OPINIONS & EDITORIAL

Monday, June 28, 1999 Online Edition 163

Amid poverty
and violence it's "spring"

By Nigel Potter

Special to Honduras This Week

It's spring! It's light by 5:30, and the birds are celebrating with a deafening chorus. The fields grow greener by the minute and the sunlight dazzles on the leaves, and the earth smells sweet and damp. It feels good to be alive as I step out. Except, of course, it isn't spring. It just feels like it. Those fresh beautiful Scottish mornings come floating back.

Here in Honduras, it is the beginning of "winter" which has nothing to do with temperature ("summer" boasts the coldest days of the year as well as the hottest), but rather the rainy season. It is starting to rain. The dry, parched, blanched earth is soaking up the water from the recent new storms. One can hardly hear oneself think for the shattering croaking of the delighted toads and the whistle, cooing of the frogs. And at night, I am amazed by the wild enthusiasm of the fireflies. A million sparks dancing before my eyes.

Everywhere everyone is preparing for the sowing, and yet the trees go at their own rhythm. They are not particularly impressed by the recent downfalls. Some remain as bare and forlorn as a Scottish winter while others are sprouting. New fresh green buds, and others maintain a mature summer green, yet others are dying in a magnificent display of red and gold. All at the same time in the same woods.

But if it feels like spring to me, not everyone shares the same spring-like rapture. The village where I live is stunned. The other day four men descended on it and entered a home. They were looking for someone who was with his wife and children, talking with some friends. They drew guns. Two threatened and covered the wife, children and friends while the other two fired at the one for whom they were looking. Three bullets in the face, three in the chest, he died at once.

My village is a quiet wee place, only two or three murders a year. They are usually crimes of passion or booze. No one is used to hit jobs.

Spring. I love the mountains and descend to the plain. It is hugh hotter but greening-up nicely. Public transport is rough and ready in Honduras but will usually get you where you want to go. I am in a new mini-bus with my children and their mother. We overtake a bus. A mistake -- mini-bus and big bus are squabbling over passengers and route, so big bus gives our mini-bus a bang as we try to pass. Crunch... Just like the movies. Our bus shakes, shivers and wobbles and hastily draws back. A panic-stricken moment of sheer terror. I hate mini-buses. They make me feel claustrophobic. Too many people, too squashed-up, no way out. I swear I will never travel in one again.

Which is why a few days later, in San Salvador I find myself practically living in them. If Hondurans are the best bad drivers in the world, Salvadorans have to be the best worst. They swerve in and out, constantly missing other vehicles by two centimeters. They rev up and try to accelerate up to 100 mph over 10 yards only to slam on the brakes and come to a dead stop, yes, to accelerate again over another five yards to take off for the moon, never arriving of course, but once more screeching to a halt. No wonder that after such a performance over an urban mile or two passengers stagger off a whiter shade of pale ready to throw up all over the pavement.

Not much signs of spring in sunny San Salvador. It's an armed camp. Guns are everywhere. It makes Honduras look like toytown. We go to a pupuseria to eat that delicious specialty of El Salvador, la pupusa, which comes in many forms but is always delicious. A modern sophisticated shot-gun (handgun model) lies on the counter (imagine, by British friends, your local chippies guarded by heavy and lethal ironware). In Honduras, when I saw local frozen chicken delivery vans riding shotgun, I thought I had seen everything. An armed guard for chickens for Christ's sake! But such are the new peace-loving democracies of Central America.

I stayed in a small very pleasant hotel in a middle class district. I am used to the high walls and barbed wire and the armed guards of Honduras' wealthy districts but this was something else. Everything, everywhere was shuttered and barred up. You go to the local store, the wee corner shop, and you meet bars, iron doors, layers of them. There is a wee hole in all this metal through which you pass your money and through which you get your packet of peanuts.

The hotel I stayed in was once a safe house, I was told, for the FMLN during the war, and thinking of that war brings me down. It is the saddest thing so much blood, such a great sacrifice and yet everything just as before. Great wealth and poverty, fear and paranoia as life goes on behind bolted iron doors.

Honduras may not have the fast urban highways nor the sleek taxis, and it cannot boast the sophistication of modern industrial El Salvador. In Honduras, you can come out of the poshest hotel and within seconds you are juddering over huge potholes, surrounded by devastating poverty. But for all Honduras' anguished suffering, it has never suffered like El Salvador (or Guatemala or Nicaragua). We number our "disappeared ones" in hundreds rather than thousands. And if thousands upon thousands of your citizens are killed, surely you expect why El Salvador manifestly has not got some measure of social justice.

I am taken on a tourist tour of the capital. We go to the cathedral. I am a spoilt European so I am not surprised to find that it is no gothic wonder-of-the world. Still, is very impressive all the same: It has been recently restored, it's light and airy. The walls are beautifully whitewashed and some simple murals adorn the ceilings.

Where is Archbishop Romero's tomb, which as an ernest and committed tourist, rather than an ardent Catholic, I would like to see? Well, it was here, it seems, but now "It's down below, turn left on your way out."

So out I go, hoping to be moved but rather dreading and expecting some awful Catholic shrine. What I encounter shocks me more than I can say. Leaving the light and bright cathedral and going down below is a little like, I imagine, leaving heaven and descending into hell. It's like an underground car-park. It's all pillars and cement, dark and dirty. And the tomb? A grey filthy block of cement in an obscure corner. And this is for Saint Romero, the Catholic martyr of the poor? It's an insult and no doubt intended as such.

It is also somehow reassuring if this is how they treat him now that he is no longer alive and a threat, he must have something going for him. Can it be that he is still alive and still a threat? Given the stark misery outside the Cathedral. Perhaps it would have been the greater insult to have prettified the grave. The powers that be made a big mistake. A few flowers, a little respect, and I would not have given a second thought. But this! Christ born in a barn, and Romero entombed in a cement hole. That's my kind of politics and my kind of religion.

It's spring. El Salvador is full of surprises. The last time I was there, I was amazed, to find Cadbury's chocolate in the stores (forgive me, my gringo friends, it's not that often I am the super-patriot, but Hershey's cannot hold a candle to Cadbury's). This time, I found to my delight, Guinness (beer). It was handed to me through the usual dungeon bars in San Salvador but the taste transported me thousands of miles across the ocean. So much for the joys of Cadbury's and Guinness.

On my return, as we arrived in Perquin, which seems a nice town to me, I immediately felt more relaxed. The bus left for the forests and mountains. We passed through the solitary frontier outpost back into Honduras. The bus stopped and I got off, relieved to feel the Honduran red earth beneath by feet and the chill mountain air.

It's spring or at least, sort of, and for all its problems and poverty, I am glad to be living here in Honduras and not in its poor suffering neighbor, El Salvador, where I think the pain is even greater.

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Work or politics
President Flores this week asked his Minister of the Honduran Fund for Social Investment (FHIS) Mel Zelaya to decide between his job or his political career. The president has made it clear to his ministers and collaborators to give their all in their jobs. Flores has had to make sacrifices between giving his party more power through the government itself or through more work, in accordance with the circumstances. We had already pointed this out in earlier administrations. Besides planting the doubt if the funding for the personal campaigns comes from within the government, the effectiveness of the work done being inside the administration is limited by the time dedicated to politics. We all agree with this.

The problem resides in the fact that the president did not make it clear when his term started. He should have established incompatibility between the jobs and politics. So he is right in acting this way because there is no room for politicians in a work team that does not march at the rhythm the country requires. He wants to work in a way where citizens can see a good presidency because this could help guarantee a future victory for the Liberal Party.

The downside is that this Minister that is leaving his post was specifically appointed by Mr. Flores because Zelaya had done a good job in the previous administration.

So what happens when this minister is gone? Besides the fact that he had won the confidence of international organisms, he had strengthened his party's image with hard work.

So the president admits it is a mistake to have politicians whose only dream is to put on the suit of ministro because in many cases they fall in love with the power it invests. In their place, it is necessary that everybody in the public administration has one mind, that is, to work in the best, most efficient and honest manner.

But now we come to a paradox. This example given today does not differ from politicians in the past, including the President himself. The same applies to him when he was Minister of the Presidency during the administration of President Roberto Suazo Cordoba and when he was president of the National Congress. In both posts, he started his own race for the presidency. He knows better than anyone the advantages of being a politician with personal ambitions, inside the structure of public administration.

So, besides being an internal decision of the government, this now, should become a law so that never again a government official takes advantage of taxpayers for their personal political gain. This would be part of the real reconstruction and transformation of our dear Honduras.

GARIFUNA MUST GET TOURISM BALL ROLLING

Dear Editor:

The June 5, HTW article titled "Try Triunfo for a taste of Tela without the crime" did a good job of promoting the Garifuna village of Triunfo de la Cruz as an alternative tourist destination, but I do have a question or two (or three).

First off, the article stated that the Garifuna of Triunfo are "not happy about the move to create a national park east of the village called Punta Izopo." My question is why? The creation of a national park in the area would bring with it many benefits for the community. For one, the areas ecology would be protected by making it off limits to housing projects and other commercial development. The creation of a national park would also do much to foment tourism to the zone.

The end result of all this would be increased economic activity in Triunfo, with the lion's share of the pie going to local Garifuna guides, launch owners, restaurant and hotel owners. On the down side of creating a national park on the site would be that the Garifuna of the zone would have to give up their right to own outright or commercially develop lands that would be included in the proposed national park. So here we have the perennial crux of the problem, setting aside ecologically sensitive and important lands as protected areas brings with it a series of advantages as well as disadvantages for those living in around the zone. In a perfect world, a decision would be based on what's the best thing to do is, taking into account the preservation of threatened environmental areas and the rights of nearby inhabitants. How will this play out in the end? Hard to say, but if history is any guide, this conflict could drag on and on and on with the only loser being Honduras' dwindling reserve of pristine areas, many of which are more than worthy of the type of protection that only the declaration "national park" can bring.

The other point I wanted to bring up was that the article mentioned that Triunfo has no telephones for hotels to make reservations, and neither hotels nor restaurants have signs. If the tourism sector of Triunfo is really serious about developing tourism in their town, why not take some steps to make their village more "tourist friendly?" It really doesn't cost much in terms of time or money to throw up a nice, typical, homemade sign. Concerning the problem of telephone service, I may be wrong but isn't Triunfo now within the range of cellular service? Nearby Tela is, I believe. Cellular service is not terribly expensive and would provide an excellent means for hotels, for example, to take reservations and attend to prospective visitors' questions.

Triunfo residents should take heed and remember the now famous phrase from the Kevin Kostner film, Field of Dreams, "If you build it...they will come." In this case, we can bend it a bit to fit Triunfo's situation. If tourism entrepreneurs in Triunfo really want to attract tourists, then they must do what it takes: set up nice, simple, clean, safe hotels, open good, wholesome, value priced restaurants, put up some nice typical signs, offer good, friendly service, offer local tours and lots of authentic Garifuna culture, have a means whereby tourists can call in advance and book a room, a tour or simply ask for information.

Now this sounds all well and good on paper but what about the real world, you may ask? Economic resources are limited and tourism has never really taken hold in the area. So what to do? For starters, residents of Triunfo need to invest in their village, both in terms of money and time.

The point here is that tourism can take hold, bringing more prosperity to the long marginalized Garifuna, but what they must do is get the tourism ball rolling on their own. They've got all the raw materials they need to succeed: lovely white sand beach, pristine nature, friendly service-minded locals, interesting native culture complete with its own language, customs, music and foods. And all located an hour and a half from a major international airport in San Pedro Sula. I mean heck, they've got all they need to give tourists what they want, so what are they waiting for?

Howard Rosenzweig
Copan Ruinas

Monday, June 21, 1999 Online Edition 162

Creating an unconventional movement for change in Honduras

By MARCO ANTONIO CACERES, JR.

Every time I return to Honduras for a visit or talk to someone who has returned from Honduras, I ask them, "Aha vos, y como estan las cosas?" I always get the same answer. "The value of the lempira has gone down again. The price of frijoles is much higher. We're without electricity a few times a day."

It's been the same old story for the past 20 years, or ever since I've been engaging my relatives and friends in discussions about why things are the way they are in Honduras -- politically, socially, and economically. I've heard about all the corrupt governments. I've heard about the destabilizing role of the military. I've heard about the inept tax system that fails to

collect needed revenue from people of influence. I've heard about the lack of industrial development, the excessive dependency on agriculture. I've heard about the inequities of land distribution in the countryside. I've heard about malnutrition in children. I've heard about the difficulty in building an infrastructure in a country that is 80 percent mountainous. I've heard about the inherent laziness of Hondurans.

Amazing. There is never any shortage of answers as to what is wrong with our country. Just like in the United States, people are able to rattle off a litany of problems. Of course, the problem is, How do you resolve the problems?

All the solutions I've heard from my friends and relatives never seem to leave me with much hope, unfortunately. Solutions such as revolution or electing a new President from the other party are either too high a price to pay or seldom make much of a lasting difference. More thoughtful solutions such as land reform, education, industrial development, diminishing the power of the military are great in theory, but are hard to implement.

The more I've thought about my country, the more I realize that it is precisely this difficulty in "implementing" solutions that is the problem. Honduras has few tools for carrying out major projects on a mass scale. And it's not a matter of money or material resources, but rather ideas, energy and the knowledge of how to get things done -- in other words, human resources. It's also a matter of being able to use these human resources without having to worry about being stone-walled at each turn by a system that, sadly, doesn't function very well.

As much as we love our native country, it is not unfair to say that most of the institutions in Honduras do not function efficiently or professionally -- at least not like we're accustomed to seeing in the United States (excluding, of course, the District of Columbia). The fact that Hondurans commonly joke about ineptitude, corruption and greed within their government, the unprofessionalism of their military, and the lack of modern, diversified and internationally competitive businesses, means that there is at least an element of truth to it all.

How do you go about changing major flaws in a country's most powerful institutions? Particularly when a country lacks the most powerful institution of all for change -- a large, well-informed and well-educated middle class with wide access to capital. I think the answer is that you can't.

Without a powerful, influential and motivated middle class, I do not believe Honduras will ever truly progress. There will be cycles of improvement for our country. Good, capable presidents like Mr. Flores will emerge. The economy will show new signs of life whenever the price of coffee and bananas fluctuate favorably in world markets. Once in a while there will be a spurt of road and hotel construction which will encourage travel and tourism. Once in a while some smart business people will invest and create a new industry such as the harvesting of shrimp or we'll get lucky and already have a commodity in place such as tobacco which caters to some new international fad like cigar smoking.

I believe, however, that all of these things are destined to be cyclical and short-lived without a strong middle class to constantly push our country forward and keep its other institutions honest and functioning effectively.

How do you create a middle class in Honduras, when over 90 percent of its people are extremely poor and are busy simply trying to survive from day to day? How do you expand a middle class that makes up only about 5 percent of the population when its members are working just to keep up with inflation and numbingly high interest rates and maintain a semblance of economic security?

There exists relatively little left-over energy, time or money to invest in getting involved in ideas, projects that do not somehow improve your lot or the well-being of your family and friends.

This type of situation will never be conducive to implementing serious change in Honduras. Gradual, minor changes will occur in our country through a sort of natural momentum of events, as has always been the case. There will be times that are less bad for our country as a whole, and there will be times such as now when things are very bad. But I fear there will never be times that are truly good for our country. Disregarding the destruction that Hurricane Mitch has brought, I would not anticipate things in Honduras will be much different 20 years from now as a whole, or 50 years from now...unless we try a different angle on this matter of progress, development.

My assumption is that profound change cannot occur in Honduras from within. We have too many things working against us. My assumption also is that help from the outside such as economic aid and strategies for development from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank are not the answer. First, because assistance from international organizations usually comes with strings attached. Second, because all the assistance Honduras has received from these organizations for the past half century have not produced serious change for the country as whole. In some cases such as the agrarian reform efforts of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, World Bank development policies, for example, actually made things worse in Honduras by aggravating the situation between wealthy landholders and landless peasants.

Without delving into a long explanation of how this happened, I can say that generally the reason the policies of international organizations hurt our country is because they emphasize growth. Unfortunately, growth is not the be-all-and-end-all in an impoverished country: development is. Believe it or not, there is a difference. I'll leave you to figure it out.

The most important reason why help from international organizations is not the answer is because these bodies are not independent. Because they are not self-sustaining financially, they are subject to the interests and politics of the governments that fund them. These organizations are also bureaucratic by their nature and the people that run their programs have many different agendas, be it personal or professional. For better or for worse, these organizations cannot always be relied upon to place the best interests of Honduras as a whole at the very top of their priority lists. Sometimes they will. Sometimes they won't.

Besides, plain common sense tells you that any individual, any family, any company, or any country is infinitely better off when they don't have to rely on someone or something else for their well-being.

Ultimately, Honduras must rely upon itself and its citizens. Again, though, how can it do so when the vast majority of its citizens are powerless? One hell of a quandary, isn't it.

I've been called naive to think this, but it strikes me that there may exist a reasonable number of Hondurans and Honduran-Americans (as well as "friends of Honduras") in the United States and in other countries with the capacity to make a difference in Honduras and they don't even know it.

I came to live in the United States when I was four years old. For most of my life here, I've seldom run across another individual or family from Honduras. I've known that there are plenty of Hondurans living in New Orleans and Houston, but in all the towns and cities in which I've lived, I've always been a unique nationality. Of course, I've long maintained acquaintances

with Hondurans who work at the Honduran Embassy and Consulate in Washington, D.C. And in the last few years, I've developed relationships with Hondurans that have immigrated to the United States to work as physicians or to study. But these people have been few and far between.

It wasn't until I met a fellow Honduran recently and we started talking that I began to fathom the possibility that there might be lots of Hondurans and Honduran-Americans just like us tucked away in pockets of American society. Many of us have interesting professional careers, backgrounds. Contrary to popular opinion, not all Hondurans that have come to the United States are refugees or migrant workers. There are lots of us who have grown up, studied and work here in a diverse range of professions. There are others of us who are enrolled in universities and colleges around the country. Some of us are here to stay for good. There are others of us who will eventually go back to Honduras.

The point is that, combined, I think we have the potential to be one of Honduras' greatest resources because many of us are unhindered by the internal problems of our native country. While we may not have huge financial resources at our disposal, many of us do have sufficient means to allow us the luxury of volunteering portions of our time to activities that can help Honduras. I've seen the tremendous outpouring of time, effort and material resources of which Hondurans and Honduran-Americans (not to mention average Americans) in the United States are capable.

We are also unhindered by institutions in Honduras. If we want to accomplish something for Honduras, I feel confident we can find a way if we pool our expertise, ideas, and personal contacts. Many of us are independent and creative people who do not stop until we resolve problems, particularly when we have nothing to lose by trying. If there is any one thing that we have to have learned from living in the United States it is that anyone can accomplish anything if they work hard enough at it.

If we can merge this positive spirit with our talents and resources and the selfless affection that we have for Honduras, it would be fascinating to see how much we can do. It would be a rather unconventional movement we would be creating to affect change in our country.

But you know, unconventional approaches have a way of gaining momentum sometimes. And, after all, all we're really talking about here is starting to communicate with one another.

Marco Caceres is a co-founder of ProjectHonduras <http://www.holyrosarychurch.org/projecthonduras.htm>.

The challenge of Punuare

It's a long way from Stockholm, Sweden to Punuare, but the people of both communities are thinking along the same lines. The leadership of our government recently returned from Sweden with a message from the world that, for us to get the funding to rebuild, we must first make fundamental changes in our society and governability. The consultant group said specifically that there should be more democracy in Honduras, meaning that communities should participate at a local level, making decentralized decisions.

Almost at the same time, the people in a remote town in the heart of the department of Olancho called Punuare were making history by having a referendum to decide whether the community should have establishments that sell alcoholic beverages. In a town of about 3,000 inhabitants and about 30 cantinas (bars), 665 people went to the polls and in a landslide decision voted the businesses out of their town.

This big NO will put a stop to the chaos, disorder and violence generated by alcohol that has ruined many families, businesses and the fabric of the town's society as well. As representatives of the church, human rights organizations, electoral entities and the United Nations, among others, watched, the people of Punuare got rid of something that seemed endemic to all of Honduras but, as it has been shown now, has a cure.

But what about the many other maladies that plague our country? Will these people, and for that matter, all of us Hondurans, use this democratic tool to reverse our destinies? Will the state promote such a practice? Is it in line with the government's agenda to let everyone decide on the delicate issues of self-governability? Is it up to us or to the government?

Some genius in another country, in another time had already invented a government of the people, by the people, for the people. A referendum is the foremost expression of democracy inside a democracy. The question here is if our government and our political parties will foster and sponsor such a revolutionary concept for Honduras, or should we have a referendum to see if we should have referendums?

This Catch-22 has been broken. The people of humble Punuare have given us a lesson of courage and have shaken the seats in high places. They have shown that it can and will be done. They have told the world: Come on, ask us!

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

Dear Editor:

I just wanted to say "Thank you" for your excellent news coverage which is available here in the United States through the Internet. I have been to Honduras five times in the past few years and truly love the people and the beautiful landscapes. I have several dear friends in the Tegucigalpa area. Your English-language news allows me to keep up with events since I speak very little Spanish. Please keep up the good work.

David Martin
Parrott, Ga

Thank you for the article on the need for a national airline or at least for open skies in Honduras. Please emphasize this point as much as you can in your web site. It is a shame that Hondurans have to pay the highest airfares than any other country in Central America.

Honduran tourism will never be developed if we depend on TACA to provide a decent service. The Honduran tourism industry needs the presence of a national airline.

Many Montes
via Internet

Thank you from thousands of Hondurans like myself who have had negative experiences with TACA Airlines (except attention from stewardesses). Also, I thank you and encourage you to continue writing on the exorbitant prices that we have to pay (for instance Miami-San Pedro Sula US$713.00 coach class).

I try to promote Honduras as a vacation place but Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and other Caribbean places beat the fare prices.

Marina Sandoval
via Internet

I'm not familiar with the details of Central America's "open sky policy." But I have been averaging over 10,000 air miles a year for the last 20 years and Group TACA is, by far, my 1st choice of airlines. No, it's not because of the free liquor.

After TACA very professionally gets me to Miami I have to deal with the other airlines to get to my final destination. This is something I certainly wouldn't like to try after a few drinks.

Last trip one airline quoted $160 for a one-way Miami to Tampa flight because there were only five seats left. I've never heard of TACA engaging in these practices.

When things get crazy at Miami Airport TACA has people on the floor checking your tickets, dealing with any questions or problems you may have and making sure you get in the right line which is actually moving because TACA adequately staffs the counter.

I've always been able to get RT airfares to Miami from between $300 and $500. I assumed these good prices were due to the healthy competition between TACA, American, Continental and Iberia.

Last month a friend in Tampa spent an hour on the computer to get me a $550 RT Tampa to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania flight with a 5-day lead time and lots of airlines to choose from. I believe the air miles are close to the same as San Pedro Sula to Miami.

Since when do greedy and short-sighted companies invest billions of dollars in new airplanes?

Group TACA is a Central American airline and Central Americans should be very proud to have a company as professional as TACA representing them around the world.

Terry Stark
Tela

Monday, June 14, 1999 Online Edition 161

Journalism at the crossroads: at what price silence?

Now and then, the truth is sacrificed at the altar of self-censorship. The consequences are incalculable.

PARIS -- It was early fall 1954. Marked by the passage of time, the 11th century Saint-Germains-des-Pres Church stood proud in its austere architectural simplicity. Its courtyard was filled with jugglers, balladeers and poets, quick-sketch artists and musicians, each seeking in self-assertion and the good will of passers-by a chance for recognition, perhaps fame. Across the street, patrons at Les Deux Magots sipped hot fragrant espressos in thimble-sized cups and cool pale white wines in fluted glasses. In their chairs had once sat Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, Samuel Becket and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley and James Baldwin, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, to name a few of my favorite gadflies.

Around the corner, in a stately old building that now housed the Sorbonne School of Journalism, a 17-year-old would-be reporter listened intently at the dean's acerbic exhortation. "You will dissect history, chew on political science, ruminate on sociology, choke on economics. You will learn to conduct interviews, wrest information from recalcitrant subjects, resist subjectivity, suppress personal biases, control opinions and dominate sentences by luxuriating in as few words as possible. We can teach you all that. We cannot stoke, let alone ignite, the sacred pyre that must consume you, enslave you from within. Journalism is a calling. We can't sell you inspiration, at any cost. Nor can we instill the greatest of all virtues -- an unqualified respect for truth and a dogged determination to find it wherever it may hide."

Uttered 45 years ago, the dean's words echo with singular resonance as I fast-forward to the more recent past.

***

For Honduras, 1994 was punctuated by gross inequalities in wealth and status, a faltering economy, labor unrest, widespread power and water shortages, droughts, famine, crime and disease. Caught in the crossfire, a growing number of street children,some mere tots, were being illegally incarcerated with hardened adult felons. Most were routinely beaten. Many were raped. Several died at the hands of adult inmates and guards. Others were summarily shot and killed in the streets of the capital, some for pilfering food or stealing a worthless trinket from an outdoor stall.

Reacting with justifiable consternation, Casa Alianza's national director faced expulsion. Egged on by then Police Chief Rodas Gamero, the Honduran press embarked on a campaign of vilification during which it maligned the shelter, slandered its employees, and defamed the homeless children in its care, calling them "thieves" and "vermin."

It is against this backdrop of chaos, hostility and fear -- much of it attributable to colossal government ineptitude, corruption and disdain for its own laws -- that this writer first visited Honduras. The somber images recorded during a marathon 18-hour journey in the gloomy streets of Tegucigalpa, later augmented during a second visit, formed the basis of a cover story titled, Injustice Under Law. A gutsy budding English-language publication, Honduras This Week, ran the story verbatim in December.

In a nation cowed by authoritarian rule -- military one day, pseudo-civilian the next -- this act of defiance against preordained journalistic protocols represented an enormous calculated risk. That the gamble paid off is of great historic significance, not just for Honduras but for all nations now inching unsteadily from autocracy to democracy. The message this small, underfed, struggling newspaper sent by publishing the story is that the press must play a leading role in holding governments accountable for their actions, and in defending citizens' inalienable rights. Predictably, the article was denounced and the publisher soundly upbraided for allowing "a gringo journalist to calumniate the fatherland."

Nearly six years later, a series of reports on the assassination of Maya-Chorti leader Candido Amador Recinos were promptly greeted with threats of legal action. For its part, the government disregarded the leads offered in the report with an apathy bordering on stupor. Attempts to intimidate this journalist were likewise ignored by the mainstream Spanish-language press. Once again, a culture of intolerance toward truth and dissent was being exalted by political indifference. Unresolved and unpunished to date, the case has since plunged autochthonous and Black communities under a pall of apprehension and mistrust conducive to social unrest.

In early May, this writer filed a report titled, Central America and genocide: the seamy side of reconciliation. The original manuscript contained a list of 22 high-ranking Honduran military officers, all graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas, now retired, all implicated in various offenses that the international court would unhesitatingly categorize as crimes against humanity. Unlike the Amador chronicles, which are based in part on testimony by an informant whose identity cannot be revealed, the miscreants named in the article are well known, in and out of Honduras. They have all been cited by independent news organizations, among them The Atlanta Constitution, The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, Newsweek, and The New York Times, and by respected human rights monitors, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations. Their crimes are a matter of public record.

First published by HTW in March 1995, the list, and a brief account of documented offenses ranging from narcotrafficking to torture, to disappearances, assassination and mass murder, was excised from the recent perspective piece.

American journalists, this one included, zealously and justifiably protective of their status as independent observers, question the very concept of an editor suppressing verifiable facts. As it is, newsmen working in the region often face harassment, intimidation, a weak judiciary, corrupt law enforcement agents and governments that view the press as a meddler and rumormonger. Contextually expedient and politic, the motives offered for this uncharacteristic exercise in self-censorship are disconcerting. In open societies, a free press is both an asset and a guarantor of democracy. In Honduras, apparently, it is still viewed as a threat to oligarchies and other deeply entrenched power structures. This attitude creates a self-view by the press that predisposes it to silence. Empowered by elites, indebted to them, governments add insult to injury by looking the other way.

Silence is not an answer. In the long run, it invites more threats, more brazen acts of intimidation, more deaths. Armed with words, journalists wage an ill-balanced war. The other side has guns. "It is amazing to consider that, historically, the words have prevailed," says prize-winning essayist and author Roger Rosenblatt. [There are those who argue that] "some horrors are too deep for words," adds Rosenblatt. "That may be true for art but not for journalism. The unwritten or unspoken report is good news for killers. Eventually it leaves a wasteland."

***

As I gaze at my old school and remember the great lessons learned along the way, I am reminded that it is in censorship that the seeds of suspicion, fear and social disquiet grow best. Those who fail to learn from history are indeed doomed to relive it.

W. E. Gutman, a veteran journalist and frequent contributor to Honduras This Week, will be on leave until the fall.

The Culture Minister will soon meet with his Central American and Cuban counterparts to discuss ways of preserving language and culture from the encroachment of dominant cultures and societies.

The best examples are the Mexican culture, which is quite similar to our own but with several marked differences, and the U.S. culture, with its obvious power that, in fact, has already invaded our idiosyncracy, as it has throughout the world.

We have adapted to these cultures but it is common knowledge that we are all too conscious of them and in many ways disapprove of them. Our vocabulary is full of English turned into Spanish by usage; Mexican influence with its music, movies and television shows have infiltrated not only our country but the whole of Latin America.

It is said that this makes Hondurans more knowledgeable linguistically, understanding the Spanish from other countries including the Spanish of Spain, but that is not always the case. We must admit that we are ready and willing to accept words and phrases that are new and do not have a practical and fast translation yet, but there are cases where correct Spanish equivalents exist but are not used.

For example, many commercial or technical names are already implanted in our lexicon, like "scanner", "hard disk" or "Windows." Nobody would understand "Ventanas 95" (Windows) and, by the same token, few would understand the correct Spanish word for computer, which is "ordenador."

Globalization in every way, including languages, is taking giant steps that the world cannot keep pace with. We can imagine that the aforementioned is also true for people in Indonesia, Germany, or Russia, where some words just don't exist in their languages.

Advertising is another means for open contagion. Back in the 1970s, there was a worldwide controversy concerning a soft drink company that was flashing its name and brands inside movies at very high speed. Subliminal advertising it was called, directed at the subconscious, and was censored by all as unethical, uncalled for and even illegal.

We shall pay close attention to this long overdue meeting in Cuba, where countries will be judged and censured, some for contributing and others for allowing cultural invasion, where the only and last linguistic resort is to use the original without any effort to save, in our case, our Spanish.

Dear Editor:
I was shocked to read that the Honduran government is thinking of building another dam which would generate "surplus" electricity which would then be sold to other Central American countries.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this the same line they gave us when they proposed the building of El Cajon? This huge project was not only supposed to produce enough electricity for Honduras, but it was supposed to provide surplus electricity which we would sell to other Central American countries providing us with much needed revenue. Years later, we find ourselves with the same old problem of severe power outages with no end in sight.

Our hopes of progress are raised by the promises of such grandiose projects, only to be dashed by poor management and misuse. It's the same old "one step forward, two steps back" routine. While other Central American countries continue to move forward, we seem to be intent on regressing.

Carlos Rosa Mejia
Miami, Florida

Dear Editor:
I have purchased every paper you have published since its inception -- at first from stores in Tegucigalpa and since returning to the States, by subscription. It is an irreplaceable source of information about your land that I love very much and to which I return at every opportunity.

With the terrific rise in subscription rates, however, I don't think I will be able to renew mine when it becomes due again. Needless to say, I will miss Honduras This Week. I was interested in the letter from one of your readers recently who suggested more novel ways of distributing your paper in the U.S. I'm hoping something can be worked out. I would be willing to pay an increased fee, but not $81.00.

Beverly Rolfe
Seaview, WA

Dear Editor:
Mr. J.S. Davis's letter of May 22 was emotional but contained errors. He states that according to an article in HTW the poor pay more taxes than the rich and he says that is totally inaccurate. He asks for a public apology from HTW for printing it. He also adds that he holds the editor and Mr. Gutman personally responsible for the attitudes and actions in Honduras recently.

The rich in the U.S. do pay less taxes than the rest of the people. He can read two excellent books on the subject to clarify his thinking: The Politics of Rich and Poor by Kevin Phillips and America: Who Really Pays the Taxes by Bartlett and Steele. After reading them, and other research, he owes the editor an apology. During his spare time he can wade through the supposedly revised and improved tax laws.

The editor and Mr. Gutman aren't responsible for the attitudes and actions in Honduras. HTW has always published pros and cons and is open-minded about printing any article.

He says, "I want to cry when I see what is happening, as I have seen it happen to a segment of our society in the U.S. Once proud people driven down to irresponsible worthless beggars."

If he would write an article on how a segment of society was degraded it would serve more than just tears. It is not enough to point out problems; it is more constructive to suggest solutions or what to avoid in the future.

John P. Buser
Siguatepeque

Dear Editor:
For some time I have had the desire to drop you a note. Hopefully this criticism will be well taken. Someone in your capacity needs to stop and realize that the future of Honduras does not lie in the Bay Islands, nor the North Coast for that matter. Occasionally I read an article telling of the beautiful inside part of the country and such is well-founded, yet I have not read one article where the writer has done extensive visiting, let alone research, into the situation(s) in the interior of the country. Foreigners are invited to come and see. This is good, while at the same time it is an invitation to disaster! Why is there a need to come and see? (There is much to be seen.)

Again, I ask, why? Recently I read in one of the Honduran daily papers that there is "no delicuencia" in Honduras. Make this same statement to the numbers of people who have been robbed, raped, assaulted and even killed while traveling the highway from Los Limones to Olanchito. Last year my family and I were robbed. The following week our house was broken into and robbed. Within the last few weeks there have been more robberies, murders and heaven knows what else taking place in this, one of the best roads (at times) and some of the most beautiful country in Honduras.

How under heaven can you all, a respectable people operating a newspaper, continually ask and invite strangers to come and see, while at the same time [asking them to take] a risk? Where in the [world] is Wendy Griffin, Erling Duus and W.E. Gutman? And for that matter Jorge McClellan? McClellan might be interested in doing some investigating, then putting the number of victims on the Internet (just those on the Olanchito highway). Gutman might, too, find that there have been more victims of violence out there than [just] the street kids here in Tegucigalpa.

What are you all to do? Just [go] some place where there are no plush hotels, fancy restaurants, just to a place where no one will gain (monetarily) from whatever might be printed.

Kenneth C. Leach
Olancho

Upholding women's rights: what the media can do
Women journalists have an opportunity -- and the obligation -- to write seriously about the real issues confronting them and, in so doing, to campaign against the sexist portrayals that prevent women from managing their own lives.

By W. E. GUTMAN

Apart from fashion, beauty and society columns which generate a great deal of interest, the only hard news that focuses on women is generally crime-related -- sexual harassment, sexual abuse and rape in particular.

The indifferent projection of rape in the media -- unlike war, a volcanic eruption, a train wreck or a hurricane -- actually encourages rape to be seen as a crime of sexual perversion rather than an affront to all women.

It is not surprising that many human rights activists cannot help but see the media as the villain in their struggle against sexism and other forms of discrimination.

Much remains to be done. As the media is structurally linked with big capital and commercial interests, and as it also shapes ideology and public opinion, it has now become imperative to campaign against negative portrayals and to create alternative images of women that empower them.

Conversely, the media should not only publicize evils against women, such as rape, dowry burns, female foeticide, female circumcision, prostitution and other topics, it should also dig deep into the power structures and unequal distribution of resources within society that provoke these crimes.

Despite an overall increase in the participation of women in social and political movements, women of the developing world are not fully aware of the media's power and influence. Feminist consciousness is a recent but fragile phenomenon lacking homogeneity.

Still, since the mid-70s, women's movements have slowly, painfully helped create awareness, mold public opinion against oppression, discrimination and exploitation. They have since organized and better focused on the specific problems obstructing their full integration and participation in society. Attempts have been made to get women journalists and sympathetic male reporters together to forge closer links.

Given that the nature and form of media growth is structurally linked with big capital, and owing the subtle ways in which media images permeate our consciousness, attempts to effect change in the way women are seen and depicted will not be easy.

Journalists, women in particular, face challenging times ahead. They have an opportunity -- and the obligation -- to write seriously about real issues confronting them, and in so doing to raise the level of consciousness of both men and women. They can campaign against the sexist portrayal of women and they can raise a collective voice against pornography.

Signed into law by former Philippines President, Corazon Aquino, the Plan for Women forcefully articulates the need to address women in relation to the media on three important points: One, as media practitioners or workers in the communications industry; two, as subjects or characters in media productions; three, as users or consumers of publications, ads, radio and TV programs and movies.

The document also states unequivocally that the media remains a male-dominated industry, with few women -- less than 30 percent -- occupying policy-making or top management positions, that there is a woeful lack of sensitivity and appreciation among journalists of women's and children's issues and that the absence of a female perspective on important news limits their interest for and subsequent utility to women, thus barring them from a more meaningful participation in national issues.

The main objectives and policy thrusts of the Filipino plan include:

* To involve women in chartering more equitable working conditions, comparable wages and equal opportunities for advancement as initial steps to their own development as media workers.

* To orient media practitioners to the needs and realities of women and to help develop media structures that will make their problems and perspectives more visible to policy-makers.

* To develop ways by which women can gain easy and immediate access to "mainstream" and alternative media -- both as beneficiaries of and contributors to government information and services.

Targets include greater parity in numbers between male and female media managers and decision-makers, and an increase in women staffers, desk editors and executives, as well as more key management positions in the advertising and circulation departments.

Also targeted is a qualitative change in the assignment of beats, with women deemed competent enough to handle topics and issues traditionally seen as male preserves -- including the presidency, the legislature, foreign affairs, defense and national affairs.

Among the policies and strategies that seek to document, assess and eliminate discriminatory practices in the media as a basis for labor legislation, are the organization of women in print, broadcast journalism and advertising, trade-unionism and the sponsoring of regular gender-sensitizing seminars for male editors, desk persons and media managers, especially in areas such as hiring and promotion, salaries and beat assignments.

Media can also play a critical role in addressing the abuses children suffer at the hands of their elders -- sometimes at the hands of the State -- and in creating public awareness of the various programs aimed at improving their lot.

In both industrialized and developing countries, critical attention must also be focused on how foreign aid is being used, what proportion finds its way to the poorest groups, to primary health care, to basic education, to low-cost water and sanitation programs, to family planning. While a grand alliance between government agencies, educators, voluntary organizations, business and labor unions, advocacy groups and health services makes for a solid people-to-people infrastructure, ultimately only the media can help sensitize society and foster healthy attitudinal changes.

The questions and the style of the coverage will vary, but media proprietors, editors and journalists will find no shortage of subjects which, on grounds of both national importance and human interest, could sustain a decade of intense media attention. Sporadic and casual reporting will not obliterate the causes. But if a sufficiently large number of respected media professionals were to take up the challenge in the new millennium, then the public and political pressure to meet the basic needs of the poorest quarter of a nation's people would be very substantively increased.

Addressing children's and women's issues is seen as the greatest challenge of our times. Sadly, overcoming poverty, restoring dignity and bringing hope to the victims of prejudice and exploitation, buttressing the legitimate claims of the oppressed and shielding children from the ravages of poverty and hunger are not pressing agendas in Central America.

Such awesome undertaking enjoys no mighty constituency. Like any crisis born from the contest between expediency and principle, so long as it does not become the cause celebre of all, it remains little else than a Quixotic exploit, an impossible dream unless and until the most elementary needs of society's outcasts are finally met.

Thus, a shift in ethos is fundamental to such a quest in the next century. By being society's conscience and the principal agent of social change, only the media can bring about this spiritual rebirth.

Because they are vulnerable and often voiceless, women must come first. A first call for women must be the favored ethical stand. Perhaps from remorse redemption can spring. It's called learning. A free, responsible, committed media can teach the basic lessons.

Help! What is decentralization?

By ERLING DUUS CHRISTENSEN

This is a call to our readers for help. Two of the major themes dominating Honduran political parlance these days are "transparency" and "decentralization." These are emphasized strongly in the administration's master plan for reconstruction. In the English language, transparency means something that you can see through. But a short time back the trendy people in the main-stream press began to use it in a different way, adopting the Spanish meaning of the word "transparencia," which is honesty, or perhaps openness.

As far as I am aware this bastardization of the English language has been accomplished without protest. Well, so be it. We can look forward to a period of confusion in which crooks and liars are confronted with "you're not transparent" or teachers will exhort students who cheat "to be more transparent" a feat that could it be performed would be a great aid to cheaters.

But decentralization is another matter entirely. I think it has become a code word for something, but the problem is that I am not sure what. Well, of course, at a certain level everybody knows what decentralization means. It refers to a process in which power, both political and economic, which is normally located in the central government, is distributed downward and outward to states, departments, municipalities, townships; whatever smaller units of social organization might exist.

I first encountered the concept as part of the radical, populist, democratic politics of the sixties, during a period when the central government was seen as tyrannical in both the United States and Europe. But the general consensus is that the political agenda of the "new left" was never realized. Its orientation was toward a democratic socialism in which the state virtually disappears in favor of small cooperative units.

However, the concept of decentralization reappeared under different auspices in the eighties as part of the agenda of the new right, and what is widely known as neo-liberalism. In the United States it was often called Reaganism. In this context the main thrust was not more power to the people, except to the degree that "the people" happened to be entrepreneurs, especially large entrepreneurs. What was sought was ways to limit the power of the central government to intervene on behalf of the majority of the people to protect them from the effects of advanced capitalist society. There was perhaps some over-lapping with concerns and rhetoric from the new left, but fundamentally, the thrust and concerns were radically different.

So what is going on now? Have the far left and the far right magically come together on a point so essentially irresistible that a consensus, or, in Hegelian terms, a synthesis, has been created. This is possible, but unlikely. However, when the European governments, no doubt supported by the United States, are holding the feet of Central American governments to the fire of decentralization, it is appropriate for us to wonder what is going on.

Consider for the moment that the mainstream politics of the very late 20th century in Europe would appear to have rejected populist concepts from both the left and the right in the name of what is called centrism, and no government in Europe or America that I know anything about would appear to be practicing decentralization in any very important manner.

It seems likely that decentralization pressure originates from organizations like the International Monetary Fund and are thought to be excellent medicine for poor underdeveloped nations, but not for rich countries. What is sauce for the goose is not perhaps sauce for the gander.

But I really do not know. We have informed readers from all over the world, and it would be interesting to read their perspectives on this interesting and probably important phenomenon. Mas Dinero, where are you when we need you?

The editorial of the May 1 edition was too critical and not always accurate considering what has to be done.

Sidewalks are substandard or many times non-existent. Just repair the holes and forget about redesigning a city. Electric poles and wires are being installed in an orderly fashion and with cement poles the maintenance costs will decrease. Good thinking and well done.

The cities are much cleaner and most of the sweeping of debris is done early in the morning, much better than when I came here in 1986. Considering the amount of debris hauled out of the flooded and damaged areas the job is well done. If contaminated material falls of the trucks, the sun's rays will kill the bacteria. Most of the contaminants are eliminated by exposure to air and sunshine.

I'm reminded of the German saying that many things are like a potato. The outside is dirty but the inside is clean.

John P. Buser
Siguatepeque

I just wanted to say "thank you" for your excellent news coverage which is available here in the United States through the Internet. I have been to Honduras five times in the past few years and truly love the people and the beautiful landscapes. I have several dear friends in the Tegucigalpa area.

Your English-language news allows me to keep up with events since I speak very little Spanish. Please keep up the good work.

Parrott, Ga
via Internet

Dear Editor:

I am an American businessman in San Pedro Sula. I sell used auto parts. I went to the Multiplaza Mall last Sunday and was surprised to notice that many stores were running their air conditioning at a much lower temperature for comfort. With the power rationing that we are experiencing, shouldn't we all be trying to conserve electricity? I have been doing so since the onset.

My girlfriend's family experiences more cuts than the normal. Every day I think of then, and try to save a little bit more on the power. There are also a little more lights lit at night than needed. I have not heard of any publicity asking people to use less. Why don't we all try to save a bit of power, and possibly

save a bit on the ENEE bill at the same time?

San Pedro Sula
via Internet

Bring back Tan-Sahsa
With the demise of our unique Honduran-owned airlines Tan-Sahsa in 1993, Honduras has become overly dependent upon the services of TACA, which is an airline that originated in Honduras but later moved to El Salvador. It has not been possible to create a new company that could help to promote tourism by drawing attention to those characteristics that could help to identify Honduras in the eyes of the world, and at the same time provide a cordial and quality personal service.

We remember from the days of Tan-Sahsa that whenever there was a flight to wherever, the travelers were served delicious breakfasts and lunches, which helped to create a positive image of Honduras. But these days, the company that is the dominant carrier serving this country, TACA, is not alone in the habit of over-charging its customers (charging about a dollar per minute of flight time) but which also fails to give satisfactory service. Nobody could save Tan-Sahsa from economic catastrophe, but the fact remains that this country greatly misses its national airline.

Today, we have two small airlines owned and based in Honduras, Islena and Sosa. The chances that either of these might expand services and simultaneously develop a larger purpose as an airline committed to more than maximizing profits with a minimum of service, seems, to say the least, remote.

The problem is not just located in Honduras, however. TACA also dominates the airways of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, imposing on these countries a monopoly increasingly synonymous with poor service and high prices.

It is incumbent upon the governments of Central America to realize that the entire region is adversely affected by the TACA monopoly, and that they need to act with dispatch to create an "open skies" policy with some teeth. We understand of course that their are a variety of private individuals who have influential friends in high places who are yoked together in a pact that insures all of them a very high standard of living. But whatever small benefit this may bring to the wider society, we suggest that this pales before the larger interests of the region and its people.

To speak plainly, the present situation is intolerable. The veritable isolation imposed on us by a greedy and short-sighted monopoly is contrary to the progressive policies, economic and social, blowing through our era.