Julio Escoto: Of Men and Ideas

Julio Escoto, Honduran novelist, published his reflections on the disinformation spread following the coup in the paper El Heraldo on July 11. Among those whose actions he comments on is the Human Rights Commisioners, Ramon Custodio, whose denial of violations of rights by the coup government has been widely questioned:

Equally surprised have left me other interventions, before and after the military action, and that clearly taught me that when conflicts rooted in ideology take place human beings leap barriers and social limits, and invent and disinform with extreme shamelessness, since the end justifies the means.

This phenomenon, that Adorno calls "rupture" and hence personal recomposition of moral canons (beyond ethics, including reality), and that Kristeva analyzes as discursive recourse of intoxication (to make one believe a truth that does not exist) tumbles to the ground the apt image that I harbored of valued friends.

Listen for example to Jorge Yllescas, experienced revolutionary with whom, I believe, together with Paz Barnica we founded in San Jose an ephemeral Patriotic Front against the military dictatorship of the 1980s; to listen to him say that the liberal government wanted to take awat the paternal authority of infants and recruit them to political indoctrination camps, was as if the Christ of Esquipulas was dashed to the ground... To see the most intelligent and brilliant lawyer German Leitzelar wind up proving that the coup d'Etat was not such but a "democratic transition", and that the usurper was "constitutional", showed that he never considered the people in their due stature since he did not hesitate to insult their intelligence.

And then, innermost pain, to catch on the screen that my esteemed Ramon Custodio, spirit of ethics, proposed an awkward dodge of validation of the dictatorship by means of a captious plebiscite, to gain time and legitimate the illegitimable, returned me to cruel worlds.

Finally, to contemplate a descendant of Villeda Morales backing the coup executors was a historic stabbing, no matter how much explanation he might provide in a personal article.

Men age and change, they are weakened in weariness and deception.

Under critical situations the mind discounts what it learned and assumes opposite values, such is its plasticity. Abandon principles and elevate interest as a ruling motive. Well they say that history is a wise teacher.