Honduras on the Brink of Change

[Judi Lynn]

Weekend Edition September 13-15, 2013

Ser Libre (“to be free”) is Better

Honduras on the Brink of Change

by SUYAPA PORTILLO VILLEDA

It is hard to imagine right now that Honduras is on the brink of change after all the post-coup challenges that remain. Crime rates are high–a reported 88 murders per 100,000- making Honduran cities some of the deadliest in Latin America. Employment rates are at an all time low, labor laws are weak, and wages are among the lowest in the region. It seems that lawlessness controls all sectors of society. Hondurans frequently do not trust the police or local and national government. Just a week ago the Honduran Congress created a military policy, harkening back to the times of military rule and strong man politics of the past.

The governmental response to these serious issues has wavered from a National Day of Prayer for peace to the “installation” of Congressional representatives that would not have won under any normal electoral conditions. This “democracy” rules only because of the great illegality that was Pepe Lobo’s election, so sanctioned by the United States. That is how a national military police comes into being: with US Embassy support. Increased “policing” notwithstanding, the egregious 200-plus human rights violations affecting the Honduran public today have not been addressed and continue to grow in prevalence. Americans seeking to understand how odd Honduran public life is these days might try imagining the regular presence of armed military personnel on highways andintersections, outside of malls, as well as check points that stop you on your way out of one neighborhood and upon entry to another. Aside from the threatening nature of encounters with soldiers wielding high caliber weapons in your face, they are most inconvenient for the free transit around your city or town.

So why is Honduras on the brink of change despite the violence, despair and rampant human rights violations? For one, this year’s election has nine candidates running for president, including one woman, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya. Castro is the candidate of the new party LIBRE (Freedom and Refoundation) and has a great potential to win. Change comes in that the biggest contender for the president is a woman and from a new party, breaking the 100 year old bipartisan ring of rule (between the Liberal Party and Nationalist Party) that has ensnared Honduras for most of the 20th century and nearly strangled is democratic potential. The opportunity to destroy bipartisanship and to choose a new option for a new era is a change in itself. A woman president at the same time would also break with the old, as women have historically occupied low places in the Honduran political system. Lastly, and perhaps more importantly, the new party proposes a new set of social and economic policies that look to the future with a progressive and modern agenda, bringing Honduras current with the modern world. The new agenda marks the beginning of democratization and progress that has only just begun.

I grew up with stories of the much-reviled dictator Tiburcio Carías Andino, who ruled for 16 years in the 1930s. Many of my family members were exiled to El Salvador and Guatemala, and others, including my great-grandfather, faced years in jail for the simple fact that he was a Liberal Party activist. Carías Andino’s small town military men, armed with rifles and handmade sandals, combed the countryside hunting down Liberals or anyone who dared to challenge Carías Andino’s authoritarian rule. The threat: fair elections. Carías Andino’s army hunted down all dissenters that threatened to vote for the Liberal party and not him. This era marked our grandparents and our parents; years later the stories of strife and repression were often told in the kitchen, at night and with low voices for fear of being overheard. The legacy of this persecution is still palpable even in 2013. In the 1950s, despite the fact the Carías Andino was no longer president, his effect and rule was still powerful. In my manuscript I detail the ways in which banana workers who happened to belong to the Liberal Party were thrown in jail for the mere mention of the Liberal Party, often labeled Communists or sympathizers.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/13/honduras-on-the-brink-of-change/

[ocpagu]

1. Glad to know.

Best wishes to Xiomara Zelaya. I hope she's able to break this cycle of violence and impunity that started right after the coup d'État. The working class in Honduras has suffered enough.

Interesting excerpt: "For much of the 20th century the Liberal Party was seen as the oppositional party to the more conservative Nationalist Party. These two parties were cemented into people’s minds as the only potential for change. All this would change forever when the Liberal Party technocrats ousted their own party’s President Mel Zelaya Rosales on June 28, 2009. The coup d’état instigated by the Liberal Party, the historic underdog or so the story is told, forced a response from a conscious people. (...)The Liberal Party made itself irrelevant by utilizing Nationalist Party political tactics of the times of Carías Andino’s era"

It's great to see bipartisanship being contested with the creation of LIBRE. If Xiomara is elected, Honduras will teach a lesson to other countries suffering from a crisis of legitimacy in their bipartisan systems.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Hope one way or another we'll all be watching this election together.

It makes you wonder if the current dirty regime in Honduras will allow this election to proceed without finding a way to get Xiomara out of the way. Clearly people who aren't their supporters can NEVER trust them.

These people have done things since the coup I would have thought they wouldn't dare to try, because they were so overt, so vicious, so soulless they should have expected the world to turn its back on them.

I just remembered one of the first things they did after illegally removing their president was to close a government-run hospital which treated people who couldn't afford treatment and doctor visits. They also started after the physician who operated the hospital, and I think he had to flee the country altogether.

Right-wingers are truly treacherous. They respect NO laws whatsoever, unless it's simply accidental, yet they usually pompously insist they are the law-abiding people who respect the "rule of law."

Not only are they crooked, they lie constantly. You are never ever the worse off if you lose right-wing acquaintances. NEVER.

The leftists of Honduras who were harmed are all sorely missed, they all contributed meaning and value to their communities. That's why they were hated, and persecuted. That's what the right does, everywhere. Throughout the world. A-holes.

Very best wishes to Xiomara Zelaya, and protection, too, from the monsters, both internal in Honduras, and those who wish her harm from without. Hope we can celebrate it together.