Day of Indigenous and Black Resistance: the 12th of October in Honduras

An article published today on Vos el Soberano reminds us how this coup and the de facto regime that it shaped has directly harmed the indigenous and African-descendant peoples of Honduras, whose resistance has been almost unmentioned in mainstream news media.

Dia de la raza is familiar to many in the US west as the alternative to marking October 12 as "Columbus Day", reflecting on the roots of contemporary populations of Latin America in indigenous and Spanish communities brought together by violent conquest. The "dia de la hispanidad" is the way that the same date was marked in Spain, commemorating the expansion of Spanish peoples out of the Iberian peninsula. But as indigenous peoples day, October 12 marks a different story: one of persistence and recovery of historical memory.

12 de octubre: Día de la Resistencia Indígena y Negra

The 12th of October is commemorated the "dia de la raza" or "dia de la hispanidad", recording the date on which Christopher Columbus saw land on the American continent. This date marks the beginning of the process of exploration, conquest and colonization of the American territory that is characterized by the almost total extermination in some parts of the continent of its native population. The process also brought with it the ethnic reconfiguration of the continent: the coming of the Spanish colonizers and black slaves, that together with the surviving indigenous peoples and the mixing that was produced during the centuries of living together, made up the present population of the continent.

This date has been appropriated by the original groups, in particular the indigenous and blacks, to claim their rights and expose the situation of social, political, and economic marginalization to which they have been systematically subject. In some South American countries, inclusively, now one doesn't speak of a "dia de la raza" but rather "day of indigenous resistance".

It is for this reason that on this date we recognize the indigenous and Garifuna-Black Honduran resistance, resistance of centuries as victim of the brunt of the regime and of the avaricious interests of the oligarchy and of management.

The Lenca campesinos resist: the 28th of September 38 were taken prisoner, among them 12 members of the National Indigenous Lenca Organization of Honduras (ONILH) that watched over their land titles in the Instituto Nacional Agrario, the sole legal guarantees of the tenancy of their community lands.

Agustina Flores López, campesina and indigenous leader and other political prisoners resist the repression of the fascist dictatorship that has been installed in this country, since the expatriation of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales. As also resist the indigenous people that, as refugees in the Guatemalan Embassy are soliciting political asylum.

The indigenous Pech of the zone of Silín, Colón, resist in heroic struggle, who daily are beset by hitmen and police under the command of Miguel Facussé, Honduran businessman who has sought for years to appropriate the community territories of the indigenous people of the zone and since the coup d'Etat his sudden attacks have become more severe against the community that resists!

The Garifuna brothers of Ciriboya also resist, against those who have violated their human rights to life and health, by closing their community health center constructed with local management and foreign humanitarian aid, staffed by Cuban doctors and Honduran graduates of the Latinamerican School of Medicine (now persecuted by the regime).

The Garifuna in all the coastal zone resist, against the growing menace to their lands, coveted by businessmen and tourist conglomerates. They resist as well in the streets, marching with their drums, victims of persecution, and have reported on more than one occasion the seizing of their drums on the part of the police and their being arrested solely for carrying them. These drums are a powerful weapon, they emit sounds that feed the spirit and return the courage of the demonstrators.

The Tawaka and Miskitu of the Mosquitia also resist, historically marginalized, battling for the return of a constitutional order in a State that has marginalized them and combining their battle with the battle against drug trafficking and the exploitation and deforestation of their lands in reserve.

The Tolupanes in the Montaña de la Flor also resist, menaced by malnutrition, by the loss of their lands and by the traffickers in wood and animals, they resist the suspension of the humanitarian aid of the Red Solidaria that guaranteed them basic grains and medical attention for the improvement of their minimal conditions of life.

They have resisted for centuries, all these Honduran ethnic groups, against marginalization, discrimination and poverty. And from the 28th of June they resist the suspension of social programs of food, health and education, promoted by the constitutional government in order to improve their conditions of life.

12 OF OCTOBER: DAY OF INDIGENOUS AND BLACK RESISTANCE

HONDURAS RESISTS!

AT FIVE CENTURIES OF STRUGGLE, HERE NO ONE SURRENDERS!!!

Colectivo Voselsoberano

It seems that the aid termination does hurt, however much money is at stake...

...although it is unclear if it is simply that the coup regime is so insulted at having its friends act even mildly against it, or if they are really thinking about the economic effects of being cut off from the world more rationally now.

In the continued absence of more decisive action by the US (e.g. declaring this a military coup and cutting off all aid, freezing bank accounts, stopping remittances...) the chances of the mild pressure being applied bearing any fruit probably depend on whether or not the reactions reported in the Honduran press are real concern or just hurt feelings.

An article in pro-coup La Tribuna quoting the de facto regime's designate to run the treasury, Gabriela Nuñez, tends toward the hurt feelings end of the spectrum. Repeating one of the themes of the coup regime, she asks that the international community respect the decisions that have been adopted in Honduras.

At the same time, unlike other voices from the regime, including Carlos Kattan suggesting that Canada or Japan could fill the gap a US withdrawal of economic partnership would leave, Nuñez today admits that as Hondurans we also should recognize that we also need them.

Nuñez' views may partly come from her assessment of the impact of the US aid cut-off, which she set yesterday at $122 million and today says could be $200 million. The latter figure matches one floated in New York Times reporting, attributed to a senior US official, although furiously contested by coup apologists trying to minimize the impact of the US aid cutoff.

Of course, Nuñez has her own reasons to paint the worst-case scenario. It seems that she, along with others in the coup regime, are suddenly realizing that there are poor people in Honduras who may suffer economically. The Tribuna article has her estimating these funds will harm 18,000 campesinos:

This is a problem that has great humanitarian implications, because it will affect campesinos in the departments of Intibucá, Lempira, Copán, Colón and in other zones of the country.

Curious choices of examples of affected departments, since the four named happen to include large indigenous and african-descendant populations (Lenca, Chorti, Pech and Garifuna), groups that have been among those most strongly protesting the coup d'etat and resisting the de facto regime.

And of course, if all US aid were cut off, those people would be among those affected.

But they are not the principal beneficiaries of the projects terminated yesterday. The funding cut hit the government, the military, and the owners of road-building companies and businesses dependent on road transport.

It affected development of roads that run from the Department of Cortés in the north through Comayagua, Francisco Morazan, and Choluteca in the south, the axis from Puerto Cortés to the port of Amapala, running through the cities of San Pedro Sula, Comayagua, and Tegucigalpa.

Nuñez's statement is a kind of shell game, trying to substitute a more sympathetic target for the one really hit yesterday.

What was eliminated? According to a US State Department briefing, one big piece was US AID funds for

trade capacity building and support for Honduran ministries of labor and education.

Altogether, US AID funding terminated was $9.4 million. (The State Department explicitly noted that while $2.7 million of US AID funds for child survival and health were terminated, other funds in the same category were continuing as humanitarian aid.)

An additional $8.96 million of State Department funds went to a variety of military purposes, and another $1.7 million was for "security-related funding".

Finally, there was $11 million of "already suspended" MCC funds. Here is where there seems to be a virtual free-for-all in estimates offered by government officials in Honduras and in the US.

According to the MCC's own website, funding approved for Honduras is destined for

Strategic investments in Rural Development and Transportation [that] will increase the productivity and business skills of farmers and their employees who operate small- and medium-sized farms, and will reduce transportation costs between targeted production centers and national, regional, and global markets.

In practice, the majority of projects included are road improvements, including the development of the Pacific to Atlantic trucking corridor called in Honduras the "dry canal" (canal seco) because it realizes on land the centuries-old dream of a Pacific-Atlantic corridor, the goal of canal-building schemes in the 19th century already described as a land route in letters to the Spanish Crown in the 1530s.

$125 million of the total approved MCC funding of $215 million was destined for the transportation project. Just over $72 million was originally allocated for rural development, including over $21 million for feeder roads through which farm products reach the main transport system.

(By August 2009, the amount directed to the rural development project had risen to almost $75 million, while the transportation project stayed just under $124 million. The remaining funding is directed to administration and monitoring.)

An update posted on August 28 on MCC's site says the as of "the last quarterly status report, over $191 million has been disbursed or committed to contracts" leaving $25 million to commit. The PDF quarterly report accompanying that statement clarifies that only $80 million had been disbursed by August 2009, leaving $111 million of the committed funding open to suspension or termination.

Or maybe not. Consider this from the September 3 briefing:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Yeah. In terms of total money going into Honduras that was in the pipeline, which includes MCC, which is 135, was 200. Going to the Honduran – that amount going to the Honduran Government, a total of about a hundred, of which the 30 has been – the 22 – about 22, not counting the MCC, so – because the 30-plus that we’re talking about is the MCC 11 plus another roughly 22, and so another balance of about 70 or so that comes under that category of humanitarian assistance that we’re continuing. So roughly 70 would be the number. And we can get you more details on that if you’d like them of what that – what all that entails.

Crystal clear, right?

$135 million in the pipeline from MCC, and $70 million in continuing humanitarian aid.

Or maybe not.

Since the $70 million is what's left of $100 million "going to the Honduran Government" minus the $30 million being terminated, which itself is made up of $22 million of US government funding plus $11 million of MCC funding (yes, 22+11= 30: call it new new math).

So if there was originally about $100 million of aid going to Honduras, of which $22 million was just terminated, that would imply up to $78 million in continuing "humanitarian" aid.

And what does our humanitarian aid do? It supports a variety of programs, according to the State Department briefing, including

teacher training, basic education, girl's leadership skills training, food security, aid to small farmers, biodiversity, anti-gang, youth-at-risk activities... designed to assist the most vulnerable.

"The most vulnerable". That (inadvertently) echoes the way that Myrna Castro, coup regime functionary at the Ministry of Culture, described indigenous, rural, and african-descendant people in her famous rant against bookmobiles and libraries.

And maybe these are the people in Lempira, Intibucá, Copán and Colón who Gabriela Nuñez wants us to imagine are suffering most from the US aid termination.

But the real people hurting own the road construction companies, the shipping companies, and the businesses making money by selling products up and down Honduras. The same groups profiting from the splurge of legislation by the congress since the coup.

As La Tribuna notes,

In the preceding days, Núñez had indicated that what was pending for disbursement [from the MCC] in the rest of 2009 is around $28 million, to pay the construction companies.

And these are the people who shaped the coup d'etat.

De facto regime illegally dismisses Director of Institute of Anthropology and History

Readers of this blog know that the de facto regime is no friend to the Ministry of Culture or its various programs and offices. We have documented the history of dismissals of talented and accomplished scholars and artists, as well as the evidence of ideological blindness about disseminating books and encouraging critical thinking.

Now comes the latest sad volley: Ms. Myrna Castro has issued an illegal dismissal letter intending to remove the Director of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, Dr. Darío Euraque.

A historian and Professor of History at Trinity College in Connecticut, Dr. Euraque took a leave of absence from his position there to step in and provide leadership for the Institute. Under his leadership, it has fostered wide public participation through workshops, press coverage, and conferences that always include a public aspect. He has overseen the greatest expansion in the number of historical sites managed by the Institute for the Honduran public in its history.

Dr. Euraque's own research, including his ground-breaking book, Reinterpreting the Banana Republic (1996), and the 2004 Conversaciones históricas con el mestizaje y su identidad nacional en Honduras, are indispensable works to understood the roots of the present conflict, and also how Honduras is developing as a pluralistic, multicultural society.

What is different in this case is that the office of the director is preparing a legal defense and will fight this. The Honduran Institute is legally autonomous and is under the direction of a duly constituted board. The Director can only be legally dismissed by the board. The board must be legally convened, a quorum established, and a specific procedure following.

None of this has happened.

We are asking for solidarity on behalf of the directorship of the Institute and the integrity of its projects. This is, as the network of artists and scholars in resistance shows, a regime that lacks respect for the work of understanding culture and history.

Resisting this abuse of authority against an institution defending the cultural heritage of Honduras in the aftermath of the coup is something to which we can all contribute.

Update: As noted, this time, the person under attack is fighting back and holding the de facto regime responsible. See his response letter here.

Additional update: The union of employees of the Honduran Institute has issued a statement of support for Dr. Euraque, translated by Adrienne Pine, and employees took over IHAH installations across the country. Dr. Euraque continues to conduct the work of the Institute, with growing international support, including a letter signed by more than 350 academics, scholars, and intellectuals.

Honduran Skepticism About Democratic Institutions: Some Data and Opinions

Greg Weeks at Two Weeks Notice continues to provide some of the best actual data from studies of Honduran civil society that can be found. His post today, pointing to a soon-to-be-more-widely available study by Mitchell Seligson and John Booth of Vanderbilt University, is especially important to understanding both the circumstances of broader Honduran politics, and some of the motivation among Zelaya government officials for pushing for participatory democracy. But even though I understood the issues, the dramatic quantitative, comparative measures provided in the new Vanderbilt study still shocked me.

Greg notes that the study asks respondents about their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with

three key aspects of political legitimacy: support for democracy, support for national institutions, and evaluation of the government's economic performance.

The results are codified in a ratio of "triply dissatisfied to triply satisfied". In other words, how many people are dissatisfied with all three key aspects, compared to the number satisfied with all key aspects? Pardon me for being professorial here (occupational hazard) but as I deal with statistical data all the time, and find my students even in the doctoral program not prepared to really understand such measures, I want to break this out before reviewing the actual, horrifying numbers.

Say we asked 100 people in the average American city the same questions. Maybe 75 would have mixed reactions; another 10 might be extremely pessimistic and say "dissatisfied" to all three questions; and the remaining 15 might be among those lucky folks who think everything is wonderful. The ratio of triply dissatisfied to triply satisfied in our example would then be 10/15, or 0.66. This is a measure that tells us how large the extreme sentiments are in a society.

Honduras had the highest ratio of people dissatisfied in all three areas to those satisfied in all three areas among the Latin American societies studied. Its 6.17 score was almost twice as high as the next most pessimistic society in the sample (Guatemala, at 3.23).

To over-simplify, the Honduran score suggests that for every optimistic person who is satisfied with democracy, national institutions, and government progress on economic issues, there are more than six pessimistic people.

We want there to be more optimism than pessimism in democracies. When pessimism starts becoming the norm, people lose their motivation to participate, to support the institutions that ensure the survival of civil society.

Here is where the opinion part of this post starts. My friends in the Honduran government who support President Zelaya's attempt to raise the Constitutional reform issue have talked about this pessimism, the disenchantment of civil society with government, as threatening the survival of the Honduran democracy. These are people who lived under, or whose parents lived during, the long period of military rule in the 1960s and 1970s. They and their family members remember and talk about the history of 20th century oppression by dictators marked by violence and imprisonment that, while little known in North America, is a history that Hondurans have worked faithfully to ensure never can be repeated.

The failure of successive democratically elected governments since the 1980s to solve the structural problems of the Honduran economy has, in the opinions of many of these informed participants, eroded public trust in government. My colleagues did not need numbers like those we now have to understand that. So they have worked assiduously in the current administration to support policies intended to alleviate the economic burdens of the poorest members of Honduran society. Miguel Cáceres Rivera puts the case for how the Zelaya administration proceeded to try to address this civic weakness more clearly than any other scholar I know.

While economic justice is powerful, and fundamental, it alone would not be enough to ensure the survival of a democratic Honduras. The disillusion with the nature of democracy itself also needs to be addressed, the dissatisfaction with government institutions. Here, the fact is that the current form of government was constructed in such a way that it almost inevitably would produce such disillusion. Congress, the courts, and the executive branch, as well as state and local governance, institutionalized politics that privilege party operatives, as noted by Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle. The theory of the Honduran Constitution of 1982 is representative democracy; but the few who persistently are elected are not perceived by a large proportion of Hondurans as representing the interests of the people. The decline in voter participation is one reflection of this. But so is the emergence of activism by social segments that seek a more visible presence, a voice, to participate.

Zelaya government policies not only acknowledged such segments-- women's groups, indigenous groups, african-descendant groups-- but worked on many levels to engage them in a common project of creation of a new vision of the Honduran nation as multi-ethnic and pluri-racial. This is clear in both statements by Zelaya government officials and the flyer the Fuerzas Armadas claims to have seized during their raid on President Zelaya. It is clear as well in statements by segments of society that have never before had an opening to participate fully in Honduran democracy, such as indigenous peoples.

What advocates of Constitutional reform in the Zelaya government are committed to is a project nothing short of countering the spread of pessimism in Honduran society by shifting from a basis of sterile and stylized "representation" to a vigorous level of citizen participation in governance. This is why a non-binding poll was worth risking legal action. Anyone who doubts the necessity for such activism to preserve democratic society in Honduras needs to read the numbers reported by Seligson and Booth and think about what it would mean to live in a society where six times as many people were thoroughly disillusioned as believed in government.

Why Promote Constitutional Reform? A Zelaya Government Text

The Honduran Armed Forces posted a 156 page long document including everything from a timeline to an FAQ that reached almost unequalled levels of the absurd: in response to the question, Was this novel in political history?, the Armed Forces replied with the to-them obvious parallel: the Supreme Court decision in the US Presidential election in 2000 designating George W. Bush as winner over Al Gore (p. 10).

You all remember when the Chief of Staff at the time kidnapped Gore and took him off to Costa Rica, right?

Nestled in this treasure trove, which overall reinforces my sense that the Armed Forces are very defensive, is a document (p. 7) described as

Propaganda material distributed by the Executive Power, called "Cuarta Urna, Peaceful Route to the Citizen's Revolution, a New Constitution!" A document that now establishes some aspects that were intended to be eliminated from the Constitution of the Republic.

The actual handout itself appears almost at the end of the 156 pages of reproduced legal cases and orders sent to the military, the basis on which they acted.

But this document is different: it is the one, actual, solid piece of evidence the military can offer showing what the Zelaya government was intending to promote, in the event that the public opinion poll on June 28 produced a majority in favor of a fourth ballot box in November.

Here's what it promotes; notice the entire absence of any discussion of term limits, continuing in office longer than his elected term, dissolving Congress, the Supreme Court, or the command of the Armed Forces, which elsewhere (p. 15) in the Armed Forces document they claim was the real goal of the exercise; instead, what the Zelaya government proposed was ensuring the rights of women, of the multiple ethnic groups now recognized in Honduras, and the expansion of human rights to include "third and fourth generation" rights-- in other words, bringing the Honduran constitution into conformity with international treaties, just as Minister of Culture Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle previously noted:

Cuarta Urna
Peaceful Route to the Citizen's Revolution!
A New Constitution

The fourth ballot box is the democratic road to make it legally possible to convene a Constitutional Assembly that could write a new Constitution, to give Honduras a superior democracy, in which the people will not only freely elect their rulers and representatives at all levels of Government, but as well will participate actively in the fundamental decisions that affect their lives and exercise actual control over those who are in power in their name.

Among the momentous topics that should be included in the new Constitution we single out the following:

a) Social Control: establishment of recall referenda, so that the people will have the possibility of denying their confidence in the middle of their term, to those that have been elected and have betrayed them-- and of the Death Crusade! Censure and veto, for mayors, representatives, and the President.

b) Actual freedom of the press, which means equitable access to the media for all the social and political organizations and all the citizens, and that will impede the use of the ownership of the means of communication as an instrument of accumulation of economic and political power.

c) Economic liberty with social responsibility, that will guarantee private property with a social use and the social economy of the market, placing the human being at the center of the economy and rescuing public services for the people.

d) Authentic political liberty that will impede the monopoly of representation on the part of the current party members, who slow the actual participation of the citizens, whether party activists or not, in national politics. Election of representatives by electoral districts and separation of the dates of elections for Presidents, Representatives, and Mayors.

e) Renewal of confidence in those officials who have dignified their office, fulfilling it adequately for the citizens.

f) Popular consultation to guarantee that no ruler could snatch from the People their economic and social takings, because any decisions that menaced these takings only could be legalized by means of a Popular Consultation.

g) Constitutional obligation to aid the progress of Woman as central actor in the development of the country.

h) To grant priority to the individual rights, social, economic, and the rest that will be established, as well as the guarantees of a multicultural and pluri-ethnic society.

i) To incorporate the rights known constitutionally as "third and fourth generation rights" as constitutional rights.

j) To institute the Constitutional Tribunal.

"An Authentic Cultural Inquisition": A statement by Helen Umaña

Helen Umaña wrote and circulated the Spanish original of the following translated statement decrying ideological attacks on the employees of the constituent parts of the Secretariat of Culture in Honduras, on July 23. An internationally prominent author, she calls public attention to the notorious failure to understand the Secretariat of Culture by the de facto regime's appointed placeholder there, Mirna Castro.

Castro is equally indicted by her own words in a YouTube video-- denouncing the distribution of books throughout the country to populations she describes as "vulnerable", a disturbingly patronizing word to use to describe the afro-caribbean Garifuna and indigenous peoples. Especially ironic when one of the first changes the coup regime brought to the Secretariat of Culture was the dismissal of the first Garifuna Vice Minister of that Secretariat, Salvador Suazo, who is in the process of producing a unique dictionary of the Garifuna language.

The same person is responsible for the widely reported threat to violate international conventions on the protection of cultural property in times of military conflict, as well as Honduran law, by approving the use of a Honduran National Monument for a cadre of military reservists.

The facts, and others Helen Umaña comments on-- including many previously noted here-- should produce international outrage.

Crimes against Culture

Helen Umaña

From an anthropological point of view, the term "culture" refers to all manifestations of material life (planting maize, for example) and spiritual life (writing a poem, devising a scientific theory, or frawing a protest graffiti) of a specified community. We live and we breathe, then, within a specific and singular culture that marks our way of proceeding: taste for specific foods; parameters to evaluate a film or a song; manner of dressing; preference for specific sports, etc. It provides us, then, a kind of seal or badge that identifies us or individualizes us in the face of others. In the case of Honduras, as well, we have to speak of a multicultural reality.


But speaking in general terms, culture is linked unfailingly to the concept of national identity. That is, not as a closed or finished condition, but as a process: something that always is enriched or is renewed. Including, that is deteriorated or destroyed (the Spanish conquest annihilated, mutilated or changed the culture of the indigenous peoples: the Lenca, for example, lost their language and with it, vital aspects of their world view).


It is self-evident, then, the importance that the Ministry of Culture has in the life of a nation. The formulation and putting into practice of programs destined to conserve and enrich the spiritual wealth of the country depends precisely on its policies. Only clumsy politicians disparage the function of the intellectual and affective mortar that artistic, literary, and other works represent for the people. For this reason, when a government cabinet is named, persons are chosen to “direct” it who must fulfill some political or personal commitment but who, in cultural phenomena, ignore the most basic elements.


The de facto regime, in addition to the great blunder with the naming of its first Chancellor (he of the celebrated phrases, pearls of Honduran diplomacy, like the racist phrase directed at Obama), is giving another example of the intellectual level of its functionaries. In a recent appearance, Mirna Castro, brand-new minister of “culture” – of unknown resume in scientific, artistic, or literary subject matter – in front of television cameras of the world, showed that never in her life has she opened a book: she condemned as subversive fundamental works in the literary heritage of the country.


Probably, as Juan de Zumárraga and Diego de Landa did when they burned invaluable indigenous codices, she will soon organize a great pyre with the works of "indoctrination", such as the following: Memorias y apuntes de viaje, Todos los cuentos and Anecdotario hondureño by Froylán Turcios; Soy extranjero y ando de paso by José Roy Castro; Estampas de Honduras by Doris Stone (daughter of Samuel Zemurray, banana magnate); Honduras by Luis Mariñas Otero; La inconformidad del hombre by Alfonso Guillén Zelaya; La heredad by Marcos Carías Reyes (nephew and secretary of General Tiburcio Carías Andino); Mundo de cubos by Nelson Merren; Obra poética escogida de sus manuscritos by José Antonio Domínguez; Panorama de la poesía hondureña by Óscar Castañeda Batres; Soñaba el abad de San Pedro soñaba y yo también sé soñar by José Cecilio del Valle; Sueños de Merce by Mercedes Agurcia Membreño, and many other titles of similar lineage and of recent publication. Perhaps the dictionary of Honduran authors by José González can explain to her who those “dangerous” authors were, that undoubtedly delighted many of our fathers and grandfathers.

The preceding is, truly, laughable and equivalent to the celebrated phrases of Dr. Enrique Ortez Colindres. If these books are destroyed or confiscated, they can all be replaced in future editions. The most serious issue lies in other decisions that directly affect the historical patrimony of the country. So, she contemplates assigning the Honduran Documentary Center for Historical Research (where the newspapers and documents fundamental to scientific investigators and the general public interested in the theme are kept) to the Military Reservists so that they can set up a center of military operations. If action is not taken rapidly (and a call to UNESCO is imperative), soon, the Hemeroteca and the National Archive could be victims of a looting and destruction without precedents. For members (visible or invisible) of the de facto government it is urgent to "erase" irrefutable proofs of a not-very-clean recent past. It isn't an accident that one of the first actions of Sra. Castro was the firing of the historian Natalie Roque Sandoval, zealous guardian of this cultural patrimony.


Also, within this ominous policy of razing Honduran culture, is inscribed the recent firing of the Director of The Book and the Document, Lic. Rebeca Becerra, one of the poets with the greatest expressive force in present-day Latin American poetry. She carried out a distinguished editorial labor and is responsible for the publication of books like those mentioned. The “Death to the intelligentsia!” war cry of all the Fascists that there have been in the world, begins to resonate in the halls of government.


Black clouds are hanging, as well, around the Cultural Houses, accused, by the uninformed minister, of being centers that damage the country because the unholy shadow of Hugo Chavez is cast over them. Fortunately, they are located in cities of the interior of the country and each community knows what acts have been carried out under its protective eaves (presentation of books; painting workshops; film showings; reading clubs…). In other words, they know how to detect the magnitude of the official lie.


With grief, we observe that Honduras has entered an obscurantist stage whose precedents go back to the notorious decade of the 1980s. The de facto government, in cultural matters, has thrown overboard the progress achieved during the two terms of Dr. Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle at the head of the Ministry of Culture. In this respect, it is enough to cite the praiseworthy work, applauded internationally, of the Institute of Anthropology and History, directed by Dr. Darío Euraque. Let's not deceive ourselves. Unholy signs like those noted indicate that we are in the shadows of an authentic cultural inquisition.


San Pedro Sula, Honduras 23 July, 2009

A Primer on Honduran Politics, by Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle

A second text written by the Minister of Culture, made available through the work of Adrienne Pine

[Note: this excellent and brief summary of the context of the coup should be read in conjunction with the previous post, my hurried and thus somewhat choppy translation of Pastor Fasquelle's passionate open letter to those responsible for the coup, titled after Émile Zola's famous J'accuse]

For the recent coup in Honduras to begin to make sense to an American public, readers require knowledge of a broader context, of political and historic circumstances surrounding the situation. Even with such background information, it is difficult to trace the multiple links that pull these events into a coherent picture.

Some of the players are evident, for example, the interamerican rightist coalition that connects CIA diehards with Cuban exile fanatics and rightist politicians in Latin American countries has been tremendously worried over the last couple of years with the advance of socially progressive politics in the region. Right wingers have attempted to put widely differing experiences and models in the same sack, making no distinction between Chile’s socialist President Bachelet and Venezuela’s Chavez, between Argentinian President Kirchner and Bolivia’s indigenous coca defender Evo Morales, Correa of Ecuador and, on the other hand Brazil’s Lula with whom the former is fighting, or between the left leaning presidents of Central American countries, as if there were none, for example, between President Zelaya, a rich landowner from the traditionalist Liberal Party --who has simply insisted on the need to address inequalities and respond to severe poverty-- and, on the other hand, Daniel Ortega, an avowed Marxist Leninist.

There are other common threads or denominators, such as the increasing pressure of fundamentalist christians (both Catholic and Protestant) in politics and on the state. (Clearly The Assault on Reason of former Vice President Al Gore analyses a similar thread in American politics). So that when President Zelaya vetoed a law which intended to prohibit the use of birth control pills, the clergy reacted with a vengeance. Americans should also be familiar with the lobbying of corporate interests in Congress and executive offices, especially by oil and pharmaceutical conglomerates, the communications industry and seekers of tax havens and exemptions. I know a couple of New York republicans who hate the democrats who tax them in order to finance public health services.

Yet, Honduran politics must be difficult to understand for an American reader. How, for example, can one explain to this public that in what Hondurans call “democracy” today, seven party bosses determine the totality of the electoral options (from President of the country to local officers) and no one can participate without their patronage. Or how to explain that our congressmen have no geographically determined constituency, as American congressmen from a given district, and therefore are not really answerable to anyone but the bosses who put them on the ballot. Or how can one explain that until three months ago there was no way one could ask the Honduran electorate if it agreed with legal reforms of different sorts. Because ours is only a “representative democracy” according to the constitution! A reglamentary constitution, with almost four hundred articles that regulate rigidly every aspect of national life, make no provision for change and which have, therefore, had to be reformed in more than one third of their contents, yet lacks guarantees. So Indian groups and African descendants have no rights over their lands, which belong to the nation. And no one can personally accuse any other party for any wrong suffered, but has to rely on public attorneys and their disposition to process! Really. I am serious.

And when we have obtained, through public opinion pressure profound reforms, passed with all votes in favor, applauded by international organizations, for example prohibiting the President of Congress (which gets a disproportionate part of the budget for its political activity) from aspiring immediately to the Presidency of the Republic, in order to limit his advantage with public funding, the incumbent has gone to the Supreme Court, which Congress also elects every seven years (and had to elect this year) and gets a sentence saying the said provision violates his constitutional right to be elected to office!! It’s for real.

So that when, based on the new Law of Citizen’s Participation passed on the first day of his term, President M. Zelaya proposed consulting the electorate through a nationwide poll on the need to convene a new constituent assembly to reform this perverse system, its beneficiaries began a prolonged war to stop him, accusing him wanting to become a dictator.

Or how do you explain to the American electorate that in Honduras where we have had in the last two centuries hundreds of revolutions and coups d’etat, military commanders really can invoke a judicial sentence ruling that poll to be unconstitutional (because it is a direct consultation) in order to disobey an executive order, an order of their Commander-in-Chief to transport the materials for the poll, to rebel, and can, after being discharged from their posts, attack the President’s home with machine guns at five o’clock in the morning of last Sunday and kidnap him pointblank and fly him out of the country, and convene Congress, a couple of hours later that day, and proclaim there has been no coup and that the legal successor is the President of Congress. I am not sure I understand that myself and I was born and bred in Honduras.

More Pastor Fasquelle's commentary on the role of the military in the coup d'etat, and his argument that the role played by the military will constitute a difficulty for the negotiations underway mediated by Oscar Arias, is featured in an interview today with Telesur. On July 5, Pastor Fasquelle spoke with the BBC about the politics of the coup, expressing the same views and voicing his concern that the situation could erupt in civil war.

[Adrienne Pine, an anthropologist who blogs at http://quotha.net/, translated and published this statement by this prominent Honduran intellectual. Her work is used here under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, the terms of which govern any other use of this work.]

What some supporters of constitutional change think is at stake

English language news coverage has been remarkably uniform in narrowing the issue of constitutional reform down to that of term limits, despite the lack of any statement by Zelaya that would support the claim that his whole intent was to stay in power.

This in large part echoes the Honduran national press.

An interesting statement posted by Honduran indigenous groups, dated July 1, calls for the restoration of the Zelaya government. It includes as its last clause

Jamás claudicaremos a nuestra lucha histórica por una reforma a la constitución política de nuestra patria, en donde se reconozca el Estado multicultural y multilingüe en Honduras; los derechos particulares de nuestros pueblos; por una democracia participativa e incluyente; al consentimiento libre, previo e informado; al reconocimiento y defensa legitima de nuestros territorios y recursos naturales; a la libre determinación de nuestros pueblos; entre otros, así, como lo establecen diversos Tratados, Convenios y Declaraciones internacionales, principalmente el Convenio 169 de la OIT y la Declaración de la Naciones Unidas sobre Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas.

We will never back down in our historic struggle for a reform of the political constitution of our country, in which will be recognized a multicultural and multilingual State in Honduras; the specific rights of our peoples; a participatory and inclusive democracy; free, prior and informed consent; the recognition and legitimate defense of our territories and natural resources; the free determination of our peoples; among others, as are established in numerous treaties, agreements, and international declarations, principally ILO Convention 169 and the Declaration of the UN concerning the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The points listed echo several made by Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle in his editorial in El Tiempo discussing what proponents of constitutional reform saw as important potential outcomes.

ILO 169 of the UN concerns "indigenous and tribal peoples" and their rights. One of the more unexpected things happening in Honduras over the past 20 years has been the public visibility of such minority groups, and the increasing voice they have had in political action. ILO 169 challenges signatory countries, including Honduras, which ratified it March 28, 1995. ILO 169 calls for specific treatment to be accorded to indigenous peoples in recognition of their status as original inhabitants and as minorities whose cultures are often most threatened by nationalism and development. As Pastor Fasquelle pointed out, the present Honduran constitution does not conform with this and other similar international agreements.

There are undoubtedly other substantive parts of the constitutional reform story going unreported. This is simply one example of why those who supported reform did so.