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!

9. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: Gracias, Copán, Honduras II

Written by Harry A. Franck in 1916:
In the morning heavy mountain clouds and a swirling mist made
photography impossible, but my host was not of the grade of intelligence
that made this simple explanation possible. He led the way into the
windowless hut, in a corner of which lay a woman of perhaps thirty in a
dog-litter of a bed enclosed by curtains hung from the rafters. The
walls were black with coagulated smoke. The woman, yellow and emaciated
with months of fever, groaned distressingly as the curtains were drawn
aside, but her solicitous husband insisted on propping her up in bed and
holding her with an arm about the shoulders while I "put them both on
paper." His purpose, it turned out, was to send the picture to the
shrine of "la Virgen de los Remedios" that she might cure the groaning
wife of her ailment, and he insisted that it must show "bed and all and
the color of her face" that the Virgin might know what was required of
her. I went through the motions of taking a photograph and explained as
well as was possible why it could not be delivered at once, with the
added information to soften his coming disappointment that the machine
sometimes failed. The fellow merely gathered the notion that I was but a
sorry magician at best, who had my diabolical hocuspocus only
imperfectly under control, and he did not entirely succeed in keeping
his sneers invisible. I offered quinine and such other medicines as were
to be found in my traveling case, but he had no faith in worldly
remedies.

By nine the day was brilliant. There was an unusual amount of level
grassy trail, though steep slopes were not lacking. During the morning I
passed several bands of ragged soldiers meandering northward in rout
order and some distance behind them their bedraggled women and children,
all afoot and carrying their entire possessions on their heads and
backs. Frequently a little wooden cross or a heap of stones showed where
some traveler had fallen by the wayside, perhaps at the hands of his
fellow-man; for the murder rate, thanks largely to drink and vendettas,
is high in Honduras. It might be less if assassins faced the death
penalty, instead of being merely shut within prisons from which an
active man could soon dig his way to freedom with a pocket-knife, if he
did not have the patience to wait a few months until a new revolution
brought him release or pardon.

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916
Will be published every day!

8. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: Gracias, Copán, Honduras

Google map view of his Journey, search for "Gracias"!.

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Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:
An hour's walk next morning brought me to Gracias, a slovenly,
nothing-to-do-but-stare hamlet of a few hundred inhabitants. After I had
eaten all the chief hut could supply, I set about looking for the
shoemaker my already aged Guatemalan Oxfords needed so badly. I found
the huts where several of them lived, but not where any of them
worked. The first replied from his hammock that he was sick, the second
had gone to Tegucigalpa, the third was "somewhere about town if you have
the patience to wait." Which I did for an hour or more, and was rewarded
with his turning up to inform me that he was not planning to begin his
labors again so soon, for only yesterday had been Christmas.

Over the first hill and river beyond, I fell in with a woman who carried
on an unbroken conversation as well as a load on her head, from the time
she accepted the first cigar until we had waded the thigh-deep "rio
grande" and climbed the rocky bank to her hut and garden. At first she
had baldly refused to allow her picture to be taken. But so weak-willed
are these people of Honduras that a white man of patience can in time
force them to do his bidding by sheer force of will, by merely looking
long and fixedly at them. Many the "gringo" who has misused this power
in Central America. Before we reached her home she had not only posed
but insisted on my stopping to photograph her with her children "dressed
up" as befitted so extraordinary an occasion. Her garden was unusually
well supplied with fruit and vegetables, and the rice boiled in milk she
served was the most savory dish I had tasted in Honduras. She refused
payment, but insisted on my waiting until the muleteers she had charged
for their less sumptuous dinner were gone, so they should not discover
her unpatriotic favoritism.

During the afternoon there was for a time almost level going, grassy and
soft, across gently dipping meadows on which I left both mule-trains and
pedestrians behind. Houses were rare, and the fall of night threatened
to leave me alone among vast whining pine forests where the air was
already chill. In the dusk, however, I came upon the hut of Pablo
Morales and bespoke posada. He growled a surly permission and addressed
hardly a word to me for hours thereafter. The place was the most filthy,
quarrelsome, pig and chicken overrun stop on the trip, and when at last
I prepared to swing my hammock inside the hut the sulky host informed me
that he only permitted travelers the _corredor_. Two other
guests--ragged, soil-encrusted arrieros--were already housed within, but
there were at least some advantages in swinging my own net outside from
the rafters of the eaves. Pigs jolted against me now and then and before
I had entirely fallen asleep I was disturbed by a procession of dirty
urchins, each carrying a blazing pine stick, who came one by one to look
me over. I was just settling down again when Pablo himself appeared, an
uncanny figure in the dancing light of his flaming torch. He had heard
that I could "put people on paper," and would I put his wife on paper in
return for his kindness in giving me posada? Yes, in the morning. Why
couldn't I do it now? He seemed strangely eager, for a man accustomed to
set mañana as his own time of action. His surly indifference had
changed to an annoying solicitude, and he forced upon me first a
steaming tortilla, then a native beverage, and finally came with a large
cloth hammock in which I passed the night more comfortably than in my
own open-work net.


More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916
Will be published every day!

7. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: Rio Grande, Copán, Honduras

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:



It was sunset when I came to the "great river," a broad and noisy though
only waist-deep stream with two sheer, yet pine-clad rock cliffs more
striking than the Palisades of the Hudson. A crescent moon was peering
over them when I passed the swinging bridge swaying giddily to and fro
high above the stream, but on the steep farther bank it lighted up only
a cruel disappointment. For the "casita" was nothing but a roof on
wabbly legs, a public rest-house where I might swing my hammock but go
famished to bed. I pushed on in quest of a more human habitation. The
"road" consisted of a dozen paths shining white in the moonlight and
weaving in and out among each other. No sign of man appeared, and my
foot protested vehemently. I concluded to be satisfied with water to
drink and let hunger feed upon itself. But now it was needed, not a
trickle appeared. Once I fancied I heard a stream babbling below and
tore my way through the jungle down a sharp slope, but I had only caught
the echo of the distant river. It was well on into the night when the
welcome sound again struck my ear. This time it was real, and I fought
my way down through clutching undergrowth and stone heaps to a stream,
sluggish and blue in color, but welcome for all that, to swing my
hammock among stone heaps from two elastic saplings, for it was just my
luck to have found the one spot in Honduras where there were no trees
large enough to furnish shelter. Luckily nothing worse than a heavy dew
fell. Now and then noisy boisterous bands of natives passed along the
trail from their Christmas festivities in the town ahead. But whereas a
Mexican highway at this hour would have been overrun with drunken peons
more or less dangerous to "gringoes," drink seemed to have made these
chiefly amorous. Still I took good care to arrange myself for the night
quietly, if only to be able to sleep undisturbed. Once, somewhere in the
darkest hours, a drove of cattle stampeded down the slope near me, but
even as I reached for my weapon I found it was not the band of peons
from a dream of which I had awakened. The spot was some 1500 feet lower
than Santa Rosa, but still so sharp and penetrating is the chill of
night in this region in contrast to the blazing, sweating days that I
did not sleep a moment soundly after the first hour of evening.

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916
Will be published every day!

6. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: Santa Rosa, Copán, Honduras

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:

The only other industry of Santa Rosa is the raising of tobacco and the
making of a tolerably good cigar, famed throughout Honduras and selling
here twenty for a real. Every hut and almost every shop is a cigar
factory. The town is four thousand feet above sea-level, giving it a
delightful, lazy, satisfied-with-life-just-as-it-is air that partly
makes up for its ignorance, disease, and unmorality. The population is
largely Indian, unwashed since birth, and with huge hoof-like bare feet
devoid of sensation. There is also considerable Spanish blood, generally
adulterated, its possessors sometimes shod and wearing nearly white
cotton suits and square white straw hats. In intelligence the entire
place resembles children without a child's power of imitation. Except
for the snow-white church, the town is entirely one-story, with tile
roofs, a ragged flowery plaza, and straight streets, sometimes cobbled,
that run off down hill, for the place is built on a meadowy knoll with a
fine vista of hills and surrounded by an immensely rich land that would
grow almost anything in abundance with a minimum of cultivation.

The one way of getting an early start in Honduras is to make your
purchases the night before and eat them raw in the morning. Christmas
day had barely dawned, therefore, when I began losing my way among the
undulating white rock paths beyond Santa Rosa. Such a country brings
home to man his helplessness and unimportance before untamed nature. I
wished to be in Tegucigalpa, two hundred miles away, within five days;
yet all the wealth of Croesus could not have brought me there in that
time. As it was, I had broken the mule-back record, and many is the
animal that succumbs to the up and down trails of Honduras. This one
might, were such triteness permissible, have been most succinctly
characterized by a well-known description of war. It was rougher than
any stone-quarry pitched at impossible angles, and the attraction of
gravity for my burden passed belief. To this I had been forced to add
not merely a roll of silver reales but my Christmas dinner, built up
about the nucleus of a can of what announced itself outwardly as pork
and beans. Talgua, at eleven, did not seem the fitting scene for so
solemn a ceremony, and I hobbled on, first over a tumble-down stone
bridge, then by a hammock-bridge to which one climbed high above the
river by a notched stick and of which two thirds of the cross-slats were
missing, while the rest cracked or broke under the 185 pounds to which I
subjected them.

I promised myself to pitch camp at the very next clear stream. But the
hammock-bridge once passed there began a heart-breaking climb into
bone-dry hills, rolling with broken stones, and palpitating with the
heat of an unshaded tropical sun. Several times I had perished of thirst
before I came to a small sluggish stream, only to find its water deep
blue with some pollution. In the end I was forced to overlook this
drawback and, finding a sort of natural bathtub among the blazing rocks,
fell upon what after all proved to be a porkless feast. The doctor's
treatment had reduced the swelling in foot and ankle, but the wound
itself was more painful than ever and called for frequent soaking. In
midafternoon I passed a second village, as somnolent as the
belly-gorged zopilotes that half-jumped, half-flew sluggishly out
of the way as Iadvanced.
Here was a bit of fairly flat and shaded going, with another
precarious hammock-bridge, then an endless woods with occasional sharp
stony descents to some brawling but most welcome stream, with
stepping-stones or without. Thus far I had seen barely a human being all
the day, but as the shades of evening grew I passed several groups of
arrieros who blasted my hopes of reaching Gracias that night, but who
informed me that just beyond the "rio grande" was a _casita_ where
I might spend the night.

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916
Will be published every day!

Strike Culture Part II: Teachers Strike

According to Heraldos Latest News, today 1.3 Million Children will not go to school, due to differences existing withing the magisterial directives.

Last week, COPEMH ( Mid education teachers guild or "Colegio de Profesores de Educación Media de Honduras") stopped school for half a million children, as a measure to demand the payment of 3,000 teachers. This event was solved after recent COPEMH leader Eulogio Chávez ( Elected president back in dic, 2007) and president Zelaya, signed a payment agreement under the understanding that school would start today.

Today, representatives of the Magisterial Organizations Federation, declared a strike. According to them, Eulogio Chávez is not really pushing demands that represent the whole organization, and the signed treaty should of also resolved the following issues, (Found in La Tribunas version of the situation):

- Submission of Budget and Review of budgeted employment vacancies, that remain vacant.
- The creation of 313 teacher employment openings this year.
- Resolve of the unfulfilled of free school inscriptions.
- Payment of the "Student Bonus" ( The student bonus is a a program created for high achieving primary and high school students that includes transportation and scholarships, acording to the Secretary of Educations web page.
- Payment of gouvernamental debt of around 1,000,000,000 Lempiras ($50,000,00), to Inprema. Imprema (Magisterial institute for retirements and pension), "loaned the government money in order to pay for public worker salaries, amongst them, teacher salaries. The government agreed to pay that completely in three years... so far... apparently, the debt has only gone up. Money that is intended to provide for the needs of retired teachers.)

1,300,000 students aren't going to school. Why?

The biggest problems arise from the lack of vision and wise priorities; Subject of an article we are working on now. Like the subsidizing strategies for public transportation, the problems we are seeing now come from the combination of ancient social problems and current global economic problems. Once again, the games have changed, and the solutions for present problems can no longer come from traditional measures. This is crucial to understand. The answers are there, they are probably simpler than organizing 30,000 teachers on a weekend notice, they are probably better and more synergistic.

5. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: San Agustín, Copán, Honduras Part II

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:

Tobacco is grown about San Augustín, and every woman of the place rolls
clumsy cigars and cigarettes as incessantly as those of other parts knit
or sew. The wife and daughter of my host were so engaged when I
returned, toiling leisurely by the light of pine splinters; for rural
Honduras has not yet reached the candle stage of progress. For a
half-real I bought thirty cigarettes of the size of a lead-pencil, made
of the coarse leaves more fitted to cigars. The man and wife, and the
child that had been stark naked ever since my arrival, at length rolled
up together on a bundle of rags on the dank earth floor, the daughter of
eighteen climbed a knotched stick into a cubbyhole under the roof, and
when the pine splinter flickered out I was able for the first night in
Honduras to get out of my knee-cramping breeches and into more
comfortable sleeping garments. The festered heel gave me considerable
annoyance. A bread and milk poultice would no doubt have drawn the fever
out of it, but even had any such luxury been obtainable I should have
applied it internally. During the night I awoke times without number.
Countless curs, that were to real dogs what these people are to
civilized races, howled the night hideous, as if warning the village
periodically of some imaginary danger, suggested perhaps by the scent of
a stranger in their midst. Sometime in the small hours two youths,
either drunk or enamored of the bedraggled senorita in the cubbyhole
above, struck up a mournful, endless ballad of two unvarying lines, the
one barely heard, the other screeching the eternal refrain until the
night shuddered with it. All the clothing I possessed was not enough to
keep me warm both above and below.

One of the chief difficulties of the road in Honduras is the
impossibility of arousing the lazy inhabitants in time to prepare some
suggestion of breakfast at a reasonably early hour. For to set off
without eating may be to fast all the hot and laborious day. The sun was
already warm when I took up the task of picking my way from among the
many narrow, red, labyrinthian paths that scattered over the hill on
which San Augustín reposes and radiated into the rocky, pine-forested,
tumbled mountain world surrounding it. Some one had said the trail to
Santa Rosa was easy and comparatively level. But such words have strange
meanings in Honduras. Not once during the day did there appear a level
space ten yards in length. Hour after hour a narrow path, one of a score
in which to go astray, worn in the whitish rock of a tumbled and
irregular series of soft sandstone ridges with thin forests of pine or
fir, clambered and sweated up and down incessantly by slopes steeper
than any stairway, until I felt like the overworked chambermaid of a
tall but elevator-less hotel. My foot was much swollen, and to make
things worse the region was arid and waterless. Once I came upon a
straggling mud village, but though it was half-hidden by banana and
orange groves, not even fruit could be bought. Yet a day or two before
some scoundrel had passed this way eating oranges constantly and
strewing the trail with the tantalizing peelings; a methodical, selfish,
bourgeois fellow, who had not had the humane carelessness to drop a
single fruit on all his gluttonous journey.

When I came at last, at the bottom of a thigh-straining descent, upon
the first stream of the day, it made up for the aridity behind, for the
path had eluded me and left me to tear through the jungle and wade a
quarter mile before I picked up the trail again. Refreshed, I began a
task before which I might have turned back had I seen it all at once.
Four mortal waterless hours I toiled steeply upward, more than twenty
times sure I had reached the summit, only to see the trail, like some
will-o'-the-wisp, draw on ahead unattainably in a new direction. I had
certainly ascended four thousand feet when I threw myself down at last
among the pines of the wind-swept summit. A draught from the gourd of a
passing peon gave me new life for the corresponding descent. Several of
these fellow-roadsters now appeared, courteous fellows, often with black
mustaches and imperial "la Napoleon III", who raised their hats and
greeted me with a sing-song "Qué se vaya bien," yet seemed remarkably
stupid and perhaps a trifle treacherous. At length, well on in the
afternoon, the road broke through a cutting and disclosed the welcome
sight of the town of Santa Rosa, its white church bulking above all else
built by man; the first suggestion of civilization I had seen in
Honduras.

The suggestion withered upon closer examination. The place did not know
the meaning of the word hotel, there was neither restaurant, electric
light, wheeled vehicles, nor any of the hundred and one things common to
civilized towns of like size. After long inquiry for lodging, I was
directed to a pharmacy. The connection was not apparent until I found
that an American doctor occupied there a tiny room made by partitioning
off with a strip of canvas stretched on a frame a part of the public
hallway to the patio. He was absent on his rounds; which was fortunate,
for his Cuban interpreter not merely gave me possession of the "room"
and cot, but delivered to me the doctor's supper of potatoes, rice, an
imitation of bread, and even a piece of meat, when it arrived from a
market-place kitchen. Here I spent Sunday, with the extreme lassitude
following an extended tramp in the hungry wilderness. The doctor turned
up in the afternoon, an imposing monument of a man from Texas with a
wild tangle of dark-brown beard, and the soft eyes and gentle manners of
a girl. He had spent some months in the region, more to the advantage of
the inhabitants than his own, for disease was far more wide spread than
wealth, and the latter was extremely elusive even where it
existed. Hookworm was the second most common ailment, with cancer and
miscarriages frequent. The entire region he had found virtually given
over to free love. The grasping priests made it all but impossible for
the poorer classes to marry, and the custom had rather died out even
among the well-to-do. All but two families of the town acknowledged
illegitimate children, there was not a priest nor a youth of eighteen
who had not several, and more than one widow of Honduranean wealth and
position whose husband had long since died continued to add yearly to
the population. The padre of San Pedro, from whose house he had just
come, boasted of being the father of eighty children. All these things
were common knowledge, with almost no attempt at concealment, and indeed
little notion that there might be anything reprehensible in such
customs. Every one did it, why shouldn't any one? Later experience
proved these conditions, as well as nearly 90 per cent. of complete
illiteracy, common to all Honduras.

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916

4. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: San Agustín, Copán, Honduras

Note: In our last excerpt, Our narrator leaves the village of "La libertad" after helping out a couple of locals, and continues on to the village of San Agustín, on his way to Tegucigalpa.


Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916:

Beyond was a rising path through dense steaming jungle, soon crossed by
the ubiquitous river. Across it, near a pretty waterfall, the trail
climbed up and ever up through jungle and forest, often deep in mud and
in places so steep I had to mount on all fours, slipping back at each
step like the proverbial frog in the well. A splendid virgin forest
surrounded me, thick with undergrowth, the immense trees whispering
together far above. A half-hour up, the trail, all but effaced, was cut
off by a newly constructed rail fence tied together with vines run
through holes that had been pierced in the buttresses of giants of the
forest. There was no other route in sight, however, and I climbed the
obstruction and sweated another half-hour upward. A vista of at least
eight heavily wooded ranges opened out behind me, not an inch of which
was not covered with dense-green treetops. Far up near the gates of
heaven I came upon a sun-flooded sloping clearing planted with tobacco,
and found a startled peon in the shade of a make-shift leaf hut. Instead
of climbing the hill by this private trail, I should immediately have
crossed the river again more than an hour below and continued on along
it!

When he had recovered from the fright caused by so unexpected an
apparition, the Indian yielded up his double-bodied gourd and made no
protest when I gurgled down about half the water he had carried up the
mountain for his day's thirst. That at least was some reward for the
useless climb, for there is no greater physical pleasure than drinking
one's fill of clear cold water after a toilsome tropical tramp. I
crashed and slid down to the river again and picked up once more the
muddy path along it between dense walls of damp jungle. It grew worse
and worse, falling in with a smaller stream and leaping back and forth
across it every few yards, sometimes permitting me to dodge across like
a tight-rope walker on wet mossy stones, more often delaying me to
remove shoes and leggings. An hour of this and the scene changed. A vast
mountain wall rose before me, and a sharp rocky trail at times like
steps cut by nature in the rock face led up and up and still forever
upward. A score of times I seemed to have reached the summit, only to
find that the trail took a new turn and, gathering up its skirts,
climbed away again until all hope of its ever ceasing its sweating
ascent faded away. After all it was perhaps well that only a small
portion of the climb was seen at a time; like life itself, the appalling
sight of all the difficulties ahead at once might discourage the climber
from ever undertaking the task.

It was near evening when I came out in a slight clearing on what was at
last really the summit. Vast forests of whispering pine-trees surrounded
me, and before and behind lay an almost endless vista of heavily wooded,
tumbled mountains, on a low one of which, near at hand but far below,
could be seen the scattered village of San Agustín. There was still a
long hour down the opposite face of the mountain, with thinner pine
forests and the red soil showing through here and there; not all down
either, for the trail had the confirmed habit of falling into bottomless
sharp gullies every few yards and struggling out again up the steepest
of banks, though the privilege of thrusting my face into the clear
mountain stream at the bottom of each made me pardon these monotonous
vagaries. After surmounting six or eight such mountain ranges in a day,
under a sun like ours of August quadrupled and some twenty pounds of
awkward baggage, without what could reasonably be called food, to say
nothing of festered heels and similar petty ailments, the traveler comes
gradually by nightfall to develop a desire to spend ten minutes under
the electric fans of a "Baltimore Lunch."

Yet with all its difficulties the day had been more than enjoyable,
wandering through endless virgin forests swarming with strange and
beautiful forms of plant and bird life, with rarely a habitation or a
fellow-man to break the spell of pure, unadulterated nature. For break
it these did. As the first hut of San Agustín intruded itself in the
growing dusk there ran unbidden through my head an ancient refrain:

"Plus je vois l'homme, plus j'aime mon chien."

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916

A predictable outcome of transportation strike in Honduras: Government decided on free market prices.

In our last article about the transportation strike, we had pointed out how the government had a better bargaining position due to the fact that the strikers were in disagreement among themselves.

Yesterday the government decided against subsidies and price regulation on taxis and chose to let the market do its magic. Bus tariffs are indeed regulated, but the taxi prices, like many other transportation fees, are going to go up, and soon. El Heraldo's latest article on the subject talks about how the "CNT" or "National Transport Council" is thinking about raising L.3.00 to inner city bus tariffs, adding one Lempira per month, for the next three months. Same thing seems to be happening on inter- city buses, raising tariffs 30%, also distributing the raise over a period of three months.

This is a huge incremental jump for regular urban commuters in Honduras! The probable average transportation budget for an regular city commuter back in late 2007 was between 7-14 Lempiras; L.3.00 per bus ride, on subsidized buses and 3.50 on non-subsidized buses, (see Heraldo publication back in Nov.2007), now the price is going to be around L. 6.00 per bus ride, making the probable transportation budget for commuters somewhere between 14-28 Lps. If we multiply this by the number of work days in a month, we are looking at a L. 280-560 monthly transportation budget, for a country whose minimum wage is around L. 2,000. per month.


The basic problem is not really government regulations, but more the way the game has changed due to global economic shifts. The fact is simple: transportation is becoming very expensive, and people in Central America in general are facing a challenge that has never before been so heavily felt. The game has changed, and so have its rules.

Mass Transportation per se has not received the same priority of investment as other sectors have, and certainly not enough to improve it in a significant, sustainable way. By improvement we look at whether it is accessible, affordable, sustainable and relevant. That said, a major underlying factor in this emerging crisis is obviously the current costs of fuel, or 'energy,' the term we have come to use to encompass so much of what ails us. Still, perhaps especially given the continuing rise is energy costs, we are really talking about priorities - are policies and decisions being considered with the next 30 days in mind, or the next thirty years? (In another blog article we will look more closely at another example of what indeed has been a spectacular investment priority, namely, global communications.)

Rather than identify true priorities, we have witnessed government and private sectors substitute more of a triage approach to motivating change. The 'priority' in making choices in recent history has been guided by the promise of short-term results, or by crisis-mode reactions to shortages and pricing fluctuations, not longer-term vision and planning, and the perseverance and patience needed to reach long-term goals.

Governments who try to subsidize petro/oil fuel are fighting an elephant with a flyswatter. If anything, government subsidies in the tranportation sector should be focused less on maintaining the current status and more on seeking renewable energy forms of transport, and more community-fluent engagement with the issues of change in their urban and rural population movement. This will take time and effort and the talents of many from different sectors, and it is worth it.

More and more, people around the world are proposing new (and even not-so-new) ideas in offering alternate, plausible solutions for creating and harnessing energy for one of it chief uses, transportation. For example, www.alfapenta.com is proposing a Metro System in Guatemala City, that runs on hydroelectric energy; gulfnews.com talks about how Qtar is already making official plans to make all of its public transportation work through solar powered buses. USAToday, published an article called "Transit systems travel 'green' track" where Charisse Jones (Author) sums up most of what the US is doing in terms of "Green Transportation Systems" in the country and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic is about to open the first phase of its Metro System.

Again, the game has changed, and one of the positive things is that green now saves green... dollars that is.

Written by JF Aguilar and EM Peck

Metro in Santo Domingo Video:


SANTO DOMINGO'S FIRST METRO RIDE!

3. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: El Jarral, Copán, Honduras Part II

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916
...(Harry wakes up in "El Jarral", copán, after a long and uncomfortable night)...
" Having had time to collect her wits, the female of the dungeon charged
me a quadrupled price for a late breakfast of black coffee and pin-holed
eggs, and I set off on what turned out to be a not entirely pleasant
day's tramp. To begin with I had caught cold in a barked heel, causing
the cords of the leg to swell and stiffen. Next I found that the
rucksack had worn through where it came in contact with my back; third,
the knees of the breeches I wore succumbed to the combination of sweat
and the tearing of jungle grasses; fourth, the garments I carried
against the day I should again enter civilization were already rumpled
and stained almost beyond repair; and, fifth, but by no means last, the
few American bills I carried in a secret pocket had been almost effaced
by humidity and friction. Furthermore, the "road" completely surpassed
all human powers of description. When it was not splitting into a
half-dozen faint paths, any one of which was sure to fade from existence
as soon as it had succeeded in leading me astray in a panting chase up
some perpendicular slope, it was splashing through mud-holes or small
rivers. At the first stream I squandered a half-hour disrobing and
dressing again, only to find that some two hundred yards farther on it
swung around once more across the trail. Twice it repeated that stale
practical joke. At the fourth crossing I forestalled it by marching on,
carrying all but shirt and hat,--and got only sunburn and stone-bruises
for my foresight, for the thing disappeared entirely. Still farther on I
attempted to save time by crossing another small river by a series of
stepping-stones, reached the middle of it dry-shod, looked about for the
next step, and then carefully lay down at full length, baggage and all,
in the stream as the stone turned over under my feet. But by that time I
needed another bath.

An old woman of La Libertad, a collection of mud huts wedged into a
little plain between jungled mountain-sides, answered my hungry query
with a cheery "Cómo no!" and in due time set before me black beans and
blacker coffee and a Honduranean tortilla, which are several times
thicker and heavier than those of Mexico and taste not unlike a plank of
dough.

Though often good-hearted enough, these children of the wilderness have
no more inkling of any line between dirt and cleanliness, nor any more
desire to improve their conditions, themselves, or their surroundings,
which we of civilized lands think of as humanity's privilege and
requirement, than the mangy yellow curs that slink in and out between
their legs and among their cooking pots. I had yet to see in Honduras a
house, a garment, a single possession, or person that was anything short
of filthy.

As I ate, a gaunt and yellow youth arrived with a rag tied about his
brow, complaining that a fever had overtaken him on a steep mountain
trail and left him helpless for hours. I made use for the first time of
the small medicine case I carried. Then the old woman broke in to
announce that her daughter also had fever. I found a child of ten
tossing on a miserable canvas cot in the mud hut before which I sat, her
pulse close to the hundred mark. When I had treated her to the best of
my ability, the mother stated that a friend in a neighboring hut had
been suffering for more than a week with chills and fever, but that she
was "embarrassed" and must not take anything that might bring that
condition prematurely to a head. I prescribed not without some layman
misgiving. Great astonishment spread throughout the hamlet when I
refused payment for my services, and the old woman not only vociferously
declined the coin I proffered for the food, but bade me farewell with a
vehement "Diós se lo pagará"--whether in Honduranean change or not she
did not specify. The majority of the inhabitants of the wilds of
Honduras live and die without any other medical attention than those of
a rare wandering charlatan or pill-peddler".

Note from Aguitta bout this excerpt: It is interesting to see, the beginnings
of the awe and positive impressions Honduras has of foreigners. The huts
described are now a of the medium sized villages near Sta. Rosa de Copán.
People like our narrator gave freely and generously, doing what they only
think is humane. But the impression given is that of great power and
wealth...even if it was only a couple of aspirin, something that in Europe
or USA, would be considered minimal. Like the woman who raised her
price for breakfast 4 times the original quote, Central America in general
is still figuring out market prices in many ways, the poorer the people, the
less the knowledge of what their work and potential really is. Some
intents might come out looking like ripoffs, others like complete bargains.
Foreigners also found this to be an interesting supplier Niche, which
later gave way to the whole "Banana Republics Period".
(This period has two very big sides of the story, BTW).

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916

Transportation in Honduras and the Cooperative Movement

An early article in this blog warned about the impending possibility of social protests. Today's news of the transportation strike gives evidence of this possibility, now a reality, which should be looked at with a bit of perspective.

Yesterday, North, East and Central Honduras woke up to paralyzed cities; it's obvious that the public transportation sector is trying to make a point. Taxi Drivers have organized themselves to stop city transportation. Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, La Ceiba, Choluteca and Danlí, have no bus or taxi service, so we know that they have big bargaining chips. The interesting thing is that the protesting groups were in direct disagreement with one another in terms of what they think should be done in relation to the issue at hand, putting the Honduran government in a position of power, something unanticipated and almost certainly unwanted by the strikers.

The issue is now being called the "Tarifazo"*1, the rise in fuel prices is making transport groups raise the transportation costs. Groups agree that change in policy in imminent; some ask for the liberation of fixed prices, some ask for the authorization of a new government subsidy. Some say that prices are not being regulated by the government and it should stay that way, others say the opposite, i.e let the market forces play out to a price 'conclusion.'

The government is investigating what the law has to say about fixed transportation prices. We hope they don't continue investigating until the population has resolved the issue through practical experiment. See El Heraldo's latest article on this subject.

*1 ... the endings in "...azo" are used to name national situations. Wendy Griffin's "Spanish endings make things worse, or just bigger" published in Honduras This week, wrote: ..."Un paquete is a package. It is the kind of package that you love receiving for Christmas or your birthday. But what do you call a package of economic measures which must be agreed to so that you qualify for World Bank loans and IMF relief? In Honduras, un paquetazo...." See full article in Honduras this week.

2. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: El Jarral, Copán, Honduras

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916


I set a good pace along the flat, shaded, grassy lane beside the river,
promising myself a swim upon sighting my destination. But the tricky
trail suddenly and unexpectedly led me far up on a mountain flank and
down into Jarral without again catching sight or sound of the
stream. There were three or four palm-leaf huts and a large, long
hacienda building, unspeakably dirty and dilapidated. The estate
produced coffee, heaps of which in berry and kernel stood here and there
in the dusk. The owner lived elsewhere; for which no one could blame
him. I marched out along the great tile-floored veranda to mention to
the stupid _mayordomo_ the relationship of money and food. He
referred me to a filth-encrusted woman in the cavern-like kitchen, where
three soiled and bedraggled babies slept on a dirtier reed mat on the
filthy earth floor, another in a hammock made of a grain sack and two
pieces of rope, amid dogs, pigs, and chickens, not to mention other
unpleasantnesses, including a damp dungeon atmosphere that ought early
to have proved fatal to the infants. When she had sulkily agreed to
prepare me tortillas, I returned to ask the way to the river. The
mayordomo cried out in horror at the notion of bathing at night,
pointing out that there was not even a moon, and prophesying a fatal
outcome of such foolhardiness and gringo eccentricity. His appearance
suggested that he had also some strong superstition against bathing by
day.

I stumbled nearly a mile along to-morrow's road, stepping now and then
into ankle-deep mud puddles, before reaching the stream, but a plunge
into a stored-up pool of it was more than ample reward. "Supper" was
ready upon my return, and by asking the price of it at once and catching
the woman by surprise I was charged only a legitimate amount. When I
inquired where I might swing my hammock, the enemy of bathing pointed
silently upward at the rafters of the veranda. These were at least ten
feet above the tiled floor and I made several ineffectual efforts before
I could reach them at all, and then only succeeded in hanging my
sleeping-net so that it doubled me up like a jack-knife. Rearranging it
near the corner of the veranda, I managed with great effort to climb
into it, but to have fallen out would have been to drop either some
eight feet to the stone-flagged door or twenty into the cobbled and
filthy barnyard below. The chances of this outcome were much increased
by the necessity of using a piece of old rope belonging to the hacienda,
and a broken arm or leg would have been pleasant indeed here in the
squalid wilderness with at least a hundred miles of mule-trail to the
nearest doctor.

Luckily I only fell asleep. Several men and dirtier boys, all in what
had once been white garments, had curled up on bundles of dirty mats and
heaps of bags all over the place, and the night was a pandemonium of
their coughing, snoring, and night-maring, mingled with the hubbub of
dogs, roosters, turkeys, cattle, and a porcine multitude that snuggled
in among the human sleepers. The place was surrounded by wet, pine-clad
mountains, and the damp night air drifting in upon me soon grew cold and
penetrating.

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916

Will be published soon!. :)

1. Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond: Honduras, the Land of Great Depths.

Written by: Harry A. Franck, in 1916

Food was not to be had when I folded my hammock and pushed on at
daylight. One of a cluster of huts farther up was given over to a squad
of "soldiers," garrisoning the frontier, and an officer who would have
ranked as a vagabond in another country sold me three tortillas and a
shellful of coffee saved from his rations. Another cluster of huts
marked the beginning of a stiff rocky climb, beyond which I passed
somewhere in a swampy stretch of uninhabited ground the invisible
boundary and entered Honduras, the Land of Great Depths.

It was indeed. Soon a vast mountain covered with pine forest rose into
the sky ahead and two hours of unbroken climbing brought me only to the
rim of another great wooded valley scolloped out of the earth and down
into which I went all but headfirst into the town of Copán. Here, as I
sat in a fairly easy chair in the shaded corner of a barnyard among
pigs, chickens, and turkeys while my tortillas were preparing, I got the
first definite information as to the tramp before me. Tegucigalpa, the
capital, was said to be fifteen days distant by mule. On foot it might
prove a trifle less. But if transportation in the flesh was laborious
and slow, the ease of verbal communication partly made up for it. A
telegram to the capital cost me the sum total of one real*. It should
have been a real and a quarter, but the telegraph operator had no
change!

Beyond the town I found with some difficulty the gate through which one
must pass to visit the ancient ruins of Copán. Once inside it, a path
led through jungle and tobacco fields and came at length to a great
artificial mound, originally built of cut-stone, but now covered with
deep grass and a splendid grove of immense trees, until in appearance
only a natural hill remained. About the foot of this, throttled by
vegetation, lay scattered a score or more of carved stones, only one or
two of which were particularly striking. Summer solitude hovered over
all the scene.

Back again on the "camino real" I found the going for once ideal. The
way lay almost level along a fairly wide strip of lush-green grass with
only a soft-footed, eight-inch path marking the route, and heavy jungle
giving unbroken shade. Then came a hard climb, just when I had begun to
hear the river and was laying plans for a drink and a swim, and the
trail led me far up on the grassy brow of a mountain, from which spread
a vast panorama of pine-clad world. But the trails of Honduras are like
spendthrift adventurers, struggling with might and main to gain an
advantage, only wantonly to throw it away again a moment later. This one
pitched headlong down again, then climbed, then descended over and
again, as if setting itself some useless task for the mere pleasure of
showing its powers of endurance. It subsided at last in the town of
Santa Rita, the comandante of which, otherwise a pleasant enough fellow,
took me for a German. It served me right for not having taken the time
to shave my upper lip. He had me write my name on a slip of paper and
bade me adiós with the information that if "my legs were well oiled" I
could make the hacienda Jarral by nightfall.

*“coquimbas”
In 1831, Honduras creates its own coin mint (Creates its own coins). The coins where called "Reales", in honor of the original colonial silver "Real". Reales came in 1/4th,1/2, 1 and 2 Reales. In 1868 Reales where also produced in 4 and 8 "Reales", popularly called "Coquimbas". Reales where replaced by Honduras's present coin, "Lempiras" which makes reference to a historical hero and tribal leader of the "Lenca" people, known for his tragic but courageous and surprising battles against Spaniards. The first Lempiras were ordered and produced in a US mint. The mint was asked to produce bills that had an Indian figure to represent Lempira; the mint figured that putting a North American Indian with feathers on his head worked just as well (not at all what a Lenca would call normal head gear). So, in sum, our first real Lempira, showed a North American Indian!. :). (Footnote Added by Paco Aguitta, based on this article published by Diario El Heraldo 2006, and written by someone that is not specified by the newspaper. (My apologies to that author, will be happy to add author's credentials to this reference).

More excerpts from Harry A. Franck's:

Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond
Honduras, by Harry A. Franck 1916

Will be published soon!. :)

Strike Culture: Labor movements in Honduras.

When it comes to labor movements, Honduras is no stranger. Most of the subjects that are put under social scrutiny have been polarized to a point where logic seems to play second role to power. Now, facing a global energy crisis and its subsequent economic problems, (Costs of basic foods, fuels, minimun wages, Etc.) we are bound to see more movements, hopefully keeping them nonviolent and with positive outcomes. History has taught us that these movements are massive players of social change.

Social power, both by the government and organized civil groups is a very strong card to deal, often, the general population pays the immediate price of these civilized "battles", regardless of the subsequent benefits that are being sought by the parties involved.
Over the years, civil protest walks, transportation blockades and hunger strikes have become better organized and media covered. Amazing leaders, both true to the cause or expert mass manipulators, have come to learn and use the power of the mases. A month of "Teachers on strike" or a full week of "Public Health workers strike" has been almost an annual tradition in Central American Countries; while most participants agree that stopping a child's education every time the country educational officials quarrel with the Syndicate Leaders, or a stop of all major surgery operations for a week in public hospitals, is in fact a tremendous blow to the country's already challenged population, most are under the impression that not supporting their syndicate or the quarreled idea is personally more damaging, specially when the subject is about raising their salaries. See: Minimum wages in Central America. The same can be said about public transportation, fuel subsidizing, the national public university (UNAH), and many key groups in Honduras's social development. But again, History has taught Honduras, that this way of "Dealing with issues" is powerful...

Honduras Laboral.org , documents the History of labor movements; It beggins a very interesting historical summary of labor movements with the mines of "San Juancito" part of the "Rosario Mining Company" back in 1869, where inhumane working conditions caused the first strikes and subsequent incarceration and governmental repressions. It also states that the same governmental repressions were seen on major strikes involving the banana production and Railroad industry back in the 1920's.

Civil Movements became more popular, even with country authorities pushing them back. After the creation of the "Federación Sindical Hondureña, FSH" (Honduran Syndicalist Federation) in 1929, groups started to become a major threat to large multinationals working in the country. The great strike of 1932 became a nation wide movement that lead to the solution of minor issues between laborers and the United Fruit Company and the partial resolution of a salary reduction.

In 1933, Tiburcio Carias Andino became president. Most Honduran historians agree that he was put in power through the large transnational's political influences. When it came to Carias's civil movement policy, things got ugly; Carias was a dictator for 16 years, all labor organizations were declared "illegal" and their leaders where either captured, assassinated or expulsed from the country.

Civil movements where only paused, but not stopped. In 1944 civil groups re-organized in Guatemala and planned to take Carias out of power. The movement called itself the "Partido Democrático Revolucionario de Honduras" and since then, civil groups became an important key player in Honduran history:

-The creation of the "Comitee Coordinador Obrero" (Labor Coordination Comity) in 1949, banned by the "War Minister" of the time, replaced by the "Comité de Unidad Sindical" (Comity for Syndicate Unity) who in turn promoted the the strike of 54. (Recognized as one of the most influential labor movements in Central America).

-The first banana labor unions.

-The General Strike of 65

-In the 70's, the labor movements became key players in the connection and development of important issues that later resulted in a very dark period of Honduras: The 80's, or the time of the "Desaparecidos". Where many people where assassinated or "Disappeared" due to their political beliefs.

-1990's violence was reduced, ( Think about the connection between the end of the Cold war in all of this). But it seems corruption was enhanced, as many of the movement leaders where accused of being "payed off" by government authorities that wanted to promote free trade.

Corruption seems to be a small problem compared to the challenges the labor movements have faced in Honduran history, and the pride and dignity that comes out of fighting for what you think is right, is an invaluable investment in Honduran culture. Hopefully, readers of this Honduran article, have a clearer Idea of the powerful roots behind this countries "Strike Culture".

Honduras: Toncontin Airport is Opened Today

President Zelaya, commonly known as "Mel", finally gave way to petitions from the private and social sector to re-open Toncontin Airtport, (Tegucigalpa's International Airport).

Mel had immediately shut down the airport after Taca flight 390's crash landing on may 30th, 2008. The plane had failed to stop on its second attempt to land on Toncontin's short runway. The accident took the lives of 4 people, two of them commuters who where driving on a busy avenue near the airport.

The incident was known world wide and Mel found himself interviewed by hard ball reporter's from CNN, that very same day. The president spontaneously declared to the media that he would shut down the airport and that the actions would be taken to construct a new international airport in Comayagua. This took most of the country by surprise; it was common knowledge that Toncontin is one of the most dangerous airports in the world and that the government has been planning to move it to the old U.S. Airforce base, comonly called Palmerola (Also known a the "Enrique Soto Cano Air base" in Comayagua) for almost a decade now, but no serious actions had been taken. The 1980's base is about a hour and a half's drive from the city, in between Honduras's two biggest cities, San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa.

Flight's where canceled and people where forced to fly into Toncontín only on small aircraft, the change and added travel complications of the country's capitol, made allot of people jump in both annoyance and confusion. Mel explained that the action was fundamentally good; it reduced the risk of loosing further lives to the runway.

It is thought that the president and his counselor's took the crash landing as an opportunity to push the construction of a new international airport in Palmerola, but having no international access to the country's political capitol was a little too much for "The people". There even was a face book group organizing people and protests in support of Toncontin!.

The Honduran Newspaper Diario La Tribuna said: (Translated) "Zelaya reacted while attending the Honduras Industry's first congress, in presence of members from the National Industrial Association (ANDI) and the Private Business Council (COHEP)".
"The Toncontín airport will be re-rehabilitated as long as it agrees not to fly category C and D flights"... (the big planes) ..."once the airport in Comayagua is ready". Confirmed the presidential office's private secretary, Raúl Valladares. Quote taken from: Diario La Tribuna

Happy remarks are heard all over the city!