NATIONAL |
NATIONAL |
Monday, December 25, 2000 Online Edition 52 |
|
The
internal elections of the Nationalist Party turned into a
"thermometer" of the people's votes.
Hondurans rushed, last Sunday, to exercise their right to vote; a
vote they used to choose Luis Cosenza, an almost unknown pre-candidate.
This man represented the "Arriba Honduras" movement, led by
recently-made martyr Ricardo Maduro. The
Liberal Party's internal elections, which took place last Dec. 3rd, were
marked by abstentionism and "inflated" results. Contrarily on
December 17th, Nationalists sympathizers wanting to vote ran out of ballots
due to the large number of young people exercising their right to vote for
the first time. The
National Tribunal of Elections (TNE) has already declared Rafael Pineda
Ponce, current President of Congress, as the Liberal Party's candidate for
the Presidency of the Republic. He
is still confronting legal problems for the illegal use of his last name
during 70 years. According
to local analysts, Pineda gained his victory over a Party weakened by the
abuse of power that has occurred over the past eight years. Behind
Pineda Ponce are the persons who have fought tooth and nail to block
Maduro's inscription, mainly former President Carlos Roberto Reina and his
legal advisor and brother, Jorge Arturo Reina.
The latter holds a counseler’s position to the the current
President. The
heated battle between the Reinas and Maduro has turned the Nationalist
presidential candidate into a national martyr.
As a result many voters voted against the Reinas and in favor of
Maduro as punishment. In
2001, Pineda Ponce will dispute the Presidency with the "Arriba
Honduras" candidate -- which to date would be Luis Cosenza, recognized
victor by the TNE. Luis
Cosenza's triumph was a landslide and, though official results have not come
in yet, preliminary numbers show he received almost a million votes.
These votes were given "in faith" because voters expect
Cosenza to step down as soon as Maduro can be inscribed. As
we stated last week, Luis Cosenza accepted to represent Maduro's candidacy
due to time pressures placed on primary elections.
He has stated, time and again, that he will step down as soon as
Maduro's opponents allow him to register. According
to recent statements by President of the TNE, Lisandro Quesada, the tribune
will accept Cosenza's resignation, but not Maduro's inscription.
This leaves Cosenza as candidate for the Nationalist party and,
forbidding Maduro's inscription, next President of the Republic.
Maduro might have to wait until then to be inscribed, and he might
possibly have to hold off from running until the 2006-2010 elections. The
other pre-candidates of the Nationalist party, Elias Asfura, Carlos Kattan
and Hector Rene Fonseca, did not, individually, receive even 40,000 votes.
Fonseca, who only got around 10,000 has been the first to join
Maduro's movement. The
political situation in Honduras is still tense and will continue to be so
until Maduro is inscribed. The
leaders of the Liberal party have not respected negotiations or signed
agreements out of fear of confronting the popular Nationalist leader. They insist Maduro is Panamanian and cannot run for office. The only legal way to prove it involves reforming constitutional laws. Maduro might have been born in Panama, but he legally acquired his nationality by right of blood in 1982. Although
statistics show improvements in the human development index in Honduras,
throughout most of the country, poverty still governs the life of the
people, even getting worse in rural areas.
This data classified by department was issued last week by the United
Nations Development Programme in their 2000 National Human Development
Report. The
launching of the seven-chapter document was held during a special event held
in Tegucigalpa, in the presence of several members of the government, the
international community, the private sector, academics, religious leaders
and the local media. Elaborated
by an independent, international group of consultants and researchers, the
report provides information collected and analyzed from 1991 to the first
semester of the year 2000. This is the third National Human Development
Report sponsored by the UNPD. The
first one focused on gender and general inequities, while the second one
evaluated the impact of hurricane Mitch on the country. Jeffrey
Avina, PNUD representative in Honduras, said that the contents of report,
titled "For an equitable growth towards sustainable development,"
concentrate on development problems existing in each department in terms of
economic growth and sustainability.
In
regards to economic growth, while there has been relative progress in
education and life expectancy, the income indicator places Honduras far
behind the rest of the Central American nations. When
analyzing the references about poverty, one can observe some improvements,
but only in urban areas, where the gender gap is decreasing given the
greater participation of the women in the labor market. In rural areas, however, the situation is clearly worse than
before; the income gap between the haves and the have nots is even wider,
especially for women, making their living conditions more difficult. Access
to the educational system is also far from becoming a real right for all
Honduran children. On one hand,
the average literacy rate climbed from 72.65 percent in 1990 to 80.47
percent in 1999, headed by the departments of Francisco Morazán, Atlántida
and Comayagua. In
contrast, the average number of years in schooling is still one of the
lowest in Latin American, reaching only 4.8 years.
In 1999, a total of 1,635,608 Honduran couldn't make it to the
classrooms, representing 50.7 percent of the population aged between 5 to
24. In
terms of human development indicators, the UNDP report states that the
during the referred period the departments of Choluteca, Ocotepeque, El Paraíso
and Sánta Barbara reached the highest percentages with 13.8, 12, 11.6 and
11.6, respectively. Meanwhile,
the departments of Copán, Valle and Comayagua obtained the lowest indexes
with 0.8, 1.6 and 4.2 percent. "The
government agrees in that reducing poverty and a equitable distribution of
the income and opportunities are the main challenges in Honduras.
That is why the Poverty Eradication Project (ERP) that we have
submitted to society, offers specific statements to enter into the virtuous
circle of development," said Minister to the Presidenct, Gustavo Alfaro. "The
ERP has been conceived as a National long-term project, and applying it
requires the participation of all sectors at all levels," he added.
|
A
medical brigade combining elements of the U.S. Joint Task Force-Bravo,
Honduran military and the Ministry of Health provided health services Dec.
5-13 to 30 communities in Gracias a Dios and Olancho departments. A
spokesperson for the Honduran Armed Forces said the brigade included the
participation of 40 U.S. and 10 Honduran physicians in the areas of general
and preventive medicine and odontology. Among
the communities benefiting from this activity were Las Marías, Catacamas,
Cielo Azul, Río Chiquito, Buenos Aires, Tilopo, Wawina and Yapuwas, all
located in Olancho; and Brus Laguna, Kama, Usan, Tuburus, Río Plátano,
Limonal and Puerto Lempira, in Gracias a Dios. The
spokesperson added that the Ministry of Defense headed by Edgardo Dumas Rodríguez
has been organizing these brigades for several months now.
One of them involved personnel from Arlington Hospital, which
attended more than 3,000 patients at that time. Moreover, the spokesperson added, the Tolupan Indians who live on Montaña de la Flor have also received medical attention from the medical brigades.
The
government of Cuba announced it is offering 100 more scholarships for
Hondurans. The scholastic
financial aid will be offered to students seeking to get a medical degree,
and is aimed towards Hondurans of rural origins.
The students will be offered a full scholarship to attend the
University of Cuba, and will graduate in 6 years with a general
practitioner's degree. Members
of the Liberal party submitted, to the National Tribunal of Elections, a
petition demanding the nullification of votes in the province of Intibuca.
According to members of the losing Liberal pre-candidacy movements,
members of the winning "Pinedista" movement (headed by Rafael
Pineda, President of the National Congress) committed serious election fraud
in the municipality of Masaguara. Accusations
ranged from deliberate tampering with ballots and urns to allowing voters
bearing false credentials to exercise the suffrage. Last
Tuesday, children, adults and the elderly took to the streets in open
peaceful protests. The
so-called "empty bottle march" was a complaint against the
unmerciful hikes in the prices of basic food products in Honduras.
The march stopped in front of the Ministry of Commerce and
Investment, where protesters complained that they no longer can no longer
afford even milk to feed their children. They made a call to the government asking them to protect
Hondurans from commercial abuses as humanity celebrates the birth of the
Savior. In
a strong statement, that included subtle accusations towards members of the
Liberal Party, Luis Cosenza, Nationalist candidate for President, demanded
that Honduras's court systems be freed from politics.
He claimed that reforms being made by President of Congress Rafael
Pineda, do not fulfill the needs that the Honduran people required.
He went on to say that the Presidents of the National Tribunal of
Elections and the Liberal Party, Lisandro Quesada and Jorge Reina
respectively, represent the worst element of traditional, dirty politics
that has plagued Honduras for decades. On
Thursday, rebel bus drivers blocked traffic in Tegucigalpa's Suyapa
Boulevard causing serious traffic problems. The reason for this rebellious protest was the bus driver's
demand for better treatment from National Transit Authority and its
officers. Bus drivers claimed
the fines given by the Transit Authority are too high, more than three times
the driver’s average daily. The
bus drivers also demanded to be allowed to stop for more time at the bus
stops, claiming officers make them leave to quickly.
As a result, many Tegucigalpan workers were removed from the public
transportation units and forced to walk. Thelma
Cantarero, Comayaguela Criminal Court Judge, supervised the incineration of
142 kilos of illegal cocaine on Wednesday.
The drug was apprehended by agents of the Anti-Drug Police Force last
month at the Nicaraguan Border. The
cocaine, valued at around Lps.12 million, was said to be crossing Nicaragua
into Honduras, en route to the United States.
Representatives of the Ministries of Health and the Environment,
accompanied by members of the National Police and the Public Safety
Ministry, also witnessed the conflagration of the narcotic. |
Monday, December 18, 2000 Online Edition 51 |
|
Thousands of children working illegally in Honduras
Special
to Honduras This Week TEGUCIGALPA
-- If the supermarket chain La Colonia has 12 boys working each shift (this
figure is based on counting the number of boys seen working at three of
their different stores) and there are two shifts a day at each of their
seven supermarkets, this means they have 168 boys in their employ. If,
including social security, holidays, sick pay and actual pay, each boy
received in pay and benefits Lps. 500 a week, they would still be being paid
badly. Yet by avoiding paying them this money or indeed any wage at
all in direct defiance of the law, La Colonia saves themselves Lps. 84,000
or $5600 dollars a week, which over a year works out at approximately Lps.
4,200,000 or $280,000 a year, which would be an enormous amount saving even
by western standards. That
this illegal money-saving operation is occurring at all, and is occurring
with the turning of a blind eye by the authorities, is an absolute disgrace,
is it not? Honduras is a poor
country that can only emerge from this poverty with the help of its rich,
but if this exploitation is what some of the rich do to become richer, in
direct defiance of the law, what hopes have Honduras for the future? An
organization with a lot of concern for the exploitation and abuse of
children is the Casa Alianza. It
is an internationally-based organization founded on Christian principles
that looks after 120 street children right in the heart of the city by
Puente Carias. It also reaches
out to 1,300 of the other 1,500 or so street children that exist in
Tegucigalpa. Abalid
Irias from the center gave an interview, and after being shown the report
compiled by Honduras This Week (see last week's issue), said that at Casa
Alianza they are well aware of the issues of child exploitation in work.
This includes the institutionalization of this exploitation of
children by large companies, of which La Colonia is only one. The
problem with most types of exploitation of working children is that the
families of the children and the children themselves are so desperate for
every lempira that they can get because they are so submerged in poverty.
It is one thing, he said, for a starving mother to send her child out
to sell lighters, toothpaste or razor blades, but it is quite another when a
successful company owned by an already very rich man systematically exploits
this poverty in order to save itself nearly $300,000 a year. Irias
says he believes, without trying to lessen the responsibility of already
wealthy companies, that the blame ultimately lies at the door of the
Ministerio de Trabajo (Ministry of Labor).
They are basically turning a blind eye in spite of the fact that they
know what the supermarket is doing is illegal, and in spite of knowing that
it is the greed and not the need of companies like La Colonia that motivates
them to break the law. Any
child under the age of 18, he continued, who wants to work needs to get a permiso (permission) signed by their parents and authorized by the
ministry. When interviewed, the
children were clear that they need to get this signed permission from their
parents or guardian in order to work for La Colonia. Doubtless this necessity to get written permission gives a false air
of legality to the whole proceedings, especially as far as the parents are
concerned. The
problem facing organizations like Casa Alianza is that they are already
overwhelmed by the work they have working with the undoubted needs of the
street children who have neither home nor family, and thus there is no one
to work against or to denounce these abuses of illegal child labor. The
government has signed various agreements against the exploitation of
children in this form but have done nothing to enforce these accords, or to
ensure that they become the standard in this country.
The children and their families are desperate for money, and the
supermarket chain exploits this unmercifully, knowing the power they have as
a rich organization in this society will give them impunity against being
prosecuted for this type of offense. Again
Irias stressed that the bottom rung of children are either on the streets
totally addicted to glue or are in the poor barrios involved with gang
culture. Thus, to many people the children working in these
supermarkets are considered quite fortunate rather than being victims of
exploitation. It
is this type of attitude that without doubt foments and facilitates this
abuse. The parents figure that
at least they know where their children are, and that the children won't get
into any trouble with drugs or gangs or the sexual exploitation that Irias
assures is very common here while they are working. Yet
there is hope. Casa Alianza is
so aware of the problem that next year they are hoping to begin actively
opposing this type of exploitation at work.
Of course, much of this is work in small companies, or employing a
young child for a few minutes to do some heavy and dangerous work for a few
lempiras, but their are big companies also engaged in the much more
systematic exploitation of children. There
are estimated to be 300,000 children working illegally in Honduras, whose
total population is no more than 5-6 million people, so it is a huge problem
affecting every aspect of society.
Honduran
official's son arrested Stubs
lit cigarette in street child's eye By
W. E. GUTMAN TEGUCIGALPA
-- They say that the sins of a father must not be visited upon the son.
A recent case of senseless brutality against a child, tragic in its
irony, may inspire the adage that the son does not always inherit the
perceived virtues of the father. On
a recent sunny fall afternoon, as was his custom, 9-year-old street child
Eleazor Munoz was begging at a busy intersection on Boulevard Morazan.
A young man in a nice car stopped at the red light and rolled down
his window. Hoping for a few
centavos, Eleazor ambled toward the car, his grimy hand outstretched. The
man looked at the boy, took the cigarette out of his mouth and stubbed it in
Eleazor's left eye. Screaming
in agony, the child stepped back and was nearly hit by an oncoming vehicle. Two
policemen who had witnessed the incident arrested Rodrigo Eugenio Valladares
Pineda and took him into custody. Charged
with drunken driving and committing grievous bodily harm upon a minor, he
was remanded to a local jail and released on bail the next day.
The case is now under investigation.
Eleazor had to be hospitalized.
Preliminary findings suggest that his sight will
not be permanently impaired. Rodrigo
Eugenio Valladares Pineda, 20, is the son of Human Rights Commissioner Leo
Valladares. According
to Casa Alianza Executive director, Bruce Harris, Eleazor has been in and
out of the organization's programs "and is again under our care.
He is unstable in the sense that he is addicted to the streets and
finds it difficult to submit to the discipline and regimentation of the
Crisis center." Casa
Alianza is pressing for criminal charges against Valladares. Says Bruce Harris: "It's not bad enough that children
are abandoned and starve in the streets, they must also suffer torture at
the hands of thoughtless adults." Neither
the father nor the son has commented on the case publicly.
Phone calls to Valladares Pineda's home and to the commissioner's
office have gone unanswered for weeks. Meanwhile,
young Valladares is free.
|
Luis
Cosenza lends name to Maduro candidacy By
BLANCA MORENO TEGUCIGALPA
-- Time and adversaries in his own party have forced presidential hopeful
Ricardo Maduro to temporarily cede his candidacy for president to his friend
Luis Cosenza. It will be this
latter Honduran's name that will appear on the ballots for the National
Party primaries to take place tomorrow. As
is known, President Carlos Flores convened top leaders of the nation's
political parties in November to find a solution to the crisis provoked by
the Liberal Party's opposition to the registration of Maduro's candidacy. From this meeting, a "Patriotic Agreement" was
signed in which the parties agreed to abide by the decision made by a juror
on Maduro's citizenship. After
the formulation of a Committee of Honorable Witnesses, two lawyers were
assigned, one from each of the Liberal and National parties, and were told
to seek a foreign professional to bring equanimity to the case. Jorge
Arturo Reina, acting president o the Liberal Party, opposed the naming of
Spanish jurist Julio Gonzales Campos; so Brazilian Joao Grandino Rojas was
chosen. He determined that
Maduro was Honduran and Panamanian by birth and that he could aspire to be
President of Honduras. Nevertheless,
the National Tribunal of Elections (TNE) formed by two representatives of
the Liberal Party, one of the National party, one of the PINU party and
another of the Christian Democracy party, disagreed with this decision.
The representatives of the Liberal and Christian Democracy parties,
some say under the guidance of Reina, insist that Maduro cannot run because
he is Honduran and Panamanian by birth. In
other words, as HTW reported last week, the "Patriotic Agreement"
is only "wet paper." This
provoked the Nationalist Party "Arriba Honduras" movement
followers to take to the streets in protest and cause a riot that ended with
police intervention. Maduro
was not registered, and was forced to cede his candidacy to Luis Cosenza.
This is only temporary and forced upon the candidate by other
contenders in the National Party so that the primaries could take place on
Dec. 17. Meanwhile,
Maduro's rivals -- Elias Asfura and Carlos Kattan -- are accused of being
traitors for allegedly having negotiated with the TNE and the Liberal Party
to get him out of the running. Maduro
followers are currently campaigning hard for people to vote for the "Arriba
Honduras" movement under Cosenza's photograph. Many
Maduro supporters fear Cosenza will retain the candidacy permanently, but he
has publicly committed himself to returning the position to its rightful
bearer once Maduro is registered. This
is a "sui generis" situation.
It might be that Cosenza wins the primary and general elections. This is the greatest fear of Liberal candidate Rafael Pineda
Ponce and his party, for they expect a large voter backlash against them. This is not the first time unusual conditions like this arise in Honduras. In the Liberal Party's 1988 primaries, the photograph of a dead man -- Modesto Rodas Alvarado -- was placed on the ballot in place of a Liberal candidate Oscar Mejia Arellano.
Police
jailed for bank robbery Two
members of the preventive police force in Tegucigalpa were jailed on
Wednesday accused of being members of the eight-man team that held up the
BANEXPO branch bank in downtown Tegucigalpa.
Apparently after the criminals held up the bank at 8:30 Tuesday
morning, they spent more than half an hour in a nearby parking lot, and
witnesses were able to positively identify them. - La Prensa Maduro
to take case to Supreme Court Presidential
hopeful Ricardo Maduro said last Sunday that in light of the National
Election Tribunal’s refusal to register his candidacy, he will take his
case to the Honduran Supreme Court of Justice. He
said that although taking this action puts his candidacy in a precarious
position, he sees no other alternative.
"I know that I am taking a big risk, but in the name of peace
and order and so as not to slow down my party's primary elections, I decided
to name Luis Cosenza Jimenez as a temporary candidate for my political
movement." Maduro
reiterated that naming Cosenza is only a temporary move while his case is
being resolved with the TNE. - La Tribuna Closed
season for lobsters to be set Due
to depleting reserves of young lobsters in the Gulf of Fonseca, Honduras and
El Salvador have agreed to establish a closed season for harvesting lobster.
A representative of the Fish and Aquaculture Agency, Sergio Giron,
said overfishing has created a demand for lobsters less than 14.5
centimeters long, the necessary length for these creatures to reproduce at
least once. Girón
also said that in view of the current problem, El Salvador, Guatemala and
Honduras have decided to implement an integrated management program for the
Gulf in order to develop it in a sustainable manner. ¾ El Heraldo El
Heraldo journalist wins UNICEF award A
journalist from the Honduran daily, El
Heraldo, Leonarda Andino, was awarded the UNICEF press prize for 2000. Also receiving awards were Channel 63, the news show Hoy
Mismo, Radio Progreso, and the Teletó Foundation. Andino
received the UNICEF press award for her systematic approach to reporting the
problems of Honduran children during 1999-2000. - El Heraldo
UD
Party will not participate in budget approval Congressman
Matias Funez, leader of the Democratic Unification Party, said last week
that his party will not participate in the approval of the national budget
that congress is currently working on.
According to Funez, the budget is always full of irregularities and
for this reason his party will not participate. The
congressman also said his party has not received a copy of the proposed
budget and that it is illogical for his party to have any criteria about
numbers they know nothing about. He
added that it is unconstitutional for them to be expected to vote in this
way, since according to the Constitution, all parties should have a copy of
the budget by September. "The
whole process is disrespectful to the Honduran people. We
have always said that the budget should be an instrument of national
development." - El Heraldo |
Monday, December 11, 2000 Online Edition 50 |
|
Abstentionism big winner in Liberal Party's primaries
By BLANCA MORENO TEGUCIGALPA -- As of Thursday, the
number of voters participating in the Liberal Party's primaries was just
400,000, not including 40 municipalities that remain to be counted,
according to the latest "unofficial" results.
This number is slightly less than the total votes received just by
President Carlos Flores in the 1996 primaries, which had a turnout of
725,009 voters. The lack of professionalism and
capacity that the National Tribunal of Elections (TNE) has shown in
reporting vote totals has forced the media to do its own calculations since
Sunday. Official results are
not expected until next week. Still, numbers show President of
Congress Rafael Pineda Ponce as the winner by a comfortable margin.
Pineda Ponce's 153,554 votes lead over Jaime Rosenthal's 114,048. Rosenthal was expected to show much stronger since it was his
third attempt for the Liberal Party's candidacy. Coming in third was Manuel Zelaya
with 76,256 votes, followed by Esteban Handal with 24,655 votes.
The last three places were occupied by Vera Rubi (11,047 votes),
Victor Sierra and Tito Livio, who received 3,000 votes apiece. Many consider the Liberal Party's
primaries a big disappointment, since authorities at projected somewhere
around two million voters; and less than 500,000 actually turned out to
vote. Or at least that is what
the authorities are saying. Abstentionism was notorious at the
polls nationwide. At the poll
President Flores went to vote, for example, only 50 people showed up to cast
their votes. Many people did not find themselves
on voter registration lists. One
lady complained that she was reported as deceased and therefore denied her
right to vote, even though she had a valid identity card. As if that were not enough, Pineda
Ponce himself voted with a dubious ID card.
It was only three weeks ago that his father acknowledged him
legitimately with his last name, Pineda, which he had used "in an
irregular manner" for 70 years. Also, accusations of fraud flew
from the mouths of some candidates, who considered that the winning faction
used the party seal unfairly to their advantage. Instead of calm waters after a
storm, a climate of uncertainty and distrust continues in Honduras.
Even though their is a clear-cut-winner for the governing party, the
unification of Liberals seems an unattainable goal at this moment. It should be noted that the candidacy for mayor in the country's major cities turned out to be close contests. In Tegucigalpa, only several hundred votes separate Marco Antonio Andino and Jose Simon Azcona Bocock as the counting continues. Andino is with Mel Zelaya's movement and Azcona with Jaime Rosenthal's.
By BILLY WEISS Special to
Honduras This Week TEGUCIGALPA --
La Colonia is a supermarket with seven branches in the capital. It can seem a great convenience to the paying customer to
have their heavy bags packed and carried out to the parking lot by the young
boys who are always working at the payout counter, especially as this
service is provided for "free" by La Colonia. Wanting to
discover about their working conditions turned out to be an easy matter as
they were happy to give any information desired, except their names, in
exchange for a few lempiras. It
turns out that the wages they receive from the supermarket chain is
literally nothing at all. They
don't get any wages and are expected to survive from the propinas
(tips) that they can get from the goodwill of the shoppers, most of whom
probably imagine that any voluntary tip they give is merely to supplement a
wage. Several boys
gathered around, each eager to give this information because they knew here
was another potential possibility to gain a little bit of money.
All of them claimed to be 14 or 15 years old, though some of them
seemed so small it stretched the imagination to believe them.
Perhaps they were just malnourished. They work in
the supermarket seven days a week, and there are two shifts.
These boys were from the early shift, working every day from 8:30
a.m. until 3:30 p.m. They had
no holidays or possibility of gaining anything if they were ill, and they
seemed somewhat perplexed or perhaps indifferent to the question of who pays
their security contributions or if there were any benefits at all offered by
the supermarket. It seemed that
they were so desperate they felt the supermarket was offering them something
of benefit merely by letting them be in the position of being able to
receive tips. In order to get
the job, they said they need to get the permission of the supervisor and
then get a written form of consent from their parents.
Both the main contributors lived with their parents, and said their
parents were happy they were doing this work.
They agreed that the work was pretty hard at times, and boring as
well, but the gripe they all had was not with the conditions of the work,
but with the pay. They all
clamored to say how terrible it was, and with reason. On a good week,
a boy could earn Lps. 300 but more often than not they were lucky to receive
Lps. 200, and this was the average, making a wage of approximately Lps. 4
($0.25) an hour for work that has no guarantee of any pay, is hard, has long
hours and no days off. These boys said
they had all left school, and clearly their education has stopped in terms
of the fact that they are not learning anything or improving themselves in
any skill-building way by working in the supermarket.
If they fail to attend seven days a week, they quickly lose their job
to someone else. They seemed
remarkably ill-informed about their legal rights or about whether or not the
supermarket was breaking the law in employing them in this fashion. Were they aware
of Covenant House and the work that Casa Alianza is doing from there to stop
the exploitation of children? They
seemed surprised at this question. Perhaps
they did not feel they were exploited.
These were children with homes and families, one level up from the
street children right on the bottom rung.
They had heard of the place but they did not think it had anything to
do with them. Clearly there is a lot of desperation here in these poor, exploited boys, who may be better off than those without a home begging on the street for the next pot of glue, but who are still extremely vulnerable. Equally clearly ,this supermarket chain has come in to exploit this desperation, and to provide this service that yes, is free, free because the supermarket pays absolutely nothing for the service given to them by these boys.
Rains
leave 15 communities incomunicados Fifteen
days of heavy rainfall has caused streams in Santa Barbara, close to the
Guatemalan border, to overflow onto roads, making them impossible to travel
and leaving at least 15 communities incomunicados. Although
much of the flood waters have subsided, dirt roads that were washed out can
now only be used by four-wheel drive vehicles.
Most severely affected by the adverse conditions are coffee growers
who have not been able to get their produce to market. – La Tribuna Maduro
willing to go on hunger strike National
Party candidate Ricardo Maduro said this week that if he is unable to
register as a candidate for the National Party's primaries scheduled for
Dec. 17, he may go on a hunger strike in protest. Although
party members are planning massive protests throughout the city and
elsewhere around the country, Maduro said he was not in favor of these
protests, deeming them dangerous for innocent bystanders and protestors
alike. "If someone's life
is going to be in danger, it should be mine," he said. – La Prensa Int'l
correspondents injured in protests A
demonstration demanding the registration of National Party candidate Ricardo
Maduro held in front of the National Election Tribunal (TNE) in
Tegucigalpa's Central Park on Tuesday turned violent when protestors tried
to break through police lines and get into TNE's offices. Protestors also threw stones and burned tires in front of the building. Police controlled the riot with tear gas, but not until 12 people had been injured, including two international correspondents -- one from Reuters, England and another from the Associated Press in the United States. - El Heraldo |
Political
crisis heats up Election
board refuses to register candidacy of Maduro even though jurists have ruled
he is Honduran by birth By BLANCA MORENO TEGUCIGALPA -- The fragile Honduran
democracy is on the brink of anarchy due to the refusal by three members of
the National Tribunal of Elections (TNE) to recognize the juristic opinion
reached by an international jurist that Ricardo Maduro is a Honduran citizen
by birth and thus eligible to run for president. On Nov. 3, in a goodwill gesture
President Flores convened the leaders of the nation's legally recognized
political parties to find a solution to the political crisis generated by
TNE's refusal to register the candidacy of Maduro. From this meeting of political
leaders a Committee of Honorable Witnesses was formed that included
representatives from the National, Liberal, Christian Democratic, and
Innovation and National Unity (PINU) parties. The purpose of this committee was to obtain the opinion of an
unbiased foreign jurist in the event the two parties could not reach an
agreement on Maduro's situation. All the parties signed the
"Patriotic Agreement" that committed them to abide by the decision
of the jurist. After the acting
president of the Liberal Party rejected Spanish jurist Julio Gonzales,
Brazilian Joao Grandino Rodas was chosen.
Grandino Rodas, along with Cesar Batres and Max Velasquez Diaz, both
Honduran lawyers, held a meeting in Brasilia to analyze Maduro's case. On Nov. 30 a decision was reached:
"Ricardo Maduro is Honduran by birth and therefore fulfills all
constitutional requirements to become President of the Republic." Nevertheless, the crisis continued
when TNE president Lisandro Quesada and Jorge Arturo Reina, the acting
president of the Liberal Party, refused to accept the decision. Members of civil society asked
President Flores to again convene the signers of the Patriotic Agreement to
resolve this new crisis. Unfortunately, President Flores replied that his function as
an officer concluded with the signing of the agreement and that the leaders
of the political parties themselves must be the ones to settle the issue. It is in the hands of the Christian
Democratic Party to resolve this dilemma because, in the TNE, Maduro has two
votes against him from the Liberal Party members and two votes in favor, one
each from the National Party and PINU.
Still, the person who would make the decision is a minister in the
current administration as well as a known associate of Reina. As a consequence, the National Party primaries will not be held on Dec. 17, as previously scheduled, because until Maduro is registered, there will be no elections.
|
Monday, December 4, 2000 Online Edition 49 |
|
TEGUCIGALPA
-- Although two years have passed since Hurricane Mitch devastated the
country, there is still much work to be done in many of the damaged areas in
order for hundreds of communities to fully recover and improve current harsh
living conditions, as well as raise productivity levels. Fortunately,
the reconstruction process has received the generosity of several foreign
friends, including the German Red Cross.
Working side-by-side with the Honduran Red Cross, the government and
other agencies, the Deutsches Rotes Kreuz has been implementing a series of important
social and sanitation projects in the departments of Choluteca, Valle,
Cortes and Santa Barbara that will benefit no less than 150,000 people. Authorities
of the German Red Cross say the key to their success in the country depends
on the participation of the community. "Including
local residents in the construction of houses and other facilities for
collective benefit has made it possible to reduce costs, while creating a
sense a identification and belonging that results in better quality
works," said Mission Chief Juergen Heppe.
"Moreover, local economies improve since all materials are
acquired through cooperatives or in the local markets," he added.
One of the most recent projects inaugurated by the German and the
Honduran Red Crosses was the rehabilitation of the drinking water supply
system in Las Vegas, Santa Barbara. The
work in this zone included the installation of potable water networks, the
improvement of sanitary facilities and the installation of drainage systems,
not only at this site but also in the communities of San Luis, San Jose de
Colinas, San Marcos and Macuelizo, directly benefiting more than 29,000
people. Domingo
Flores, the Honduran Red Cross public relations officer, said they have also
built 739 new houses and another 133 have been remodeled.
In education, the German Red Cross has built five educational
centers, 22 more were rehabilitated, and 7,500 students received classrooms,
desks and school materials. During
the emergency period, many schools were transformed into temporary shelters
and a considerable number were seriously damaged. In
the area of health, the organization assisted the San Lorenzo Hospital in
the southern department of Valle, which serves a population of 150,000
residents. At an institutional
level, seven Red Cross branches were either built or rehabilitated, while
their members received financial support for special programs aimed at
educating families that live on high risk lands. The
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the German
government, its people and private sector, the Red Crosses of Belgium,
Liechtenstein, the European Union, local authorities and a good number of
volunteers are participating in one way or another in this ongoing effort
that is making a difference in the development of Honduras. In
other news, Flores announced that the Honduran Red Cross, headed by Meneca
de Mencia, will hold a special event next week to declare 2001 as the
International Year of Volunteers as part of a global campaign sponsored by
the United Nations. The
institution will also take the opportunity to present a video and magazine
about the activities it has undertaken since Hurricane Mitch. For more information, call Domingo Flores at (504) 237-1801,
e-mail: <honducruz@datum.hn>.
Due
to exposure to disease from improperly disposed needles, several lawsuits
have been filed against the government by health employees who work in
public hospitals. Elmer
Carranza, the legal representative of the Ministry of Environment and
Natural Resources, said most of the cases involve nurses who acquired HIV at
the Hospital San Felipe and Hospital Escuela in Tegucigalpa. Honduran
authorities have accused their Salvadoran counterparts of violating the
ruling made by the International Court of Justice at The Hague in 1992 when
the latter authorize logging in Honduran territory. The
Honduran representative in charge of border affairs, Col. (ret.) Abraham
Turcios, said the Salvadoran Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock is
granting logging permits to Salvadoran residents in the area Nahuaterique,
which belongs to Honduras. Nahuaterique
formed part of a disputed 446 square kilometer area in which 311 square
kilometers where granted to Honduras and 135 square kilometers to El
Salvador. Approximately 10,000
Salvadorans and 4,000 Hondurans live in the area assigned to Honduras. Turcios
also made public a copy of the logging permit and said the Salvadorans had
stated that if Honduras tried to stop logging activities, serious problems
could arise. In a similar case
in 1997, the conflict was quickly resolved when the Salvadoran government
paid taxes to the Honduran Forestry Development Corporation. A
Honduran Air Force helicopter experienced an electrical failure during a
routine training flight last Saturday, forcing it to make a crash landing.
Although reports of serious injuries were flatly denied, no
photographs of the helicopter were permitted.
Apparently, the craft was severely damaged. The
Municipality of San Pedro Sula announced last week that it will put in to
effect a public ordinance passed Oct. 2 prohibiting drinking and smoking in
gasoline station parking lots and other public places. The
ordinance specifies that first-time offenders will be fined up to Lps. 5,000
while repeaters will be criminally accused and sanctioned. Operating
hours for convenience stores and pool halls were also set. In
what police consider a hit job, the head of the Central American Drug Cartel
was shot to death Wednesday in the Colonia Rio de Piedras in San Pedro Sula
while making a cellular phone call from his parked car. Witness
said two individuals in a stolen vehicle killed Alberto Bobadilla Perdomo in
a drive-by shooting. The
assassins died in the subsequent police chase when they crashed into a tree
at a high speed. Police
found a gun, knife, binoculars and cell phone in the perpetrators car, both
of whom had previously been involved in car thefts and drug trafficking. It
is presumed that the murder was the result of an existing feud between the
Colombian and Central American drug cartels.
|
WASHINGTON,
D.C. -- U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator, J.
Brady Anderson, announced that hurricane reconstruction programs in Central
America and the Caribbean are on target. Hurricanes
Mitch and Georges devastated the region in late 1998 and USAID has spent
$186.3 million for reconstruction activities to revitalize Central American
and Caribbean economies. As of
Sept. 30, 2000, USAID surpassed expenditure estimates by $14 million.
The funds are being used to rebuild roads, schools, sanitation and
water systems, and prepare the region to better cope with future disasters. "The
U.S. Agency for International Development has made remarkable progress
helping to reconstruct the economies, infrastructure and livelihoods of
thousands of people in the Caribbean and Central America whose countries
were racked by Hurricanes Mitch and Georges two years ago," said
Administrator Anderson. "After
a disaster of such unprecedented magnitude, USAID has made tremendous
strides helping our neighbors get back on their feet.
Americans should be proud of this historic effort." Hurricanes
Mitch and Georges were the most severe hurricanes to impact Central America
and the Caribbean in the history of the Western Hemisphere.
Hurricane Georges swept through the Caribbean from Sept. 20-22,
1998 causing $1.7 billion of damage, with the Dominican
Republic bearing the brunt of the disaster.
Hurricane Mitch walloped Central America on Oct. 26 and 27, 1998. One
hundred-mph winds, rain and massive flooding destroyed entire
villages, homes and schools, crops and infrastructure.
More than 9,000 people were killed, 13,000 injured and 3 million
displaced. Damages were
estimated at more than $8.5 billion in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El
Salvador, with $3.4 billion in Honduras alone.
The U.S. government provided more than $325 million in emergency and
relief assistance to the region in the 6 months following Hurricane Mitch. In
May 1999, Congress passed the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act,
creating the Central American and Caribbean Emergency Disaster Recovery Fund
(CACEDRF), which contained a total of $621 million in reconstruction
assistance. USAID programs,
totaling $586.8 million, are scheduled and on‑track to be completed by
Dec. 31, 2001. USAID is the U.S. government agency that provides worldwide humanitarian and development assistance.
|
|
|||||||
A
young boy sells vegetables on one of the bridges in downtown Tegucigalpa.
