Who Needs Brazil? On to Asia...

Tiempo's coverage characterizes this is a "reorientation" of resources. La Tribuna quotes vice-minister Mireya Agüero calling this a "temporary closure".

But the Honduran papers are clear: the budget formerly used to maintain embassies in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina will now be used to open commercial missions in India, Singapore, China, and Canada.

The ringer in there, of course, is Canada. Let's come back to that.

First, though, it is worth recognizing that Mario Canahuati, Foreign Relations Minister of Honduras, seems to be acknowledging that this is a response to the continued refusal of the UNASUR countries to recognize the Lobo Sosa government as legitimate.

Canahuati proposed that Honduras would maintain contact with South America via its embassies in Chile, Peru, and Colombia, the countries that have recognized the Lobo Sosa government. He is quoted as saying

"We cannot stop having relations with Latin America... it is better to have friends than enemies".

Tiempo, noting that the South American countries selected to have their embassies closed also reject readmission of Honduras into the OAS, says this is because

the country has not complied with certain requirements, among them the unconditional return of Zelaya without charges.

This is very much the way the issue is now portrayed in all media, Honduran and English alike. It is unfortunate, because it reduces the issue to personalization. It is of a piece with the lazy characterization of the resistance movement in Honduras as "Zelaya supporters", as, for example, the Economist does in a particularly bad article earlier this month.

Among the requirements that Honduras has not satisfied are some much more important ones. These have to do with investigating the human rights abuses that took place during the coup and under the de facto regime of Micheletti, and that continue to take place under the Lobo Sosa administration.

The mainstream media never really cared much to cover these stories. Just this month, Human Rights Watch issued a press release about threats to Leo Valladares, former ombudsman and the former president of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights:

Valladares told Human Rights Watch that he has received intimidating phone calls, and noticed people monitoring his home and following him, after he questioned the increasing power of the Honduran military since the 2009 coup.

"The Lobo administration's inability to ensure that human rights defenders can do their job and express their views without reprisals is frustrating," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "If someone with Leo Valladares' experience and international exposure is getting serious, credible threats, it is crystal clear that the human rights community in Honduras is facing risks."

It does not appear that this story was covered by any major media.

Nor has there been major media coverage of the continuing violence in the Aguan river valley, where Lobo Sosa's government exacerbated a confrontation between campesino cooperatives and large landowners, injecting the military into the region. Nor has the mainstream media seen fit to acknowledge that gay, lesbian, trans-sexual and transgender people are at constant risk in Honduras, with apparent impunity.

Zelaya isn't the issue. He may be a symbol, but the issue is that with the coup d'etat, Honduras moved backward, and no country with influence has used it to promote redress, except those of UNASUR.

Which brings us back to the main topic here: the Lobo Sosa government has made a discovery. It doesn't need to be legitimate to return to business as usual, as long as there are countries clamoring for cheap labor and new markets for cheap and dangerous goods. Lobo Sosa's recent Asian trip apparently encouraged him to expect new investments from that sector.

And Canada. Reportedly, Canada is close to finalizing a Free Trade Agreement with Honduras. Canadian mining companies with interests in Honduras, like Goldcorp, are enjoying record profits.

Oh, Canada.

Honduras has Two Christian Democrat Parties

The National Party in Honduras is neither leftist nor rightist, but centrist and Christian Humanist according to Ricardo Alvarez, the Party president. But what does Christian Humanism mean in the context of politics?

According to the English language Wikipedia, there are no notable organizations of Christian Humanists. Wrong. Clearly the authors of that page have never read the Spanish language page on Humanismo Cristiano, which identifies it as a catholic, and political philosophy originating in the writings of the French philosopher Jacques Maritain and the political philosophy of the Christian Democrats as a political movement. The National Party of Honduras is a member of the Organización de Demócrata Cristiana de América (ODCA), as is the Christian Democrat party (PDCH). So effectively Honduras has two Christian Democrat affiliated parties.

The ODCA's website calls the National Party's affiliation with them last August a 180 degree turn from its principles of more than a decade. So what are the new values?

The ODCA's political philosophy is presented in a document from their website called "El Nuevo Centro Humanista y Reformista (the New Humanist and Reformist Center)". which in 2008 outlined the political philosophy of the ODCA, and hence, the member parties.

First and foremost, it is conservative (so much for Alvarez's rhetoric above); with christian moral values (e.g., emphasis on the family, against abortion) and emphasizes small changes (evolution) rather than large changes (revolution). There is an emphasis on the community and a person's duties to the community, on free market economies with little regulation

The emphasis of Christian Humanism is on the creation of persons not individuals, in the community, making a world more prosperous through the "harmonic conjunction" of the market, democratic equality, and globalization to be used for the development of people. They must understand the limitations of the market in assigning resources. They must deepen democracy, increase social justice nationally and internationally. Globalization provides an opportunity to overcome poverty and equalize the inequalities in economic development. This is "positive realism". In summary, they must value a new sense of socialization and citizenship based on the market and on democracy and globalization to humanize them.

Christian Democrats must introduce values that give their citizens not only a sense of local belonging, but of belonging to the world, more liberty, equalities, equal opportunity, the setting up of a civilization of brotherhood. They must actualize the suggestions of christian humanism or whole humanism in their contract between individualism and leading. Change must be based on the possible within ordinary politics (eg, no revolutionary or rapid change), centrist, but working towards the ideal with an ethics of responsibility.

Privilege neither the market nor the state ; people's values and initiatives and interresponsibility should order the market and the state as instruments of their will. They will create a strong civil society based on mutual responsibility that not only creates a climate for economic development but also sustainable democracy. Human rights must be defended in all circumstances. They must work for respect, the basis of democracy.

They will work for sustainable development for men and women. Governments should evaluate themselves by whether or not they improve the life of individuals Parents must assume more responsibility for children's education and religious development. People should work hard, have confidence, and be responsible to others and tot individualistic like the United States.

Families are based on the couple, a man and a women where interpersonal relations are centered. Families are the locus of personhood and the party will work to promote, strengthen, respect, and protect families. Labor laws need to be family friendly.

Equality between men and women requires profound changes in the family. There needs to be a more equal division of labor between husband and wife. The Christian Democrats will propose changes to law that emphasize the equality of men and women in marriage, work, and open opportunities for women to lead politically.

Decentralization is fundamental to strengthening democracy by creating more spaces for people to participate.

But Lobo Sosa and the Nationalist Party are moving quickly to change Honduras and its laws to meet these goals, without doing the necessary social development. In that sense, the change they're introducing is just as revolutionary, in Honduras, as some of the changes Zelaya Rosales introduced.

In this way they're like the Republicans in Wisconsin. They control the government and so can push through just about any kind of change, and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks about it. So much for the Christian Democrat belief in participation. Is the National Party Christian Democrat in Name Only?

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?

Lobo Sosa in Houston

Last weekend Porfirio Lobo Sosa abruptly disappeared on an unscheduled trip to Houston, reportedly to lobby for his new model city idea. I say abruptly because he had just returned from his Asia trip to view Asian model cities and had told the press he would hold a press conference on Sunday, March 6, to explain the benefits of the trip. Instead, the very next day he was on a plane to Houston.

Press coverage says he went to meet with a group of investors who might be interested in Honduras's model cities. He flew out Friday March 5 and returned Monday, March 7. There's no press coverage of any meetings. Perhaps the investors were early arrivals for the CERAWeek 2011, the IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates Energy Conference. The theme this year is “Leading the Way: Energy Strategies for a World of Change".

What we do know is that there is a facebook posting and picture that shows that Friday evening he took his daughter and entourage to Arcodoro, a restaurant serving traditional Sardinian cuisine. We also know that Monday before flying back he visited the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo along with Minister of Agriculture of the Republic of Honduras, Jacobo Regalado; the Ambassador of the Republic of Honduras to the United States, Jorge Ramon Hernandez-Alcerro; and the Consul General of the Republic of Honduras in Houston, Consul General David Hernandez.

We don't know where he promoted "Honduras is open for Business" nor who the potential investors were.

It seems like someone should ask him about it.

Dress Code

Luis Rubi, the Public Prosecutor, is disturbed by how his employees dress.

'You are instructed to exercise strict control and oversight of the dress of people working for you, as it has been observed that some of them do not dress properly, so that they are reminded that its forbidden for female staff to wear blouses with plunging necklines, or short dresses and skirts, capri (fisherman's) pants, jeans, and blouses with straps (spaghetti straps?); in the same way male staff should not wear jeans, t-shirts, and tennis shoes."

These are the words of José Francisco Morales, head of human resources in the Public Prosecutors office in circular 2-2011- DRH entitled "Dress".

I guess Luis Rubi doesn't want chuzadas (the practice of placing a microphone in the bodice of a woman for clandestine eavesdroping in meetings, popularized by Uribe in Columbia to eavesdrop on his opposition) in his workplace.

Failure

Honduras has a violent crimes problem and is struggling to find ways of combating it. Unfortunately, the imagination of the current government runs to authoritarian solutions which require changes in the law or the constitution to be legal. The proposed solutions fail to address the fundamental problem. Alvarez told the press

"We're not trying to throw out the Penal Code, rather to find a way to make it more efficient by reforming it as necessary, and with the support of Congress, we can make it happen."

Here's what's broken.

The problem they recognize facing is organized crime, by which they mean drug traffickers and gangs. The unacknowledged problem they face is the police lack credibility. This is not to say there are not good honest police officers in Honduras; there are. But there are also corrupt ones, and that's where the problem begins.

How do you identify a police officer in Honduras? Until last week the government kept no information on the individuals hired as police, except that required to pay them. There were no photo id cards, no fingerprints kept, no signatures even. Your uniform is the only indication a civilian had that you were a police officer, and uniforms are easily obtained by criminals. Only now is Alvarez starting a program to identify the motorcycle police by collecting this basic information.

Nor do the police always wear their uniforms. Various police groups involved in checkpoints are often in plain clothes, as anyone who looks at the photographs in the Honduran newspapers will have noticed. Its been this way for more than 30 years. You know they're police and you have to stop because they have rifles and machine guns, or at least, I assume that's how you're supposed to recognize them. They don't wear uniforms; they don't have identification (and don't bother asking them for it unless you want abuse).

Then there's the question of police corruption. Mordidas to get out of traffic fines, avoid arrests, the petty cost of living in Honduras is contrasted with really corrupt police who are criminals. Members of the anti-kidnapping unit have been arrested heading up kidnapping rings in the San Pedro area. Police have in the past six months been caught robbing banks and businesses. Police have been caught running extortion and blackmail rackets against businesses.

Without a systematic purging of the ranks of these corrupt individuals, it does not matter how many police there are. Alvarez needs to address police corruption before hiring more police.

Then there's the fact that there is no investigation of crimes. Only 2 percent of murders ever result in charges being filed. Robberies almost never get solved. The crime statistics are bleak. Alvarez would say its a lack of manpower, but really, its a lack of training. There is no investigative unit, at least, not one that can investigate crime in Honduras. Even the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubi, noted that fewer than 48 percent of the cases he remands for investigation ever come back to him. Until Honduran police can effectively investigate crimes, the crimes will go unpunished. This will require training, manpower, and technology.

To investigate crimes, you need citizen confidence in the police. Papa Elvin Santos argued Thursday that you can't purge the police because they'll just go out and become criminals. Wrong. Without doing this, you have no public confidence in the police; and without public confidence, no information about criminals; you cannot investigate crimes. As Jorge Ortega, a member of the Alianza Democratica Nacional put it

"So for us to addrdess the violence first we have to have confidence in the Police and later, when that confidence exists, the citizens may go peacefully to denounce the actions."

Yesterday Porfirio Lobo Sosa held a meeting, on his return from visiting model cities in Asia, with Juan Orlando Hernandez, Jorge Rivera Avilés, Ricardo Maduro, Oscar Alvarez, Luis Rubi, Áfrico Madrid, Ana Pineda and Jose Luis Muñoz Licona to decide what to do about an ongoing problem that is the primary cause of dissatisfaction with his regime, street crimes.

Coming out of the meeting, Lobo Sosa ordered the military to resume joint patrols with the police, ignoring the fact that soldiers, especially Honduran soldiers, are not trained in policing. Note to Embassy: this should be the highest priority military aid for Honduras, training in military policing. If they're going to be out on the streets, train those units in how to be effective at it.

Instead of vowing to clean up and professionalize the existing police force, Alvarez has asked for budget authority to double the number of police under his command. This likely will lead to an increase in crime, as a percentage of the new officers become corrupt.

At the meeting they also discussed the problem of judges who don't apply the law (the assumption is that they're either too scared or corrupt themselves), and of establishing more severe penalties for violent crimes, 50 years or even life for violent criminals. They spoke of increasing the penalties for criminals who attack judges, police, and prosecutors. They spoke about changing the law so that raids can happen any time of day, not just after 6 am as current law allows. They talked about changing the law to allow for holding of individuals for 72 hours without charges instead of the current 24 hours. Teodoro Bonilla, head of the Association of Judges requested that judges get not 6 days, but 12 days after charges are filed to decide whether to release the person on bail or remand them to jail for trial.

As El Heraldo notes, the changes discussed involve changing the law, changing the Constitution, and even abandoning some international treaties. Ana Pineda's voice is missing from any of the press coverage. Was she silenced, or did she have no concerns about the proposed changes?

In any case, Alvarez needs to clean up the police before he can address organized crime head on. Failure to clean up the police means failure, regardless of what else Alvarez does.

Songdo, Korea A Model City For Honduras?

Juan Orlando Hernandez has a facebook page in which he chronicles the 63 person Honduran delegation's trip through Asia to visit model cities. First up is Songdo, Korea, or more properly, SongdoIDB.

Songdo is an international business district of 1500 acres (or 6 square kilometers) built on reclaimed land along Incheon's waterfront. It is part of the Incheon Free Economic Zone. It is a planned city developed by Gate International and POSCO E&C. The master plan developed by the design firm Kohn Pederson Fox includes 100 million square feet of commercial office space, retail shops, hotels, residences, schools and cultural facilities. There are currently $10 billion invested in its development. Its first phase opened in August 2009.

So why Songdo in Korea. The key here is the location. It lacks its own airport, but is only 15 minutes away from Incheon's international airport. From there, all the major business centers of Asia are close by. As their website says,

3.5 hours to a third of the world's population,

for which they call it an "Aerotropolis".

It is scheduled, when fully built, to have 22,500 luxury condominiums giving it a population density as great as, or greater than Tokyo (5600 people per square kilometer). Public and private schools will serve the populace, and it will have its own state of the art hospital system.

Residents can shop in an opulent retail mall or stroll through picturesque local markets.

But how exactly is this a model city in Paul Romer's sense and how will it help develop Honduras?

It is office space, not manufacturing. Its goal is to attract businesses to locate offices in it. It will provide only luxury housing, golf courses, charter schools and hospitals, and by its own description, "opulent malls". This is meant to cater to the rich.

The jobs created by such a city located in Honduras would be service jobs, store clerks, office cleaning staff and support staff, groundskeepers, caddy's for the golf course, and none of the people filling these jobs would benefit from the schools or the hospital, which are for residents. These kinds of jobs would be filled by non-residents.

And that brings up another factor in Songdo's success, its locate in a major metropolitan area, to provide the labor, connectivity, and service infrastructure that such a development requires to be successful. Such a development in Honduras would need to be located within commute distance of a major urban center like Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula, not the locations currently being discussed.

In some ways, Songdo is reminiscent of the Bahia de Tela resort project being implemented near Triunfo de la Cruz, Atlantida. The plan there is for up to five luxury resorts, housing, and a golf course. The Bahia de Tela resort project will not succeed without a place for its labor force to live nearby. It will need more semi-skilled and skilled labor than Tela and Triunfo residents can provide.

Songdo's success is predicated on its location as a central hub for businesses wanting to do business in all of north Asia, which houses a large segment of the world population. Honduras could be a hub for business, but likely only for Central America and perhaps northern South America, and it would have to develop better air service to do that. TACA airlines serves Central America well, but not frequently enough, from Honduras.

And then there's the infrastructure questions. Korea has sufficient reliable electricity, water, sewer, and so forth. Honduras does not, so all those infrastructure necessities would have to be added to any Honduran similar development.

Songdo is not a model city in Paul Romer's sense. It neither has, nor requires, its own rules, laws, or constitutional exceptions. It is an international business district located within a developed metropolitan area, leveraging that development, to provide luxury services to businesses.

Songdo functions within the laws of Korea, not outside them. Korea chose to modify their local laws to fit international business standards, not come up with new laws that only function within the Incheon Free Economic Zone.

Songdo seems like an interesting place to live, if you can afford it, but we don't see it as a viable model for development in Honduras precisely because of the way it leverages its location and the surrounding metropolitan area. Next?