Prison Fire in Honduras: Another Chapter in an Old Story

The English language press is reporting another prison fire in Honduras, this time in a prison in San Pedro Sula with as much as 1800 or 2250 inmates, that was built to contain a maximum of 800, according to Honduran press reports.

According to CNN, the dead include "a prisoner who was decapitated". Ricardo Ramirez, described as chief of police of San Pedro Sula (actually now the head of the National Police), is cited as saying that before the fire "shots had been heard from inside".

USA Today titled its article 14 dead in Honduran prison fire amid riot. Quoting "authorities" they summarize the deaths as occurring "after armed inmates started a fire during a riot". They quote police commissioner Yair Mesa:

"The uprising has been put down with the need to fire shots," Mesa said by telephone from inside the prison. He added the 14 victims apparently died of burns or asphyxiation. The cause of death could not immediately be determined because the bodies were so badly burned.

Also quoted: fire chief Jose Danilo Flores who USA Today quotes as saying that

the prisoners themselves appeared to have fought the fire inside the facility. But Flores said the armed inmates had kept firefighters from entering earlier in the day.

This is a far too familiar story. USA Today actually managed to add the most necessary context:

In 2008, the latest year for which figures are available, Honduras' prison system had nearly 38% more prisoners than it was built for, according to the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies.

Perhaps predictably, Honduran coverage was less subtle. La Prensa wrote "13 muertos dejá motín" (uprising leaves 13 dead), putting all the responsibility for the deaths on the prison uprising, and avoiding any discussion of the overcrowding the grows out of the policies of the government:

The uprising was produced after a quarrel among the group of prisoners called "los paisas", who are the prisoners that are not related to either of the two gangs that operate in Honduras.

The point at issue was generated after there was encountered inside a cell, the decapitated body of Mario Álvarez, one of the sub-coordinators of los paisas. The head of the prisoner was thrown from inside toward the area of the entrance to the jail area, whose control has not been possible to be retaken in its totality by the Police to avoid a repetition of the gunshot that accompanied the beginning of the incident, that left another 12 dead.

The confusing use of the passive voice here, so important to avoid getting into who shot first, makes it hard to completely visualize the turn of events. Now add this:

Police sources stated that the prisoners, among whom firearms had been encountered, presented to the Police a sheet of demands to return control of the jail, but they threatened that if they were not given a response, they would kill another coordinator of los paisas.

What those demands were goes undocumented.

Given the normal propensity for La Prensa to provide the most lurid and stereotyped view of things, their coverage of this fire seems almost matter of fact.

But a comparison to coverage in El Tiempo allows us to see some differences. Start with the title: Sube a 13 el numero de víctimas (the number of victims climbs to 13).

The account of the fire is also somewhat different: Tiempo repeats the claim seen in La Prensa that the fire was in the kitchen area, crediting it to a "police official". But it also includes other reports: that the origin point was the conjugal visit cells, citing a fire officer; and that it began in "Zona 18, occupied by gang members", the latter without a specific source.

The AFP reproduced a Spanish language story that indicated that the prison was back under the control of the authorities. Despite repeated quotations of Honduran police and government officials saying that the actual events would only be clarified by investigation, the AFP story includes repeated claims about how the incident started, who was responsible, and what happened, sometimes by the same person almost simultaneously saying that the investigation would have to be carried out to know what they just said they knew:

For example, Walter Amaya, a police official, is quoted saying that

"organized bands that are in conflict provoked" the fire in San Pedro Sula, but he asked "to await the results of the investigations" to have more precision about what happened.

AFP, which is the source of the higher prison population estimate of 2250, follows Honduran government sources in describing the inmates entirely as members of

fearsome gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS) and Mara 18 (M-18), and other bands of drug traffickers, kidnappers, and vehicle thieves.

What they omit is how many of the prisoners were not so fearsome: whether, as was the case in Comayagua, a portion of the incarcerated were uncharged or still awaiting trial.

Hard Life Leads to Hard Death

When I began to work in Honduras, the economy I experienced was quite different from what exists today. San Pedro Sula was growing, but the many free trade zones that would lure sweatshops were in the future. In the Bay Islands, where today hotels stand side by side, we saw almost deserted beaches and pristine reefs.

What supported the economy then was agriculture, cattle ranching, banana and sugar plantations, all dependent on the laboring bodies of campesinos.

I spent my work days walking across the countryside, meeting these working people and seeing their daily lives. They worked hard. In the sugar plantations in particular, the work was hot, long, and intense. I could barely stand the heat myself, and I was not swinging a machete to cut the mature cane, a grass whose strands cut into your skin like a thousand tiny glass knives.

In those days before purified water was commercialized in Honduras, I carried a half-gallon water bottle with me, filled from the taps in La Lima where the banana company that owned all the housing provided drinkable water. If I emptied my water bottle, I would have had no alternative to combat the sun and the heat. I had learned on my first trip to Honduras what would happen if I did not stay hydrated: collapse from heat stroke took me out of the field for days.

So it always amazed me to see the relatively tiny water bottles that workers carried to the field. When I offered a drink to someone, they would politely refuse, and then possibly take a tiny sip from their own container. I thought it was something about growing up in that setting; that they were more adjusted to the heat, and needed less water.

Now, an AP story tells me otherwise. It describes a mysterious epidemic of kidney disease killing agricultural workers in Central America. Despite original suspicions that the cause might be a chemical used in the fields, tests for these, and for heavy metals, came up negative. Instead, "the roots of the epidemic"

appear to lie in the grueling nature of the work performed by its victims, including construction workers, miners and others who labor hour after hour without enough water in blazing temperatures, pushing their bodies through repeated bouts of extreme dehydration and heat stress for years on end. Many start as young as 10. The punishing routine appears to be a key part of some previously unknown trigger of chronic kidney disease, which is normally caused by diabetes and high-blood pressure, maladies absent in most of the patients in Central America.

My naive impression that the men I saw toiling all day, with less water than would get me through a couple of hours, were somehow avoiding the damage I feared for myself was wrong. They were not avoiding it: they were accruing that damage year in and year out. Some were probably already dying of it.

But not in such numbers as in the last decade, when in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the frequencies of deaths from kidney disease doubled. The article cites rising mortality in sugar-cane zones of northern Costa Rica, and possible indications of the same in Panama, although "at less dramatic rates".

Because the report didn't mention Honduras, I went off to see what I could find about the incidence of chronic kidney disease there. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, responsible for the original story about chronic kidney disease in Central America on which the AP report is based, describes its methods of investigation. The note on methodology posted by the Center for Public Integrity says "studies have indicated the disease is spreading in Honduras and Mexico as well" but then adds "no data were available for Honduras."

Saying its data come from the World Health Organization, a site called World Life Expectancy claims that in 2011 Honduras deaths from kidney disease made up 4.67% of the mortality there, making this the fifth most common cause of death and placing Honduras 8th in the world for deaths from this cause. El Salvador ranked first; Nicaragua trailed Honduras slightly at 10th. I was unable to find a specific source on the WHO website that would let me verify these numbers, but that's not my specialization, and as the Center for Public Integrity note on methodology indicates, deaths from chronic kidney disease are not coded transparently. What the relative ranking would indicate is, as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists suggests, Honduras is experiencing a similar level of the disease as Nicaragua and El Salvador. Some support for the conclusion that chronic kidney disease is a more urgent health problem in contemporary Honduras than previously comes from news coverage of protests by 1000 patients dependent on dialysis in Honduras suggests the number of those needing this treatment is outstripping the resources the government has to provide.

In the case of El Salvador and Nicaragua, where they could find comparable data, the scientists the reporters talked to argue that increases in kidney disease are not simply due to better reporting. They point out that

in nations with more developed health systems, the disease that impairs the kidney's ability to cleanse the blood is diagnosed relatively early and treated with dialysis in medical clinics. In Central America, many of the victims treat themselves at home with a cheaper but less efficient form of dialysis, or go without any dialysis at all.

International demand for the products of sugar plantations may be putting increased pressure on the labor force:

In 2006 [one plantation in Nicaragua] received $36.5 million in loans from the International Finance Corp., the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group, to buy more land, expand its processing plant and produce more sugar for consumers and ethanol production.

As the AP article notes, some companies are taking steps intended to prevent the chronic disease; but the need of employment leads workers to desperate measures:

about eight years ago [the Nicaraguan factory] started providing electrolyte solution and protein cookies to workers who previously brought their own water to work. But the study also found that some workers were cutting sugar cane for as long as 9 1/2 hours a day with virtually no break and little shade in average temperatures of 30 C (87 F).... many worker protections in the region are badly enforced by the companies and government regulators... Many workers disqualified by tests showing high levels of creatinine go back to work in the fields for subcontractors with less stringent standards, he said. Some use false IDs, or give their IDs to their healthy sons, who then pass the tests and go work in the cane fields, damaging their kidneys.

"This is the only job in town," Glaser said. "It's all they're trained to do. It's all they know."

The article notes, grimly, that the conditions that probably produced this increase in kidney disease and death exist elsewhere:

they have seen echoes of the Central American phenomenon in reports from hot farming areas in Sri Lanka, Egypt and the Indian east coast.

These are deaths of people who matter. And if the diagnoses are correct, they are completely avoidable consequences of the choices made in global centers of capital; the desire for more sugar in foods and for ethanol to postpone the inevitable transition of the world economy from petroleum fuels to other sources. These working bodies are dying for us.

Currusté Archaeological Park Abandoned?

Earlier this month La Prensa published a story indicating that the Archaeological Park of Currusté, officially opened to the public in December, 2008, is reportedly abandoned by both the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia (IHAH), and the city government of San Pedro Sula.

Currusté, an archaeological site within the city limits of San Pedro Sula, became the country's fifth archaeological park when it opened on December 12, 2008. Prior to that it had been protected by IHAH, but closed to the public. Archaeologists first investigated the site in 1972 when archaeologist George Hasemann mapped the site and excavated in and around some of the largest structures at Currusté.

Under Dario Euraque's leadership, the IHAH formed a partnership with the city of San Pedro and the US Embassy to develop the park. Under IHAH guidance, the park was cleared, archaeological testing of the area destined to be a visitor's center, and of several of the structures was carried out, interpretive trails were built, signs were installed, and it was opened to the public. The city was supposed to pave the road leading to the site entrance, and build a visitor's center/museum on site.

Currusté was a popular location for field trips for school groups from the neighboring cities.

The coup in 2009 disrupted the plans for Currusté.

First, in July of that year, the de facto government removed the Mayor of San Pedro, Rodolfo Padilla Sunseri, who had been a party to the overall agreement for developing the park and replaced him with Micheletti's nephew, William Franklin Micheletti. Padilla Sunseri later fled to the US.

Then the de facto government removed Dario Euraque as head of IHAH that September. After the November, 2009 elections, when a new Mayor took office, he found the city badly underfunded and in debt. The funds for the visitor's center at Currusté were silently diverted to other projects.

La Prensa reports that today the park is closed to the public, and overgrown. The guard, they report, quit because he wasn't being paid.

Only the sign out on the main road remains; that and the mosquitoes.

Geography of Cocaine Processing

Honduran news media have for the last two days been reporting the discovery of Honduras' "first cocaine lab".

Honduran newspapers are, in general, lurid tabloids that delight in the presentation of crime and violence, the bloodier the better. The coverage of this raid has been, in my reading, contaminated by a kind of dark celebratory tone-- sort of "we told you it would come to this" combined with "we're on the world map".

This may partly be my reaction to the fact that, of all the events that happen in Honduras, it is things like this that international media, even the more reliable BBC, find worthy of coverage.

Honduras has been stereotyped, and this time, it isn't the old "banana republic": it is the corrupt drug capital.

Considering the fact that the storyline comes straight from the Minister of Security, Oscar Alvarez, whose entire political career is based on promoting a sense of lawlessness, I find myself feeling somewhat cynical about the hype. When Alvarez is quoted as saying that they found

"a laboratory of the first rank, Colombian-style, which appears to me is very worrisome because it is the first time that we discovered a cocaine processing laboratory in Honduras"

I hear the next sentence that he didn't say: "so give me more money and more weapons and more ways to clamp down on the entire population under the pretext that everyone is really, to some extent, a criminal".

Alvarez has been outspoken in recent weeks about lack of adequate US support for his activities. On March 5, a story in La Tribuna began:

The Minister of Security, Oscar Alvarez, in a sarcastic form stated yesterday that it made him happy that the State Department of the US is realizing that there is a serious problem of drug trafficking in the region, because then there might be more aid for the country to combat this scourge.

Alvarez was reacting to the 2011 State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report issued on March 3. The Honduras country summary there would not, at first glance, appear objectionable, although perhaps this passage stung a bit:

corruption within the Honduran government and its law enforcement elements presents obstacles to counternarcotics efforts. While law enforcement authorities made numerous arrests related to drug trafficking, prosecution rates remained low for all crimes and few convictions have been made, in part due to corruption at all levels of the prosecution process.

Oscar Alvarez complained particularly about Colombia receiving helicopters and radar that Honduras was not given. Clearly, his message was that the US was over-valuing the drug threat represented by Colombia and under-estimating the situation in Honduras. In fact, the US report began with a summary that concluded that organizations operating from South America and Mexico

use the remote northeastern region known as La Mosquitia and other isolated sites as transit and storage areas. Marijuana is cultivated in Honduras almost exclusively for domestic consumption. Honduran police have not detected any cocaine or heroin processing laboratories in the country. [emphasis added]

So I may be pardoned for wondering about the timeliness of Alvarez's find of "the first cocaine processing lab" in Honduras-- especially as there was no one to be arrested when the site was raided.

But my cynicism is not what motivated me to write this post (although it is what has motivated me not to write about this "discovery" until now).

What is driving me crazy is the complete inability of the international media to identify places in Honduras in any way other than by distance north of Tegucigalpa-- the capital city, yes, but not always the most relevant reference point.

The BBC describes the locale, Cerro Negro, as "a mountainous area north of the capital, Tegucigalpa" and as "about 175km (100 miles) north of the capital".

Boz, in a post about this story, citing the BBC report and reiterating the "100 miles north of the capital" description, was led to conclude

4) Also notable, this lab was in the middle of the country up in the mountains. It's not as if they moved it in by boat to some unoccupied coastal region. The people behind this lab had to get the coca paste in by air or land and a plan to get the processed cocaine out by land and sea. This required some significant logistics.

Well, yes and no. Significant logistics, maybe; but as in real estate, what matters here is location, location, location. Cerro Negro is not all that isolated, and it is in fact within easy reach of the Caribbean coast.

The Cerro Negro in question is up in the Montaña de Merendon, west of my beloved San Pedro Sula, and about 8 km south of Omoa, the little colonial town on the Caribbean coast where I spent June of 2009. Don't be confused by internet databases that show another Cerro Negro somewhat further inland; this one is called Cerro Negro de Omoa on topo maps, and Honduran press coverage makes it very clear that this is where the raid took place.

Topo maps made some time ago showed access via a dirt road up from Omoa to the aldea of Santa Tereza, then the closest inhabited place to Cerro Negro, again, about 8 km distance, although a rugged haul.

More recent topo maps show an improved road to a cluster of buildings at Cerro Negro itself, coming from the east, starting at a place called Bijao (along the Puerto Cortes-San Pedro Sula highway, north of Choloma, and location of major cement works). The road is visible and can be traced on Google Earth all the way up to the top of Cerro Negro, where the lab was apparently operating under cover of a coffee plantation.

While Honduran press reports say that local people indicated helicopters were used to transport drugs from the lab, the location lends itself to moving raw materials and equipment in from the Caribbean coast up into the mountains.

Even though I remain cynical about the timing of this raid, the bad luck that allowed all the people operating it to escape, and the convenient timing of finding "the first cocaine lab" just when Honduran authorities are airing their grievances about not getting enough support from the US to combat drug trafficking, I would still like discussion to take into account the actual geography of Honduras, and thus the actual effects experienced by actual people living there.

The laziness of the BBC and other major media substantively affects the ability of others to understand where this drug operation fits into the landscape of Honduras. I wonder what Boz would say about the implications of this location, with a more accurate geographic placement within a few hours drive (at worst) from San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortes?

Patrimony and Cocaine

Customs agents at the Ramon Villeda Morales airport found cocaine inside a replica of a prehispanic figure sent for shipment out of the country last week.

Nearly 2 kilos of cocaine were enclosed inside the object, part of a group of 27 packed in two boxes.

On November 13, El Tiempo reported that the alleged sender had been identified as Ismael Ramírez, resident in San Pedro Sula, while leaving open the possibility that his name was used without his authorization.

The package was being shipped to an individual in Barcelona, Spain, named variously "Salomón Guerra" or "Salomón Porra".

The replica containing the cocaine in this shipment was described as made of a mixture of cement and stone, about two feet tall, and judging from the picture in El Tiempo, is a somewhat bad impression of one of the much larger stelae of Copan.

Mixtures of stone and cement have been used with greater and lesser degrees of skill to make replicas of stelae for quite some time; the best such work is actually on view in the site of Copan itself, where many of what look like original sculptures are actually replicas prepared under the supervision of international archaeologists. The object involved in this drug shipment is clearly of quite another order of artistry.

Another 26 small statues made of modern composite material were included in the shipment. Similar objects, often still wet and covered with hastily applied black or green paint, are commonly offered to tourists who visit the archaeological ruins at Copan by vendors outside the park.

The amount of cocaine involved-- two packages totalling two kilos-- is relatively small. What is most troubling about this news is that the authority of the Honduran national patrimony agency is being actively exploited to try to facilitate the export of drugs. Paperwork accompanying the shipment was supposedly from the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, authorizing the pieces, from the Copan region, to leave the country.

Indeed, the article in Tiempo credits airport staff as originally questioning the papers from the Institute because they suspected the objects were actual antiquities being smuggled out against Honduran law, under the guise of replicas.

Speaking strictly as a professional, the objects illustrated in news articles shouldn't have caused even a moment of uncertainty about their legitimacy. They are tchotchkes, souvenirs, and my only question would be why anyone in Spain would want to import them.

Not that the linkage of Precolumbian artifacts and drugs is entirely novel. Archaeological materials and drugs seem to circulate through the same channels. There is a thriving trade in illegally exported Honduran antiquities, and in recent years, theft of colonial art has been especially heated, again for illegal exportation. To quote Neil Brodie, an expert in the illegal traffic in antiquities,

Direct links between drugs trafficking and antiquities smuggling in Central America for instance have been reported on more than one occasion. In Belize and Guatemala jungle airstrips are used by criminals to smuggle out drugs and antiquities...while at the receiving end a smuggler’s plane arriving in Colorado from Mexico was found to contain 350 lb of marijuana and many thousands of dollars-worth of Pre-Columbian antiquities.

Press coverage to date leaves open the question of when the drugs were inserted in the replica stela, and whether this was done by the original maker or after the object was acquired. The former, obviously, would indicate a more serious tie between the cultural heritage industry and drug smuggling. But even if, as we hope, the smugglers in this case simply seized opportunistically on a cheap, easy to find, hollow container for drugs, the case is a troubling one.

Strange Coincidences

On Saturday, the Special Anti-Kidnapping Unit (GEAS in Spanish, Grupo Especial AntiSecuestro) of the National Police announced they had rescued a kidnapped cousin of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

Mario Filberto Moya Lobo was kidnapped October 16, 2010 near Catacamas, Olancho. According to El Heraldo, Moya Lobo was being held on a hacienda in the mountains of La Zarzaloza, Ocotillal, in the Municipio of Patuca, Olancho. After being freed, he was returned by the police to Catacamas.

Also involved in the operation were elements of the Colombian Special Anti-Kidnapping unit of the Army, the Gaula, who are in Honduras to train its National Police. The Gaula groups specialize in breaking up criminal groups. El Heraldo reported that they have helped free 11 Hondurans kidnapped so far. The National Police spokesperson went to great lengths to explain that their role was only advisory, that this was a domestic operation.

According to La Tribuna, no one was captured during the rescue, but the Anti-Kidnapping Police were left there to "comb the countryside" to find those responsible.

Thursday morning, six bodies (seven in some reports) turned up in one small aldea in Olancho.

All six bodies were found in Ocotillal, Municipio of Patuca, Olancho, where the operation that freed Moya Lobo was carried out.

Every press account agrees they were some of those involved in the kidnapping of Moya Lobo. CODEH, the non-governmental human rights organization headed by Andres Pavon, has indicated the National Police are responsible for the deaths of these individuals. The National Police deny responsibility, explicitly stating they detained no one, and report they've opened a special investigation.

Its not the first time the Special Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the National Police has been embroiled in controversy. On November 1 a member of the unit, stationed in La Ceiba, was captured while kidnapping a San Pedro Sula businessman in San Pedro Sula.

The same officer's police-issued gun had been found in a car belonging to kidnappers "a few years ago", but "nothing came of it."

To hear the National Police tell it, it was just a coincidence that the Anti-Kidnapping Unit was combing the area where the six or seven bodies turned up, all on a single hacienda in the aldea of Ocotillal, Patuca, Olancho.

A coincidence that strains credulity, don't you think?

Flying under suspicious circumstances

Five armed men broke into a military base at the major international airport in northern Honduras early Monday and made off with a small airplane that authorities seized last year in an anti-drug operation.

So says the Washington Post, so that must be what really happened.

But: El Heraldo's coverage of the events earlier today had, shall we say, an undertone.

And now the same thread is in Tiempo, which-- due to its unusually fact-based reporting during the de facto regime-- always seems to be that little bit more reliable.

The plane had been seized in 2008, suspected of being used in drug smuggling. Security Minister Oscar Alvarez, not surprisingly, immediately blamed organized crime for the theft:

"It was really a temptation for organized crime or drug traffickers to have the plane there."

Well, yes. But that undertone running through Honduran press coverage is not about drug traffickers: it is about a possible inside job. As La Prensa put it,

The northwestern coordinator of the Public Prosecutor's office, Marlene Banegas, said this Tuesday that there were preparations for the last two weeks to abstract the small plane Monday morning from the installations of the Armando Escalón military base in San Pedro Sula...

"The runway had everything needed for the plane to take off, also, every day it was warmed up and a week ago one of the two keys of the plane was lost and that was not reported"....

The guards informed the prosecutor that the plane had around 40 to 50 gallons of fuel which would not allow it even to arrive at La Ceiba [on the northeast coast]. "Nonetheless there were encountered in the place various cylinders with the remains of fuel which indicates that it was filled up there".

(El Heraldo's story seems to have disappeared or been edited, but La Prensa retains what we saw earlier today in its sister paper.)

In case readers missed the not-so-subtle implication, La Prensa later summarized:

Unofficial versions pointed out that technicians of the air base were warming up the plane hours earlier, that it was full of fuel and even had the key in place. The indications that there were members of the air base implicated in the operation are considerable because not one of those on duty noticed or reacted to the situation.

What seems to rouse the most concern is that someone communicated to the air traffic control tower that the take off of the stolen plane was authorized. Public prosecutor Luis Rubí-- famous for his relentless crusade to charge ex-president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales with something, anything that will stick-- bluntly said it was not an action of organized crime, but rather, one in which the military officers were complicit:

“It is a product of a degree of boldness that organized crime and the bands that operate in the country have. This was an operation in complicity with someone, definitely. It cannot be an act that someone arrives at an air base and carries off a plane, it causes us concern".

Defense Minister Marlon Pascua and Chief of Staff Carlos Cuéllar, meanwhile, were quoted as saying the theft might have been intended to damage the image of the Armed Forces. At the same time, their actions, removing from command Lieutenant Colonel Juan Carlos Gónzalez, suggest some degree of suspicion of the military contingent that was somehow overcome by five thieves. Some critics went so far as to call on the Minister of Defense to resign.

But it took Tiempo to come right out and say it:

As the hours pass, the Hollywood-esque story about the robbery of a small plane at the Armando Escalón Air Base loses ever more force and loose ends pop up that flow into a history of corruption inside that military unit.

Suspicions are focused on soldiers who testified that the plane was being serviced for the past two weeks in anticipation of it being absorbed by the Air Force, according to the sources cited by Tiempo, because the Air Force had not been approved to transfer the plane.

It may well be that the air force was acting in advance of authorization, and drew the attention of a particularly clever gang. Perhaps the claim by the defense secretary that this was a plot to embarrass the armed forces is true-- although it is utterly unclear why that would be a goal of drug traffickers.

But it is the suspicion of corruption and complicity that appears to resonate with Honduran observers, who seem well prepared to accept that the Air Force is corrupt and in league with organized crime.

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.

A cry of moral outrage over repression in San Pedro Sula

From Nuestra Palabra on September 16, by the Jesuit-run Radio Progreso:

On the evening news on the 15th of September on a radio station of national scope, the news presenter was precise: "In San Pedro Sula the so-called resistance did its thing [hizo de la suyas]". There was nothing missing from the press release: the leaders of the resistance, among them the youthful group of music with a social message, Café Guancasco, provoked the police, promoted disorder and violence. The police had no choice but to act in their defense. There was no mention of the death nor of the wounded, much less of the threats to journalist colleagues.

The media siege continues its course and its implacable format. There doesn't exist even the slightest shred of opening for a journalism of minimum ethics. And this is so because the behavior of the Honduran elites in relation to those who oppose their privileges continues unimpeachable. Their decision is invariable and implacable: to make use of that which they can, without concern for the human costs, with the goal of preserving their privileges. There is no possible road unless it is that of their earnings and using the State for the strict advantage of their interests.

The case of the country continues intact. Here there is no commission of truth that is worthwhile, and if it has worth it is because it says things in such a way that it leaves intact all the case of the country. So yes, the spokespeople of these elites, in full tune with the tightrope walkers and the prudent, shout themselves hoarse speaking of reconciliation, of peace and of unity. And with pleasure they will accept and promote the embraces-- with all the photos for circulation-- of those opponents that guarantee that the case of the country will continue intact.

In the logic of these minorities, the good are the people who promote individual moral change without ever questioning the state of things that sustains and justifies exclusion and structural inequality. The ideal is to have the top businessmen and politicians whose goodness is expressed in donations to support works of charity in parishes or religious ministries of the prudent and the tightrope walkers, without upsetting anything deep that would place at risk the model producing inequalities.

But when the people and groups demand structural changes that break with exclusion, and when they demand a new structuring of the country that breaks with the control of the State and of the society by wealthy and privileged minorities, then to the fire with them, because they incarnate wickedness, attempt against democracy and the laws, they are servile to international slogans and enemies of reconciliation and peace.

In San Pedro Sula there was a repression with evident signs of premeditation and calculation, and an abusive use of force that only confirms the reality: the small wealth and power elite understands that what is happening in Honduras is a war, and from their privileged trench, they don't value compromises: the resistance is their enemy and only its extermination is worthwhile.

All the rest, call it reconciliation, dialogues, State of Law, respect for human rights, Truth Commission, unity, Plan for the Nation, are interesting themes to fill agendas that distract the unwary and entertain the prudent, the tightrope walkers and the international community. For them the case is more than clear: here we are at war, and the media siege is an essential part of the trench from which is launched the mortal attack against everything that promotes minimal consensus that would save the country from the galloping barbarism in which we are now trapped.

Mobilization and Repression on Independence Day

[Revised: minor edits to correct grammar and spelling]

Two stories in El Tiempo tell the story:

The FNRP Demands True Independence

reads one; the other

The Police Dislodge the FNRP

The first story, time-stamped 9:41 am reported that "tens of thousands of people" marched in San Pedro Sula, attempting to stop at the statue of 19th century founding father Francisco Morazán before proceeding to the lovely main plaza of San Pedro where a concert was planned.

The second headline, posted at 11:23 am, sadly, leads a story of brutal violence used to shut down a concert with popular pro-Resistance performers, Cafe Guancasco. The photos and videos are shocking, recalling the most violent moments of the de facto regime's attacks on the people of Honduras. Revistazo reports 12 people wounded and 37 arrested.

Andrés Pavón, president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH), reported that Efraín Hernández Villalta, a lottery ticket salesman who habitually worked in the Parque Central, died of the effects of the massive tear gas attack. Others were badly injured by beatings, with witnesses reporting not just the use of the batons issued to riot police (which are bad enough) but of wooden clubs.

Revistazo quotes the rationalization provided by the police:

they said that they were obligated to disperse the demonstrators, in the face of the intrusion that they made in the marches of the schools in the patriotic festival.

It is not clear what this might mean. With even less credibility, an unnamed police member is quoted as saying

"We had to disperse them because among them there were people carrying firearms and they tried to make disturbances."

What seems really to have happened is somewhat different. The Artists in Resistance had set up a stage for a concert. The police attack was unprovoked and coordinated, with tear gas shot into the plaza from the banks that line the north side. Water cannons were used on the stage and the band, destroying the equipment and instruments there.

While El Tiempo reported the violence in San Pedro promptly, other Honduran news media, while at least admitting that "thousands" of members of the Resistance marched in Tegucigalpa, downplayed the incident. La Prensa wrote that in San Pedro Sula "some incidents without major consequences were registered."

La Tribuna presented the most complete account of the rationalization by the security forces of the attacks in San Pedro Sula:

The march coordinated by the Frente in San Pedro Sula was detoured at 10 AM, apparently because it had presented disturbances, according to the report of the National Police.

The Police intervened when the two marches coincided in the city center, with the result of various people beaten and detained, but then both continued along separate streets, according to local media.
...

In San Pedro Sula, the resistance began its march, walking from the Dandi market along 14th avenue, nonetheless one block before arriving at 1st street [more commonly called the Boulevard Morazan after the statue located there] it was diverted.

The chief of police of San Pedro Sula, Héctor Iván Mejía, spoke with one of the directors of the FNRP and would have allowed a commission of 12 to 15 people to go to place a floral offering at the statue of General Morazán, but they did not accept this and continued their walk along 2nd street until they arrived at the Parque Central.

“We used the human and material resources that the State assigned us to maintain order. They wanted to install themselves next to the other march and according to intelligence reports they wanted to do damage to intimidate those that were peacefully marching", said Mejía.

There are familiar strategies here. Claiming to have "intelligence reports" of violent intentions to justify a pre-emptive attack; the police as reasonable actors offering a compromise (one that limits the freedom of assembly and speech of the citizenry); vague claims of disturbances, and minimizing the actual security violence and injuries.

El Tiempo has now updated its website with a long article that effectively refutes this account. They write that "The indiscriminate dislodging provoked chaos and confusion".

They report that the attack in the Parque Central was by the dreaded Special Squadron Cobras and even members of the Armed Forces.

Among those injured and affected by tear gas were onlookers, members of the press, and reportedly, some students.

Members of Cafe Guancasco have issued their own statement describing the unprovoked attack on the stage.

Videos of the moment of confrontation show resistance members attacked without provocation. The Roman Catholic church that faces the square appears prominently in the background, with clouds of gas floating into the crowd.

So let's be sure we understand this: the repression was, as has become normal, disproportionate. The primary victims were musicians and those waiting for a concert, one of the activities through which members of the resistance have continued to express solidarity.

And one harmless vendor died.

Debts to Culture in San Pedro Sula

Patricia Murillo Gutierrez, Professor of Journalism at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras campus in San Pedro Sula, writing in El Tiempo last Monday, questioned a proposal by a city official for San Pedro, the second-largest city in Honduras, to renege on its commitments to helping subsidize public cultural institutions.

She begins

We citizens would like to know the logic that moved the Nationalist Party regidor Reinaldo Rouglas, to take the initiative to suspend the support that by law the city should pass on to institutions of cultural formation such as the Children's Cultural Center, the Museum of Anthropology and History, the Museum of Natural History and the Music School "Victoriano Lopez", among others. It seems that it is the logic of "economy" (we do not want to believe that it is contempt for learning) that is ruling to "rationalize" the action by the Nationalist since the bankrupt municipality can give no more and Rouglas affirms that it cannot continue subsidizing cultural institutions and that they should seek to support themselves.

It is almost like passing to the market, to the highest bidder (that equally can be money badly gained) the constitutional obligation that the State has, the municipalities have, to support the holistic development of the governed.

Murillo expresses a vision of the role of the State which, while being constitutionally mandated in Honduras, has lost traction steadily throughout the coup and its aftermath.

One of the programs at issue in the proposal to cut off funds for public cultural institutions is the continued access of 300 children who currently attend the Centro Cultural Infantil (Children's Cultural Center, CCI). Murillo notes that the funds the city of San Pedro is supposed to provide-- 83,000 lempiras a month, a little more than $4600-- are less than the salary of a regidor, a pointed comparison given that this is the office held by Reinaldo Rouglas, who is leading the charge to cut off funding for culture.

News coverage of Rouglas' proposal includes a significant clarification: the CCI is actually a municipal institution, and its 17 employees, who have not been paid their full salary for 18 months, are not simply being subsidized by the city.

There are hints of more to this proposal than simply a belt-tightening by a governmental philistine. The head of the executive committee of the CCI, Aníbal Castellanos, is quoted as saying that "the intention of the mayor's office is to take advantage of the building to install an academy of art".

The suggestion that the city government actually has a plan to substitute a different arts organization for the CCI emerged in an editorial published in La Prensa on August 28 as well. Noting that the 83,000 lempiras split among 18 employees (apparently counting the director of the center in addition to the 17 employees mentioned in more recent coverage) is less than many people earn individually, the unnamed editorialist goes on to ask

Does the mayor's office have a special project to substitute for the CCI? The pupils, boys and girls, of the Centro Cultural Infantil in their majority pertain to the middle and lower classes, and cannot invest, for example, 800 lempiras monthly to take art education in a private school. Will the present municipal administration give the final death blow to this small, but vital center of artistic formation? Only insensibility and lack of humanistic upbringing could guide the commission of an act of this kind.

Murillo sees the proposal to abandon support of the CCI and other institutions serving San Pedro Sula as part of a general abandonment of governmental support for "cultura popular", that is, public access to cultural activities, rationalized with economic arguments but by no means justified by them.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has watched San Pedro Sula struggle for more than thirty years to develop public cultural institutions that are vital parts of the urban fabric today, the short-sighted nature of cutting off the modest funding that supports these activities is deeply troubling.

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.

Convenient Explanations

Gangs, drug trafficking, and corruption are real problems in Honduras. Unfortunately, they are also a too-convenient explanation for crimes, an explanation rolled out before anything resembling police investigations are carried out.

Oscar Alvarez, Security Minister, appallingly trotted out his blanket excuse yet again; this time to explain Tuesday's massacre of 18 people in a shoe faction in San Pedro Sula: it was gangs, or rather, gang rivalry:

"A group belonging to one gang arrived at this place with the intention of eliminating supposed sympathizers of another gang"

Case closed.

He admitted that this was not to say that the employees of the factory were actually members of any gang:

"I want to be respectful of the families of the victims, and to say they were sympathizers. I'm not saying they were members of gangs, but they were friends of those who are gang members."

Blame the victims.

The factory owner disputes Alvarez's explanation:

"They haven't found any drugs or arms here, and the employees weren't tattooed... Its not certain that this crime was a dispute for territory between drug gangs. The police need to investigate more,"

He also noted that the police took no material evidence from the crime scene, which presumably means they have no material evidence to tie the criminals to the crime. The factory floor was littered with AK-47 and 9mm shell casings according to the reporters. Were these left behind by the police?

So what is Alvarez's evidence of any gang linkage to this crime?

"The three came in and shouted 'everyone on the ground'....that 'everyone on the ground' and then executing them is the modus operandi of a gang that operates in our country."

Yet witnesses said that most of the people were shot where they worked, only some on the floor.

"When we saw they were gone, we ran to the shoe factory and found everyone shot on their tables, in their work chairs, and on the bloody floor, some breathing their last breath, others asking for help"

said one witness to an El Tiempo reporter.

Alvarez claims to know who the guilty parties are, but that they've gone into hiding, so he's opened phone lines for people to call in and give them up, and released sketches of two of the assailants.

This raises the question, if he actually knows who they are, why not release names and/or photos from the Registro Nacional, rather than the very generic unidentified sketches that were released to the press?

Alvarez's convenient excuse for not investigating this massacre is just that, a convenient excuse. The story he tells bears little relationship to the events as reported by witnesses. He blames the victims for their undemonstrated gang "association". Applying a one-size-fits-all explanation substitutes for doing the much more difficult job of finding out what was behind this terrible event.

Commemorating the Coup d'Etat of June 2009: Opinions

Marking anniversaries is a basic human impulse. When the event was a positive one, we call this a celebration. When, as in the case of the coup d'Etat in Honduras, the event was violent, destructive, and disruptive, the word we use is "commemorate": to remember together.

So it is that in Honduras today, those in opposition to the coup, to the de facto regime it initiated, and to the administration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, elected under the shadow of that regime, gathered in public, to share in marking the passage of a year since the legal order was broken in their country.

We would normally be in San Pedro Sula at this time of year, when the celebration of the founding of the city, the Feriana Juniana, takes place. In San Pedro yesterday and today the Artistas en Resistencia continued their practice of using the arts as a weapon of protest, organizing a sleepover Sunday night with cultural activities and fireworks, and promising a concert and screening of the film "Quien Dijo Miedo".

As it happens, El Tiempo, the only newspaper in Honduras that dared to print accurate stories during the coup and de facto regime (and as a result, saw its circulation increase), is published in San Pedro Sula. So it was the first place we went to see how the marking of this anniversary would be covered.

The first notable thing is that the front page includes a whole series of stories on the topic. This even includes reporting on the alternative truth commission sponsored by the Human Rights Platform.

But even more striking is the editorial stance of the paper. Of six signed editorials, four overtly condemn the coup d'Etat. There is only one that openly supports the coup. (*)

The lead (unsigned) editorial is striking: it calls attention to the connection between drug-trafficking and the coup, quoting Hugo Martinez, chancellor of El Salvador, for the punch line: "There are only two sectors that are interested in the governments in the region being weak: drug-traffickers and golpistas".

Luis Alexis Ramos writes of the "Anniversary of a betrayal" (or even, "Anniversary of an act of treason"

promoted by the oligarchic classes of the country, with the collaboration of unscrupulous and ambitious politicians and congress members, clerics and pastors that left the pulpit to meddle in politics, and with the backing of the most backward groups of the decision-makers of the Armed Forces of Honduras...The only positive thing that was obtained through this attack on the Constitution perpetrated by the Honduran oligarchy, is that the people became conscious of their role in defense of democracy, woke up from their stupor of decades; they illuminated their mind with the thoughts of liberty and rebellion in the face of injustices, and that their courage was an armor against all the affronts and the blows that the received defending their right to protest.

In "The Virus of golpismo", Eduardo David Ardon argues that due to the long history of coups in the country

we have not attained the development that the people long for, and we believe that it is only possible when a democratic process is initiated in which popular sovereignty is respected and a system of participation with justice and equity truly takes shape, because if not, if there is not justice for everyone, there will be peace for no one.

Ardon identifies golpismo as a virus in the bloodstream of some politicians because their ancestors carried out previous coups. He traces an intricate web linking many of the authors and supporters of the latest coup to relatives involved in previous disruptions of constitutional government. He continues

The golpistas of yesterday, today, and always, are the same and the people knows them already, so that it fights against them in every circumstance.

The causes of those coups and attacks on the Constitution, also are the same, since at every moment it has been the defense of their economic and political class interests, that do not compromise with the ideas of liberty and progress of the Honduran people.

Efraín Bu Figueroa labels the coup of 2009 an "Historic Rupture",

with which constitutional order was broken in Honduras. A ferocious repression was begun against the people and the independent press was silenced by bayonets. Old death squads were reactivated, that human rights institutions have denounced as dedicated to the selective elimination of the opposition, actions that persist to the present, many of them disguised as crimes by common delinquents.

The coup was fostered by powerful groups, affected in their economic interests by the diverse popular measures taken by the government of citizen power....

The political crisis of 2009 is the eruption of a political-social volcano, whose destructive energeies have been building up for many decades.... When the people began to receive timid responses to their vital needs, the controlling elite saw its special interests menaced, and its hegemonic power in danger....

One year later, Honduras is no longer the same nor will it go back to being so. The coup d'Etat, was a consequence of the distortions and weaknesses of the system, placing in evidence its failure; but at the same time opening the door, in a moment of inflection, to advance without fears, with hope and under new paradigms to a State of justice, and equity, and of confidence under new leadership and renewed ideas.

Finally, Efren D. Falcon writes in "First things First" that the answer to the question "what do Hondurans want?" is complex, beginning with what he identifies as a lack of understanding about the political-economic situation of the country on the part of the small middle class, in which he places himself. His critique of the political-economic elite is harsh:

the political leadership confuses itself and merges with a coarse business class that has not learned how to measure the consequences of its actions. It manipulates with hypocrisy and cynicism poverty and need; it makes a party of an unwanted social conscience-- that is quoted with discretion and without dignity-- but that it keeps in its Prada handbag or Armani wallet when it isn't speaking in public, citing measures of inequality that they themselves sponsor.

To this, he contrasts

the growth of a social movement whose extension has no equal in national history. We call this phenomenon the Resistance: resistance to the coup d'Etat, and against an infinity of irregularities that today are perfectly unmasked. What is moving through the country today is a resistance against the present social and political-economic order, ever stronger winds of change.

These editorial opinions contrast vividly with the failure in much of the English language press to understand that the coup of 2009 was a response by a threatened political-economic elite to the possibility of broader effective participation on the part of the Honduran people, to relatively small steps toward economic equity and participation in governance by that people.

The repeated recognition that there is no going back, and that the resistance movement mobilized by the coup may well be the real lasting legacy of that attempt to hold back change, is and should be the story, one year after what history will look back on as the grossest miscalculation by a group in power thinking they could hold back change by force and will.


*********
*The sixth signed editorial in Tiempo, by Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramirez, is ambiguous. It presents an argument against people who rely on "one book". If we take this as a call for tolerance of pluralism, mark it in the category of opposed to the coup. Ramirez, a former revolutionary during the anti-Somoza fight in Nicaragua, wrote in negative terms about the coup in Honduras last year, calling the international press to task for not identifying it clearly as a military coup, calling attention to the dangerous political involvement of the military, to cite just two examples.

But he also is engaged in fighting against what he sees as the danger of continuismo in Nicaragua. So the framework for his editorial is not that of the Honduran editorialists, and he makes no mention of the anniversary. Yet it is interesting to read in the context of that anniversary. He asks explicitly whether we should hold against Marx "the socialism of the 21st century". References to 21st century socialism in Honduras usually come from those who see danger in the kinds of participatory democracy promoted under Manuel Zelaya. We would not be surprised if this editorial is read by those people as support for their position, regardless of Ramirez' own intentions.