Several news sources report that "dialogue" has resumed today between the Zelaya and Micheletti negotiators with the OAS representatives. This is the first reported bi-lateral meeting between the representatives of Zelaya and Micheletti for the purpose of forming a government, which should have been the procedure all along. La Tribuna reports the dialogue could have begun at noon today. Jorge Arturo Reina, Zelaya's representative on the Verification commission, reported that there was a "pre-agreement" to return to talks after extensive conversations Friday with members of the Verification commission, representatives of the OAS and Hugo Llorens, US Ambassador in Honduras.
"We have possibly found a road. There's a pre-agreement but I don't want to give more details. There's a new path," said Reina to a local Tegucigalpa radio station.
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Meanwhile, in the "headlines that make you say 'huh?'" category, Tiempo reports that in La Ceiba, the Department of Tourism is going to establish a "Paseo de las Baleadas."
It's a good thing they included a photo and explanation of that local delicacy, or I would have had a completely different notion of what was being celebrated.
--Charles
As it happens, last evening we were at a fund-raiser in Washington, DC, where among other delicacies baleadas were on offer.
And I was thinking that whenever we end this blog and start Honduras Politics and Culture, the obvious transition would be explaining why Honduras' national dish is named "bullet-ridden". I think it tends to tell us something about the humor and experience of the Honduran people.
(RNS says it is because they are like lead balloons in your stomach. We both are nostalgic for the baleadas of San Pedro Sula in the early 1980s.)
As I had it explained to me in 1979, the balas are the beans, which in those days were always small black beans. (Since then, the importation of beans from other countries has led to changes in the texture of some baleadas.) Once it was explained, the beans really did look like bullets.
The Tiempo article gives what I think is a typically touristic additional explanation, claiming that the individual beans would shoot out of one end of the baleada while you were eating it. When I was introduced to it, there was no dramatic "shooting" described-- nor have I ever seen a baleada, even one of the new more filled ones, that had this problem.
But that is how institutions promote folklore.
All of these explanations beg the question, why is it a "baleada" and not a "baleado".
If contacts at the fundraiser brought any insight into why official Washington has been so perverse in its reaction to the coup, I hope you'll share it. I had the queasy experience of contacting Raul Grijalva's office to thank him and discovering that his efforts on behalf of the elected government are a secret even from his own staff. I literally had to explain to the staffer what he was doing.
And yet people are doing things. Kerry is apparently trying to get the Gutierrez report officially withdrawn, for example. That's an important step, but these things are kept all but secret.
--Charles
--Charles
Una tortilla baleada is the implied full name.
Not that I have ever heard someone say "tortilla baleada": but baleada is an adjective here, and what is shot is the tortilla full of beans/bullets.
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