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EDITORIAL

A lesson to be learned

At the recent Republican National Convention, both Bob Dole and Jack Kemp said they are for legal immigration but against illegal immigration.

Sadly, that hasn't been the rhetoric coming out of the Republican Congress over the last year and a half.

Some members of the majority party have tried to fan anti-Latino flames by saying they would cut off aid even to those who enter the United States green card in hand. They would deny even the children of legals the opportunity to study, to better themselves and to learn a life skill that would make them productive members of society.

One of the most short-sighted policies of many Latin American nations, including Honduras, is not devoting enough resources -- money, buildings, teachers -- to education. Many rural Hondurans never study beyond sixth grade. To do so would mean moving to another town, finding a place to live and working to keep fed -- a big order for a 12-year-old trying to learn math and spelling. Most just stop and go to work, never realizing their potential and sentencing themselves to a life of poverty. And the nation never outgrows its image as a backwater, hopelessly hungry land.

Is that the road Americans, with their long, rich educational heritage, want to send an ever-growing segment of their society down?

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: The United States would be better off spending the money it's investing in building a wall across the Southwest on a publicity campaign in Mexico, Central American and northern South America. Those who spend their life's earnings and sell everything they own on an often fruitless attempt at entering the United States should be told, for the first time in their lives, that the myths just aren't true.

Not all Americans, not even most, are rich. There is no free ride. The government gives no unemployment insurance money to illegals. And, like here at home in Honduras, people with little education usually wind up with the lowest-paying, most back-breaking jobs.

Get smart.

Beware of military prophets of doom

By W. E. GUTMAN

Honduran Armed Forces Chief, Gen. Mario Hung Pacheco, recently warned of an impending civil war. He cited strikes and street protests -- all legitimate instruments of democratic expression -- as symptomatic of a society on the verge of collapse. While his conclusions may be valid, his analysis is predictably flawed, and therefore suspect. Failing to address the root causes of "deep social discontent," most of which can be traced to decades of ruthless military domination, a mercenary plutocracy and foreign political and economic colonialism, he naturally advocates use of military "solutions" in response to widespread and mounting discontent by marginalized and voiceless elements of Honduran society.

The good people of Honduras ought to remember their history. They should then recall the military's recent attacks on the Reina administration for trying, "to damage [the Army's] credibility and reputation." They should further recollect that President Reina's efforts to reduce military influence were met with death threats and at least one assassination attempt. They should also bear in mind the abuses of authority, the hindering of due process of law, the abductions, the tortures, the "disappearances," and the summary executions -- all of which were perpetrated by military death squads. Last, they must never forget that when the military go on feeding frenzies, as they are wont to do in the Isthmus with alarming regularity, they are NOT championing democratic ideals or defending social justice, but protecting narrow interests, including their own. Fighting against "disloyalty and terrorist organizations" is a pastime that has kept the military busy in Honduras for over 20 years.

Military vigilantism against "delinquents" -- a euphemism of sizable elasticity generally reserved for the destitute and the hungry -- continues to claim lives in Honduras. To reports of irregularities in detention procedures and the torture of detainees during interrogation by the Fuerza de Seguridad Publica (FUSEP), particularly at the hands of its military branch, has been added evidence of intimidation and harassment of members of human rights groups, lawyers, clerics, trade unionists and the press. Relations between the armed forces and the press deteriorated sharply when a group of journalists filmed a murder in the provincial city of San Pedro Sula. The killers were identified as members of the armed forces. The journalists were threatened. One was attacked. Another had to flee Honduras.

While there have been no "disappearances" under the Reina administration, serious human rights violations persist and most of the crimes are perpetrated by uniformed cadres. Many of the victims are among Tegucigalpa's 1,000-plus street children. Minors continue to be routinely -- and illegally -- incarcerated with adults. Some are murdered.

While concern for lawlessness is justifiable, Hondurans must resist measures that are punitive, not rehabilitative, retaliatory, not curative in scope. It is too easy to overlook the source of antisocial behavior, convenient and considerably more prudent not to point fingers at dysfunctional societies spawned by avaricious regimes intent on preserving political dominion and economic supremacy over a voiceless and increasingly desperate citizenry.

Whereas work stoppages, demonstrations, rallies and loud displays of popular discontent are no sin, crime is an act of hopelessness by those who have lost everything but the foolhardiness to commit it. Chaos does not occur in a vacuum. A healthy, progressive, civilized and compassionate society is capable of self-scrutiny. It must also have the courage of its convictions and the resolve to act upon them. It treats misery and pain with vision, respect, tolerance and magnanimity. It does not kill the patient to eradicate the malady. Least of all, it does not entrust its destiny to soldiers of fortune.

W.E. Gutman is a Connecticut-based journalist and frequent contributor to Honduras This Week.

Mini-skirts sell,

but at what price?

An unsettling trend has been subtly implemented by the nation's advertising agencies and elegantly accepted by the media. They call it advertising. We call it pornography. You can hardy buy a product these days without first seeing it promoted by scantily clad young women wearing faces that suggest things far beyond the item at hand. That voluptuous face that greets you in your morning paper selling the latest version of a popular car has more than good mileage on her mind -- or at least that's they way advertisers insist she appear.

We should think twice about what kind of society we're becoming if we'd rather buy aspirin from a newly pubescent school girl squeezed into a spandex miniskirt than from a wise looking pharmacist. After all, its easy to blame the ad agencies and the media for this tasteless exploitation, but aren't we the ones who buy more soda pop when it's presented to us by a sexy young woman?

The human body is a thing of beauty, a thing to be celebrated and, foremost, a thing to be respected. It was not created to boost marketing.

What do our children think when they see sex being used to hawk the latest merchandise? What do little boys think when they see girls not much older than them walking from to car to car at the corner stoplight in low-cut, painted-on dresses handing out free samples of sugary beverages and yanking on their skirts to keep them below the panty line? And what do little girls think when society applauds a body form that most can never hope to obtain, and that doctors say they shouldn't obtain.

We could certainly imposed stiff laws about what images do and don't go beyond the basic limitations of human respect. But who do advertisers listen to? Government bureaucrats? Not as much as consumers. If we stop buying products that exploit young bodies, advertisers will stop exploiting young bodies.

Let's leave pornography to the dark alleys and adult book shops where it can be controlled and managed by adults and authorities. We don't need it on our TVs and in our newspapers. We have enough trouble respecting each other as it is.

The phone book: chaos in print

In Honduras the circumstances under which the national telephone directory is published are quite unusual. In other countries there is a network of communication between those who publish the phone book and those who provide phone services. In Honduras, no such communication exists. This has led to near chaos in the Honduran phone book. Thousands -- if not millions -- of numbers are published incorrectly, based not on reality, but on errors. And there's no way to find out if the number you find is the right one, except to chance a phone call only to be told you're mistaken.

What good is a phone book if it has no credibility?

The problem arose several years back when the Honduran Telecommunications Company (HONDUTEL) relinquished its right to publish the phone book and contracted a private company to perform the service. Although the contract was a temporary one whose time has run out, the business has become so lucrative -- some say in the tens of millions of lempiras -- that the current publisher has been unwilling to give it up.

HONDUTEL tried to remedy the situation by opening up bidding to companies around the world interested in refurbishing the nation's archaic phone book. But a group of lawyers aborted the bidding and today the case remains backlogged in the Supreme Court. It will be years before the case is heard. This is good news for the company that currently publishes the phone book.

The situation has become a tragic comedy. More and more people are discovering that their homes and commercial establishments are incorrectly listed in the phone directory. The changes appear to be based on nothing more than a whim. Meanwhile, no one, neither HONDUTEL nor the book's publisher, is willing to take legal responsibility for the mess.

HONDUTEL is the rightful owner of the data base of Honduran telephone numbers. The current publisher is marketing stolen property. And things will only get worse now that HONDUTEL is expanding its network of phone lines. While HONDUTEL finds itself in the position of being unable to publish and sell its own information, the phone book's publisher is unable to collect the necessary data and update the necessary changes. The result is chaos.

To see for yourself, look up the Christian Embassy (Embajada Cristiana). You'll find it with the other embassy listings. Only problem is, the Cristian Embassy is a tour operator.

Like we said, chaos.

The real olympic victory

Asked how he felt after winning the men's 400 meter foot race Monday evening, the first words out of the mouth of U.S. track and field phenomenon Michael Johnson were, "I'd like to dedicate this victory to Alice Hawthorne." Alice Hawthorne is neither a shining young Romanian gymnast nor a powerful platform diver. Michael Johnson never even knew Alice Hawthorne. But in one tragic moment at Atlanta's Centennial Park Friday night, she was transformed from one of millions of enthusiastic Olympic fans to the latest victim of the newest scourge of the earth: terrorism.

I learned a very important lesson when I was nine. When the neighborhood bully started following me home from school throwing rocks, I asked my mother why. She told me simply that there would always be bullies, that there would always be someone out there who felt compelled to do bad things. And that the only real defense against them was to keep doing good things to balance them out.
Although simplified for a child's mind, my mother's wisdom rings true. The Olympic Games place everything we value in this world on a huge international pedestal. They glorify sportsmanship, hard work, international cooperation, giving it your best shot and overcoming obstacles. They turn international affairs into something fun and good natured. And they show that when the world comes together with a common goal the results are powerful.

But there always has to be a bully. There always has to be a spoilsport out there who can't stand to see things working well, things coming together. There always has to be one poor coward who believes nothing good in this world will never come to him so nothing good should come to anyone else, either. And if it means placing a bomb on a flight with more than 200 passengers, smuggling a pipe bomb into an Olympic crowd, or throwing rocks at a nine-year-old girl on her way home from school, the bully will do it. And, sadly, the bully will somehow feel better about himself.

Another athlete, Amy Van Hagen, the young swimmer from Colorado who snatched four gold medals in this, her first Olympics, also spoke of the bombing during her victory interview. "I feel sorry for the woman who died and the people who were injured," she said, "but I feel most sorry for the person who did the bombing." A sad character, indeed. Imagine being so pathetically disgruntled with the rest of the world that you're compelled to ruin it for everyone else.

But perhaps the greatest victory of the 1996 Olympic Games is that the bombing didn't ruin it. It was a tragedy for Alice hawthorne and her family. But the rest of the world, angered at the loss and determined to send a message to terrorists that their tactic will not succeed, turned adversity to global victory. The following day, Ukranians, Bahamians, Ugandans and Dutch still battled it out on the Atlanta track. Women from China and Brazil still met on the volleyball courts. Rowers from France, Canada and Italy still glided neck-and-neck across the water. And maybe the athletes sweated just a little bit more in memory of the 44-year-old mother whose daughter is still in the hospital being treated for shrapnel wounds.

When Michael Johnson dedicated his victory to Alice Hawthorne, he dropped a bomb on terrorism. When Cuba's Maikto Romero boxed his way into the quarter finals Sunday afternoon, he took a jab at terrorism. When Russia's Yelena Nikolayeva took the gold in the 10k speedwalking race, she left terrorism in her dust.

Despite the subversive attack, sportsmanship, hard work, international cooperation, giving it your best shot and overcoming obstacles remain the victors of the Olympic Games. These are our greatest weapons against terrorism and we're learning to use them well.