Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle: The Community of Nations and Honduras, a Conjuncture

The "coup" of 28/6/2009 (so Obama himself called it before Lobo, although it was those who conspired who were deploring it) entailed a high and expansive level of involvement of the International Community, especially of the OAS, in Honduras. From the perspective of the Resistance, nonetheless, this involvement also was incoherent and ineffective and even misleading (1) in various meanings of the word. And it was increasingly doubtful that the international community could assist in finding a way out (it would be difficult to have a solution) because the determination of radical golpismo to overcome or ignore any external interference that would not be pleasing to them was understood, so that the questioning of the Europeans or Latin Americans, were of no interest for golpismo, and, in that measure, have ceased to be means of pressure. In a recent communication the ex-Minister of Tourism of Honduras Ricardo Martinez wrote lucidly to me:

Central America could not maintain the closure of frontiers after one week because of the economic pressures of their businessmen... partners of the Honduran golpistas. The OAS never succeeded in true commercial embargos or resolutions that would require... the golpistas to give in; on the contrary they dragged their feet (2) and now around 54 countries recognize the present government, including the USA that represents 70% of our economic activity. In Honduras there has been no scarcity of anything that had not already been lacking and despite the acute economic crisis, the lempira has not even been devalued and the interest rates increased. All the multilateral organizations are now in dialogue with the government of Lobo and have initiated payments and the SICA has already incorporated the Honduran ministers in the consultations of its ministers, even thought they have not changed the resolution that prohibited it.

Something that is patently illegal.

We should remember that the ex-Minister behind much of this debacle is the strong arm of the USA, but is a discreet man. On the other hand, the golpista press has questioned, and the forces of the right (that also were more able to hold together with their few external friends) have rejected, adverse pronouncements from outside the country, by the OAS and most recently the joint position of the so-called Group of 16 that-- recently-- repudiated the determination of the golpista Supreme Court of Justice to fire the judges and magistrate that have made statements against the coup and demanded attention and remedy to the continuing abuses of human rights and violence against the opposition, ignored by the Prosecutor. The so called "Institute for the Defense of Democracy", that is no more than a front for golpismo, has rejected in a communique the strong statement of the G16, imputing to them an interventionist spirit and a lack of respect for the institutionality of the country. The ambassador Ruperto Pérez, of the Kingdom of Spain, who belongs to that group, rejected that response and declared that the isolationist norm invoked was completely obsolete, recalling that around the world, the international community today is involved in problems of human rights which are conceived as universal and the responsibility of everyone.

In effect, the judge Garzón, who is now being punished for having dared so much, only had made a personal demonstration of a perception already generalized that we cannot be indifferent before the rights of the rest of the inhabitants of the planet without putting our own in danger. And this thesis has prevailed in the new international law. Consequently there exist international commissions of rights that have repudiated Ramón Custodio and international campaigns against flagrant violations, in Asia and the Pacific, and campaigns by the UN against mutilations by Muslims in Africa, treaties and conventions worldwide against torture that-- furthermore-- Honduras has ratified, which is why the International Court has been established, etc. The ideologues of golpismo such as Carlos López C. (ex Chancellor who was the favorite of the military since the time of his uncle, the dictator of the same name) and his favored ambassadors don't understand. They remain, as General McCrystal said not long ago, "stuck in the seventies". Certainly this is not going to stop this push of international law, nor is it going to resolve the confrontation in Honduras.

Perhaps the evolution of the situation since the coup has been converted into a case of the study of change generated, not in the bureaucratic field, that also keeps being short-sighted or obsolete, but in the very wide public effects on international politics of the powerful countries of the globe. These are democracies in the more genuine sense, where the citizens (that can inform themselves at the edge of the manipulated media) are determined to demand that their governments be consistent with international aid, and not waste it on dictatorships that, with it, make themselves ever more powerful. Self-determination can only prevail where the agreed-upon international norms are not violated. The problem continues being the dissonance or open contradiction between pragmatic interest, especially of the USA, and the more abstract and idealist doctrine of rights, otherwise easily manipulable if it is not defined in an integral way, as human rights, political as well as social.

Some pivotal institutions of the international community could be in danger if they do not demonstrate more effectiveness in the protection of those principles, but at the same time they are pressured not to move against the powerful. In particular the OAS, that is already warned by the published determination of a large majority of its members (that feel smothered within it) to create a different entity, that would leave out the USA and its twin.(3) So that, to the degree that the great power does not succeed in reconciling itself with the greater complexity of the community of nations of the Continent, the latter is disposed to create a space apart, that excludes it. The OAS as such therefore confronts a test. It will not be disposed to fail. And to have success it is necessary that it be capable of reconciling the imperatives of both factions and to obtain concessions from both parties that will give to the voice of the organization the coherency that it requires to be effective and to consolidate its new principles of international law. In so far as this goal advances it will gain respect and even recognition in all the factions, although some will remain more content than others and even though no one can demand that they resolve the internal problems of each one of their members.

Published Friday 25 June, 2010 on Vos el Soberano.

Notes:

(1) engañoso: deceitful, deceptive, illusory, fraudulent, phony, misleading. As Pastor Fasquelle references "various meanings of the word", any of these should be considered here.

(2) dio largas al asunto

(3) The reference is to the meeting of the Río Group earlier this year, resolving to form an association leaving out the US and Canada.

The unmasking of golpismo: Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle

Translated from the Spanish posted February 23 on Vos el Soberano:

Those who have taken pains to better inform themselves have not been confused. After a debate of more than a month, hundreds of anthropologists who are members of the American Anthropological Association just passed a resolution that not only condemns the coup d'etat, as many historians of the US have already done, but also asks their government to condemn the abuses of rights on the part of golpismo, support the Resistance, collaborate with the governments of the region and refuse to recognize the government elected under golpismo. But those that have trusted in the information of the press do not end up understanding and one of my old professors-- a political scientist-- here (in México) a few days ago asked me in puzzlement "if the ex-President Zelaya did not intend to remain in power, as the conspiratorial press always alleged, what could have motivated the coup d'etat of the 28th of June?"

I do not know if I knew how to explain well to him that the proposal for a Constitutional Assembly menaced the interests of the beneficiaries of the system, determined to continue being those that command and to command for their benefit. Nor do I know if the majority in Honduras understand it thoroughly. But I see with clarity how the conspirators have tried to conceal this essential motive.

Before and after the 29th of November, golpismo has wished to justify itself recovering its rhetorical defense "of institutionality" whose advance it reverted thirty years, "of the Constitution" that it broke, of "the democracy" that it repressed and of which it made a mockery, and "of private enterprise" whose legitimate right it has placed in insecurity. And it has sought to symbolically consecrate these justifications declaring the day of the coup as that "of the defense of the Constitution", and the golpistas, above all the tramp Micheletti, as "hero of democracy", an idea that was inspired by the grotesque joke of Thomas Shannon that history will not forget him, and to which the Grupo de Rio now has responded. Gradually (as the old adage goes, "by his deeds you will know him"), the contradictions and disputes among the golpistas for the loot surpassed the underlying motives, so that they can be contemplated starkly and they wind up being understood by themselves and strangers.

The later proliferation-- that La Gaceta testifies to-- of concessions of exploitation of open-air mining, that ex-President Zelaya had suspended from the day of his inauguration. The denunciations of corruption of the first post-coup regime (of Micheletti) on the part of the second (of Lobo) that have been disseminated from the Presidential Residence by Sr. Discua, of as yet obscure antecedents, detailing the scandalous management of resources. The denunciations of a pair of ministers, notoriously that of Culture, about the unknown fate of hundreds of millions of lempiras of funds evidently outside the budget (transferred outside of the budget of the entity) for unjustified purposes. The unheard of concession to the mafia of a dam in which the Honduran State (and the people) have invested dozens of millions of dollars since the time of the earlier military dictatorship. The protest now of COHEP about the presentation of "the fiscal species" that this corporation used to enjoy legal benefit from, to the military class, to buy goods of questionable valuation. And, finally, the candid disclosure, on the part of the new Chancellor, of the division of consulates among the traditional parties allied in the coup they attempt to explain.

These things together and simultaneously place in evidence the motive of golpismo: the cupidity of the elites, business, political, and military, and their eagerness to continue enjoying the benefits of public goods and resources without restraint, which the prospect of "Citizen Power" placed at risk. These larcenies are not novel nor unique. So it is that it has always operated, the present "democratic" State (the system of government that the golpistas defended with such passion against any change) to benefit the "real power groups", "interest groups" that have disputed the division of the benefits, the exemptions, the pardons, the concessions of services, the well- and badly- conceived state enterprises, etc. according to the old pattern of colonial corporatism.

If it had been possible to consolidate, in effect, a political regime that responded in direct and exclusive form to the general interest of the citizenry, through a constitutional assembly that would facilitate the participation in legislative representation, in the operation and control of the system, this understanding among delinquents would have been threatened, not only when their misdeeds were revealed, but in the process of public discussion and decision. (This was sought by the ill-fated, because misunderstood, Law of Access to Public Information, that was promulgated at the beginning of the Zelaya administration and that the system rapidly neutralized, dividing the magistracies among the parties.) The coup was produced to protect these privileges for their beneficiaries.

I do not know how many people know that-- even though the cynics of the Honduran political class "understand the routine this way"-- this type of distribution (and more when it is done publicly) is unacceptable not only in the advanced countries, but also in the neighbors of the isthmus that have already passed through a modernizing process. Many Hondurans will not be able easily to understand it. I do not know in what proportion the mass of the Resistance or the public in general understand it. (In the final instance the prospect for reform and the development of the country depends on what the majority understands, because those who benefit from the usufruct rights that they run the risk of losing control of understand it well.) But I do not wish to boast about finding the water tepid. And the unveiling of the modus operandi of this primeval dominant class is a sorrowful civic education for all and a component of the construction of democracy that, in the Honduran case, precisely due to this type of throwbacks, passes -- necessarily-- through a re-founding, by a Constitutional assembly that will armor, as they say today, the general interest.

Mayanization in action: erasing Pech history

A story that caught my eye today, from the Bulgarian site FOCUS Information Agency (billing itself as "the first Bulgarian private information agency" and "the most preferred Bulgarian electronic media both in Bulgaria and abroad"), simultaneously illustrates the complexity of Honduran cultural history, and the narrowing effects of what historian Dario Euraque has dubbed mayanization: the collapse of all the diversity of Honduras' pluralistic indigenous heritage into one category, as generalized "Maya".

The story reports on an initiative by the "Friendship Society Bulgaria – Honduras" who will be traveling to La Ceiba, a city on the north coast of Honduras, east of San Pedro Sula. There, they say, is found the only river in the world named after their native country, the Rio Bulgaria:

Inquiries have shown that a Bulgarian community has been living in the Central American country for 100 years. At the beginning of 20 century they discovered an unknown river and named it Bulgaria in honor of their native country.

That brought me only a moment's pause. While I had no previous knowledge of a Bulgarian immigrant population, the North Coast is incredibly diverse, and waves of immigrants around the turn of the 20th century were drawn there by the business opportunities created by internationalization of the banana industry.

The expedition will bring Honduran photographers Nimer Alvarado and Mervin Corales to trace the course of this river from its headwaters near Tegucigalpita (a small town, not the capital city), as it runs from Pico Bonito, one of Honduras' astonishing national parks, to La Ceiba.

So far, so good. The article notes that the photographic trek is

carried out in cooperation with the culture center in La Ceiba.

This is one of the local "Casas de Cultura", an initiative pushed forward under former Minister of Culture Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle beginning in his first term in that position between 1994 and 1996. Casas de Cultura are intended to encourage public participation in the exploration of specifically local histories. It would seem like nothing could be more localized than a coherent Bulgarian community with sufficient sense of national origin to lead them to name a local landmark in memory of that country.

But wait:

The photographs taken will be displayed in an exhibition called Rio Bulgaria – the Bulgarian Presence in the Land of Maya [emphasis added]

So in what sense were Bulgarians living near La Ceiba "in the land of the Maya"? None, really.

We do know quite a lot about the prehispanic people of the north coast of Honduras. They lived in towns, the largest of which probably had populations of a few thousand people, whose remains are recognizable as mounds today, mapped by archaeologists visiting the area since the first half of the 20th century. At least one large archaeological site is directly adjacent to La Ceiba itself, although not developed for visitation. Based on ceramics, it probably dated to the Classic period-- more or less 500-1000 AD. And, also based on these ceramics, the people living near La Ceiba were not the same as the people of Copan, who we refer to today as Maya.

Who were the people living near La Ceiba? To answer that question, we enter into speculative territory, and need to take into account how archaeologists know who lived anywhere. The common approach is to take the people who Europeans described in the 16th century as most likely descendants of those who had lived in the same place earlier. Notice that this means we assume that people stayed in place, unless there is some strong evidence that they moved; this conservative assumption can sometimes be misleading.

But if we take this common approach, then the likely people of the area around La Ceiba would be the ancestors of the indigenous group today known as Pech, previously called Paya. Pech are recognized as the indigenous people who occupied the island of Roatan in the sixteenth century. The northeast coast opposite the Bay Islands was the earliest focus of Spanish occupation, including massive slave raiding of the indigenous population. This began a long history of depletion of Pech population, including forced resettlement and voluntary movement away from exploitation.

The surviving Pech are among the indigenous groups officially recognized by the State of Honduras, under ILO 160, the Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries of 1989, which was ratified in 1995. According to Minority Rights Group International (MRG), an NGO tracking global diversity, today there are about 2000 Pech who

have resisted total assimilation and, under the national bilingual programme, have developed Pech-language courses and Pech teachers.

In fact, you can find a YouTube video of Pech children singing the Honduran national anthem in translation.

Does it matter that a promotional notice of a pretty bizarre "cultural" exchange between Bulgaria, of all places, and Honduras, erases the historical connection of Pech to the land they once occupied, and replaces it with a generalized "Maya" identity?

Well, yes, it does. Cultural diversity has been a focus of struggle in Honduras for decades. In these struggles, the erasure of other pasts and their replacement with a single Maya past breaks connections between contemporary people and the territory they once occupied. It can lead to investment in understanding one valued indigenous culture to the exclusion of understanding the others that Honduras recognizes. And it undermines attempts fostered by some Honduran intellectuals to forge a national identity that recognizes historical complexity for a nation today working to accommodate various forms of difference.

As MRG puts it

For most of its post-independence history the culture of national unity forged by the state has been on the basis of a mestizo ideal... As a consequence traditional indigenous and minority populations have historically been marginalized, ignored or discriminated against....

This despite the fact that

Unlike other countries of the region, in the 1980s Honduras officially recognized the multicultural composition of its society and the need to protect the economic, cultural and human rights of its ethnic peoples. This helped to create an official space for indigenous and minority populations to work towards having their rights recognized and their needs addressed.

So yes, it matters when a photographic exhibition planned to be shown nationally and internationally erases local identity. And it is especially ironic when this takes place in the context of re-discovering the complexity of European heritages of modern Honduras.

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A historical footnote: the erasure of Pech identity and its replacement by Maya identity has a long literary history.

When Christopher Columbus made his only landfall on the mainland of the Americas in 1502, it was on the north coast of Honduras, across from the Bay Islands-- that is, in the region of La Ceiba. He had first captured a canoe off the island of Guanaja, which, like Roatan, was likely inhabited by Pech speaking people. Most reports today identify the canoe as "Maya traders", ignoring the original accounts, written closest to the time of the incident. These clearly identify the canoe as coming from one of the islands, and its passengers as local people.

Most pernicious, modern accounts base the identification of this canoe on a sixteenth-century general historian, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, who wrote that

this vast region [the mainland of northern Honduras] is divided into two parts, one called Taïa and the other called Maïa

Or, that is what he is said to have written. In fact, the manuscript of his book clearly has "Païa", not "Taïa", the name previously used for the people who call themselves Pech.