Selling the Wind, or How Honduras Will Finance Its Debt

The government of Honduras wants to sell you the wind. Literally.

The proposal is for a new kind of investment instrument.

On July 20, the Honduran Congress passed a law called the Ley de promocón del desarrollo y reconversion de deuda publica, which can be read here in its entirety. 

The newly passed law, proposed by the Executive Branch, creates a special commission of trustees sited in the Central Bank of Honduras.  That commission, which includes the Minister of Natural Resources, will identify "idle" assets.  It will also create a technical committee to analyze the financial potential and return on such assets, and oversee the concession of assets to private parties.

So what are these "idle resources" that Honduras proposes selling?  The wind, for wind power; the rivers and the land for hydroelectric power; and mineral rights - gold, silver, and iron in particular, though it also just sold petroleum exploration rights. They can be pretty much anything not already under the control of the Comisión para la Promoción de la Alianza Público-Privada (COALIANZA).

Once the resource is identified as idle, the government will seek to lease it in concession to a third party. The lease process will involve estimating the income-producing potential of the asset, both for the party leasing it, and for the government.

The lease will produce, among other things, a future income stream for the government for the length of the lease. The leasing part of the law merely makes references to the processes used by COALIANZA for its concessions.  The same rules will apply.

Normally income from a lease would trickle in to the government coffers over the length of a lease, producing income for both the present and future governments of Honduras. 

But the new law empowers the Central Bank, or someone delegated by it, to securitize this future income stream and sell it to others, based on the discounted present value of that future income stream. 

This discounted present value of the future income stream will come to the government in a lump sum, rather than as several smaller payments over the lease duration.

The law specifies that it must be used to pay down the Honduran government's debt.

The Financial Minister, Wilfredo Cerrato, argued that the state would be getting the future income that this resource would generate over longer periods, like 20 years, but getting it all now instead of year by year over the 20 years, and that the money would then be used to pay down the national debt, because at least for now, the law prohibits it to be used to pay current expenses. 

Cerrato added:

What we want is to pay the internal debt, which is short term at high interest rates, to achieve what the law's title says, "reconversion of the debt".

Cerrato characterized the "idle resources" that are covered by the new law as not generating wealth but rather producing poverty.  He suggested that Honduran pension plans would be likely purchasers of the assets.

The law, which originated with Lobo Sosa's executive branch, was introduced and passed during a Congressional session held in Lempira rather than the capital of Tegucigalpa. 

The bill had not previously been disclosed or put through committee.  Its content was unknown to most at the start of this Congressional session.

Because the session was held outside the capital, fewer members attended, and those who did attend were primarily National Party members.

During the Congressional session, Congress voted to suspend the requirement for three debates and to hold only one debate on this law.  It then passed the law in a single debate. This has brought about much grousing from almost all sectors.

The law, by not going through the committee review, passed pretty much as it was submitted by the Executive Branch.  It was not publicly disclosed, so there was no discussion about what Congress was enacting. That seems to have been by design.

As Ralph Flores, an executive of the Foro Social de la Deuda Externa y Desarrollo de Honduras (FOSDEH) stated, the people should have been consulted.  FOSDEH is one place where the Honduran public gets to comment on proposed government policy.

Flores said that he thought the law probably was a good financial move, but that the government of Honduras shouldn't be managed like a private company.  As these are resources belonging to all the citizens, he said, probably they should have been consulted before the law was approved:

Unfortunately here they only talk about this type of activity as beneficial.  There needs to be an objective balance.  There are methodologies to analyze if an investment is positive or negative for the economy or for a society.  Here we only look at the financial stream as a positive element.

Mauricio Oliva, the new head of Congress, says that such lease arrangements are nothing new, that the approach has been used successfully by many other countries, and points to Costa Rica and Colombia. 

Cerrato vehemently defends the law, claiming that without it Honduras won't make payroll for government employees in November.  That in turn suggests they already have assets identified and potential buyers of concessions lined up and presume they can bring securities on these assets to market before November.

Hugo Noé Pino, who represents the  Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales (ICEFI) in Honduras, told La Prensa that the law was suspicious because not only of the rapidity with which it was proposed and passed, but for the lateness in Lobo Sosa's term.  This made him suspect that there were some ulterior motives.  He said the law sells Honduras in pieces:

"The most worrying part of this affair, given that the government has not shown itself to be trustworthy, is that  through this hurried law, just as with the model cities, [it has] committed all the resources of the state of Honduras without leaving to the next government any possibility of structuring its own recovery and investment plan for the country.  The next government will have its hands tied by these decisions."

Lobo Sosa says the law helps, not hinders, future governments.  Lobo Sosa goes on to claim this will not benefit his government one bit, a statement seemly contradicted by his Finance Minister's statement that without this law the government will not be able to meet the November payroll, implying income to this government, surely a benefit.

By using the processes specific to COALIANZA, the government avoids its own contracting law which would impose a greater transparency on the process.  It was this process that resulted in COALIANZA signing an MOU with Michael Strong for a model city somewhere other than where Congress had stated it wanted model cities (eg, San Pedro Sula instead of Puerto Cortes). 

COALIANZA's processes are not transparent nor do they always work towards the same goals as the government, as the model cities bungle demonstrated.  Civil society has no input into what the new commission decides to license. 

All resource-based projects involve expropriation (with long delays in payment in cases like the Patuca III dam project now underway). They may involve the dislocation of populations living on the concession, without any compensation.

There are no controls on either the number of employees, or the budget of the oversight commission set up in the new law.  It is unconstrained, and at this time, unfunded. Future governments will have to allocate it a budget for salaries and operations.
 
Civil society should pause at the statements of the Finance Minister that employee pension funds should invest in these financial instruments, which are effectively unsecured bets where a payment to the government up front gives the lease holder the "right" to profits from exploitation of a resources that may or may not be successful.

It has been an expressed goal of Honduran governments since at least 2009 to use the large government employee pension funds to improve the liquidity of the central government. It sounds like Cerrato sees this as one such mechanism.

This is just the latest of a series of laws passed by this administration that takes control of national assets and turns them over to private parties. 

These include the original model cities law, and the COALIANZA law that has sold concessions to airports, roadways, and railways. It includes the ZEDE law (aka model cities 2) which creates private economic development zones that can have their own laws, as well as the new mining law, which pretty much gives mining companies permission to do what they want on their concession.

There apparently is nothing that the Lobo Sosa government won't privatize.

Even the wind.

Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo

When I became interested in the colonial history of Honduras, I read a lot of colonial history.  Among those who wrote about Honduras were people like the geographer William V. Davidson, and historians like Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, Mario Argueta, Mario Ardon Mejia and for the more recent past, Dario Euraque.  But no one impressed me more than the work of Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo.

He was a founder of the History program at UNAH, and easily the most knowledgeable person about 16th century Honduras.  He wrote about colonial art, and the society that generated it.  He was interested in the "family" of Hondurans who both formed the colony and whose descendents still wield power today.

From 1970 to 1980 he lived in Spain and worked daily in the Archivo General de Indias researching the early history of Honduras.  It was there he found the 1558 declaration of the service and merits of Rodrigo Ruiz (AGI Patronato 69 R.5) which for the first time confirmed in a contemporary document, the existence of the national hero Lempira.  His book on Lempira in 1987 both analyzes that document, and transcribes it, challenging everything that Honduran school children still learn today about their national hero.

He authored 14 books, and co-authored several others:

2011  Los forjadores de nuestra identidad
2009  Temas históricos inéditos de Honduras
2004  El paternalismo y la esclavidtud negra en el Real Minas de Tegucigalpa
2004  La Intendencia de Comayagua
2000  Por las rutas de la plata y el añil:  desarrollo del arte colonial religioso hondureño
1993  Honduras en su historia y en su arte
1992  Cuatro centros de arte colonial provinciano hispano criollo en Honduras
1990  Honduras:  cultura e identidad
1988  Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción de Valladolid de Comayagua
1987  Los últimos dias de Lempira y otros documentos:  el conquistador español que venció a Lempira
1982  Apuntamientos para una historia colonial de Honduras
1981  Presencia de grupos mexicanos antes y despues de la conquista de Honduras y pervivencia de la lengua Nahuatl en el área supuestamente Lenca.
1967  Capitulos sobre el Colegio Tridentino de Comayagua y la educación colonial en Honduras
1961  La escultura en Honduras

It's not often you get to meet one of your heroes.  In 2008, my friend Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle arranged for me to meet his "mentor", Mario Felipe Martinez Castilllo, while we were attending a conference on minor Atlantic ports in the colonial period.  He hosted a dinner at a beachfront restaurant in El Paraiso near Omoa where he introduced the two of us.  Mario Felipe was gracious and listened to me talk about my own research on the 16th and 18th centuries in Honduras, but it was clear that his years of work had given him a greater knowledge of the 16th century events in Honduras than he had ever had the time to write about.  I was both jealous and envious of the depth of that knowledge, and hope one day to be able to approach it.  After the meal ended, we wanted to talk more, but he didn't do email, and I almost never go to Tegucigalpa, so it never happened.

Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo died Monday at the age of 80.

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:

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.
...

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...

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.

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.

Culture, Peace and Contested National Identity

“Normally, the traditional politician has in his house a beautiful bar, but he does not have a library, they are enemies of the written word, they do not know Honduran music, they are fans of the narco-corrido, of ranchera and música procaz, and the proof of this is that this is the music they use in their political campaigns because it is the best representation of them and best identifies them...."

So, who might we imagine made this provocative statement? One of the Artists in Resistance who have kept the spotlight on the erosion of public culture that began with the appointment of Myrna Castro by the de facto regime, to replace Minister of Culture Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle?

Would you believe maybe a cartoonist who was elected to the Honduran Congress in 2009 as a Liberal representative in Congress?

Ángel Darío Banegas has been a political cartoonist since 1985. His work appears in La Prensa, and has been recognized internationally.

When he began his run for the Congreso Nacional in 2008, he was quoted as saying that he wanted to clear out the "monsters and dinosaurs that have discredited politics for years". He also made an apparently serious proposal at that time that Congress members receive only minimum wage.

Starting in 2000, Banegas began to teach courses on drawing and painting, especially for children. His latest move, described as "a permanent cultural activity to stimulate youth so that they stay away from idleness and violence", seems to be closely related.

It also highlights the contested nature of "culture" in the aftermath of a coup and a de facto regime that made cultural institutions central targets for attack.

As announced in La Tribuna this weekend, using his new position in Congress as head of its "Commission on Culture" Banegas has promoted the first Honduran "Festival de las Artes, Congreso, Cultura y Paz" (Festival of the Arts, Congress, Culture and Peace). Taking place in Danlí, it is supposed to be the first of a series in all departments of the country, "to convert public areas into spaces of expression that will contribute to the formation and consolidation of peace, as a culture".

Invoking "peace" as a culture echoes a public discourse in Honduras that predates the coup, but is strongly linked to it. Public concerts and marches as early as May, 2008, explicitly framed as attempts to persuade young people not to take drugs or become involved in street gangs, were organized with the support of the Catholic hierarchy and the business community.

In July 2008, we watched one of these marches in the former colonial capital city of Comayagua, ending at stages set up in front of the cathedral where inspirational speeches were given and Garifuna musicians and dancers performed, explicitly urging teenagers to adhere to "peace". The crowd included large numbers of people dressed in white.

Both before and after the coup, marches using similar rhetoric and clothing were mobilized against President Zelaya and later in support of the de facto regime by the right-wing Unión Civica Democratica and its allies. The rhetoric used in these marches equated "peace" with more intensive policing. As press coverage on June 5, 2009 of a demonstration in Choluteca organized by the Chamber of Commerce described it, marchers were "in favor of peace, security, and democracy and therefore asked for an end to high indices of violence and insecurity that afflict the country".

Banegas' campaign advances a second emphasis, on national identity. The first event in Danlí, and the other festivals of arts to follow, are described as intended to help identify students with artistic talent "who will contribute to local and national culture in the forge of identity".

Banegas personally emphasizes the link between art, national identity, and the outsider political stance on which he ran:

“Because of my critical attitude towards traditional politics, I committed myself strongly to not be the same and to be different; ...I was charged with presiding over the Commission of Culture and Arts, for which we are pledged with a group of partners to make a meaningful effort to manage to fortify national identity."

The first program to this end is the festivals of art. The second is equally ambitious:

"we have created an National Identity Prize that will be given every year, on the 20th of July, in the City of Gracias, Lempira, with the honor in 2010 going to the singer/songwriter Guillermo Anderson."

What is left unstated here is what stands as national identity.

Both programs represent incursions by Congress onto terrain of the executive branch's Ministry of Culture. Banegas seems to be directly taking aim at the Ministry through the Casas de Cultura it coordinates, saying that he will promote congressional initiatives

related to strengthening the Casas de la Cultura in all the country that... in many cases are empty shells, entities abandoned to their own luck.

Banegas repeatedly defines cultural activity as aimed at reinforcing a uniform national agenda and a singular national identity:

“culture is fundamental for the development of a country since it contributes to national identity and we ourselves regain faith in what we do, what he have and our own way of being".

The original mission of the Casas de Cultura was something quite different: "to provide conditions for the flourishing of local culture" through a "policy of decentralization of cultural material".

The Casas de Cultura were central to efforts under the Zelaya administration to promote pluralistic cultural identity; as Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle notes:

we almost tripled the number of Casas de la Cultura in capitals and important towns with their own identity and in remote ethnic communities, Garifuna, Cusuna, or Tawaka, each with bilingual libraries.

Politicization of culture is nothing particularly new, in Honduras or elsewhere. Pastor Fasquelle begins a review of governmental intervention in Honduran culture with the proposition that "the organizations of Honduran cultural institutionality, the Instituto de Antropología e Historia (I.H.A.H) and la Secretaria de Cultura (S.C.A.D.), were creatures of dictatorship":

The Institute was founded with the idea of glorifying ancient Copan as the historic navel of the nation, paradoxically by foreign inspiration, while the Secretariat was established with the primordial aim of co-opting intellectuals and creators. And it ended up deposited in the hands of the military, whose vision amalgamated a folk concept of the culture of the people and an elitist vision of bourgeois High Culture. These were its sins of origin.

Pastor Fasquelle writes that in his first term as Minister of Culture starting in 1994, he began "the professionalization [of these organizations] and the articulation of policy lines: decentralization, democratization, ethnic rescue and support for creators".

When he returned to that role in 2006 he again pushed forward an agenda of "diffusion [of information], rescue of the national patrimony, diversity, direct assistance to creators and decentralization of functions and resources".

Rather than aim to produce a single national identity by promoting a uniform culture, the Ministry of Culture in the Zelaya administration promoted projects designed to exemplify Honduras' cultural diversity.

Pastor Fasquelle argues (as does the former director of the Institute of Antropology and History, Dario Euraque) that the very direction of these policies-- pluralistic, democratizing, decentralizing-- is what brought on the de facto regime's suspicion, embodied memorably in the appointment of Myrna Castro, who denounced book distribution, labeled the Casas de Cultura "Casas de ALBA", and redirected funding to Fashion Week in Tegucigalpa.

But, Pastor Fasquelle argues, all of this "underlines as the moral that our principal function-- institutionally-- is to secure that the people appropriate their own patrimony". He notes that only when culture is locally produced and controlled can it actually survive, a principle that guided policies of the Ministry that encouraged mobilizing local historians and local stakeholders in presenting their own culture.

In stark contrast to the implicit argument that culture is weaker in Honduras today, Pastor Fasquelle suggests that resistance to the coup has awakened creators of the arts in Honduras to their role in public life:

the brave involvement of the great majority of the best thinkers and artists in the country in civic life is one of the unexpected fruits [of the coup], surprising and hopeful. ... our artists and intellectuals have subscribed-- for decades-- to skepticism, not just towards the public cultural institutions, but also towards the State and politics. This skepticism has been a problem for the culture and a headache for the public cultural institutions. But worse, it has been part of the civic problem. Because, to the degree that the critical and creative spirits absented themselves from the forum, politics remained orphaned of intelligence and imagination. The flourishing of culture in the Resistance has engendered a new consciousness, a new type of commitment, critical for the opposition and for the future reconstruction of a deeper and more authentic democracy.

So we have laid out for us a series of contrasts: decentralization versus centralization; State projects versus local appropriation of patrimony; an idealized culture of "peace" versus culture as the expression of critical consciousness.

A telling detail: the time and place cited for the new "National Identity Prize", on the Día de Lempira in the heartland of the Lenca people, implicitly invokes a national imaginary of mestizaje, but now stripped even of the nominal and token brandishing of the Lenca as the primordial people of Honduras.

In the aftermath of a coup that polarized the Honduran people, two models of cultural production are now in open competition. One argues for promoting a common Honduran national identity; the other to recognize the multiplicity of Honduran identities. In the absence of any coherent cultural policy emerging from the new Minister of Culture, the nationalist project enjoys the advantage of energetic promotion by a Congressional novice with a public profile and the means now to promote his own agenda on a national stage. Yet we cannot help wonder if it will prove so easy to put the genie of Honduran diversity back in the bottle of a uniform national culture.

Dia de Lempira

Yesterday, July 20, was the Dia de Lempira in Honduras, when schoolchildren dress up as make-believe Lenca and elect an "India Bonita" in each town.

Like most such nationalist holidays incorporating imagery of an original people, there are many problematic aspects to this celebration. The image of Lempira on Honduran currency and in the statue that stands on a boulevard in San Pedro Sula draws more from ideas about generalized American Indians than any specifics of Lenca appearance or costume. But these aspects of cultural appropriation and their ironies are not the subject of this post.

In honor of this Lempira day I want to step back and remember the historical Lempira.

Lempira, or El Empira, was a Lenca war captain in the 1530s when the Spanish invaded western Honduras. We know he was a real person, one of those rarely named indigenous people who appear in Spanish Colonial documents of this time. When we began research in the country thirty years ago, the high school graduates we talked to were dubious about his historical existence, thinking he was legendary. But he was demonstrably real, and the recovery of his story is a tribute to the tenacity of Honduran scholars.

There are two contradictory stories about Lempira's death at the hands of the Spanish.

The most well known story is from the 17th century writings of Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas. In his multivolume work Historia General de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas y en tierra firme del mar océano.

This story, written long after the Spanish Conquest, was composed by interviewing the children of participants in the conquest and by examining documents in archives in Guatemala. In Herrera's story, Lempira agreed to meet with two representatives of the Spanish captain Alonso de Caceres to negotiate peace. While they were meeting under a flag of truce, a Spanish sharp-shooter shot and killed him. This is the story as it is taught in Honduran schools.

Due to the hard work of Honduran historian Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo, we actually know that earlier documentation of Lempira's campaign against the Spanish, dating to the 1560s, exists. Written less than a generation after the events, it contains first-hand witness testimony, and it tells a much different story.

The document, Patronato 69, R. 5 ("Meritos y Servicios Rodrigo Ruiz Nueva España") is in the Archivo General de Indias in Sevilla, Spain.

The document was sitting in the archives but was unknown to Honduran historians until the 1980s, when Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo, a noted Honduran historian, found and published it in Honduras in his book, Los Últimos Días de Lempira: Rodrigo Ruiz, El conquistador Español que lo venció en combate.

Rodrigo Ruiz gives us a fascinating story of infiltrating the Lenca forces during the battle with Lempira, until he arrived at the spot where Lempira was commanding his troops. He reports that Lempira was dressed in the clothing of two Spanish soldiers because Lempira felt it would make him impervious to bullets. He reports that he fought Lempira in hand to hand combat and killed him with his sword, later cutting off Lempira's head and presenting it to Montejo, the Spanish governor in 1537, as proof of Lempira's death. After Lempira was killed, Ruiz reports the Lenca withdrew for four days, then came to give obedience to the king.

The account of Rodrigo Ruiz contains elements which match the oral history preserved by the modern Lenca about Lempira, specifically that he thought he was impervious to the Spanish bullets, and that he was killed in combat, not in ambush as Herrera wrote.

The story of Lempira received from Herrera has been an important part of the creation of Honduran national identity, especially in the 1930s under the dictator Tiburcio Carias Andino. The new national currency, the Lempira, was named after him in 1931. The story of Lempira's betrayal by the Spanish, as told by Herrera, was incorporated into the new national school curriculum.

When Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo came forward with the account of Lempira based on earlier-- and therefore, likely more reliable-- documents, he was largely ignored. Lempira as an innocent victim of his nobility, doomed to defeat by the crafty (if morally flawed) Spanish, fits a standard storyline also seen in Mexico and Guatemala (where the stories are equally questionable historically). These stories underwrite ideologies of national integration, of assimilation and acculturation, of the inevitable loss of indigenous autonomy and identity.

Lempira as a successful leader who rallied a large-scale resistance to the Spanish is quite another kind of founding father. He is one of a group of alternative figures of indigenous history, who came to grips with the new historical circumstances in which they were living, and took active roles in advancing the persistence of their peoples.

It is a tribute to the work of Honduran historians that today the more complex story of Lempira is so well known that an editorial in Tiempo today by Edwin Wilfredo Rubí presented basically the same facts as we have in this post, about the rediscovery of the earlier story of Lempira and the contradictions it presents with the nationalist version. He ends his editorial

This extraordinary document...that has not been studied by any other historian [since Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo], merits a more careful analysis... It is also a stimulus for the present and future generation of Honduran historians that will give life to our colonial history, making use of documents like this...

From this text you can take two conclusions: first, that the rising of Cerquin was absolutely true, and second, that the indigenous leader who led the peoples of the province of Cerquin was named ELEMPIRA.

If this version is the truth, it also makes me feel proud, on knowing, that our Cacique Lempira died completely as a hero, preferring to die fighting, rather than on his knees

[Unfortunately, we cannot provide a link directly to the original document. But due to the policies of open access by the Spanish government, anyone with computer access can look up a scan of the original 16th century document. To do this,

1. Navigate to http://pares.mcu.es

2. Select the button for "Búsqueda Avanzada"

3. Under "Filtro por Archivo" select "Archivo General de Indias"

4. Under "Filtro por Signatura" enter "Patronato,69,R.5" and select the "Búsqueda por Signatura exacta" radio button.

5. Click on the "Buscar" button at the bottom of the page.

6. On the search results page click on "Patronato Real" underneath the "Archivo General de Indias" title.

7. Under "Titulo" click on "Meritos y Servicios Rodrigo Ruiz".

8. To view the page images, click on the "Ver Imagenes" button. ]

The rebellious spirit of Lempira: The Frente de Resistencia and Lenca Rhetoric

From this ancestral territory of Lenca resistance, with the rebellious spirit of Lempira:

This is the final salutation in the Manifesto that was issued by the Frente de Resistencia after the recently concluded meeting in La Esperanza, Intibuca, with the stated goal of beginning a process of "refounding" Honduras.

The salutation recalls the history of resistance by Honduras' Lenca people faced with the Spanish military colonization in the sixteenth century. Lempira was the leader of a widespread Lenca uprising in 1537. The traditional story goes that he was killed while under a flag of truce. But Lempira is a more complex figure than simply that of a noble, yet defeated, leader.

Every July 20, Honduras celebrates the Día de Lempira to commemorate this founding moment in the history of the nation five centuries ago. As Wendy Griffin described it in Honduras This Week in 1999, this celebration has traditionally been observed by having school children dress in what they imagine is Lenca clothing and elect an "india bonita" (beautiful Indian girl).

Griffin notes that in Lenca communities, and in Honduran society more broadly, this appropriation of a romanticized indigenous past is contested:

The Lencas celebrate the Day of Lempira as their day of ethnic pride. After the election of the "India Bonita," Lenca musical groups or "conjuntos" made up of a fiddle, guitars, and a base fiddle, play ranchera music so people can dance. "Recorridos", which are often protest songs, are also popular at these gatherings...

July is a time to reflect on Honduras' motto of being "Free, Sovereign and Independent." Ethnic groups and academics organize forums and write articles to reflect on whether current policies truly reflect those of a sovereign state.

The spirit of Lempira was to reflect foreign imposition and each year his day draws critiques of current attempts toward such imposition, be it against Contra bases in the 1980s or U.S. troops at Palmerola or IMF imposed conditions in the 1990s. The Lencas add to this protest their own cry, asking a country that so honors Lempira then leaves the hijos de Lempira (the sons of Lempira) in such a state of neglect.

It is this less-domesticated aspect of Lempira that resonates in the invocation by the Frente de Resistencia of Lempira: "the spirit of Lempira to reflect foreign imposition" and "whether current policies truly reflect those of a sovereign state", both made urgent by the coup d'etat of 2009. The symbolism of Lempira is not that of a valiant but unsuccessful fight against colonization, but rather, of a persistent resistance. News coverage of Lenca activism in the late 1990s recorded slogans on posters displayed in La Esperanza: ''500 years after the conquest of the Americas, Lempira is alive!'', ''Indigenous resistance is still alive, the Lenca people are present!''

It is those overtones that the Manifesto invokes, as much as the site and sponsorship of the II Encuentro itself. The gathering in La Esperanza was noted to have been hosted by COPINH, an indigenous rights organization. Positioning the Frente as like Lempira reinforces the radical and revolutionary nature of the movement being forged, whose goals are not simply to gain a little political power, but to "re-found" Honduras.

What actually happened at the Encuentro in La Esperanza? Counterpunch, in an article reviewing the position of Canada's right-wing government on Honduras (where Canadian companies are the largest external mining interest), cites a first-hand report by Claudia Korol describing

twenty simultaneous popular assemblies to discuss a variety of themes: the preservation of water, forests, land, subsoil, traditional territories, and air; the political system and popular sovereignty; culture; justice; autonomy; sexual diversity; health; communications; foreign policy and international relations; anti-patriarchal struggles; anti-racism; national security; work and workers’ rights; the economic system; indigenous and black communities; youth; fighting corruption and learning about popular accounting.

The goal: "the building of popular power from below", to "refound" Honduras, not merely reform it. As Peter Lackowski describes it in The Santiago Times,

After a serious debate the various sections of a new constitution were laid out. A committee to direct the National Constituent Assembly was nominated, and Bertha Oliva of the Committee of Families of disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH) was elected to lead this group.

While mainstream US media have ignored this event entirely, there is another narrative that has spread via reports in a variety of other news media.

This storyline suggests that at the Encuentro, the Frente decided to transform itself into a political party. According to the claim advanced on March 14 in a "news" article by the pro-coup Honduran newspaper La Tribuna,

The Frente Nacional de Resistencia declared its decision to constitute itself as a political party to gain power by means of the vote with the sole mission of refounding Honduras.

No specific document or person was cited in support of this claim. It does not in fact appear to be accurate. But comments on the online version of this story show that transforming the Frente into a political party would satisfy the imagination of readers of La Tribuna about how opposition rhetoric should fit in Honduras.

And it gained some traction in Spanish-language reporting for Radio Nederland, which on March 16 repeated the same claim, attributing it to "César Ramos, political analyst close to the Frente".

First-hand reporting on statements at the Encuentro by Giorgio Trucchi quoted Carlos H. Reyes firmly stating quite the opposite:

We have to dedicate ourselves to [organizing to get the necessary votes during the Popular Consulta of next June 28 to demonstrate being the majority in the face of the necessity to form a Constituent Assembly that will refound the country], because there are those that day that we should dedicate ourselves starting now
to forming a political party. The Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular has decided that first we have to strengthen ourselves as a Frente, to put in place the head, body, feet and finally, wings of that bird. We cannot put a roof on a house that we still have not constructed. First we have to deepen the work of consciousness-raising, organization, mobilization, and politicization.

The fundamental proposition of the Frente is that Honduran government is broken, and that only starting over with e popular Constituent Assembly can solve the dilemma. Insisting that the Frente is really about to convert into a conventional political party lessens the impact of the radical claim to speak in "the rebellious spirit of Lempira".

Manifesto of the Encuentro Nacional por la Refundación de Honduras

The original Spanish Manifesto of the II Encuentro Nacional por la Refundación de Honduras produced in the recently concluded meeting of the Frente Popular de Resistencia can be found on voselsoberano:

Manifesto

Reunited men and women, in the city of La Esperanza, under the auspices of the sign of hope, men and women of 17 departments of the country, we have gone through with another appointment with Honduras, to examine ourselves, debate, and strengthen through dialogue our knowledge, experiences, and dreams with the eagerness to re-found our native land.

This II Encuentro por la Refundación de Honduras was characterized by ancestral spirituality, creativity, the profound interchange in the diversity and the long and arduous exercise of the installation of a Popular and Democratic National Constituent Assembly that will express the proposals that are pillars of our process of refounding this country.

Before the Honduran public, we declare:

That we are continuing in resistance against the golpistas and their national and international allies, and therefore we do not recognize the fraudulent government of Porfirio Lobo.

That we continue in the construction of historic proposals of the Honduran social movement, that line up to eradicate the system of neoliberal, patriarchal, and racist domination.

That we insist on constructing, from a diversity of sectors, voices, and experiences, a just, worthy, and enjoyable way of life for all Honduran men and women that has already been expressed in the struggles for land, for justice, for the defense of natural resources and for the respect for human rights.

That we will continue making use of our legitimate and sovereign right to exercise popular power. This power of the people exceeds the representative character and therefore it can be assumed to be legitimate to delegate as well as to revoke that representation.

That we will not renounce the proposal for the installation of the Democratic and Popular National Constituent Assembly where the diversity of the thoughts and struggles of the Honduran people will be recognized.

We declare our solidarity, at this time, with the struggles of the national teachers' organizations, the union of the national university (SITRAUNAH), the towns of San Francisco de Opalaca and Nacaome against the construction of dams, and the struggle for land on the part of the Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguan; we stand in solidarity with Manuel Zelaya Rosales and with father Andrés Tamayo, and other exiled Honduran men and women, products of political persecution just as we demand that their right to enter national territory be respected. In the same way we stand actively in solidarity with the political prisoners and men and women persecuted politically.

The II Encuentro for the Refundación de Honduras is an action more in this refoundational and resistance process, that will not be exhausted here, rather it will open and convene multiple and diverse popular actions to realize the task of constructing a new Honduras.

From this ancestral territory of Lenca resistance, with the rebellious spirit of Lempira, on the 14th day of the month of March of 2010.