NGO Purge

On his way out of the government, Áfrico Madrid, Interior Minister under Porfirio Lobo Sosa, saw the final step in a long-brewing confrontation in which he has been engaged.

That step? abolishing his opponents-- more than 10,000 NGOs.

Friday La Gaceta published a decree revoking the legal status of 5429 NGOs. The Unidad de Registro y Seguimiento de Asociaciones Civiles (URSAC), a part of the Interior Ministry, issued the decree that revokes the permission of these NGOs to operate.

This comes slightly more than a month after Madrid revoked the legal status of another 4800 NGOs in mid January.

Honduras reportedly had about 16,000 NGOs at the start of 2013. So altogether, these two decrees succeeded in abolishing more than half of the NGOs in the country.

That makes it a little harder to figure out who this campaign was really targeting and why.

We would remind readers that back in 2010, the Honduran Congress passed a law to define the characteristics of an evangelical Christian church, declared unconstitutional in 2012, that advanced Madrid's agenda to abolish evangelical churches he felt were "fringe" groups.

According to the decree published this week, the named institutions failed to comply in some way with a previous decree 770-A-2003 regulating NGOs, which gave a 30 day window for every NGO to supply an annual activities report, a financial report, indicate its officers, and so on.

What does the abolishment of these NGOs translate to, in practice?

They can no longer sign contracts or hold bank accounts.

They are ordered to liquidate any property and goods held, and donate the proceeds of that liquidation to a still extant NGO with a similar goal.

All Honduran banks and government agencies were notified of the loss of rights of these 5,429 NGOs.  In 30 days, their bank accounts will be frozen by the government, and any remaining assets seized.

This is not just a matter of eliminating a few small and inconsequential groups that were struggling.

Among the NGOs cancelled was the Asociación Comite por Libre Expresión (C-Libre), the most visible group monitoring press freedom in Honduras, composed of of journalists and others.

Hector Longino Becerra, president of the organization, said that the action against C-Libre was part of an attack on organizations that are critical of the government. Becerra said that all of C-Libre's paperwork with URSAC was complete and up to date, and he possessed the receipts to show the filing was done on time.

In the wake of the Friday publication of La Gaceta, Jorge Montes, head of URSAC, claimed Saturday that the NGOs still had 30 days to make things right and avoid cancellation.

That claim is hard to understand since the published law reportedly cancels the legal right to exist of the named NGOs. Montes claims that each NGO's legal representative will be notified in 30 days of the cancellation if, prior to that, their paperwork is not brought up to date.

He emphasized three kinds of reports that need to be filed: a report on activities; a financial report that indicates what money the group holds, where it came from, and where and how it will be spent, and where the NGO's assets are; and an up-to-date list of officers.

The Civil Society Group that advises the government is disturbed by all this and has requested a meeting with Rigoberto Chang Castillo, current Interior Minister, and thus the head of URSAC.

They stated:

It is the responsibility of the state to create an enabling environment for the functioning of civil society organizations and to keep watch over the unfettered right to free association.

Their point: the Honduran government isn't doing that when 62% of the country's legally established NGOs are disestablished by the government.

We couldn't agree more.

El Mito de Ciudad Blanca

(Para nuestros lectores en Honduras...Traducido del Inglés)
(This is for our readers in Honduras....translated from our English post)

Con titulares como Honduras: Afirman haber encontrado Ciudad Blanda, y Con rastreo satelital comprueban la existencia de Ciudad Blanca, la prensa Hondureña comenzó a tocar la trompeta, una vez mas, el descubrimiento de la Ciudad Blanca, la Ciudad Blanca mítica supuestamente situado en algún lugar en el oriente de Honduras.

La última "revelación" de que Ciudad Blanca había sido localizado fue anunciado por Porfirio Lobo Sosa en una reunión de gabinete el martes pasado.

Un artículo de uno de los diarios describe que el supuesto lugar cubre 5 kilómetros cuadrados. Áfrico Madrid, el Ministro del Interior, dijo que el equipo alegando el descubrimiento podría haber encontrado el legendario (sus palabras) Ciudad Perdida o Ciudad Blanca en la región conocida como la Mosquitia, y que podría ser más grande que el sitio de Copán, en el oeste de Honduras.

Virgilio Paredes, quien dirige el Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, dijo:

"Sabemos que tenemos algo y que tenemos que ir a esta zona para saber lo que la cultura era lo que vivía allí".

Paredes también es citado diciendo:

Hemos encontrado lo que podría ser, según los arqueólogos e historiadores, lo que podría ser el mayor descubrimiento arqueológico en el mundo del siglo XXI, una ciudad perdida. No sabemos lo que es, no sabemos si se trata de una estructura (edificio), pero su estado afirmado por especialistas que conocen esta tecnología y la disposición de la tierra, que hay muchas estructuras artificiales.

"El mayor descubrimiento arqueológico del mundo en el siglo XXI"!

Ahora que ya ha escuchado la sensacional promoción, aquí están los hechos.

La fuente de tal emotividad es un comunicado de prensa por la UTL Scientific y el Gobierno de Honduras titulado The Government of Honduras and UTL Scientific, LLC Announce Completion of the Frist-Ever LIDAR Imaging Survey of La Mosquitia Region of Honduras.

Si usted lee el comunicado de prensa, usted encontrará que no tiene la pretensión de haber descubierto Ciudad Blanca.

LIDAR ("Light Detection and Ranging" en Inglés, "Detección Aérea de Luz y Medidas de Rango" en Español) rebota la luz de un láser desde un aeronave al paisaje y hace una imagen precisa tanto de la superficie del suelo y la vegetación en él. El procesamiento de las señales le permite quitar la imagen de la vegetación y obtener un modelo exacto de la topografía bajo ella.

Cuando esto se hizo con los nuevos datos de la Mosquitia hondureña, los analistas vieron algo que les parecía los restos arquitectónicos de antiguas ciudades, una serie de sitios arqueológicos.

El trabajo real del LIDAR fue hecho por el Centro Nacional para el Mapeo de láser aerotransportado (NCALM por sus siglas en Inglés), un laboratorio de instrumentación en la Universidad de Houston, financiado por la National Science Foundation de EE UU para ayudar a facilitar este tipo de estudios.

Por supuesto, el comunicado de prensa en realidad no viene de NCALM. Viene de UTL Científico, LLC.

UTL Scientific es una compañía de cine haciendo un documental. Se maneja la organización y la logística en Honduras para el reconocimiento de la superficie LIDAR. La gente de UTL, cuyas hojas de vida breves se incluyen en el comunicado de prensa, son cineastas, escritores y aventureros, pero no científicos.

El anuncio del martes no es el primer supuesto "descubrimiento" de la Ciudad Blanca por aventureros que utilizan la "ciencia". 

En 2006, James Ewing, junto con Francis Yakam-Siman y Nezry Edmond, afirmaron haber descubierto Ciudad Blanca utilizando imágenes de la Mosquitia de la técnica Radar de Apertura Sintética (SAR por sus siglas en Inglés).

El resultado final de la utilización de SAR es similar a LIDAR, un modelo de la topografía de una región. El estudio de la SAR en 2006 también pareció de mostrar los restos arqueológicos bajo el dosel de la selva de la Mosquitia. Las características recientemente descubiertas podrían incluso ser los mismos fotografiados en ese entonces. No lo sabremos hasta que suelten las coordenadas geográficas de la región, este último proyecto de crear una imagen. Todo lo que sabemos es que el proyecto se centró en un área marcada en un mapa realizado por el fabricante del primer mapa de Honduras, Enrique Aguilar Paz, como la ubicación de la legendaria Ciudad Blanca.

Que los datos LIDAR muestran posibles sitios arqueológicos en la Mosquitia no debe ser una sorpresa para nadie. Los trabajos pioneros arqueológicos de Chris Begley en la Mosquitia mostraron que habían numerosos sitios a lo largo de los ríos, y que algunos de ellos eran bastante grandes.

Begley explica los rasgos del mito de Ciudad Blanca en su página web.

La historia de Ciudad Blanca se basa en tres puntos de referencia, dos de ellas supuestos menciones históricas, la tercera con raices en las tradiciones Pech y Tawahka.

Los dos documentos históricos fueron escritos por Hernán Cortés (en 1525) y Cristóbal de Pedraza (en 1544). Si bien presentadas como descripciones coloniales de Ciudad Blanca, pero en realidad no se refieren a una ciudad blanca, o una ciudad perdida.

Cortés escribió su famosa quinta carta a Carlos I de España después de regresar de su igualmente famoso viaje a Honduras. En su viaje a Honduras permaneció cerca de la costa, sin llegar más allá del este de la ciudad de Trujillo.

Al hacer una discusión del valor de control de Honduras para el imperio español, escribió:

He recibido noticias de las provincias muy grandes y ricos con los señores ricos, ricos asistieron, especialmente la que llaman Hueytapalan o en otro idioma, Xucutaco que yo ... han descubierto, por fin, ocho o diez días de marcha de Trujillo, que es decir, unos 50 o 60 leguas.

La referencia es a las provincias, no a las ciudades. No hay mención de una ciudad blanca o perdida. Ya que Cortés no visitó la Mosquitia, lo unico que esta carta podría aportar son rumores acerca de las zonas más al este.

La fuente de la riqueza de estas provincias y sus señores suele inferirse de la segunda fuente histórica citada, una cuenta de la colonia de Honduras por su nuevo obispo Cristóbal de Pedraza, en 1544. Allí, él escribió observando desde la cima de una montaña en algún lugar al este de Olancho:

Vimos una muy parte de tierra de la otra parte della al este de muy grandes poblaciones y la tierra que nos parecia con muchos rios.

Pedraza mandó llamar a algunos indios de la region para preguntarles sobre las tierras que habia visto:

y preguntandoles por nuestros naguatatos que quiere decir interprete que tierra era aquella respondieron que taguisgualpa, que quiere decir en su lengua donde se funde el oro | por respecto que en el pueblo mas principal della esta una casa de fundición, y vienen de muchas partes de la tierra a fundir oro y de aquellas sierras que dicen que son cerca de Veragua.

La Provincia de Taguzgalpa corresponde a la parte oriental de Honduras. Fue ocupada por los Tawahkas, Pech, Misquitos y Sumos.

"Veragua" se refería a la costa de Centroamérica, desde Nicaragua hasta el río Belén, en Panamá. Históricamente, este era un lugar donde trabaja la orfebrería precolombina.

En contraste, los sitios arqueológicos en Honduras, aunque han provisto muchos ejemplos de objetos de aleación de cobre, no eran por lo general fuentes de oro. Una figura de oro completa que se encontró en el valle del río Ulúa era claramente un objeto importado, hecho en la zona de Costa Rica-Panamá. Fragmentos de otra figura semejante fueron enterrados debajo de la Estela H de Copán. Sin embargo, la zona productora de oro fue a un largo camino desde Honduras. Lo que estos descubrimientos prehispánicos atestiguan es la existencia de una red de intercambio y de viajar desde Honduras a Panamá - la misma red que transmitió los informes sobre lejanas provincias ricas en trabajos de oro a Cortés y Pedraza.

Mientras que Pedraza recibió una descripción de una ciudad dedicada a la producción de objetos de oro no obtuvo una mención de una ciudad blanca o perdida.

Chris Begley ha escrito trabajos académicos sobre la leyenda Ciudad Blanca. En su articulo "Leyendo y Escribiendo la Leyenda de la Ciudad Blanca: Alegorías del pasado y futuro", publicado en 2007 en Southwest Philosophy Review, Begley y Ellen Cox apuntan que Begley habia recogido más de 5 menciones diferentes de las ruinas que los informantes (personas no indígenas) dijieron eran la Ciudad Blanca.

Este artículo también arroja luz sobre la tercera fuente citada por los aficionados que afirman haber encontrado o que diecen buscar la Ciudad Blanca. Begley cuenta que los pueblos Pech y Tawahka de Honduras tienen mitos sobre Wahai Patatahua ("lugar de los antepasados") y Kao Kamasa ("la casa blanca") en la cabecera de la confluencia de dos ríos, al lado de un paso a través de las montañas. En la mitología Pech, esta ubicación es el lugar donde los dioses se retiraron después de la llegada de los Españoles. Begley dice que el Pech identificaron este lugar con la parte remota de sus tierras en la Mosquitia.

Ciudad Blanca, en otras palabras, no es una ruina específica con una herencia que va desde las historias de la época colonial española hasta el presente. No hay un solo lugar que sea la Ciudad Blanca. Por el contrario, como Chris Begley ha demostrado a través de su intensa investigación, hay una serie de sitios arqueológicos por debajo de la densa selva en partes no desarrolladas de la Mosquitia. Eso no es sorprendente ni es noticia.

La SAR y LIDAR son herramientas maravillosas y costosos para la búsqueda de yacimientos arqueológicos. Tampoco están dentro del presupuesto que normalmente tienen disponibles los arqueólogos.

El estudio LIDAR que promociona el gobierno hondureño, pero observamos no por algun arqueólogo Hondureño o internacional, fue valorada en $ 1,5 millones.

La historia de "Ciudad Blanca" es una gran leyenda. Por lo que no es de extrañar que una empresa de filmación apoyaría la historia del descubrimiento y la (posible) tesoro que representa.

Sin embargo, el Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia debe proporcionar un conocimiento confiable sobre el pasado al pueblo hondureño, y las audiencias internacionales.

Mythical Ciudad Blanca

With headlines like Honduras asserts it has found the White City and With a satellite search they proved the existence of the White City, the Honduran press began trumpeting, yet again, the discovery of Ciudad Blanca, the mythical White City supposedly located somewhere in eastern Honduras.

The latest "revelation" that Ciudad Blanca had been located was announced by Porfirio Lobo Sosa in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

One newspaper article describes the supposed site as being 5 square kilometers. Áfrico Madrid, the Interior Minister, said that the team claiming the discovery could have encountered the legendary (his words) Lost City or White City in the region known as the Mosquitia, and that it could be bigger than the site of Copan, in western Honduras.

Virgilio Paredes, who manages the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, said:

"We know that we have something and that we have to go into this zone to know what culture it was that lived there.

Paredes also is quoted as saying:

We have found what might be, according to archaeologists and historians, what might be the biggest archaeological discovery in the world of the twenty-first century, a lost city.  We don't know what it is, we don't know if it is a structure (building), but its been affirmed by specialists who know this technology and the lay of the land, that there are many man-made structures.

 "The biggest archaeological discovery of the world in the twenty-first century"!

Now that you've heard the hype, here's the facts.

The source of the excitement is a press release put out Tuesday by UTL Scientific and the Government of Honduras, titled The Government of Honduras and UTL Scientific, LLC Announce Completion of First-Ever LiDAR Imaging Survey of La Mosquitia Region of Honduras.

If you read the press release, you'll find it does not claim to have discovered Ciudad Blanca.

LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) bounces lasers off the landscape and makes an accurate image of both the ground surface and the vegetation on it. Processing of the signals allows you to virtually strip off the vegetation and get an accurate model of the topography underneath.

When this was done with the new data from the Honduran Mosquitia, the analysts saw something that looked to them like the architectural remains of old cities, a series of archaeological sites.

The actual LIDAR work was done by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) an instrumentation lab at the University of Houston, funded by the National Science Foundation to help facilitate studies of this kind.

Of course, the press release doesn't actually come from NCALM. It comes from UTL Scientific, LLC.

UTL Scientific is a film company making a documentary. It handled the organization and logistics in Honduras for the LIDAR survey. The UTL people, whose brief biographies are included in the press release, are filmmakers, authors, and adventurers, but not scientists.

Tuesday's announcement is not the first purported "discovery" of Ciudad Blanca by adventurers using "science".

In 2006, James Ewing, along with Francis Yakam-Siman and Edmond Nezry, claimed to have discovered Ciudad Blanca using Synthetic Apeture Radar (SAR) images of the Mosquitia.

The end result of using SAR is similar to LIDAR, a model of the topography of a region. The SAR study back in 2006 also appeared to show archaeological remains beneath the forest canopy in the Mosquitia. The newly discovered features might even be the same ones imaged back then. We won't know until they release the geographic coordinates of the region the latest project imaged. All we know is that the project targeted an area marked on a map made by the first Honduran map maker, Enrique Aguilar Paz, as the location of legendary Ciudad Blanca.

That the LIDAR data shows possible archaeological sites in the Mosquitia should come as a surprise to no one. Pioneering archaeological work by Chris Begley in the Mosquitia showed that there were numerous sites along the rivers, and that some of them were quite large.

Begley outlines the myth of Ciudad Blanca on his website.

The Ciudad Blanca story rests on three points of reference, two of them supposed historical mentions, the third based in Pech and Tawahka tradition.

The two historical documents were written by Hernan Cortés (in 1525) and Cristobal de Pedraza (in 1544). While offered as colonial descriptions of Ciudad Blanca, neither actually refers either to a white city, or to a lost city.

Cortés wrote his famous fifth letter to Charles I of Spain after returning from his equally famous trip to Honduras. While in Honduras he stayed close to the coast, reaching no further east than the city of Trujillo. Making an argument for the value of controlling Honduras to the Spanish empire, he wrote:

I have received news of very large and wealthy provinces with wealthy lords, richly attended, especially the one they call Hueytapalan or in another language, Xucutaco which I....have discovered at last is eight or ten days march from Trujillo, that is to say, some 50 or 60 leagues.

The reference is to provinces, not cities. There is no mention of a white or lost city. Since Cortes did not visit the Mosquitia, all this letter could provide would be rumors about areas further to the east.

The source of the wealth of these provinces and their lords is usually inferred from the second historical source cited, an account of the colony of Honduras by its new bishop, Cristobal de Pedraza, in 1544. There, he wrote of standing looking east from the top of a mountain somewhere east of Olancho, Honduras:

We saw a large piece of land, and in the other part of it, to the east, with large towns (or populations) and the land with many rivers.

He sent for some local Indians to ask about the lands that he saw:

and asking through our interpreters what land it was, they replied that it was Taguisgualpa which in their language means the place where they smelt gold because in their most important city there is a gold work where they come from many parts of the land to smelt gold, and from the surrounding mountains that they say are close to Veragua.

The Province of Taguzgalpa, as it became known, corresponded to eastern Honduras. It was occupied by the Tawahka, Pech, Miskito, and Sumo.

"Veragua" referred to the lower Central American coast, from Nicaragua through to the Rio Belen in Panama.  Historically, this was a location of Precolumbian goldworking.

In contrast, Honduran archaeological sites, although yielding many examples of copper alloy objects, were not generally sources of gold. One complete gold figure found in the Ulua River valley was clearly an imported object, made in the Costa Rica-Panama area. Fragments of another such figure were buried below Stela H at Copan. But the gold-producing area was a long way from Honduras. What these pre-hispanic discoveries attest to is a network of exchange and travel reaching from Honduras to Panama-- the same network that conveyed reports about distant wealthy provinces of gold workers to Cortes and Pedraza.

While Pedraza was given a description of a city focused on the production of gold objects (Cibola anyone?) he did not get a mention of a White or Lost City.

Chris Begley has actually written scholarly papers about the White City legend. In "Reading and Writing the White City Legend: Allegories Past and Future", published in 2007 in Southwest Philosophy Review, Begley and Ellen Cox note that Begley has been taken to more than 5 different sets of ruins that informants (non-indigenous people) said were the Ciudad Blanca.

This article also sheds light on what is usually the third source cited by enthusiasts claiming to have found or to be seeking Ciudad Blance. Begley recounts that the Pech and Tawahka people of Honduras have a myth about Wahai Patatahua ("place of the ancestors") and Kao Kamasa ("the white house") at the headwaters of the confluence of two rivers, by a pass through the mountains. In Pech mythology, this location is the place to which their gods retreated after the Spanish came. Begley says the Pech identified this location with the wild and remote part of their lands in the Mosquitia.

Ciudad Blanca, in other words, is not a specific ruin with a charter that runs from the colonial Spanish histories to the present. There is no single place that is Ciudad Blanca. Rather, as Chris Begley demonstrated through hard fieldwork, there are a series of archaeological sites underneath the heavy forest in undeveloped parts of the Mosquitia. That's neither surprising nor news.

SAR and LIDAR are wonderful and expensive tools for finding archaeological sites.  Neither is within the normal budget of archaeologists.

The LIDAR study being touted by the Honduran government, but not, we note, by any Honduran or international archaeologists, was valued at $1.5 million.

The "Ciudad Blanca" story is a great legend. It is hardly surprising that a media company would support the storyline of discovery and (potential) treasure that it represents.

But the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History should be providing reliable knowledge about the past to the Honduran people, and international audiences.

Public Letter and Denunciation of a Menace to the Cultural Patrimony of Honduras

That's the title of a document posted today on Vos el Soberano, and circulated via email by the authors.

They are the Ex-Minister of Culture, Arts and Sports of Honduras during the Zelaya administration, Dr. Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, and the last legally appointed Director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, Dr. Dario Euraque.

Both noted historians, they explain clearly what is at stake in the actions taken to pacify politicians of the town of Copan Ruinas who have insisted they should get a cut of the sales of tickets to visit the World Heritage Site, Copan.

So far, no response from the government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa or, mysteriously, his Minister of Culture or the current occupant of the office of Director of the Institute of Anthropology and History, who (they note) are not listed as signing the agreement through which not only will income from Copan be illegally diverted to local politicians: the budget of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History will be deprived of funding, and protection and interpretation of the entire national patrimony, including traditional cultures, archives, historic places, and archaeological sites across the country, will be destroyed.

Public Letter and Denunciation of a Menace to the Cultural Patrimony of Honduras

The 26th of February of the present year there was signed a public agreement on the part of the present Minister of the Interior of Honduras, Áfrico Madrid, the Mayor of the Municipality of Copan Ruinas, Helmy Giacoman, and the Congress member of the Department of Copan, Julio Cesar Gámez. Through the so-called "Agreement of Copan 2012", its signatories, supposedly in order to strengthen the impact of the government of San José de Copan in the protection of the national patrimony in the Copan Archaeological Park (PAC), rather prepared the destruction of the institution legally constituted to administrate and protect the Cultural Patrimony of Honduras: the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia (IHAH).

The Prosecutor for Heritage ought to investigate this unusual Agreement of Copan 2012 that commits the sin of an evident abuse of authority. First, because it ignores and disqualifies the functions of the maximum administrative authority legally responsible to keep watch over the Cultural Patrimony of the Nation: the Secretaria de Cultura, Artes y Deportes (SCAD), whose leader is at the same time President of the IHAH, who was not present and did not sign the act. The Agreement also doesn't carry the signature of the Director of the IHAH since the coup d'etat of 2009, who by law is obligated to defend his institution, although it can be supposed that he supports the accords of the Agreement that threatens it. Second, because via these and other transgressions, the Agreement of Copan 2012 violates the spirit and international compacts assumed by the State of Honduras in relation to the most important international instruments that guard the cultural patrimony of humanity.

The Agreement of Copan 2012 consists of nine understandings. Four of those (3, 4, 6, and 7) pretend to promote a greater participation by the government of Copan in the administration of the cultural patrimony of the region behind the back of the SCAD and of the technicians and specialists of IHAH and its international collaborators, who in their great majority are opposed to the Agreement in question. In fact these articles mask the principal objective: which is to permit the mayor of Copan to divert the income of the PAC with purposes outside the mission of the law that governs the Cultural Patrimony: Decree 220-97, the Law for the Protection of the Cultural Patrimony of the Nation.

This disastrous proposition is evident in the first article that, without authorization and the required proceedings, dismisses from his position the regional administrator of the IHAH in Copan and the Park. The agreement under its article number nine promotes investigations on the part of the Prosecutor of the officials and employees of the IHAH without cause or denunciation with the aim to intimidate and silence the technicians and specialists and sub-directors of this institution who refused to favor the evident concubinage between the Directorate of the IHAH and the signatories of the Agreement of Copan 2012. Article number five asks that President Porfirio Lobo sanction a pre-proposal for a law introduced to the National Congress by the congress member for Copan Gamez which would grant a percentage of the income of the Park to the government of San José de Copan.

The Agreement of Copan 2012 seeks to reform the Decree 220-97, without consulting the SCAD and to the discredit of the autonomy and the authority that Decree 220-97 grants the IHAH to gather resources of its own and to administer and protect not just the Copan Archaeological Park but all the Cultural Patrimony of the Nation, including from many archaeological sites and the Historic Centers of the historic cities, the documentary patrimony of our archives and the living cultures. The Honduran people should know that the IHAH will administer and protect this treasure that is the greatest treasure of the nation and the core of our National Identity with the resources from the income of the Copan Archaeological Park. And that therefore the agreement and the project to strip the institution of that income will contribute to destroy the IHAH and still more to deprive the Cultural Patrimony of Honduras of protection.

We urge the Honduran people and the international community, the Presidency of the Republic, the Minister of Culture, Arts, and Sports, and the Special Attorney for the Cultural Patrimony of Honduras so that, by common agreement, they can denounce the Agreement of Copan 2012 and they can investigate the circumstances in which the signatories ignored the institutions concerned, usurped their representation and functions, abused the attributes that the law grants them and played at demagoguery, with the Copan Archaeological Park as token on the board.

Copan Seized

Employees of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History have taken over Copan Archaeological Park, protesting the agreement signed by Africo Madrid and Helmy Giacoman, that is apparently being implemented by the Institute.

The employees reject the proposed changes to the law on cultural patrimony, changes that would give municipalities control over archaeological materials found within their boundaries, and a position on the Consejo Directivo (essentially, the Advisory Board) of the Institute.

In addition, the employees oppose the proposed bill now being considered in Congress that would give 50% of the proceeds from admissions to the park to the town of Copan Ruinas.

They have called for the immediate removal of the director of the Institute, Virgilio Paredes and other Institute employees that have supported the agreement.

The employees agreed to reopen the park at noon today.

Churches

The concept of a church and how to define one is hard for Honduran legislators to grasp.

For most of Honduras' history, you needed to have a formal act of Congress declaring your organization a religious entity to officially be considered a church. Until now, only the Catholic Church had been declared a "church" by Congress.

Instead, most churches in Honduras today operate as the Honduran equivalent of 501(c)(3) civil non-governmental organizations.

Why, exactly, is the Honduran government in the business of deciding what's a real church?

The Honduran constitution establishes Honduras as a secular state with freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. In Article 77, on the topic of religion, it states:

The right to exercise any religion or worship is guaranteed without any precedence (for one over the others) as long as they don't go against the public order. Ministers of the many religions may not hold public office, nor promote political materials, even by invoking religious principles or values as a means to that end.

Honduras has signed international treaties relevant to religious freedom, such as the International Declaration of Human Rights (articles 2, 18 in particular), the Interamerican Democratic Letter (article 9), and the American Convention on Human Rights (article 12).

The Honduran Penal Code enshrines the right of religious freedom by making it a crime to interfere with someone's religion (articles 210-213).

Honduran law also addresses the separation of church and state. The Law of Political Organizations imagines that political entities should be divorced from subordination to or dependency on ministers of any religion or sect. Political parties are prohibited from using religious symbols (article 80). It is illegal to tell someone to join or leave a political party for religious beliefs or reasons (article 104).

The treaties, constitution, and law are pretty clear. All religions are permissible; church and state are separate; and no religion should be favored.

But in practice, Honduras favors two religious groups in particular in its government. The Catholic Church and the Confraternity of Evangelical Churches are asked for input by all government commissions. They hold reserved seats in some government commissions, involvement not extended to other religions. By having a position on the nominating committee they influence the selection of candidates for the Supreme Court.

That existing favoritism and involvement of these two church bodies makes it not particularly surprising that Congress in 2010 passed the Ley Marco de la Íglesia Evangelica de Honduras (decreto 185-2010) to give a blanket declaration of juridical personhood to any church that was a member of the Confraternity of Evangelical Churches.

Passage of this law was set against a background of threats by Africo Madrid, Interior Minister, to review every NGO in the country and deny many of them NGO status, particularly religious ones that he felt were "fringe". The law transformed evangelical churches from NGOs with a religious and charitable mission, to churches with juridical personhood, no longer NGOs, no longer under threat from the particular prejudices of one government minister.

Article 2 of the law says that an Evangelical Church bases its actions in the teachings of Jesus Christ and the sacred writings of the Bible. Article 3 shares with us the values of an Evangelical Church:

1. Respect for life and the gift of God, his preservation and dignification.
2. Integrity based on truth, sincerity, rectitude and compromise.
3. Unity, based in the love of God and one's fellow mankind in total respect of their denominations and doctrinal convictions.
4. Fidelity to the eternal principles contained in the word of God and the Church and the body of Christ.
5. The family as the basis of the church, Society, and the Nation; its integration, harmony, solidarity and stability.
6. Social responsibility, as the human being is indivisible, requires material and spiritual solidarity, giving it dignified housing, food, clothing, health and basic education.
7. Sociopolitical responsibility, the church submits itself to authority, respecting the law, because there is no authority except on the part of God and those that have it, have been established by God.
8. Only god is just and has permitted that people exercise justice to punish and instill fear of those that do bad and not of those who do good, as a path to achieve peace, security, and the prosperity of the Nation.
9. Excellence: all the actions of the Evangelical Church of Honduras are done as if for God, characterized by searching and finding the best results for people and the Country, optimizing with wisdom the resources of the faithful, and
10. Leadership: the Evangelical Church of Honduras promotes and makes clear the wise and good administration of all of the assets and talents which God has placed under his administration, along with the spiritual and material resources.

See the problem? Its not that all these principles are bad; any religion might conceivably adopt them, although we find the claim of divine authority for the political authorities (point 7) somewhat disturbing for a secular state.

But the biggest problem is that Congress, in this law, is making these principles of church behavior into legal norms. Congress was never granted the power to codify the religious beliefs of its citizens. This violates Article 77 of the constitution; it is government establishment of religion, pure and simple.

And of course, there is the glaring fact that the law restricts the definition of evangelical church to those that adhere to these beliefs and practices and are members of a specific organization, the Confraternity of Evangelical Churches. Remember that in the background Africo Madrid was threatening to remove the NGO status of religious NGOs he felt were "fringe": these were not members of the Confraternity.

The Confraternity, a constellation of evangelical churches in Honduras, does not represent all evangelical churches. There are evangelical churches that don't belong to the Confraternity either because they don't want to, or they don't share some of the required beliefs for membership.What happens with this law: are they suddenly not evangelical churches? Congress has established a religion that includes some and excludes others.

Article 6 gives the Confraternity the sole right to represent the evangelical church before the government and to communicate with the government. Article 7 says that to convert an existing organization from a civil NGO to a religious organization, the Evangelical Confraternity of Honduras must petition the Interior Minister (Africo Madrid, remember) to change their status.

Article 8 says the Evangelical Confraternity can exclude any organization that violates the norms included in this law, as well as its own regulations. By membership in the Confraternity, churches get exoneration from all taxes and surcharges, including the free importation of goods and services (Article 4, clause 11).

Any church that calls itself evangelical must get the permission of the Evangelical Confraternity to call itself "evangelical" whether it wants to be an NGO or considered a "church", just as a church needs the permission of the Catholic church to call itself "catholic".

It is implicit in the text of Article 7 that evangelical organizations should associate with the Evangelical Confraternity. It's only through petitions from the Confraternity that they may convert themselves from civil to religious legal entities. This probably violates the legal right to free association.

Should a government be able to set up a particular organization as the sole way to petition or communicate with the government and government officials?

It's not particularly surprising that the Sala Constitucional of the Supreme Court found the law unconstitutional. It was challenged by evangelical churches that were not part of the Confraternity, either because they did not want to be members or because of their beliefs. The Public Prosecutor filed a report with the Court finding the law unconstitutional, and the Sala Constitucional of the Supreme Court concurred.

So now pressure is being exerted by both the leadership of Congress, and Porfirio Lobo Sosa for the full Supreme Court to reverse the decision of the Sala Constitucional.

Here's to the constitutional separation of church and state and the protection of religious freedom in Honduras today.

Copan is falling and so is the Cultural Patrimony...

We previously discussed the signing of a document that entirely violates the Honduran law in regard to the national cultural patrimony, and translated that document.

In the first post, we noted that Virgilio Paredes (appointed to head the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History by Myrna Castro during the waning days of the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti) was curiously absent from accounts of the signing of the accord ceding to the Municipal government of the town of Copan Ruinas many aspects of the management of that World Heritage site. While referenced by title in the accord, he is not named either.

Some correspondents raised the idea that the Institute and its officers were not actually committed by this agreement; that it was executed as a kind of sop to the people of the town, angered by proposed loans of objects for exhibition in the US.

But we also have received another document, and this one demonstrates that, far from protesting the illegal accord that was signed by Porfirio Lobo Sosa's representation, Africo Madrid, the Institute's legal counsel already, on February 27, has begun to put it into action.

The letter-- on letterhead of the Institute of Anthropology and History-- is directed to the mayor of Copan Ruinas, Helmy Rene Giacoman. It is signed by Attorney Erlinda Lanza, General Secretary of the Institute, and is copied to the office of the director of the Institute.

Here's what it says:

Esteemed Mr. Mayor:

I inform you that I met with Maria Miranda, Jose Ramon Murillo and Omar Antonio Rios, finalizing the details of the Supervisory Commission for the transport of pieces to the University of Pennsylvania.

I was informed that the Commission proposed by the Municipal Mayoralty would be composed in the following manner:

1. Maria Miranda, Education District
2. Jose Ramon Murillo of the 2012 Committee
3. Omar Antonio Rios Head of the Municipal Tourism Unit
4. Ingmar Diaz 2012 Committee
5. Brenda Rivera Representative of the indigenous communities
6. Martha Emma Melendez member of the Municipal Council of Transparency who also will be the custodian designated for the transport of the pieces to the US

The said committee will have to be present for 5 or 6 days, eight hours daily in the building that the CRIA occupies for the packing of the pieces and they will be attended and instructed by the Institute technician Norman Martinez, Registrar of Cultural Properties.

We spoke about the points that are described in the Copan Ruinas 2012 agreement of the 26th of February and it was determined that on point 2, while the Ley Orgánica del IHAH is not reformed, the participation of the AMHON in the Consejo Directivo of the Institute, if the Consejo itself considers it, will be solely as an observer.

With respect to point 3, it was resolved that the same commission previously named will review the inventory and will be on the record that the Maya pieces are in each one of the sites.

With respect to point 4 the elaboration of a protocol on the part of the Institute was proposed that would regulate the presence of members of the Municipal Corporation so that they shall be present in the excavations, discovery, and exhibition so that they can attest to transparency while the lay and regulations of protection are reformed.

With respect to point 5, attached you will encounter Circular No. 412-G-2011 dated 13 December of 2012, directed to the commission of Finances of the National Congress through which IHAH presented what its position was with respect to the decree through which it is proposed that a percentage of the income of the Copan Archaeological Park should pass to the Municipal Mayoralty. [This document was not attached to the copy sent to us.]

Both point 5, as well as point 6 (sales of tickets outside the country) and 8 (reform of the Ley para la Proteccion del Patrimonio Cultural de la Nacion) will depend on the Sovereign National Congress of the Republic with actions carried out by this Municipality.

Point 7 will be completed with the nomination of the commission that at the beginning of this report was laid out, and in addition the University of Pennsylvania will send to you an invitation so that you will participate in the inauguration of the event as well as the costs of one person designated by this municipality so that he should be one of the custodians of the pieces, who will participate both in the transmission as well as the return of the same.

And finally point 9 are matters specific to the Municipal Mayoralty.

In the hope that this will be the beginning of a permanent conversation,

Attentively,

Attorney Erlinda Lanza.

Secret Contract

Africo Madrid, Interior Minister, has entered into a no-bid contract with Securiport, a Washington D.C. based company, for implementation of its Total Digital Control System (TDIC), a system which uses biometrics to determine that the same person who checks in is the person who boards an aircraft.

Once implemented, it will check the Honduran national criminal database for individuals with the same biometric data (fingerprints, in this case).

So, new technology, purchased on a no-bid contract. What's it going to cost?

Hondurans don't know. Madrid said the contract terms are secret, to prevent letting organized crime know the details of the technology.

Some secret. Anyone can use google to find information on what Securiport does.

Madrid told the press he's doing this because it's too easy for people to enter and leave Honduras without the police being able to accurately identify them. He told El Heraldo:

"we are trying to avoid the immigration of members of organized crime, terrorists, drug traffickers, kidnappers, arms traffickers and money launderers that use our country as a center of operations because of the lack of scientific mechanisms of immigration control."

Madrid said that the equipment is to be located at the 23 border crossing points where travelers can legally enter Honduras. Madrid said that the system will, through a satellite connection, bring back real time images of a person's face, and run vehicle identification information based on the license plate.

Such systems of identification are only as good as the databases to which they connect.

The best security would come from connecting to Interpol's SLTD database, a collection of lost and stolen identifications and travel documents as reported to Interpol by national governments. Former Security Minister Oscar Alvarez promised back in July 2011 that Honduras would do this. It's a good database and identified 23,000 people worldwide in 2011 traveling on one of the lost or stolen documents.

But that isn't part of the workflow outlined for customer's on Securiport's website.

Their website explains what their technology does. Fingerprint scanning is done using "ultrasonic imaging". This is both a strength and a weakness of the system. Ultrasonic fingerprint scanning is great. It avoids the distortions introduced by putting your finger on a glass plate, or taking a photograph of your finder tip. It is also said to have the ability to detect "live" versus "dead" skin, avoiding the problems caused by chemical burns and occupational calluses.

Ultrasonically obtained fingerprints are not entirely comparable to those obtained by other methods. Thus, as this manufacturer of ultrasonic fingerprinting chips shows, appropriate applications are for places where you can scan 100% of the population for comparison using the same technology.

What makes it possible for this system to interact with others is a US government project, by way of the National Institute for Science and Technology. This has over the years defined a finger print identification and storage system that constructs a vector based on the ridges, working around the incompatibility of directly comparing images collected by different systems.

This system codes 3 levels of detail. The first level data contains what NIST calls the "flow" of the ridges. The second level encodes the pattern of ridges, recording the paths of ridges, and their sequence. Level three encodes features along individual ridge paths. Recognition is usually performed (in the computer) by reference to just the first, or the first and second levels of data. From these recommendations, a series of International Standards Organization specifications for fingerprint data storage, interchange, and identification were issued.

So, not-so-secret technology.

And even if it were, that wouldn't explain why the contract cost needs to be secret.

So how much will Securiport actually get? That's Madrid's big secret.

Some travelers will now have to pay an additional $34, $17 on entry and another $17 to leave, in a "security tax". Madrid told the press

"Someone has to pay for it."

He continued:

"This security tax will be applied uniquely and exclusively to international travelers who enter and leave the national territory via the four international airports; they will subsidize the people who enter and leave by land and sea."

And that's how we can estimate the actual payoff to Securiport that Madrid doesn't want to reveal.

According to El Heraldo, all of the money collected will be placed in a special account and go to Securiport, about $27 million a year. The contract has a duration of 10 years. $270 million: not bad.

This special security tax was approved by Congress on December 14. They approved the increase in airport exit fees to $60.30, later rolled back by order of Pepe Lobo, around the same time.

All of this secrecy.

The added expense for air travellers-- including all those tourists on whom the country is depending-- leaving Honduras with the highest airport entry and exit fees in Central America.

How many criminals would it take to justify the cost of this contract?

What is a Universal Periodic Review

November 4th.

That's the day that the UN conducts hearings as part of its Universal Periodic Review of the state framework for human rights in Honduras.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a once every four years dialogue between the 47 members sitting on the Human Rights Council and the national government of the country under review, plus any registered non-governmental organizations that ask to participate. The result, no sooner than 2 days after the hearing, is a report which contains a summary of the discussion plus a series of recommendations for the national government. It is up to the national government to carry those recommendations out. It is up to the UN to hold the governments accountable for non-compliance.

In the case of Honduras, the submissions can be found at the UN Office of the High Commissioner website here. The submissions include the government's report to the Human Rights Council, in every UN official language, a compilation of UN agency comments on conditions that arose since the last review, a summary of comments by third parties, and a series of questions submitted in advance by governments who are part of the Human Rights Council.

Honduras's own report was submitted on August 23, 2010. The report Honduras submitted is about the government structures, rules, and regulations that support the various areas of human rights that Honduras must report on in its periodic review. A quick review of the recent submissions by other Central American countries suggests that this is the correct content. The entire report consists of 134 paragraphs.

Paragraph 4 of Honduras's submission states

"The approach adopted in the universal periodic review involved the various Government agencies and branches of the State, all of which provided input to this report in their own areas of competence."

Except, of course, when they did not provide input.

A Tiempo article from Saturday noted that according to sources in the Executive branch, the report was completed without the collaboration of the Ministry of Security or the Supreme Court.

After a brief introduction, paragraphs 7-13, on the current political situation in Honduras, contain just about the only references to the coup of June 28, 2009 and the subsequent human rights violations that continue through the present. Paragraph 8 notes that Porfirio Lobo Sosa has complied with the terms of the Guaymuras Accords. Paragraph 9 identifies the official truth commission and its mission statement. Paragraph 12 lumps all human rights violations, from any time period, together and notes that investigations are either ongoing, or the cases have been determined to be common crimes.

Paragraphs 14-37 discuss political and civil rights, including the right to life, integrity of person, eradication of torture, prisons, access to justice, and freedom of expression.

Paragraphs 38-74 are concerned with economic and social rights, such as health, education, culture, ethnic groups, work, housing, and food.

Paragraphs 75-125 are concerned with the rights of vulnerable groups, such as some ethnic minorities, women, children, migrants, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgendered people, the old, disabled, and the right of everyone to a healthy environment.

The remaining paragraphs contain the report's conclusions.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNOHCR) conducted its own review on each of the above topics over the last year. For example, there is a report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, another Special Rapporteur's report on extrajudicial killings, another on the independence of judges, and so forth. Each of these reports presents the UN's own take on the topic in question, and was available to the government of Honduras in crafting its own report. In addition, collectively the reports are summarized in a UN document included in the paperwork of the UPR for Honduras.

The UN paperwork notes that sixteen stakeholders submitted comments on the report, and provides a 14 page summary of those comments. You'll need to read Spanish, English, and French to take in the whole document, since not everything has been translated. The ten page Amnesty International submission from April, 2010 is located here on the UN website. Article 19, a group interested in freedom of the press, published their comment on their own website, located here. The other comments are probably filed in the same document archive as the Amnesty report, but I did not take the time to locate them.

Finally, there are a series of questions that the countries that make up the Human Rights Council have compiled. The countries who submitted questions include the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland. Their questions primarily focus on human rights violations arising out of the events of June 28, 2009, the de facto regime, and that of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

A group of three representatives from the Human Rights Council, representatives of Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation, will compile a summary of the discussion and a series of recommendations for Honduras after the meeting. Honduras will then have a chance to respond to this document, and then it will be adopted in a subsequent meeting.

Honduras will be represented in the hearing by several cabinet ministers and presidential advisers, including Maria Antonietta Guillén, Áfrico Madrid, and Ana Pineda. Also representing Honduras will be the head of the legislative committee concerned with human rights, Orle Solis, and the Special Prosecutor for Human Rights, Sandra Ponce. The hearing will last 3 hours on the morning of November 4.

The UN may broadcast a webcast of the hearing. Currently only webcasts for November 1 are listed. Technical note, the webcast requires Real Player be installed.

Who's in Charge (and what are they doing)?

On June 14, Honduras' El Heraldo newspaper reported concerns about the informality of the arrangements for continuity in the executive branch of government while Porfirio Lobo Sosa is away in South Africa watching the World Cup.

El Heraldo reported that according to "lawyer and political analyst" Raúl Pineda, there should have been a formal written document naming the designate in charge. The media had been unable to get confirmation of whether any such document was written. Presidential designate Maria Antonieta Guillén de Bogran was quoted as saying that she was "fulfilling the responsibilities of the administration of the Executive power" in coordination with Víctor Hugo Barnica.

But her reassurances were not enough for the media and, reportedly, the general public. So, on June 16 El Heraldo reported the release of the text of an official statement saying Barnica was the official designate, a statement that La Tribuna printed.

The original article in El Heraldo includes a sentence that seems like a non sequitur, stating that Raúl Pineda also said

that the minister of Governance, Áfrico Madrid, shouldn't be left in command either because that is why the three presidential designates were elected.

But this goes to the heart of why the press, if not the general public, have been concerned: Madrid appears to have taken advantage of the vacuum in authority, building on his constitutional role as chair of the cabinet to push through new policy that Honduran sources questionable.

As described by Radio America, last Tuesday the council of ministers led by Madrid passed a decree "that approves the construction of various dams in Honduras, responding to a priority and to take advantage of the water resource in the country". Madrid is quoted as saying

"The exploitation of water is part, together with production, the export of bananas, coffee, shrimp and wood, it is one more of the fundamental pillars and the State is going to be obliged to simplify the administrative procedures so that the people or the State itself can invest in the construction of dams of different sizes in all the [national] territory".

So what's up here? Simplifying paperwork must be good for everyone, right? after all, as Radio America reminded readers, there have been repeated shortages of water in the capital city.

But dams are not primarily about providing municipal water. They are means to control the distribution of water for agriculture; and mechanisms for production of electrical power, today an international commodity, through hydroelectric plants. And so, they are in essence profit opportunities for private enterprise, if the burden of regulation is not too onerous. Opportunities to exploit national resources for private gain. Minister Madrid's announcement of the new decree, as reported by La Tribuna, emphasized that the new decree would authorize dams for the "capture of potable water, irrigation, energy generation and the control of flooding".

In another Heraldo article article, Madrid is quoted as saying

"In Honduras there are millions of cubic meters of water that are thrown out in the sea every year and that we don't use the water represents money, represents life and social development."

What is at issue in the building of public works like dams that can benefit private enterprise was amply illustrated by the concurrent debate in Congress about a contract for 250 megawatts of "renewable energy" that, El Tiempo notes, sparked a wave of accusations and counter-accusations:

The ex-representative of the Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada (COHEP)in the governing committtee of the Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica (ENEE), Jesús Simón, said that the renewable energy businessmen enjoy an excess of incentives and that the contracts will be granted almost in perpetuity, since they will have the concession of the rivers for 50 years.

At the same time, he questioned that the prices will be above the economic variables that the energy market would set....

Those opposed to these contracts also questioned why in the process of contracting the energy the marginal price that the Secretaría de Recursos Naturales y Ambiente (SERNA) sets in January every year was not taken into account.

Water use is one of the emerging global issues where economic disadvantages are being created or deepened. For a new "priority" on water projects to be set by the Honduran government in the absence of the supposed head of state, in order to streamline some undefined "procedures", raises concerns about creating fewer opportunities for advocates for a public good to ask questions like those debated in Congress this week. And more: it raises the ever present question, who will profit from the proposed dams?

Minister of Government: Áfrico Madrid Hart

As we noted in a recent post, cabinet Minister Áfrico Madrid (Secretary of Government, the equivalent of the US Secretary of the Interior) may be asked to introduce a cabinet resolution finally ending the anti-free speech decree promulgated under Roberto Micheletti. So it may be timely to consider who Madrid is, and what his investment in such a step might be.

Madrid is a long time political activist in the National Party. As early as 1994, he became visible by attacking the sitting Liberal Party President Carlos Reina of abuse of authority and misuse of public funds, for his intervention to end a banana workers' strike. In the last Nationalist Party administration, Madrid served as vice-minister of Labor. Perhaps equally pertinent to his position in the Lobo Sosa cabinet, though, is that Madrid rose to be the director of the National Party. In that post, he was prominent in fall of 2008 in the very visible public spat about whether Elvin Santos could legally be the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party. In January 2009, Madrid accused Santos of conducting a three-year campaign of martyrdom about being shut out by his own party, arguing that this gained him a sympathy preference in the first CID-Gallup Poll on the presidential election, which projected Santos ahead. In March of 2009, he stepped down from his former position and assumed the post of vice-president of the National Party. Madrid is, clearly, a major political operative in the Nationalist Party, and it is not surprising that he has a place in the Lobo Sosa cabinet.

What may be surprising is that he did not end up with the post of Secretary of State (Cancillería or Relaciones Exteriores), which press reports indicated he was pushing to receive. Indeed, in the transition team of Lobo Sosa, Madrid coordinated the External Relations team, and was quoted in the press expansively commenting on the future goals of that ministry, in a way that seemed appropriate for the next occupant of that post.

But in the end, External Affairs went to another: Mario Canahuati, who (in addition to his role as a vigorous defender of the coup d'etat of 2009 who promoted the idea that the economic sector could withstand international pressure) was a major rival of Lobo Sosa's in the primary campaign for the National Party nomination. More pertinent, perhaps, to this decision-- and the subject of a later post-- is Canahuati's experience as a former ambassador to the US, the primary focus of Honduran foreign policy now and for the foreseeable future.

That leaves Áfrico Madrid trying to deal with the lingering effects of the polarization of Honduran civil society. His first prominent action, of course, was trying to tie up a self-inflicted wound, when an overly-zealous Immigration official, acting on orders from the Micheletti regime that no one had rescinded, turned away the Brazilian consul, whose arrival in Honduras has been discussed in international press as a first step towards normal relations with the South American power. If this is any indication, Madrid may find his service in the cabinet rough going. While the English-language media widely reported Madrid's quick firing of the head of Immigration, Nelson Willy Mejía, Mejía was reinstated within 24 hours, by direct order of President Lobo Sosa, who is quoted saying it was a "mistake and misunderstanding".

It will be interesting to see how Madrid handles the next hot potato he is being handed, which may be the call to repeal Decreto PCM-124-2009. And especially interesting to see if he has the support of Lobo Sosa in whatever position he takes.