Political Pragmatism?

It was surreal to read an Agence France-Presse interview with Adolfo Facussé, one of the vocal supporters of the coup against Manuel Zelaya Rosales in 2009, saying Xiomara Castro could represent real change in Honduras, whereas none of the other candidates does.

Facussé, who is president of the Asociación Nacional de Industriales (ANDI), said:

We have businessmen from all the parties.  Libre has something that appeals to me and that is the promise of change. The country definitely needs to change.

How exactly the nation needs to change is pretty clear: Facussé went on to characterize the Lobo Sosa government, and especially its economic policies, as a disaster.  Of Juan Orlando Hernandez, the National Party candidate for President, Facussé said "he has the characteristics to become an autocratic president."

Aline Flores, president of the other leading business group in Honduras, Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada (Cohep), made it clear she didn't agree with Facussé about LIBRE.  She said:

He (Facussé) has always had his own opinion and I respect him a lot, but we don't share some ideas.

Facussé did get support in his criticism of the Lobo Sosa government. Oscar Galeano, a former president of COHEP, said

Some businessmen will prefer the right, some the center, and others the left.  What is certain is that Honduras cannot continue depending on irresponsible governments that don't promote investment and development, because (with Lobo), we have lost much time; we have a high rate of unemployment.

Facussé said he was not afraid of leftist ideas, though he's not enchanted with Castro's call for a Constitutional Assembly:

I'm not afraid of the ideas of the left, the intelligent left (....) they have not done badly in El Salvador; in Nicaragua the businessmen are content.  We, without having a leftist government, have an idiotic government.  For businessmen it is not good to have a populace dying of hunger, poor people.

That seems to fly in the face of Facussé's support for the 2009 coup, but he clearly thinks that political intervention made a point that will limit what even a LIBRE president does:

If Doña Xiomara is elected, Don Mel Zelaya will have the intelligence to manage things [the government] without confronting the rest of society.

It is shocking to see a Honduran businessman call the government "idiotic". But increasing social inequality, impoverishing the populace, is exactly what the last two National Party presidencies have done.

A recent study by The Center for Economic Policy Research , "Honduras Since the Coup: Economic and Social Outcomes", authored by Jake Johnston and Stephan Lefebvre, points out that

Economic inequality, which decreased for four consecutive years starting in 2006, began trending upward in 2010. Honduras now has the most unequal distribution of income in Latin America.

Only three countries in Latin America have seen their GINI coefficient, a measure of how unequal the distribution of income is in the country, increase since 2009.  The rest have seen decreases of 1 to 7 percent.  Honduras had a 12.5% increase in its GINI coefficient, from .50 in 2009, to .59 in 2011, the latest year for which there are records.  That's the greatest increase of any country in Latin America, and the highest absolute value for a GINI coefficient in Latin America.

In fact, since 2001, inequality has consistently increased under Nationalist governments, declining only during the four years of the Zelaya administration. Under Zelaya, Honduras had about the same level of economic inequality as Costa Rica in 2009.

And as the Honduran businessmen speaking out note, poverty is bad for business. The rich may get richer while the poor get poorer, but eventually, you run out of customers.

What would Libre Policy Look Like?

A number of readers have remarked-- as have we-- on the lack of coverage of Xiomara Castro's positions and campaign in the Honduran (and international) press. As the candidate in the lead for the Honduran presidency according to all polls, you would expect to hear something about what she is advocating.

So it is noteworthy that Monday September 9, La Tribuna covered a campaign event held in Siguatepeque.

Xiomara Castro's message was a mixture of pragmatic criticism of the present government, envisioning something new in Honduran politics, and recalling the initiatives of the government led by her husband that were for the benefit of the people.

Showing a pragmatic side, she commented on Honduras' slide in international measures of competitiveness, saying that

"it isn't [just] that we fell from 90 to 111, because in the government of Ricardo Maduro we were in position 96, in 2009 during the government of Manuel Zelaya we arrived at position 82, indicating that we had risen 17 points, in 2012 [down] to position 90 and we have arrived at position 111, or that is since the Liberal government of Zelaya we have lost 29 points”.

This is a reference to the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014, reported widely in Honduras this past week. The report identified the top problems for doing business in Honduras as crime and theft, corruption, inefficient government bureaucracy, and policy instability. Decrying these factors, and advocating for greater business competitiveness, is a fairly pro-business position, reminding us that despite being painted as a leftist, Castro de Zelaya's husband came from old Honduran land-owning, ranching, and logging stock.

But the main point of the LIBRE campaign event in Siguatepeque, what made headlines, was Xiomara Castro gaining support from the cultural sector in Honduras. El Libertador reported that more than 100 artists and writers signed a declaration, read by Helen Umaña, that stated that the artists and writers gave  “our confidence, vote and solidarity... with the aim that culture will be the ideological and pragmatic axis” of the government they hope will be elected.

The cultural sector of Honduras has suffered enormous problems under the current administration, many of which began with the de facto regime installed by the 2009 coup. The statement, called the Declaration of Siguatepeque, states that in a century of the collective project of making a more just society, they found that LIBRE and the original Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular established to oppose the de facto regime is the most "truthful, promising, and authentic".

"With the shared certainty that her government will nourish itself from the ubiquitous creativity of we who believe in this country", the artists go on to say

We ratify, beyond any immediate circumstance, that the re-founding that will occur with the art and culture of our nations, will lead Honduras toward its transformation into an equitable and inclusive, fair and free country.

During the announcement in Siguatepeque, Xiomara Castro, for her part, discussed the potential to create a "Consejo Nacional de Cultura", described by La Tribuna as

 an autonomous organization that would be composed of all the indigenous groups, workers in the culture sector, and in consensus the policies concerning culture would be formed.

In effect, this would be the next step beyond what President Zelaya implemented during his term in office, when the Ministry of Culture undertook extensive collaboration with indigenous groups, local historians, and people who never before had been part of shaping cultural policy. This is the kind of social inclusion that made traditional business and political elites uncomfortable.

In this limited sense, the tendency of Honduran (and perhaps even more, international) media to characterize Xiomara Castro as a candidate who would extend the policies of her husband does help envisage what LIBRE might attempt to do, if she were elected.

Castro de Zelaya has a unique campaign advantage in that relationship: she can claim the successful policies, or even just progressive intentions, that her husband had as part of her political capital. La Tribuna reported her response to a question during the Siguatepeque event that seems way off message, about the lack of a local hospital, that the candidate turned to her advantage neatly:

she responded that in the government of Manuel Zelaya everything was set for the construction of five hospitals across the country with funds from Spain, for the benefit of Siguatepeque, Roatán, Catacamas, Santa Bárbara and Choluteca, but owing to the coup d'etat they were not brought to fruition.

LIBRE was created to carry forward with very specific social policies, some of which will meet fierce political opposition. It is worth recalling what Castro de Zelaya said on August 27, at the launch of the campaign season:

when they place the presidential banner on me, my first words will be: I convene a National Constitutional Assembly, lets go for that new Constitution.

That promise plays a very large part in her appeal to supporters. It is what the artists who signed on to support her see as the potential for transformation unlike any seen in a century.

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.

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:

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.