions at the office of the beverage workers' union (STIBYS), on Sunday the count reached 1,269,142 signatures. This set the Frente to proceed to mark the anniversary of Independence Day as the beginning of the next phase of their campaign for a constitutional assembly, with a call for nation-wide demonstrations and marches apart from the official celebrations of Independence Day.
In Honduras, whose flag still features a star for each of the countries that once made up the República Federal de Centroamérica, Independence Day is marked particularly by marches by school children who for weeks before have practiced, accompanied by children's marching bands, literally bandas de guerra or military bands, drum corps beating rhythms more appropriate to the armed forces than schools.
This is a festival of nationalism exhibiting a melange of symbols of identity that makes me, as an anthropologist, want to spend pages in thick description.
So to spare you that, take a look at how Wikipedia describes the annual celebration:
Honduras Independence Day festivities start early in the morning with marching bands. Each band wears different colors and features cheerleaders. Fiesta Catracha takes place this same day: typical Honduran foods such as beans, tamales, baleadas, [yuca] with chicharron and tortillas are offered.The mobilization of children of all ages, from kindergarten to secondary school, in cities across the country, makes September 15 one of those national expressions that becomes a part of the unexamined embodied knowledge that anthropologists identify as the most powerful means for the reproduction of culture. That's what September 15 is ultimately about: children learning that they are part of a national whole through persistent participation, so that as adults they don't even think to question the national myths. What the Frente is seeking to do is push a wedge into that unexamined knowledge, and gain the attention of Honduran society, to open up the possibility of deliberate, consciously considered change in the charter of government.
On this anniversary of Honduras' first foray into self-governance, it is underlining that the call for a constituyente is neither a call for anarchy nor for dictatorship.
The basic questions anyone might have about how, under existing Honduran law, such a process might be initiated are simple enough that they could be addressed in straightforward prose in a series of pamphlets, described on the website Revistazo.
This series was published by a group of religious organizations dedicated to community service, the Organismo Cristiano de Desarrollo Integral de Honduras (Christian Development Organization of Honduras, OCDIH), CARITAS, the Instituto Ecuménico Hondureño de Servicios a la Comunidad (Honduran Ecumenical Institute of Community Services, INESHCO), and Radio Santa Rosa (the radio station of the Santa Rosa diocese). It is a reminder that support for debate about Honduran governance is not, as authorities in Honduras and the US would like to insist, a project of extremists.
If there ever emerges serious discussion of the signature drive for the constitutional assembly in English media, we can expect that the news media will attempt to minimize the achievement. After all, 16% of the population is not a majority. But recall my first analogy: the equivalent in the US, given the 2010 census population estimate of 308 million people, would be more than 49 million people. As another comparison: in January of this year, Gallup reported that nationally, only 27% of US voters identified as Republican; yet no one would argue that Republicans can, or should be, ignored in national policy debates.
International commentators (if they ever pay attention) are also likely to argue that the number is of unknown (or questionable) reliability, because the count was kept by adherents of the cause. This, in fact, is one of the most apparent reasons that the coup d'etat against Manuel Zelaya had to take place on June 28, 2009, to prevent any assessment of the level of support for a constitutional assembly to take place under governmental supervision, even by a government whose credibility had been systematically undermined by media editorializing.
And if, working on a grass-roots level without government or international NGO support, the signature campaign was able to achieve this level of participation, perhaps we have a better idea of what the authors of the coup did not want the world to know: that disillusion with the present form of Honduran government has reached a significant level, one that would need to be taken into account in a truly democratic society.
Which is one thing September 15 is without a doubt about: the first steps taken in Honduras toward government by the Honduran people. Which makes it a good date to take another step along that long road.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Oscar Estrada: "La vida no vale nada" (Life is worth nothing)
Honduran film-maker Oscar Estrada weighs in on Vos el Soberano about the rush to attribute the multiple homicide in a factory in San Pedro Sula to "gang rivalry" that has received such unquestioning coverage in the English-language media. It would be wonderful if some of the reporters who find the story-line they are reporting so compelling would present even a bit of the context he provides:
Mano dura is literally "strong hand", the signature policy of Oscar Alvarez in his first incarnation as Security Minister of Honduras during the term of President Ricardo Maduro. Similar policies were widely implemented throughout Central America. In Honduras, they involved criminalizing gang membership, encouraging collaboration in policing by the armed forces, and formation of extrajudicial death squads targeting youths without apparent concern about whether those killed were guilty of any crime, or even actually were gang members. The majority of these killings went unsolved, and indeed, uninvestigated. Involvement of the security forces was widely suspected.
Anti-gang legislation was based on establishing "illicit association" as a crime. So the citation of "illicit association" as a supposed crime by the members of the resistance who marched in conjunction with the general strike is laden with disturbing overtones.
At whom does the horror point?
When in 2007 I began work on the documentary "El Porvenir", seeking to understand and portray the most complex massacre that up until that moment had occurred in the country, in which 69 people lost their life in the penal center of La Ceiba at the hands of the prison guards in alliance with the common prisoners, one thing motivated me: I knew very well and wanted to present it that way in the film, that if as a population we allowed this frightening crime (and another four massacres that occurred in the same period) to be lost in oblivion, the horror would end by catching up with us.
In those dark years of the mano dura, public opinion that the media of communication manipulated at will succeeded in demonizing gang-member youth in such a way that, without subterfuge, many people publicly said that the massacre was good, since according to them it annihilated delinquents that otherwise would cause more damage to society.
The war against the gains was won physically eliminating almost all the gang members of the time, hence the fame of personages like Oscar Alvarez, to the point that today the gangs barely appear in the media spectrum that seeks constantly to create internal enemies to justify state repression.
But the robberies, extortion, rapes, assassinations, dismemberment of corpses, massacres and the rest of the crimes committed-- supposedly-- by the gangs continue happening. Every day in Honduras there are reported between 10 and 14 violent deaths, many of them by firearms and the numbers continue rising placing Honduras in the list of the most violent countries of the continent, only behind Mexico and Colombia.
Then came the Coup d'Etat and those persons who devised (or allowed to pass) the massacres, returned to appear stronger and unpunished. The government of the mano dura returned, now with the face of Christian humanism, to impose by force the reconciliation and unity of the gravedigger.
Who at that time was Minister of Security today continues being it and his practice, now less in the media because anti-insurgency can be carried off only in a secret fashion, continues as well to be repressive.
Who at that time was the president of Congress, today is that of the republic and, like Ricardo Maduro on the 4th of April 2003 left the country on the day of the massacre, so as not to be witness to the pain and indignation that left the dead wholesale.
In this country life is worth nothing. Literally speaking. With fifty dollars you can pay an assassin so that he will eliminate a person, with fifty dollars more you can eliminate the assassin and the traces of the crime. At 100 dollars per death, 1900 lempiras at the present exchange rate, the impunity of barbarism has been embedded in the depths of this Honduras that today falls on us.
Yesterday, while some of us marched following the call of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular for a national civic strike, demanding among other things a raise in the minimum wage, respect for the labor laws, a halt to repression and violations of human rights, in San Pedro Sula, in a barrio that carries as its name Cabañas (ex-president of the 19th century, bulwark of Morazanism and of the ethics of power), in a small shoe factory, Marxist symbol of the worker, 19 young workers were assassinated, some of them apparently members of the resistance.
Beyond the symbolism of the massacre, it has to be clear that an act of terrorism of this nature is not done improvisationally. Calculated were the place where the crime was to be carried out, their routes of arrival and escape; calculated also the hour and the day. The assassins know very well how to create terror, for this they have been shaped in in this they are professionals.
While the bodies of the youths were carried away by the forensic doctor, Wong Arévalo, unconditional spokesman of the Coup and apologist for the violations of human rights squawked about the inactivity of the police and the intelligence corps. Not so much for the massacre (which he also did to a lesser extent), so much as for the windows of his building that the demonstration broke in its wake. "This group is only comparable with organized crime", shouted Wong Arévalo and his claim echoes the declarations of the prosecution that announced it would prosecute the members of the Frente de Resistencia for "illicit association".
There is a clear effort in the media of communication to link both events: the attack with stones on the golpista channels and the massacre in Cabañas. In this effort they mix maliciously to make believe that the resistance, while it is not directly responsible for this massacre, are equally detestable and dangerous and, the same as the gangs 10 years ago, any action of the system against us is justified.
It is interesting, in contrast to the other massacres, that in this terrorist act golpismo claims the inaction and "inefficiency" of its super Minister of Security Oscar Alvarez and demand immediate actions in respect to it.
It is very improbable that justice will be done. The most likely is that they will arrest some scapegoat to calm the demands of public opinion and will try to justify the massacre with the already trite "settling of accounts".
I was right. We as a society allowed impunity to embed itself like a malign cancer and today the horror points at us.
8 of September, 2010
Mano dura is literally "strong hand", the signature policy of Oscar Alvarez in his first incarnation as Security Minister of Honduras during the term of President Ricardo Maduro. Similar policies were widely implemented throughout Central America. In Honduras, they involved criminalizing gang membership, encouraging collaboration in policing by the armed forces, and formation of extrajudicial death squads targeting youths without apparent concern about whether those killed were guilty of any crime, or even actually were gang members. The majority of these killings went unsolved, and indeed, uninvestigated. Involvement of the security forces was widely suspected.
Anti-gang legislation was based on establishing "illicit association" as a crime. So the citation of "illicit association" as a supposed crime by the members of the resistance who marched in conjunction with the general strike is laden with disturbing overtones.
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