Why Claims that Lost Cities exist in Abandoned Land are Dangerous for Indigenous Hondurans

The hype about the supposed "discovery" of Ciudad Blanca in eastern Honduras is dying down in English-language media.

A little good came out of this incident: a number of Honduran academics registered their skepticism about the claims. Honduran university students in the young Anthropology major held a public event to educate Hondurans about the reality of archaeology of Eastern Honduras. And a letter taking the National Geographic to task for publishing a sensationalized account, signed by an international group of archaeologists, got enough attention to warrant corrective reporting in some mainstream media.

Predictably there has been push back: don't be such kill-joys, isn't Indiana Jones the spirit of archaeology? and isn't this just another example of politically correctness?

The PC criticism suggests that scholars questioning the promotional stories' claims that the area was uninhabited because this ignores the indigenous people whose own oral histories are our best historical indication that eastern Honduras was once densely settled with larger towns cannot possibly actually be motivated by real people's real situations. It is just an attitude scholars adopted to look good.

Now, a new blog post by Chris Begley, an archaeologist who has one of the most extensive records of archaeological investigation in this area, addresses this question directly, and personally. We would love to reproduce his whole blog post, which you can find here; but short of that, pay attention to what he says:

The language used evokes a time where foreign explorers emphasized their superiority at the expense of local knowledge...there is a much more human and immediate cost, borne primarily by the most marginalized, least powerful folks in the region: indigenous people like the Pech who are descendants of those who built these sites.

I know this is not a ‘lost civilization’ because I am an archaeologist, and I’ve worked in this ‘unknown’ area for almost 25 years. I lived and worked with the Pech almost exclusively, because I thought it was the right thing to do, and because they know the region better than anyone. They have at least a thousand years of history there.

For the Pech, the past is absolutely essential to their future. Their history is not merely an interesting pastime; it creates and supports the present. They are curious about the archaeology. I’ve talked to impromptu community meetings, looked at artifacts they collected, and listened to their interpretations. I saw them make modern pottery look like the ancient pieces we find at archaeological sites, in a deliberate attempt to connect the past and the present.

I lived with the Pech at various times over the last two decades. We lived in small villages with no electricity or water. We spent all day, every day, together. We sat and talked every night. We played cards. We took trips through the forest for two or three weeks at a time, mapping archaeological sites along the way. All told, the Pech and I documented around 150 archaeological sites.

The Pech already knew where every large site was located. Every single one. They knew where fruit trees grew, or where the good fishing holes were. They could find the little trails that I could hardly see. Sometimes we followed an old trail by looking for grown over machete cuts on branches. They knew the forest like I know my hometown.

The Pech lived in these now remote places as recently as 150 years ago, and they return to hunt and fish, or to harvest sweetgum. They’ve lost traditional lands to encroaching farmers and cattle ranchers. They’ve been moved around, and now live mainly on the edge of the rain forest, in a handful of communities....

They showed me archaeological sites. They showed me features such as which hillsides had been reshaped by people, because they could tell and I couldn’t. They explained what they thought it meant. They critiqued my interpretations.

The Pech did all this while facing serious threats to their continued existence. They fought to keep what traditional land they still had, and to keep their language alive. They buried people killed by outsiders who wanted to bully them off their land. I hated those funerals, where those animated faces I knew were rigid. I hated seeing that. Sometimes I didn’t go.

So, what is the harm in this hype and sensationalism? What difference does it make if, in their ignorance, these ‘explorers’ proclaim that they discovered something nobody has seen in 600 years?  What is the cost of these newcomers, with no real experience in this forest, claiming, disingenuously, to have discovered a ‘lost civilization?’ Why am I moved to spend a few hours writing something like this?

I write this because these false claims, hype and sensationalism invade one of the few remaining spaces in which the Pech, and folks like them, are powerful. These claims strip the Pech of their own history, and deny them the respect they deserve and the acknowledgement for their contribution to our understanding of the past. These sensational narratives, powerful because they are made by powerful people, further marginalize and disenfranchise people. In ignorance and bravado, and in pursuit of the unworthy goal of celebrity and attention, these faux discoverers make it hard to hear a crucial voice from some real experts.

Honduran Archaeologists Criticize US Claim of Archaeological "Discovery"

The US team that has been promoting the idea that eastern Honduras is an impenetrable jungle where no archaeologist has gone before has released a new report, based on arriving at one of the sites LiDAR imagery showed.

Unfortunately, they continue to promote the idea that there was no previous research in the area; they use outdated and long-rejected ideas of "discovery" (ignoring indigenous people who contemporary archaeologists would acknowledge have their own knowledge of the landscape and what lies there), "lost cities", and new "civilizations" supposedly previously unknown.

The continued insistence on the narrative of discovery is especially egregious since the group has been told, repeatedly, about the modern work in the area, and has neglected to even contact the very much available expert in the region. It is almost the 100 year anniversary of the work of the first modern archaeologist who identified archaeological traditions typical of eastern Honduras, Samuel Lothrop.

This may be a newly identified site, but with over 200 sites, including large sites with stone architecture and ballcourts documented in the existing archaeological literature, that cannot be verified without engagement with the broader, knowledgeable archaeological community.

And that is precisely what Honduran archaeologists also had to say about the report in an article just published in La Prensa. These are all people fluent in English and Spanish, so a less lazy US news organization might talk to them directly; meanwhile, let's make sure their voices are heard, shall we?

Ciudad Blanca is a myth for Honduran archaeologists

The publication by National Geographic that Ciudad Blanca has been discovered in the Honduran rainforest wakened unease and incredulity in experts in the country.

Since decades ago, scientific expeditions have explored the legend of the lost city in the Mosquitia, discovering that it is a region rich in archaeological building remains, and according to archaeologists that is what the new reporting by the magazine is showing....

It isn't a discovery...

Ricardo Agurcia, noted Honduran archaeologist, questions the possible discovery that would rise to a world-wide level because the investigation team that was formed, he says, is not well known, and nor does he know the institutions that participated and if there are Honduran experts involved. "What I have been able to see has very little scientific merit. What I find strange as well is that news of this type comes out first published outside Honduras".

He notes that what the magazine shows doesn't have the features of the legend mentioned, and it is not unknown that there are many archaeological settlements in the Mosquitia. "What they encountered is a city? A city is archaeologically defined as a site of human occupation with a population larger than 10,000 inhabitants."

"This is verified with field archaeology and registering of houses. Is it white? I don't see it that way in any of the photos."

 "In the legend of the White City (Ciudad Blanca) that I know there should be a monkey statue made of gold. If this is Ciudad Blanca, where is that monkey? I see a lot of tinges of adventure, of Hollywood fils, as it it were from an Indiana Jones movie. That is not science" pointed out Agurcia.

 The Honduran archaeologist Eva Martinez agrees with Agurcia that this does not constitute a discovery and that Ciudad Blanca continues to be a myth.

"The Honduran Mosquitia has been studied by archaeologists for decades. The place that the National Geographic mentions could be one of the sites already recorded in the National Institute of Anthropology and History (IHAH)."

The faculty member in the Anthropology major of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras says that the international publication lacks credibility.

"Any archaeological site in the Mosquitia could be given that name. Ciudad Blanca is a myth, a legend. The publication is not an academic investigation and it gives us a mistaken idea of the work of archaeology" she affirmed.

Martinez recommended that the Government should follow the legal and normal process of the IHAH and solicit a proposal for archaeological investigation, since the goal of the fieldwork that [the US institution involved] has, or if this is a preliminary step, is unknown. Before spreading news of a supposed discovery she thinks that the government ought to shield the Mosquitia from the looting of archaeological objects, which has already been happening and could grow.

 Who are these Honduran skeptics? Eva Martinez was the former head of the division of the Institute of Anthropology that is supposed to be responsible for vetting new projects in order to ensure that Honduras' cultural patrimony is properly managed. Ricardo Agurcia is a former Director of the Institute.

Theirs are not the only Honduran archaeologist's voices being raised in protest of the misrepresentation both of the level of knowledge that already exists of their country's archaeological resources, and of the way that Honduran anthropological archaeology-- a discipline that only recently became a university-level major at the National University-- is being ignored. What they have to say is echoed by many others, nationally and internationally.

We have long known there were large cities in the eastern Honduran rainforest. We have long known that there were traditions of sculpture, closely related to those of Nicaragua and Costa Rica and therefore NOT "Mesoamerican" (contrary to what one US archaeologist quoted by La Prensa said). We have even known for decades that many of the larger sites in the Mosquitia include ballcourts-- which was a real discovery, when it was made in the 1990s by Chris Begley as part of his University of Chicago doctoral research, undertaken with the proper approval and support from Honduran archaeologists.

I was challenged for calling the current project "pseudoscience". It may not be pseudoscience as we normally think of it (aliens built the site! it represents the lost civilization of Atlantis! Lucifer fell to earth here!).

But it isn't science either. Science rests on the assumption that each new investigator acknowledges what previous researchers have done, engages with it, and contributes to a growing body of knowledge. In contemporary anthropological archaeology, that process has led us to reject notions of "lost civilizations" and mysterious cities as hype-- what I called the way this team promoted itself in 2012, and still a valid label today. And that process has made it indispensable to leave behind the colonial legacy of archaeology, to acknowledge the contributions of archaeologists from other countries and the knowledge of local people, including but not just limited to those who might be descendants of the indigenous people whose histories we are tracing.

This ain't science, so give me a better work than pseudoscience: adventurism?

see the complete article in Spanish here

New Taxes, Old Economic Problems

The lame duck Honduran Congress is now piling on taxes to try and make up for the last four years of spending as the Lobo Sosa administration prepares to give way to the presidency of Juan Orlando Hernández.

On Saturday, December 21, the Congress passed a new, extensive series of taxes and rule changes designed to bring up to 4000 million lempiras ($200 million) in new revenue to the government over the next year.  The same measure imposes restrictions on the transfer of income between government branches that is expected to bring about a further 12000 million lempiras ($600 million) in savings.

Everyone will pay a new "special contribution" of 3% on all sales.  This is on top of the already existing sales tax of 12%.

All customs tax exemptions (commonly used by religious institutions, businesses aimed at tourism, newspapers, and power generation companies) are cancelled.  Telephone and cable television service will be subject to the 15% tax, but internet service will continue to be taxed at 12%.

Everyone except those given an exemption under legislation called the Regímenes Especiales de Importación y Turismo will pay a further 5% tax on taxable income greater than 1 million lempiras ($50,000).

Consumption taxes are in general regressive-- they disproportionately affect the poorest members of a population. In addition to the general impact that the Honduran poor will experience from the added special contribution tax, other aspects of the new law will sharply affect their use of energy.

Some consumers receive a subsidy on their electric service.  Until now, that subsidy has been for those who consume less than 150 kw/month.  From today forward, the subsidy will only be for those who consume 75 kw/month or less.

Gasoline will be taxed a further 5.3 lempiras/gallon ($0.25/gallon). The income is supposed to be earmarked for infrastructure and social welfare projects.

But the poor are not targeted by the new sweeping tax increases: property owners will see sharp increases in taxation as well. 

The central government will retain 10% of the gains from the purchase or sale of property, bonds, rights, and titles as a capital gains tax. Dividends will be taxed at 10% as well.

Consumption and property transfer taxes make sense as policy because Honduras has a poor record of tax collection on basic income tax. But that doesn't mean income tax rates were left alone, either.

Foreign companies will pay a tax of 10% on gross income in Honduras. Honduran companies will pay 1.5% on their gross income over 3 million lempiras ($150,000) except if their business is selling cement, services given to the government, pharmaceuticals for human consumption, petroleum products, or supplies for baking, which will pay a tax of 0.75%.

The tax law also contemplates retaining more money for the central government at the expense of entities it owes fixed levels of funding.

The new law freezes the 2014 budget for the central government at 2013 levels. But it also changes how amounts specified in the constitution for other government entities, such as municipal governments and the National Autonomous University, are calculated. Some kinds of income that previously counted in calculating the amounts to transfer will be exempt from being counted now. This means that all dependencies specified as receiving a fixed percent of the government income will receive a budget cut, while the central government will retain more.

On top of all this, there is yet another revision to the security tax.

This revision extends the security tax to cover previously exempt bank accounts with deposits under 120,000 lempiras.  Now, all savings and checking accounts will be taxed. COHEP, one of the principal business organizations in the country, warns that this might lead to capital flight.

So why is Congress doing this now?

Part of the answer is that Honduras simply has to find more revenue or the government cannot continue. And some of the answer is partisan politics, with a hand-off of government from one National Party president to another, something that has never happened since the new Honduran constitution was set in place in the 1980s. Even with the new taxes and savings envisioned under this law, it will not close the fiscal deficit under which the government operates.

Right now the lame duck Congress has enough National Party members to pass anything they want, short of a constitutional amendment. The new Congress might not be so amenable.  The National Party will not have sufficient representation to do what it wants.  It will need to make alliances with other parties in order to enact legislation, making laws like this one difficult to pass.

Most of the Liberal Party members in the present Congress opposed the new taxes, and suggested that the press headline their coverage "National Party passes new taxes". The Liberal membership in the incoming Congress will be joined by LIBRE and PAC contingents that can also be expected to be less inclined to automatically agree with the ruling party's legislative direction

The Lobo Sosa government used 1.4 billion dollars in borrowing to make ends meet this year.  Under the new tax law's projections, the increases will, at best, cover half of that.

It will be up to the next government to figure out how to cover the other half, while improving actual tax collection enough to cover those projections. And that is presumably why, along with changes in the leadership of the police and military, the first choices for government offices made by Juan Orlando Hernández included a new head of the Dirección Ejecutivo de Ingresos (Executive Office of Income), Miriam Guzman, reportedly already at work.

Making Sure? Votes Count

For the last few weeks of the Honduran election, no surveys of the electorate can be published. But really, the only poll that matters will take place this coming Sunday, November 24. According to the Tribunal Supremo Electoral, 5.3 million Hondurans are eligible to vote.

Throughout the country, people in five thousand election centers will place their ballots for president, congress, and municipal mayor in three separate ballot boxes.

What happens then? What ensures that the ballot cast is counted and reported accurately? How reliable should we expect the numbers to be? In part, what you think the answer is depends on how you assess the procedures set in place by the Tribunal Supremo Electoral.

Each individual ballot for president has a Mesa Electoral Receptora number, the name of the voting center, and the department printed on it.  Each of these ballots also has a unique number, with the name of the municipio preprinted on it.

The Presidential Ballot looks like this:

Each Mesa Electoral Receptora has a custodian. In previous elections the churches, through the Catholic Church and the Evangelical Church Association, supplied the custodians. Most of the custodians this time around are students from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras (UNAH).

Each Mesa Electoral Receptora has one representative, and an alternate, from each political party.  Each has a president, secretary, watcher, and members, all appointed to office by the TSE. All procedural votes are by simple majority, with the president of the Mesa abstaining unless there is a tie.

The charge to the MER technical custodians is

• to make sure there is adequate access by voters from the starting hour to the ending hour of voting.
• to observe the rights of the citizens
• to maintain order in the voting centers
• to be yourself transparent and responsible, absent of any authoritarianism.
• to respect the popular will when counting the votes and inscribing the results on the tally sheet
• to return the voting boxes with the tally sheets to the TSE.

Those tally sheets are key to linking the count made at the Mesa and the outcome the TSE reports.

A separate manual for each department of Honduras has detailed instructions including how to count and record the votes from each of the ballot boxes. Observers, both national and international,  may be present but must not reveal any results nor advocate for any candidate. The members of each Mesa fill out and sign an opening form that records how many ballots they have for each office (in numbers and written out in words).

To prevent voters selling their vote, cell phones and cameras are newly banned from voting booths. The voter is given a ballot for the presidential vote, congress, and municipal mayoral election, signed on the back by members of the Mesa. The voter folds each of the three ballots in half to obscure their vote, then brings them back to the Mesa where members verify they have the required signatures on the back.

Counting of the votes begins with checking the ballot for the required signatures and stamp, then the voter's markings are evaluated. Each ballot has a photo of the candidate, the party flag, and a space to mark the vote. But a mark anywhere on the candidate or the flag counts, as long as most of the mark is in the space of a single candidate.

Vote counting is done in public. Anyone can watch, but must remain silent. 

First the President takes an inventory of the leftover supplies, stamps each as "left over" and records the counts on the Accounting form. The president then hands the sealed ballot box to the Examiner who opens it and extracts a vote.

The examiner qualifies the vote as valid, null, or blank and indicates to which party (if valid) it belongs.  It is shown to the members of the Mesa, then passed to the President, who ratifies it. The secretary records it on the appropriate tally sheet with a tick mark for the party, null, or blank.

The president sorts ballots into piles by party, null, or blank, then gives each pile to the Secretary who seals them in plastic bags and puts them back in the voting place briefcase.  Once all the votes are counted, the Secretary fills out the vote count section for each candidate as well as tallying the number of citizens, and Mesa members, who voted.  This, along with the annotation of the number of blank ballots received, plus those left over, finalizes the form.  The numbers are then transferred to the Closing Tally form which is signed by the Mesa members.

Getting the vote tallies to the TSE in Tegucigalpa has been a point of potential weakness in the whole process. In 2009, the tallies were read over cell phones, and entered into the computer in Tegucigalpa based on the phoned-in counts. The results were, to be charitable, incredibly inaccurate.

This year, the TSE is trying a new approach, used successfully in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Completed Closing Forms for president, congress, and the municipal election will be scanned, and sent to the TSE either through a wired internet connection or through a wireless modem across the cell phone network. 

500 voting centers lack electricity or an internet connection, so those votes will not be counted until opened more than a week later in Tegucigalpa. 

In addition to scanning and transmitting the Closing Form, each custodian will print out a copy for the representative of each political party, and for any member of the Mesa that desires a copy.  Once sent, the original Closing Form will be stamped by the custodian with a stamp indicating it has been transmitted (all copies will be stamped).

The president of the Mesa will then aggregate all the oficial forms into an envelope to close out the polling place.  All papers will be returned to the briefcase, sealed for return to the TSE.

In the past, the TSE then recounted every ballot box, and entered the data into a new computer file. The TSE has said it will not announce results the night of the election, only "trends". Meanwhile, Hagamos Democracía, an NGO that produced exit polling that was more accurate than the TSE in 2009, will be operating again this year.

A fairly fragile system for such a consequential election.

Bad Journalism

Proceso Digital is a fairly new Honduran digital newspaper, formed by two professional journalists, Marlen Perdomo de Zelaya and Orfa Sofia Mejia Maradiaga.

Perdomo has a professional degree from UNAH in journalism, and teaches journalism at UNAH. She is also a member of the advisory council of UNAH. Mejia Maradiaga is an investigative reporter, also with a professional degree in journalism from UNAH. She has worked for a number of radio stations and newspapers in Honduras, including Radio Cadena de Noticias and La Prensa. She has also worked for EFE and Reuters, and the digital magazine Revistazo.

In a recent interview in El Heraldo Mejia Maradiaga described journalism as playing a role in the development of society and the strengthening of democracy:

"Objectivity, they say in the classrooms of the university, is the goal (ideal). It is not easy, but it is possible. Obviously you will never please both sides. What we have to try to do is keep as much as possible to the truth, to be as responsible as possible in the treatment of information. We should not think that our truth is the truth which we should impose on our public."

Proceso Digital sometimes comes close to the above journalistic standard, but more often than not fails to distinguish between claims of fact, facts, and opinion.

Their article today about Porfirio Lobo Sosa's impending trip to Spain is a perfect example of when they fail, and is suggestive about what is wrong with Honduran journalism in general. The problems begin with the headline:

Lobo Sosa will go to Spain and make the boycott by "Twenty-First Century Socialism" fail

Already we're in trouble.

As our previous post on the Naumann Foundation showed, the phrase "twenty-first century socialism" is not a fact; it is editorializing. It has no business being in the article or headline except as part of a quotation. But it isn't taken from a quotation; it is inserted by the journalists.

Lobo Sosa will travel to Spain tomorrow, missing the EU-Latin American summit, which is attended by representatives of those countries that threatened to boycott if Lobo Sosa were present. In other words: Lobo Sosa is not there today; he is not at the EU-Latin American summit; and in fact, that means the UNASUR countries got what they demanded.

Lets look at some more of this "news article", datelined Tegucigalpa:

Twenty-First Century socialism failed in its boycott of Honduras, whose representatives will attend the Third Summit of the European Union and Latin America, with which the country has broken the diplomatic siege that some South American governments and their partners in the region still insist on making.

Fact Check: Lets see, the boycott failed because some representatives of Honduras, but not Porfirio Lobo Sosa, will attend the back room meetings, not the meetings of heads of state, at the Third European Union - Latin American summit?

Umm, no, the boycott threatened was by heads of state against Porfirio Lobo Sosa attending the meeting of heads of state. Redefining what the boycott was about is just making things up.

Not very objective journalism, but certainly within the realm of what rags like La Prensa and El Heraldo print every day as news.

Proceso Digital continues:

President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the representative of Honduras, will travel to Spain to attend the summit, which is on the brink of failure because of the impossibility and the limited political clout of Spain to get other governments in tune to achieve the objectives of the meeting.

Fact Check: Better. Porfirio Lobo Sosa will travel to Spain to attend the EU-Central American summit, a subset of the larger EU-Latin American summit. The Central American meetings will happen the day after the Latin America-wide meeting.

Some European news sources, including the BBC, have said the purpose of the meeting is unclear since both sides are divided about how to deal with each other and Europe is distracted by a financial crisis. There are economic trade agreements being negotiated frantically that Spain would like to see signed at the summits, one with the MERCOSUR countries in South America, and a separate agreement with Central America, including Honduras.

The goal of the Madrid EU-Latin American and Caribbean Summit is to get two documents signed. One is a declaration of political alliances between the regions, including themes like technology transfer, the other is a joint action plan. A strategic alliance declaration may well fail.

Returning to Proceso Digital:

Lobo Sosa will participate in the meeting between the EU-Central America, where the main goal is the signing of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, with its free trade component.

Fact Check: Good. This sentence communicates both where Lobo Sosa will go, what meeting he will attend, and why he's going. Note that the UNASUR countries would never have been at this meeting, so the boycott is irrelevant.

In addition, the summit will serve to allow Lobo Sosa to keep bilateral meetings with several leaders and figures of Latin American and Spanish politics.

In addition to meeting with the Spanish authorities who bowed to the boycott of the governments of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), Lobo Sosa will meet with the head of the [Spanish] Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy.

Fact Check: The first sentence is good, emphasizing Lobo Sosa's prominence on the world stage. The second sentence, however, goes off the rails yet again. It was the UNASUR countries that threatened a boycott, not the ALBA countries. They are distinct, separate groups, even if some of their membership overlaps. You need to keep them straight if you claim to provide reliable information.

Many of the Honduran newspapers have written that it is Hugo Chavez, not the presidents of Brazil and Argentina, who is behind the boycott, continuing a pattern of demonizing international pressure on Honduras by associating it with Venezuela. So perhaps the author of the Proceso Digital article is just confused because they've been reading the "journalists" Mejia Maradiaga and Perdomo trained in the university, instead of checking the facts of this story.

Lobo Sosa will, indeed, meet with the Popular Party (PP) head, Mariano Rajoy on his trip to Spain. That is not a surprise: the PP supported the coup, as did Lobo Sosa.

Again, returning to Proceso Digital:

In vain did the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero accede to the blackmail of Chavez, as the Venezuelan president finally decided to punish the Spanish and will not attend the event and sending a person without weight, Deputy Foreign Minister Francisco Cardenas Arias.

It is also likely that the Brazilian President, Lula da Silva, the other agent who announced the boycott, will not attend.

Nor will with Uruguayan President Mujica attend.

In fact, Brazilian President Lula da Silva announced yesterday that he would attend the meetings, so this speculation is factually wrong, and that fact was knowable before the article was posted on the website. Mujica will not attend because of health concerns. The stress of being President of Uruguay has badly affected his health, according to local news sources. These are not responses to Spain's actions nor do they diminish the success of the UNASUR action.

It is likely that in Madrid, if a new obstacle doesn't force Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua to not attend the meeting, that there will be concretized a meeting of the six Central American leaders.

In fact, Ortega may or may not attend since he was listed as "iffy" about the economic agreement. He did not threaten a boycott if Lobo Sosa attended, but Nicaragua has not recognized the Lobo government either.

The above was stated by the president of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, who noted that Madrid is propitious for the desired meeting where the return of Honduras Central American Integration System (SICA) will be defined.

If the reunion of SICA happens, and the Association agreement with the European Union is also signed, Lobo Sosa's trip will have been a diplomatic triumph.

Yes, Colom noted that he's trying to get the Central American presidents together in Madrid to discuss readmitting Honduras into SICA, and that Daniel Ortega might balk at getting everyone together. Getting readmitted to SICA is important for Honduras because symbolically it means Central America has forgiven the coup. It is the precursor to being readmitted to the OAS as well. Economically, Honduras is already participating in SICA, however, so its impact there will be non-existent.

Will it be a diplomatic triumph for which Lobo Sosa can take credit? I'm sure he will, if it happens. Not impossible that it will happen. But it will be Colom's "diplomatic triumph" if so, and a "triumph" of questionable value.

But Lobo Sosa also expects the offensive of the international left, which previously was in charge of the radical groups, unions and NGOs who fought several months for the Spanish government to withdraw the invitation to the Honduran president.

The groups said they had meetings and marches to censure the presence of Lobo Sosa.

The international groups will be supported by Hondurans, followers of the "melista" movement, that supported the ex-leader and employee of Hugo Chávez, Manuel Zelaya, when he was removed from power on June 28, 2009.

Several figures of the Honduran left went to Spain to make complaints and participate in the so-called People's Summit, which brings together all opposition to government figures.

Fact Check: Got a source for that? No one else is saying there will be protests against Lobo Sosa by anyone other than heads of state (remember the boycott?), so I'd really like to know where you got that information, or did you make that up?

And what about the characterization of former President Zelaya as an "employee of Chavez", which we presume is meant to smear supporters of Zelaya in his role as President of Honduras, by blurring the lines between a recent proposal to appoint Zelaya to a ceremonial position with Petrocaribe, and his role during his truncated term of office in Honduras. This is not a fact, it is a sneer.

This has been a fairly long exercise but if you stuck with me you have a fair idea of what passes for professional journalism in Honduras, written, we have to assume, since they are the only names on the website, by Marlen Perdomo de Zelaya or Orfa Sofia Mejia Maradiaga, or both. Certainly it falls far short of what Ms. Mejia cited above as the goal of good journalism. You can, and should do better, Proceso Digital.

Hunger strike at National University becomes serious

Today in El Tiempo there is a report on an ongoing hunger strike by employees and one student at the national university in Tegucigalpa (UNAH). Four of the eleven employees on hunger strike were reportedly treated for medical problems on Thursday including cramps, faintness, strong headaches, and loss of vision.

Tiempo reports that students who are members of the Movimiento de Resistencia Patriótica (MRP) started a drive to collect food for the dismissed employees this past Thursday.

The hunger strike began on April 27 to demand the rehiring of 186 employees who were fired, the article says, "supposedly for taking over the UNAH." La Tribuna gives a more detailed report that describes the situation as beginning on February 23, when members of the UNAH union took over a building to put pressure on the university administration to negotiate a new contract, and then

extended to all the University City [campus] by taking in progressive form the remaining buildings, which impeded classes being able to be held during almost two weeks.

This led directly to the arrest of University union leaders on charges of, among other things, charges of sedition, as we previously described. On May 3, the judge hearing the case issued a dismissal for the remaining union members whose charges were still pending.

The Tiempo article notes that

uncertainty is growing for the university workers, since their calls still have not been heard by the university rector, Julieta Castellanos

According to coverage in La Tribuna, the initial hunger strikers, David Montoya Velásquez, Víctor Rodríguez, María Juvencia Alvarez, Katy Marlen Pereira, Josué David Reyes and Dilier Herrera, were joined on April 30 by a philosophy student Marvin Amílcar Pérez, and workers Nora Valladares, Jorge Rafael Durón Flores, Gustavo Adolfo Salinas, María Lucila Miranda and Anderson Flores. Finally, a few days later, Samuel Elías Sánchez Flores and Abelardo Antonio Alvarado joined the protest.

Four are in critical condition. Anderson Flores was hospitalized on May 6. No progress appears to be happening on negotiating an end to their hunger strike. Julieta Castellanos met with the Secretary of Trabajo y Seguridad Social, Felicito Ávila a week ago to try to agree on a solution, without success.

Castellanos, of course, is busy in her recently adopted role of Honduran member of the highly contested "Truth Commission".

Retaliation Against Honduras' National University

Student correspondents at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras (UNAH) write, alarmed at proposals to close the university "temporarily", which they believe are a pretext to dismiss existing faculty and hire new professors, who our correspondents suspect will be selected on ideological grounds.

The threat to close the university has been widely reported in the Honduran press. While today's coverage in La Tribuna says the proposal has been discarded, it also reports the head of Congress saying that

“there has been talk of distinct options to approach this problem, we're not going to hide it, there are congress members that have advised that if this continues it might be more profitable to give a grant to a student so that he could study in a private university, the amount that a student at the autonoma [UNAH] costs the State so much that it has been said, but no decision has been taken."

Rigoberto Chang Castillo, secretary of the National Congress, reportedly proposed closing UNAH as "ungovernable". News coverage notes that Chang Castillo is a faculty member of the school of law, and cites a precedent (although unsuccessful) when in 2008, then-president of the Junta de Dirección Universitaria, Olvin Rodríguez, called for a two year closure of the university which quite obviously was not implemented.

The most recent news reports say that the heads of the three branches of government, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, Juan Orlando Hernández (on behalf of Congress), and Jorge Rivera Avilés (from the Supreme Court) met with Julieta Castellanos, rector of UNAH, and decided against closing the university.

Yet today, the university has reportedly been closed for a period of ten days, although not apparently by the National Congress: the Ministry of Health says it is closing the campus due to unhealthy conditions created by garbage accumulated when workers went on strike. The Health Ministry claims in particular that dengue (a mosquito born illness) and H1N1 (spread by contact with someone already affected) will be promoted by the trash that has built up on campus and the uncleaned bathrooms. This suggests the ministry of health has a novel view of disease processes, one that we might have hoped was not the understanding of the officials charged with improving health conditions in the country.

The current irritation to the government that is behind the proposal floated this week is the continuing strike by SITRAUNAH, the union that represents labor at UNAH. SITRAUNAH has been on strike since February 23 in a power struggle over reforms at the university. One of the keys to the controversy is the University's unwillingness to continue with the requirement to make payments of over two years of salary upon the death of an employee. As a result, SITRAUNAH has gone on strike and taken over buildings.

The union appears to have some faculty and student support, with recent reports of strikes by some faculty and students, although these also concern proposed financial policies that directly affect students. But SITRAUNAH does not have support from the administration of the university: according to today's report in La Tribuna, Julieta Castellanos requested the congress declare this strike illegal.

The Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubi, would go further: he wants to charge union members with sedition, usurpation, and coercion and has asked a judge in Tegucigalpa to issue arrest orders for the entire leadership of the union.

Sedition? Really? Sedition is an illegal action against lawful authority, directed at a government, tending towards insurrection, but which does not itself amount to treasonous conduct.

What makes the university such a target? Among other things, UNAH is full of intellectuals who have written critical analyses of the conditions that led to the coup d'etat, and of the overall system of government in the country. As we noted in a previous post, UNAH has been criticized for hiring former members of the Zelaya administration, people well-qualified for the jobs they took on.

During the months of open aggression by the Micheletti regime, UNAH students and faculty, even the rector, were subjects of violence. UNAH, and the national teaching university, the Pedagógica, were accused of being sites where bombs/Molotov cocktails were constructed and stored, despite the documented fact that the chemistry lab where the police claimed this was going on had burned years earlier, and not been repaired or replaced.

UNAH is a continuing irritation to government because it is in the nature of a university to encourage free expression of opinions and the development of critical perspectives. The fact that the national congress and public prosecutor are using a labor dispute as a pretext to discuss shutting the whole place down, and even re-directing public funding to private universities, is another indication that Honduras remains far from the ideal of reconciliation and far from conditions that would allow a real pursuit of the truth about the political events of 2009.

UNAH Under Pressure for Hiring Ex-Zelaya Officials

A story in El Heraldo yesterday reports that two former members of the Zelaya administration are, or are likely to be, hired by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras (UNAH).

Speaking to reporters, the rector of the university, Julieta Castellanos-- who became inadvertently famous as the woman who was attacked by anti-riot police in August, 2009, when she and other university officials came out to calm a confrontation between police and students-- is quoted as saying hiring Armando Sarmiento and Marlon Brevé "is not against the Law".

Armando Sarmiento was director of the Honduran equivalent of the IRS (the DEI). He will occupy the position of secretary of Institutional Development of UNAH. Marlon Brevé was Minister of Education in the Zelaya administration. According to an article on the Radio America website, the UNAH is awaiting a response from Brevé to an offer of a position in the directorship of post-graduate studies.

The Radio America article leads with a claim that the rumor circulating is that

UNAH has been converted into the refuge of Zelaya ex-officials.

"Refuge" in this and other press coverage is an interesting choice of words, suggesting that ex-Zelaya administration officials are being viewed as illegitimate. This is made extremely clear in the way that Castellanos is forced to reply to questioning: not only was she compelled to state that these hires were not against the law; she also is quoted as saying

We have interviewed many people for these jobs and we consider that they are people that have the expertise.

Castellanos is, once again, showing personal integrity. But she is also acting like an academic, as if the real world around her will accept the idea of going ahead without dragging history into things. Meanwhile, the press is clearly ready to conduct a witch hunt, and the university is being painted as of questionable loyalty.

The scrutiny being leveled at these appointments strongly suggests that at least some Hondurans-- notably, those who control these media outlets-- are far from putting the coup behind them. Are former members of the government not to be hired in positions they are qualified to hold? Or, as other comments in these articles suggest, does the Honduran media-- whose biased reporting was a major factor in inciting the coup d'etat-- really want to see show trials over the cuarta urna campaign?

It will be in reactions to things like the attempt by former Zelaya government members to reintegrate in civil society that the thinness of "reconciliation" will be most obvious. Naming a few token outsiders to your cabinet doesn't create reconciliation-- and neither will conducting a pretense of a truth commission.