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

2012.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

El Heraldo assures us that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Copan misses the tourism heydey of yesteryear"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So why is tourism recovering so slowly at Copan?

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

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

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

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

Rio Amarillo Airport Redux

La Prensa reported today that the Lobo Sosa administration is lobbying UNESCO to approve building an airport in the Rio Amarillo valley.

The article primarily reports statements by several Santa Rosa de Copan residents on why nothing is happening on either the construction of an airport or the construction of the road from Santa Rosa, through Concepción, to near Copan, long a priority of the businessmen of the region.

Here's what UNESCO had to say about the idea of constructing an airport at Rio Amarillo, and its possible impact on Copan, in their draft agenda for the recently concluded (June 19-29) 35th annual meeting in Paris (from pages 256-257 of the PDF).

The 2003 and 2005 joint World Heritage Centre / ICOMOS reactive monitoring missions to the property made several objections to the construction of the airport at the Rio Amarillo site, and identified alternative locations. In 2006 the World Heritage Centre congratulated the State Party for the decision to halt the construction of the airport at the Rio Amarillo area....

However in 2007, the State Party informed the Committee of plans to construct an alternate airport at the old air strip in the village of Concepción. The 2009 state of conservation report indicated that a final decision on the construction of an airport in La Concepción was still pending and that IHAH was reviewing the Environmental Impact Assessment to make an official statement. No further information was received on its decision. On 30 September 2010, the World Heritage Centre sent a letter to the Honduran Delegation indicating its concerns regarding the reconsideration of the construction of the airport at the Rio Amarillo site after reviewing information from the published press. The 2011 state of conservation report submitted by the State Party indicates that the Ministry of Tourism had cancelled the option of La Concepcion for financial reasons and that it is once again evaluating the Rio Amarillo option. It also reported that prior to making further decisions the IHAH will analyze by October 2011, an updated assessment of impact on cultural heritage and the Public Use Plan, which will include the potential impact of the airport, particularly as it relates to the visitor management programme.

The World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies consider that sufficient information has been provided to the World Heritage Committee over the past 5 years, and Decisions of the World Heritage Committee have indicated clearly that the construction of an airport at Rio Amarillo, could have an adverse impact on the Outstanding Universal Value of the property.

In other words, nothing has changed; it's still a lousy idea that endangers the World Heritage Site of Copan.

In 2003 UNESCO said:

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

The information provided by the Lobo Sosa administration to UNESCO indicates that it is the prerogative of the Tourism Minister, Nelly Jerez, to choose the site for the airport. Despite claims to the contrary, this airport is primarily seen as something to drive tourism, not something vital to the overall economy of the region.

The report by the Lobo Sosa administration to UNESCO indicates that the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History is carrying out yet another analysis of the environmental and archaeological impact of a Rio Amarillo airport, this one due in October 2011.

That's what you do when you don't have the answer that you want: you commission a new study.

Not that there is any mystery about what the report due this coming fall is likely to say: in January this year Jerez stated the airport would be at Rio Amarillo, and that IHAH had already approved the site:

"We've already made the decision, we have already done the studies; we have already done the investigations; we have it all put together in the Institute of Anthropology."

UNESCO notes that a 2004 study by IHAH concluded that an airport at Rio Amarillo would endanger both Copan and the Rio Amarillo archaeological sites. Press reports of the time indicated that that conclusion cost archaeologist Carmen Julia Fajardo her job as head of investigations for IHAH. A second study carried out six months later by IHAH reversed the first, claiming that an airport at Rio Amarillo would be acceptable.

In June, the latest UNESCO report concluded:

5. Reiterates its concern that the site of Rio Amarillo is being considered for the construction of the airfield, in spite of previous World Heritage Committee decisions, yet acknowledges that additional information has been gathered and new studies have been produced after the 2005 reactive monitoring mission conducted by ICOMOS, which requires further analysis;

6. Accepts the State Party’s invitation for a joint World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS reactive monitoring mission in 2011 to assess the state of conservation of the property and particularly review all the information produced up to this date regarding the project of building an airfield in the site of Rio Amarillo, including environmental impact assessments, and a heritage impact assessment, in order to update the analysis for consideration and review by the World Heritage Committee;

So Jerez is waiting for a UNESCO visit and the new IHAH report.

If she really is waiting until October or later, the airport will not be built by the deadline of December, 2012, that she set for it to open.

As we've pointed out many times (here, here, and here) the La Concepción site would serve a larger population without the projected damage to historic sites.

If Jerez wants an airport built by December, 2012, it needs to start construction today, and be built at La Concepción.

Tourism or Development?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Politics of an Airport

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

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

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

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

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

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

So in 2003, ICOMOS recommended that Honduras

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

2. close the airstrip at La Estanzuela

3. reconsider the location for a replacement airstrip.

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

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

In 2005, the committee again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holy Week, Tradition, and Cultural Tourism

Honduran newspapers are publishing accounts of the annual observance of Holy Week, that runs between Palm Sunday and Easter. Religious processions carrying carved and painted images of saints will wind their way from major churches.

In a few places, their route will be decorated with brightly colored imagery created out of dyed sawdust. The most traditional location of these alfombras of tinted sawdust is Comayagua. According to an article in La Tribuna, by Friday there will be 43 of these artworks along the streets of the city.

International tourist publications encourage visitors to come to Comayagua this week, stressing its well-preserved colonial buildings, products of its long history as the capital of Honduras, before the mining town Tegucigalpa took over this role. Comayagua is represented as Honduras' equivalent of Antigua Guatemala, where Holy Week processions and the creation of sawdust carpets brings enormous numbers of tourists, an estimated 1.5 million in 2008. News reports claim that 50,000 to 60,000 tourists are expected to visit Comayagua for its celebrations.

The creation of alfombras has because a focus of national identity and nationalistic pride. Supported financially by the Ministries of Tourism and Culture, the creation of similar street decorations in the capital city, Tegucigalpa, is described by El Heraldo as an opportunity for

residents of the capital city and tourists to be able to appreciate this impressive artwork, that there is no need to envy that of other countries.

Yet as another article in La Tribuna about Holy Week observations in Tegucigalpa notes, the tradition of making alfombras has shallow roots, having been introduced only about forty years ago in Comayagua. The initiation of these religious artworks is attributed to Miriam Elvira Mejía, in 1963. A website created by her son describes her introduction of a custom of her native El Salvador. While the practice continued in Comayagua from then on, its adoption as an emblem of Honduran culture marketed to tourists is much more recent. Fifteen years ago, tourists visiting Comayagua for Holy Week reportedly numbered only 3,000 to 4,000.

Secular entanglements of what began as a religious tradition are visible in many ways. El Heraldo reported on alfombras in Tegucigalpa, some made by members of the parish, others sponsored by the Metropolitan Committee of the Foundation for the Honduran Museum of Man. Some of the planned alfombras will use innovative materials, flowers, seeds, and fruits, to create more effects than possible with the dyed sawdust that is more typical. The incorporation of varied materials is described as making these street carpets a celebration of the harvest, a surprisingly secular role for what are otherwise monuments to the Passion of Christ.

The variety of materials being introduced in Tegucigalpa recalls the decoration of floats in civic parades in the US, as does the sponsorship by secular organizations-- this year, according to El Heraldo, including Pepsi, the general store Larach & Compañía, the hotel group Plaza San Martín, and the bottled water company Agua Azul.

Nor is that the only secular aspect of the alfrombras of Tegucigalpa. The same article quotes Elder Rissieri, in charge of creating a 540 meter long alfombra in Tegucigalpa, saying that the "social theme" this year, "Honduras united in the faith of Christ", addresses tensions created by the coup d'Etat (here described simply as "happenings", acontecimientos):

"By means of this work we want to invite union by means of the Christian faith. The incidents that happened in recent months have been the cause of division within society and we want to unite it in the faith."

Holy Week thus presents a melange of colonial tradition, modern adaptation of a religious practice typical of Guatemala and El Salvador, and overtones of secular parades. And this year in particular, the urgency of increasing tourism income in the wake of the economic disaster brought on by the coup d'Etat is especially evident.

Newspaper coverage documents a particular emphasis by the Ministry of Tourism on increasing internal tourism during Holy Week. An article in El Heraldo quotes the Minister of Tourism, Nelly Jerez, encouraging internal tourists in Tegucigalpa, saying the government has granted a week of holiday for that very purpose. La Prensa's article encouraging internal tourism prominently mentions the alfombras of sawdust to be installed in the streets of Santa Rosa de Copán, another colonial city in western Honduras.

The self-conscious promotion of these events to the Honduran public underlines the blurring of lived tradition and commodified culture that has become ever more evident as tourism rose to the third greatest source of external income. As yet another article promoting internal tourism this Holy Week put it, based on an interview with Juan Bendeck, president of the National Chamber of Tourism (CANATURH):

At this time it is important to take pleasure in family and rediscover a noble and generous country that offers above all human quality.

Before taking your vacations, think of the social welfare that will be left to the country if you decide to undertake internal tourism and take the decision to explore this Honduras that is yours, and that awaits you with open arms.

Convert yourself into an ambassador for Honduras in the world, get to know the native soil that saw your birth... because it's all here!