Honduras's new political direction on the horizon

Honduran parliament approved internal Elections for November 16, 2008. They were originally scheduled for Feb 2009, the change was due to the pending election of the new Supreme Court.

The change of internal election dates, is part of a controversial reform of the Electoral Act passed by Honduran Congress. The Reform, already vetoed once by President Zelaya, and approved 2 days later by Congress, states that primary elections can changed from Feb. 9 2009 to Nov. 16. 2008.

Other implications of this reform are:

1. It makes the present government give 50 Million Dollars to 5 established Honduran political parties. (1.5% of the countries budget!)
2. According to Michelleti, (Chairman of the National Congress, who has also expressed his interest in becoming President of Honduras ), "the only thing we seek is to neutralize any possibility of organized crime or drug cartels financing politicians, because they could create chaos in Honduras."
3. The new law eliminated the so-called "debt policy" ("Politica de Deuda") implemented for 25 years and through which the government paid one dollar to the parties for every vote in its favor, in the elections. That generated about $ 5 million. (Supposing 5,000,000 Hondurans voted. 2005 Elections brought up an total of 3.9 million voters)
   

The reform was promoted and adopted by Liberal party ("Partido Liberal", in power), and the National Party, the other major political Party in Honduras.

The Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, is not too happy with the change, basically because the political excitement and media bonanza that comes with political elections will strongly distract attention from his agenda and affect the efficiency of his last days of term, and with that the continuity of his national plan.

ALBA: Is this economic Model right for Honduras?

Newspapers today have confidently quoted Roberto Micheletti's words. Michelleti, Chairman of the National Congress, when referring to the governments internal analysis in considering Honduras's participation in ALBA, said the following:

"I talked with the President and made it clear; if the ALBA has a single participation in military affairs, Congress will not approve it"

The main congressional representative said that Honduras is a country of peace and harmony. He also stated that the NC (National Congress) will support any commercial treaty involving matters of state, but "we are not going to support agreements that have been signed from one president to the other president."
Keep in mind that Roberto Michelleti also been known for his ideas in favor of public services being privatized.

Aside from the conclusions one can make of the importance given to a President's signature, we are confronted with another equally important question that many seem not to be able to answer conclusively. What is ALBA?

Alba, according to their main webpage:

"The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) is based, fundamentally, upon a model of politic, economic and social integration of countries, as the Caribbean and Latin American, which share geographic spaces, historical and cultural bonds, necessities and common potentialities" The Bolivarian Alternative is headed by President Hugo Chavez himself.

Their politics are based in principles of cooperation, solidarity and "Complementarity". It is also vere clear about what it is against: "ALBA is an alternative to the neo-liberal model, which has not done but that to deepen the structural asymmetries and to favor the accumulation of wealth in privileged minorities in detriment of the well-being of countries" (In simple words, they believe that when the rich get richer, the poor get, well, poorer.)

Their website provides a review of what Alba is, its mandates and prinicipals. Most of what they say is very good and gives hope to the Latin American community. But, there are some parts of it that should be looked at carefully. I also want to clarify, that I am as new to this as most readers, and I don't pretend to be inclined either way, or claim to know the right answer. I do, in fact, strongly promote that people better understand what ALBA is proposing, and have their own ideas about it. Discuss them openly and create awareness, specially about the following statements ALBA makes about itself and its agenda.

ALBA Claims to:

*Strengthen sovereignty and balance, of the countries in the region.
(By the way, Sovereign according to Merriam Websters dictionary:
a: one possessing or held to possess sovereignty b: one that exercises supreme authority within a limited sphere c: an acknowledged leader)

*Alba is based on cooperation through compensatory "founds" (I believe that the correct translation is FUNDS, from whom? Probably Private business's tax, individual's income tax and government owned businesses; perhaps "dues" as are paid to the United Nations?).

*They are proposing to "rethink the agreements of integration".

*To wake up the conscience in the developing of , among other things, a new military leadership.

*Launch a Latin American Union.

*Give national companies advantage to become public suppliers. (What do they mean by national companies?).

* "The foreign investors will not be able to demand the countries by the handling of state monopolies of public interest"

*"Treatment special and differentiated to unequal economies to open opportunities to the weakest". In other words, double standards.

*"Process of wide social participation, which can be characterized like democratic" In other words, we, Latin Americans, have the power, and thus the responsibility to understand and intervene on this agenda as our conscience deems to be true and good. And this is why its important to truly understand this agenda.

*"Creation of founds (Funds) of structural convergence for the correction of asymmetries" Now this one, I put in, because I'm afraid couldn't understand. Anyone care to comment and help me out with this one?

*"In the ALBA, the fight against the protectionist policies and the ruinous subsidies of the industrialized countries cannot deny the right of the poor countries to protect its farmers and agricultural producers". While they are saying that protectionist policies have damaged our countries, they are also saying that they are also going to implement them for their our gain.

*"In these countries agriculture is, rather, a way of life and it cannot be treated like any other economic activity". (Keep in mind that historically Agriculture was the first economic activity that produced surplus, and that part of our economic underdevelopment and malnourishment comes from lack of improvement in agricultural methods and business training, as well as lack of nutritional knowledge. A true example of this is mothers giving Coca-Cola to their children instead of milk!.).

*"ALBA must attack (...) The deep inequalities and asymmetries between countries".

*They also question the validity of intellectual property. (And while I strongly support open source and free information, I also strongly defend that he who labored, invested and struggled to develop new ideas, has the right to choose whether to sell them or give them away).

*"To pay attention to the problems that affect the consolidation of a true democracy, such as the monopolized social mass media" Its important to fight for free media and freedom of speech. Whether their policies envision that power of the individual is unclear to me, its very clear that we have to be protective of our right to express what we think. I think there is a basic, perhaps intentional confusion here mixing up 'consolidation of a true democracy' and free market, or capitalist dynamics.

*"To face the so called Reformation of the State that only took us to an unfair processes of deregulation, privatization and disassembling of the capacities of public management." Basically saying, the government is going to get bigger, handle more money and more responsibility, taking it away from anyone who would like to make a profit from such activities.

*Without a clear intervention of the State directed to reduce the disparities between countries, the free competition between unequal countries will lead us to make the damage of weakest worst. This in other words, means a very direct counter movement to the NAFTA... (Free Trade Agreement or Tratado de Libre Comercio).

*To deepen Latin American integration requires an economic agenda defined by the sovereign States, outside all ominous influence of the international organisms. Sounds a bit like isolationist theory at work here...any research out there? What constitutes an "ominous influence" - not to mention "international organism?"

So there you go, a brief and interesting view of ALBA's most controversial policies. Think them over, discuss them and let the people know they have the right to have their own opinions on the subject and promote them.

Honduras: Dignity is natural

Honduras has historically been a place of multicultural cohesion. When compared with Guatemala's social contrasts, Salvador's hard working spirit or Nicaragua's strong sense of self, Honduras has always been a place of rich mixture and easy adaptation. The Civil wars that plagued the Central America of the 80's was never really the case in Honduras, although, Hondurans where indeed affected through policies that promoted aiding external right-wing groups on all three borders, as well as in-house. When facing great disasters, like the Cholera epidemic back in the early 90's, or Hurricane Stan (20,000 Killed), Hondurans braced each other like the brothers they are and managed to mobilize faster than expected. True, when the intensity of the damage had passed, much like New Orleans Katrina, reconstruction took for ever...

Hondurans are a people who take pride in hosting others, and feel proud of being called friends, they are aware of the beauty of simplicity and are keen to spotting the differences between genuine good natured relations vs. fake ones. And while most Hondurans will not welcome a stranger with a fake smile, and in that sense they are more likely to look at a stranger with open distrust, when genuine good intentions are manifested, they will indeed be open to becoming true friends.

Immigrants from various parts of the world have found themselves welcome in this great country. From North American to Southern middle eastern, racial background has never been a significant problem in Honduras, and variety is always growing. There isn't much more to say about it, you'd have to experience it yourself. A visitor who naturally treats people with dignity will find himself rewarded with the same treatment tenfold.

13. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: Honduras, La Esperanza, Part II

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:

Beyond a fordable, ice-cold stream a fairly good road changed to an atrocious mountain trail in a labyrinth of tumbled pine-clad ridges and gullies, on which I soon lost my way in a drizzling rain. The single telegraph wire came to my rescue, jumping lightly from moss-grown stick to tall slender tree-trunk across vast chasms down into and out of which I had to slip and slide and stumble pantingly upward in pursuit. Before dark I was delighted to fall upon a trail again, though not with its condition, for it was generally perpendicular and always thick with loose stones. A band of arrieros cooking their scanty supper under a shelter tent asserted there were houses some two leagues on, but for hours I hobbled over mountains of pure stone, my maltreated feet wincing at every step, without verifying the assertion. Often the descents were so steep I had to pick each footstep carefully in the darkness, and more than one climb required the assistance of my hands. A swift stream all but swept me off my feet, and in the stony climb beyond I lost both trail and telegraph wire and, after floundering about for some time in a swamp, was forced to halt and swing my hammock between two saplings under enormous sheer cliffs that looked like great medieval castles in the night, their white faces spotted by the trees that found foothold on them. Happily I had dropped well down out of the clouds that hover about Esperanza and the cold mountain wind was now much tempered. The white mountain wall rising sheer from my very hips was also somewhat sheltering, though it was easy to dream of rocks being dropped from aloft upon me.

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
"Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond"
Will be published every day!

12. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: The old Woman and her leg, San Juan, Copán Honduras

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:
From soon after noon until sunset I climbed incessantly among tumbled
rocks without seeing a human being. A cold wind howled through a vast
pine forest of the highest altitude of my Honduranean journey--more than
six thousand feet above sea-level. Night fell in wild solitude, but I
could only plod on, for to sleep out at this height would have been
dangerous. Luckily a corner of moon lighted up weirdly a moderately wide
trail. I had tramped an hour or more into the night when a flickering
light ahead among the trees showed what might have been a camp of
bandits, but which proved to be only that of a group of muleteers, who
had stacked their bales of merchandise around three sides under an
ancient roof on poles and rolled up in their blankets close to the
blazing wood fire they had built to the leeward of it.

They gave no sign of offering me place and I marched on into the howling
night. Perhaps four miles beyond I made out a cluster of habitations
pitched on the summit and slope of a hill leaning toward the trail with
nothing above it on any side to break the raging wind. An uproar of
barking dogs greeted my arrival, and it was some time before an inmate
of one of the dark and silent huts summoned up courage to peer out upon
me. He emerged armed with a huge stick and led the way to a miserable
hovel on the hilltop, where he beat on the door and called out that an
"hombrecito" sought posada. This opened at last and I entered a mud
room in one end of which a fire of sticks blazed fitfully. A woman of
perhaps forty, though appearing much older, as is the case with most
women of Honduras, lay on a wooden bed and a girl of ten huddled among
rags near the fire. I asked for food and the woman ordered the girl to
heat me black coffee and tortillas. The child was naked to the waist,
though the bitter cold wind howled with force through the hut, the walls
and especially the gables and roof of which were far from whole. The
woman complained of great pain in her right leg, and knowing she would
otherwise groan and howl the night through in the hope of attracting the
Virgin's attention, I induced her to swallow two sedative pills. The
smoke made me weep as I swung my hammock from two soot-blackened
rafters, but the fire soon went out and I awoke from the first doze
shivering until the hut shook. The temperature was not low compared with
our northern winters, but the wind carried a penetrating chill that
reached the marrow of the bones. I rose and tried unsuccessfully to
relight the fire. The half-naked girl proved more skilful and I sat
huddled on a stool over the fire, alternately weeping with the smoke and
all but falling into the blaze as I dozed. The pills had little effect
on my hostess. I gave her three more, but her Honduranean stomach was
evidently zinc-lined and she groaned and moaned incessantly. I returned
to my hammock and spent several dream-months at the North Pole before I
was awakened at first cockcrow by the old woman kneeling on the earth
floor before a lithograph of the Virgin surrounded by withered pine
branches, wailing a singsong prayer. She left off at length with the
information that her only hope of relief was to make a pilgrimage to the
"Virgen de los Remedios," and ordered the girl to prepare coffee. I paid
my bill of two reales and gave the girl one for herself, evidently the
largest sum she had ever possessed, if indeed she remained long in
possession of it after I took my hobbling and shivering departure.


More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
"Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond"
Will be published every day!

11. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: San Juan, Copán, Honduras

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:
Not only have these people of the wilderness next to nothing to eat, but
they are too indolent to learn to cook what they have. The thick, doughy
tortillas and half-boiled black beans, accompanied by black, unstrained
coffee with dirty crude sugar and without milk, were not merely
monotonous, but would have been fatal to civilized man of sedentary
habits. Only the constant toil and sweat, and the clear water of
mountain stream offset somewhat the evil effects under which even a
horseman would probably have succumbed. The inhabitants of the
Honduranean wilds are distinctly less human in their habits than the
wild men of the Malay Peninsula. For the latter at least build floors
of split bamboo above the ground. Without exaggeration the people of
this region were more uncleanly than their gaunt and yellow curs, for
the latter carefully picked a spot to lie in while the human beings
threw themselves down anywhere and nonchalantly motioned to a guest to
sit down or drop his bundle among fresh offal. They literally never
washed, except by accident, and handled food and filth alternately with
a child-like blandness.

I was just preparing to leave San Juan when a woman came from a
neighboring hut to request my assistance at a child-birth! In this
region all "gringoes" have the reputation of being physicians, and the
inhabitants will not be undeceived. I forcibly tore myself away and
struck for the surrounding wilderness.


More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
"Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond"
Will be published every day!

10. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: Rural Honduras: Boiled Eggs!

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:
The futility of Honduranean life was illustrated here and there. On some vast hillside capable of producing food for a multitude the eye made out a single _milpa_, or tiny corn-field, fenced off with huge slabs of mahogany worth easily ten times all the corn the patch could produce in a lifetime--or rather, worth nothing whatever, for a thing is valuable only where it is in demand. At ten I lost the way, found it again, and began an endless, rock-strewn climb upward through pines, tacking more times than I could count, each leg of the ascent a toilsome journey in itself. Not the least painful of road experiences in Honduras is to reach the summit of such a range after hours of heavy labor, to take perhaps a dozen steps along the top of the ridge, and then find the trail pitching headlong down again into a bottomless gorge, from which comes up the joyous sound of a mountain stream that draws the thirsty traveler on at double speed, only to bring him at last to a rude bridge over a precipitous, rock-sided river impossible to reach before attacking the next slope staring him in the face. Luckily I foraged an imitation dinner in San Juan, a scattering of mud huts on a broad upland plain, most of the adult inhabitants of which were away at some work or play in the surrounding hills. Cattle without number dotted the patches of unlevel meadows, but not a drop of milk was to be had. Roosters would have made the night a torture, yet three eggs rewarded the canvassing of the entire hamlet. These it is always the Honduranean custom to puncture with a small hole before dropping into hot water, no doubt because there was no other way of getting the universal uncleanliness into them. Nor did I ever succeed in getting them more than half cooked. Once I offered an old woman an extra real if she would boil them a full three minutes without puncturing them. She asserted that without a hole in the end "the water could not get in to cook them," but at length solemnly promised to follow my orders implicitly. When the eggs reappeared they were as raw as ever, though somewhat warm, and each had its little punctured hole. I took the cook to task and she assured me vociferously that "they broke themselves." Apparently there was some superstition connected with the matter which none dared violate. At any rate I never succeeded in being served un-holed eggs in all rural Honduras.

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
"Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond"
Will be published every day!