Life as an Ex Pat in Honduras

My Last Day in Honduras is Wednesday

2011-10-09T02:34:00.000-04:00

I will be leaving Honduras on Wednesday, but hopefully not for good. I don't really know right now what the future will hold on my return to Honduras. I love this country and it has become as much a part of me as I have became a part of Honduras. I am not sure how returning to the US is going to affect me, but it will be a very difficult transition for me that is for sure.

My heart breaks for so many things right now. I am sad about my cousin, sad about the death of a friend, and even more sad now that my son has returned to the states and me forcing him to go back when he wanted to stay in Honduras. I had to insist though with the murder rate at 82 per 100,000 there is no way I am letting him stay here when he has a way out. So he went back to the states and he promised his friends he would return to Honduras and I am sure he will, he is after all more Honduran than he is American.

I have thought about all the things I will miss here and I am feeling very sorry for myself right now so I am going to write about the misery I feel right now over leaving Honduras. What I will likely miss most is the food here. I love the different foods, green fried bananas, chimol, ceviche, yucca with chicharrones, there are countless things...of course these things can be found in the US and are more common all the time as the community grows in the US, but the food for some reason never tastes the same as it does here. That said what I will truly miss the most are my friends and neighbors. Las Brisas is now a conflicted zone when it was very safe and hopefully soon they regain control of the community and plans are in action as I write this so most have whispered to me in about a year things should be settled down again. The community sad to see us go are all in agreement that we have made the best decision in leaving and that all of them wish they could transplant our little community to the US and I wish that too because it would be great to have all my same neighbors in the US with me, but that is impossible. I will miss walking to the 'pulperia' and talking to several people along the way or going to visit friends in the evening or even going to the local lady that cooks food and buying chicken and tajadas or a baleada. Listening to the kids pop fireworks at tremendously inappropriate times. I will miss the vegetable man with his cart and horse selling us potatos, tomatoes, green peppers, etc and listing for his cart to come by the loud speaker he speaks over. I will miss water being delivered to my house and will feel really wierd about drinking out of a tap....I can see the looking for wierd stuff coming out of my tap now..and nothing happening in the states...here my water ran from brown to yellow and occasionally clear..but usually never without floaties...oh well wierd the things I will miss. I will miss having wall to wall ceramic flooring. I love my ceramic floors and hate carpet. I will miss living in my two story house and standing on the second floor patio looking out over the neighborhood and being able to see the Merendon from there. I have made my decision but sort of regret it in a way, but I know this is the best thing even if it is killing me inside. My heart is broken I love it here. I never wanted to return to the US, but I never dreamed the mess Honduras would become. I will miss watching the kids play soccer and my son running around shirtless after the soccer ball. Remind me why I am doing this again?

The things I won't miss are the violence and pain that have been caused by really bad people. I miss my cousin and want him back, but know that is impossible in my heart. I miss David and I miss so many things...but I have to go back to the US and start over. I will miss my life here, but I will have a new life that I am not sure is going to be as I would like in the US. I will be with someone I love dearly which counts for a lot.

256 Women Murdered in Honduras during 2011

2011-10-06T01:08:00.002-04:00

Over 256 women have been murdered in Honduras in this year alone. This is a terrible number of women and absolutely astounding. What is worse is that very few of these crimes have been solved.

In Honduras, when you read the paper it is very rare to see the paper admit a woman was raped before she was murdered. The paper will say that the body was found half naked or naked, and things along that line that imply what occurred but they rarely come out and say the woman was raped and murdered.

Recently two little girls of just 13 years old were found dead after they had left out from their home at 7 pm together. The girls were found in two different locations. One was found dead close to her home and the other was found in the colonia Villeda Morales. How can anyone murder two 13 year old girls? These are babies!

Here we don't seek justice we just often hear the family say ...let God take care of it. That saying of dejalo a Dios drives me up a wall. How are they ever going to get justice if they don't put some effort into discovering who is behind all this? For all we know some of this is the work of a serial killer! No, we just leave it to God and let him sort it out, while more women die every day.

My Cousin Has Been Kidnapped

2011-09-28T16:46:00.005-04:00

I have blogged extensively about the violence in Honduras and two days ago the unthinkable happened in my family. My son's cousin*he isn't actually my cousin, but he is the cousin of my stbx husband and son* Two days ago he was in his home with his kids that he is raising with his wife*not their mother*. He has eight children total and is taking care of all of them on his own. He had a spot in the market that he ran with his father and mother and his father has been working for the government lately since the win of Pepe Lobo as president.

As to what happened, we know very little except that men dressed as DNIC officers broke into the home and took him from his house two days ago, since that time we have heard nothing. We have received no ransom demands, no clue as to where he is and we have been to morgues, police stations to see if he was in jail, hospitals and everywhere else we could think of. He seemingly disappeared without a trace.

I am asking everyone to keep his mother Amparo and father Marino in their prayers. He has a brother, Leonard and a sister Diana and his name is Noe. Of course he has eight children that are hoping for his safe return though with each passing hour that looks less hopeful. This has indeed been a very difficult week for our family and neighborhood, 2 burials in the past 8 days and now another missing.

If you have have seen or know of the whereabouts of Esteban Noe Moreno Cañada please call 2566-1238, 9673-2527 or for English 8883-4766 any information that you have is appreciated.

Honduras Needs Samaritan Laws

2011-09-27T03:33:00.002-04:00

On Sunday one of our neighbors and my son's soccer coach was killed in a motorcycle accident on Avenida Junior in front of Taco Pollo here in San Pedro Sula. His oldest daughter Melissa was with him. They had just returned from a trip to Tela and Santa Barbara. A drunk man hit them and he was thrown off his motorcycle with the daughter. He hit the telephone pole so hard that it knocked his helmet off and he hit his head on the pavement. At first he was unconcious and then he woke up. At some point his daughter was transported to the IHSS hospital.where she is in grave condition. Somehow though no one, not even the police transported him to the hospital. It seems the reason was he had a tattoo, not a gang tattoo mind you, just a tattoo. The ignorance of some folks here astounds me when it comes to tattoos you are automatically assumed to be associated with a gang or to be a criminal. This somehow makes you subhuman and not worthy of your life being saved. It even can earn some folks making comments that you should be dead. He was left in agony begging for help for almost 1 hour and not even the police would rescue him and he finally expired from his injuries then they sent for forensics to recover his body.

This above scene would never occur in the US because the police would be in serious trouble and any people around would have long before called an ambulance and rescue services regardless of what the man looked like. In Honduras, we need to establish samaritan laws that not only protect people if they rescue someone and take them to the hospital and at the same time requires people to act and not just stand there and allow someone to die on the side of the road without rendering aid, especially the police should be held criminally responsible for someone dying like this. How outrageous that now we are burying a man who was a wonderful neighbor, father and coach. He had three children, two daughters and a son. His 12 year old son had been stricken with polio as a small child and it caused serious damage to his spinal column and organs. This young man was doted on by his father and he never needed for anything. They spent countless time and hours trying to find medical assistance for his son. His daughters Melissa 19 and Pamela 14 are wondeful brite young ladies. This man is a loss to our neighborhood and we are all saddened by the situation. Had he been taken to the hospital he may have been saved, but no one, not even the police tried to save him.

Honduran Social Security Insurance For Hondurans Outside of Honduras

2011-09-26T19:28:00.001-04:00

Next Wednesday, President Porfirio Lobo Sosa will be announcing a new insurance program for ex patriot Hondurans that live in the exterior such as the US. This will cover general medicine and other medical needs that are provided by Social Security Hospital in Honduras. It is being called ' Catracho Seguro' . Right now I do not have a huge amount of information n this other than more information is available at the Consulate in Miami, Florida. I give a thumbs up to Pepe on this initiative as it wil help insure many uninsured Hondurans in the US.

Honduran Funeral Customs

2011-09-24T11:09:00.000-04:00

I loaned my living room area the other day for a wake the other day for one of my neighbor's sons who was murdered. Their home was too small to accomdate a large amount of people. I got first hand experience with some of Honduran beliefs and traditions when it comes to funerals.

First, Hondurans are extremely superstitious. These superstitions and beliefs are even more engrained in the areas of life and death.

Most wakes in Honduras are held in private homes and not in funeral homes. I am not sure for the reason for this other than the fact that the family stays with the body for the entire time until burial and the fact that a wake is a huge social event involving not just family but friends and neighbors as well.

One thing I noticed is the way they enter the casket into the home and exit the casket from the home. The casket is always exited from the home feet first. Hondurans believe that if you remove a casket head first that the deceased will then come back and take all of the people at the wake with them to the other side. During the wake the casket is also placed so that the sun will cross the face of the deceased to provide them with light and make the deceased happy. The feet should always face the door so that the spirit is not bound inside the home.

The wake is held all night long and is a huge event. There is no such thing as a small wake. Everyone is invited to the wake..there is no formal invitation it is without saying that everyone can come in the neighborhood and family as well. Food and drinks are served, even alcoholic drinks. It is custom that family stay the entire night with the casket to keep their loved one company so that they are happy in the process of moving into the spirit world. Many people think it is dangerous that you will make the spirit unhappy if you sleep during the hours of 3 and 5 am instead of keeping the dead company. The casket also should have 4 lit candles the entire night without allowing them to burn out. This will light the way for the spirit into the spirit world and make the spirit happy without upsetting them by the darkness. They also believe all caskets should have flowers of some sort even if it is wildflowers.

Once the casket is removed feet first from the home to be taken to the cemetary for burial Hondurans believe that the doors should be left wide open so that the spirit of the deceased then follows the casket to the cemetary for the proper burial instead of remaining bound in the home.

When people return from the burial they are then able to sleep and take baths to get rid of hijillo. People in Honduras are often told not to visit wakes if they have cuts or are ill because of hijillo. Pregnant women can assist as long as they tape camphor tablets to their belly button thus preventing the hijillo from affecting them and the unborn child.

What is hijillo? It is the process of decomposition of the body and the gas that the body produces.

Snow Cones with a Honduran Twist

2011-09-20T20:50:00.000-04:00

In Honduras like in most Latin American countries the icecream man pushes a cart around selling his ice cream to the neighborhoods. Here they have a different version than I have ever seen. It is something that I enjoy though. They scoop shaved ice into a cup and put the snow cone flavoring in the ice usually a red color and slap 'miel' honey on it and canned condensed milk on top with a straw and spoon for your enjoyment. I never get tired of this treat and I usually ask them to leave the ' miel' off because it makes it too sweet I love the condensed milk being added to the topping...I wish I had my camera with me this afternoon but perhaps I can find a picture of it on the net somewhere and add it here for everyone...the cost of these little treats is 10 lempiras which is about 50 cents or less in US dollars.

It´s Raining Fish, quite Literally

2011-09-20T07:13:00.001-04:00

Honduras I believe is the only place in the world where it rains fish once a year. It happens in the department of Yoro sometime between May and July. There is no specific day, but if you want to have a truly unusual experience in a trip this would be it, but you would need to plan an extended vacation since there is not a set day.

There is no credible explination for this phenomenon through science, but it really does happen. Tradition here says that Father Jose Manuel Subarina came to Honduras and upon finding so many desperately poor people he prayed for 3 days and 3 nights and upon that it rained fish providing a blessing for the people that has continued on every year.

What is interesting is the phenomenon includes fish that are not from that area and are fresh water fish. It does occur only during a very strong thunderstorm that lasts at least 3 hours so it needs to be a torrential rain storm before you will get the raining of fish. It also usually occurs around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Something even more interesting is that none of the fish that have fallen from the sky have been able to be kept alive, they all die within a few hours regardless of what is done, so it seems they are sent to be eaten and not grown. The fish rain starts from a very black rain cloud that rises up over the mountaintop and always originates from the same direction, it is most likely that it will occur sometime between June and July but evidently has occurred in May as well. What is interesting is how this always occurs year after year one time a year.

So grab your basket and come to Yoro during this season if you want to experience what it is like to have it rain fish.

Here is a Youtube video of the area where it occurs

http://youtu.be/tTCe-yut-2g

Honduran Spaghetti

2011-09-20T06:31:00.000-04:00

When I first started my adventure with Honduran cuisine the two things that were a bit strange to me where Honduran spaghetti and fried green bananas known as ´tajadas´. I first came to Honduras to visit when my 15 year old son was not yet 1 year old. He celebrated his 1st birthday in Honduras.

Honduran spaghetti is interesting, it took me some time to get used to, but now that I have gotten used to it sometimes I like to add it instead of rice. I never could understand how in the world it is that Hondurans like to eat both rice and spaghetti in the same plate, wow all the carbohydrates at work there....we walk a lot here, but not enough to work off that type of diet.

You might wander what is so interesting about it, in reality Honduran spaghetti is quite simple to make. Take 1 pound of spaghetti noodles and put them to boil in water and a pinch of salt, gather the rest of your ingredients, 1 package of tomato sauce, 1 pack of 4 ounces of Honduran crema..like Sula or fresh if you can get it, half a stick of margerine, hard Honduran cheese that is grated like parmesan, and 2 chicken buillon(I use the Issima brand that is a package instead of a cube). Once your spaghetti is cooked tender take a collander and flip spaghetti into it to drain, then immediately put back in pot while hot, add margerine, buillon, half pack of tomato sauce, crema and mix till you get a light orange color, you don´t want to add too much tomato sauce so you may want to add 1/4 of package first and then add more as you go. Once this is done you can serve with a meat accompaniment, salad and beans...and of course if you want to be fully Honduran, add white rice to it and top the spaghetti with the crumbled cheese.

Resumen of the Week.

2011-09-19T22:08:00.002-04:00

I really don't want to write about the violence going on in Honduras, but I find the need to continue on with this because if someone doesn't it is easy to forget about what is going on around us. What is occurring here is a true tragedy and it seems like there is little that can be done to stop it.

Pepe said that his ex minister of Security made a proposal to cure the violence outbreaks but that they violated human rights and he wanted no part of it. My question is what was the proposal and how did it violate human rights? I was really interested in the idea to clean up the police and no one has a 'right' to a job, they should be able to be fired for any act of corruption no matter how small or large. In fact, it should be an automatic jail sentence. Things just don't work that way in Honduras though as I am finding out. I guess it is the Catracho way of doing things...pig headed as it is.

In the past week 3 police officers have been murdered in the line of duty and one soldier. Two of the police officers were in Bajo Aguan along with a Honduran soldier when the patrol car they were in was attacked by 'guerrilleros' a true loss, I hope these officers and soldier are given full honors at their funeral. The other police officer was an official, the Chief of DNIC in La Paz was murdered when he had stopped to check out a fake bomb package in Ocotillo. Assasins opened fire on him and an ex police officer leaving both dead. No one has been captured as of yet in either of these crimes, but it is a clear signal of the deterioration of law and order in Honduras, what little there was before anyway.

In my neighborhood we have had the pleasure of having no 'maras' so far, but the violence still breaks out here as well because there are maras in surrounding areas. The neighborhood launched a small vigilante group but sometimes it takes quite a bit of effort to control even this small neighborhood. It is impossible to keep all criminal elements out. I live in a 40 year old neighborhood of Las Brisas close to Expocentro in San Pedro Sula one of the most violent cities in the Americas. It seems a shame that to protect ourselves that as citizens we have to violate the law ourselves by arming ourselves to the teeth and shooting at anything strange that moves in the night, but that is exactly what we have done. Anyone strange is checked out, churches have been advised to change their hours to earlier in the evening so that services end by 8 and no one should be in the park after 9 pm. Where before we were in the street up till 2 am many nights the watch group has asked everyone to be in their home no later than 10. This in general has been for the safety of the neighborhood.

Brewing Guerilla War in Bajo Aguan

2011-09-17T08:21:00.000-04:00

I haven't spoke about this in awhile because it is a sore point with me. I disagree vehemently with the president Pepe Lobo on this issue. I would not have even considered giving the land to these criminals in the first place. He has proposed however, to pay for it with tax payer money. The thing is they have already proven they are not going to be happy with this and that they are determined to carry out a war and take the entire area regardless of what agreements are made.

Yesterday, a police truck was attacked with grenades and high powered weapons. As a result a police officer and a soldier are dead and others are injured. The police truck was doing patrols so there had been no confrontation this was an out and out planned attack. It is time to go in there and clear out the entire area of people and do a shake down. I would retire any proposals from Congress that have to do with giving land to anyone.

What needs to be passed is a law that if you didn't buy the land you can't have it period. I do not understand the attitude of some of the poor folks that think that because a person is wealthy it is ok to steal from them. I have seen this attitude from several people in Honduras and I fail to see how stealing from the rich is any different from stealing from anyone else.

What I see is a small scale guerilla war that needs to be quashed in its early stages and some of this guerilla war is being fueled by Mel Zelaya, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega. Any foreigner in that area needs to be told that they need to leave Bajo Aguan and to stay out if they don't want to be presumed as making war against the state of Honduras. There are plenty of areas they can find safe haven in Honduras outside of the Bajo Aguan if they are not here for malicious reasons. Anyone else caught with high powered weapons or grenades in that area need to be charged under military codes for making war against Honduras and treated accordingly. Treason in the US gets you put in front of a firing squad...I wonder how long it would take for them to stop making their little guerilla war if the state of Honduras started putting traitors in front of a firing squad?

Can the Honduran Police be Cured of Corruption?

2011-09-15T01:19:00.001-04:00

According to the plans of the now Ex Minister of Security Ricardo Alvarez he wanted to get rid of corrupt police. To be able to fire them on the spot for corruption starting with the highest up of officials all the way down to the lowest entry level police officers. I salute that idea, but is it possible to really cure the police of Honduras or even Honduran society of corruption in our government officials?

It is almost custom when the police stop you to offer them a 'mordida' of say 100 or 200 lempiras to just forget the whole situation. Usually these are harmless situations of using your cell phone while driving or not wearing your seatbelt or running a red light. However, this corruption adds up to bigger corruption of paying to ignore drug shipments, to forget about ballistic evidence, etc. It is not uncommon to see police going into neighborhoods to collect 'rent' from drug dealers and common theives to let them continue with their guns in hand and to continue dealing drugs while police look the other way.

The way to cure this of course is perhaps a few things, the ability to fire...an independent police investigation unit to investigate police corruption and to take complaints against officials and police officers from the general public and let those people remain anonymous. To offer a reward for reporting corruption. Also, I like the idea of undercover police officers, but that is not going to help without the combination of other things as well as adding a prison sentence to anyone offering a bribe to police officers in the first place.

Can the police and Honduran people be cured of corruption? Perhaps, but we have a long row to hoe before we get to cure the ailment of corruption in Honduras.

The Case of Ramon Matta Ballesteros

2011-09-10T12:47:00.002-04:00

I read an article in latribuna.hn a few days ago about Ramon Matta Ballesteros. I have read about him over time and know that he is in the US in a prison for life for the murder of a DEA agent in Mexico.

Hondurans complain that he was extradited in violation of the Honduran constitution and that he was going to pay the entire external debt that Honduras owed. It is true that he offered to pay our external debt in Honduras, but it is also true that he murdered a DEA agent and a Federal police officer of Mexico. He had to pay the price for that crime and he is in jail for that crime. what is also clear is he should not have been in Honduras in the first place. He had been detained in Colombia and bought his way out of prison with $2 million and returned to Honduras where he should have been immediately arrested. There are also extradition agreements with the US and Honduras whereas the US extradites people wanted for murder in Honduras and Hondurans have the obligation to extradite people wanted for murder in the US.

I don't want to spend my time on him, because I have heard way too many Hondurans boo hoo about the son he left behind for 23 years and that the son lost out on his father. My concern is for the agent he killed and his family. You might wander who is the DEA agent that he murdered? Well let's talk about him

His name was Enrique Camarena, he was 38 years old when he was murdered by Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros.

Enrique Camarena was a decorated DEA agent and a marine. He had a wife by the name of Mika and three sons. This is who Kiki Camarena was http://www.camarenafoundation.org/news.htm and this is the legacy he left. His wife and children were without a husband and a father, but not one word from Matta's son about the family of the man his father tortured and killed.

Here is information on the case itself

http://www.camarenafoundation.org/news/aforensicnightmare.pdf

and the information about the tape of his actual torture and murder were made public
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-06-07/news/mn-3854_1_made-public

The person's rights that we should be concerned about are those of the man he killed brutally and that of his children who grew up without their father.

2011-09-08T02:13:00.002-04:00

Ex president Zelaya said that he considers the murder of one of his FNRP members as an act of war. The person he is referring to is Mahadeo Roopchands Sadloo, a person of Indian origin.

I am all for freedom of speech, but this guy was a rebel rouser and we do not know that this was any political issue at all. With all the violence going on for all we know he had narcotics connections and was 'dealt with' accordingly. He was a naturalized citizen promoting the overthrow of the constitution and government, he should have been deported.

Zelaya said, this is a declaratio of war against us.

Really? According to police the guy they called' Emmo' got into an argument with a client over some rims and the situation ended in tragedy that the client shot him five times. That hardly is a declaration of war or even a political act.

Unknown individuals shot ' Emmo' five times according to the hospital authorities.

Zelaya said that the justice system is a failure in Honduras and accused it of taking the country into chaos and
accused them of promoting a war against resistence groups.

I agree that the justice system is a failure in Honduras, but it isn't because of any promotion of war against any groups in Honduras. The justice system was just as big a tragedy under Zelaya as it is today..

Zelaya called it a political crime, though no determination has been made as to why he was killed yet or who killed him.

We are peaceful, but also the patience of people has come to an end, said Zelaya

Oh really you are a peaceful people? Shall we take a walk down memory lane as to how peaceful you are? Let's look at some pictures shall we?

Yep really peaceful looking folks there....

The ex president said that his political commission is going to make a decision as soon as possible to plan the actions that they are going to take because of this crime.

Your political commission is going to make a decision about what you are going to do? HAHA! How about sitting down, shutting up, and waiting for the investigation to determine whether this was a business deal that went bad or whether it was political and then discuss it...but who is your commission Zelaya? You and yourself? I certainly don't see too much resistence activity these days.

He said this cannot be left this way and we cannot stay silent

Why isn't he so vocal about the deaths of all the women in Honduras? No outrage there huh?

Planning On Leaving Honduras

2011-09-02T01:23:00.000-04:00

Whether this actually happens or not will depend on a series of events over the next few weeks. However, I need a change the violence is really getting to me lately and some of the people close to me know I am going through a very painful divorce so I need to be close to friends and my own family which means returning to the US for awhile anyway.

This will be a very difficult move for me and of course I will still keep my blog here on Honduras. Honduras is as much a part of me as I am a part of Honduras. I don't really know how I am going to deal with the culture shock of returning to the US after having been here in a 'banana republic' so long...lol. I laugh because they call us a banana republic but I really have a hard time picturing it that way. The divorce though needs to come to a finish in the US I suppose and I need an attorney and to be there to complete that and then do the rest here. I am really sad that the violence here in San Pedro Sula and no future outlook of it calming down has made me decide I may need a break in the US. The economy is really rough here lately and it can be felt by everyone which has not helped me in the least.

My only positive outlook is my home is here and the property is in Olancho and I still have those things and my son who is Honduran will return with me to the states but we will be back here and as strong as ever in the near future..if I can avoid it though I will stay in Honduras and maybe just move to a calmer part of Honduras if that actually exists.

The Drug War Arrival in Honduras

2011-09-01T00:16:00.001-04:00

I have watched in absolute horror as the drug war has developed over the past year here in Honduras. It seems as if the violence in Mexico has spilled across Central America with wreckless abandon. Honduras has always had problems with vigilante style justice and high crime rates, but it seems worse than it has been in recent past.

There have been 3,606 homocides this year up to the date of June, of course that number has likely doubled by now. The drug war has rewarded us with 86 deaths per 100,000 of population folks..how sad can that be? I am in shock and don't know whether I want to cry or just sit here dumbfounded at the absolute helpless situation we are finding ourselves in..and Honduras only has received a few million bucks to fight this damn drug war...I think we should tell the ATF that let the arms come across freely to come fight it themselves and leave us out of it.

Three New Lion Cubs Born in Yojoa Zoo!

2011-08-26T03:09:00.000-04:00

These were images just too cute not to share. Three lion cubs were born in captivity at Joya Grande Zoo and they are just adorable.

They were born on August 23 at 8 pm with no complications. At this point they have been seperated from their mother so that they can be cared for by professionals and are being given special milk so that they grow correctly. They are not presently able to be seen by the public, but will be on display in a few months along with the other animals that are at the zoo. I look forward to visiting this zoo and seeing these beautiful animals.

Honduran Justice

2011-08-26T02:35:00.000-04:00

One thing that is universally complained about in Honduras is the lack of the ability of police to act against criminals. It seems as if they let them escape without any consquences, even when they know who did the crime.

The latest gaff of the police turned deadly, actually there has been two deadly instances in the past few days...but the first one I am going to discuss is centered in Juticalpa, Olancho and the type of justice merited out there when the police do not act quickly. Olancho has a reputation for vigilante justice and this is of course no exception to that rule.

On Monday, a woman was murdered by her son, who is a deaf mute and a drug addict as well as an alcoholic. Several failures occurred here. The first being that society did not address the addiction problems as well as the disabilities of this man who was obviously in need of assistance before things got so out of control. His mother was visiting Honduras for a funeral from the US. She was terrified of her addicted and disabled son. She expressed her fears to several neighbors and asked if she could stay with them, all of the neighbors refused. So the neighbors failed her as well as failing to address the issues the man had. Who are we as a society if we don't protect and help others who need our help? What happened? Well he cornered her in a room, raped her and murdered his own mother. He ran obviously and the police did not capture him...a few days later he appeared at the steps of the municipal building hacked to death and castrated in an extremely grotesque fashion.

The second failure is in training the police adequately, again a police officer from Juticalpa, but he was assigned to Tegucigalpa. He caught a criminal in the capital stealing wood from a woman's house. However, he wasn't frisked for weapons when they took him into custody and the criminal shot him in the back, killing the officer instantly and escaping arrest. What causes a police officer to fail to check someone under arrest for weapons? A lack of adequate training and a lack of education and skills. That failure led to the death of a police officer that was actually acting according to his duty to serve. The failure of the police led to the death of a man who was disabled and addicted to drugs and society failed his victim by not assisting with the problem that she had in being protected from her own child.

It is sad and I wish it didn't happen in Honduras, but it does, everyday.

It Has Been Raining for THREE DAYS STRAIGHT GUYS!

2011-01-14T19:53:00.000-05:00

Can someone give a holler upstairs and tell someone that they can push the off button on the rain any time now?
I couldn´t leave my home all day and I am dying from cough, fever and all that jazz and really needed to go to work today...but nope the rain couldn´t allow that to happen....as I sit here writing this it is stillll raining...good grief.

This is 27th street...anyone up for playing in the rain?

My employee at the new bodega lives in Progreso so I let him go home early today...not like they were doing anything and I never made it to work because the streets were flooded in between me and work and me sick to death got soaked and a good chewing out from everyone. So far 56 families in his community have been evacuated to safety.

In other news our city has been named the third most violent in the WORLD guys...in the world...what happened to the days when Maduro was president?

In San Pedro Sula alone we had 1,018 murders in 2010. That is 125 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants.

The only places more violent than San Pedro Sula are Kandahar, Afghanistan(good lord) and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. Ciudad Juarez has 229 deaths per 100,000 and Kandahar has 169.9.

In other news a doctor that was from Barrandillas the community next to ours and where I had taken my son when he was ill or myself has been identified as the body that was found. He was kidnapped in September and has been missing since. Everyone called him the doctor from Barrandillas. His name was Allan Caballero...things won´t be the same...my sympathies to his friends and family.

Thinking Like You Are Honduran!

2010-08-12T23:28:00.000-04:00

When I was in the states there were so many things that happened here in Honduras that I just didn´t understand..well now that I am here I am beginning to get it and think like a Honduran..and as a result my American friends in the states think that my mind is being afflicted by too many bananas!

In Copan a thief decided to go into a man´s house...the man shot at the thief and the thief shot back. Both were hurt and fell to the ground. The thief´s friends waiting outside heard the gunfire and rescued their friend and ran to the clinic with him in their pickup.

In the meantime neighbors alarmed at the events unfolding ran out to see what was occurring and some rescued the man taking him to the clinic where he expired later. However, another group launched out in their vehicles guns in hand in hot persuit of the thieves and caught them on a curvy road on the way to the clinic...they opened fire on the thieves killing the one that was already injured and kidnapping the other to likely torture and kill elsewhere..he will appear in some sugar cane field dead as a doornail..and then the driver ran off and no one knows where he is.

I found myself happy that they got these fools...instead of thinking like an American and saying..why didn´t they call the police? Well folks..the police don´t do anything around here..and the only way to deal with them is just like happened in the community...what is unusual is that the community didn´t look the other way and pretend it didn´t involve them..horray for this community..if they keep this up they will not be terrorized by the corruption and crime taking hold of the country..if only more communities acted like this...I know, I know how in the heck can I think like that? Well, I guess I am finally a Honduran and if you really think the police are going to do something you still think like an American...in Honduras if you want justice quite simply you have to do it yourself.

Fire the Teachers

2010-08-12T23:06:00.000-04:00

Well the teachers are at it again...on strike. This sounds like a broken record lately and I am so sick of the strikes. I propose we actually do what was proposed by ANDI and actually close the schools.

Reagan fired all of the air traffic controllers when they went on strike and it worked perfectly..so I propose we either fire all of the teachers or we close all of the public schools here and make vouchers for those who cannot afford to pay for private school. It would be cheaper than providing for these broken down schools and these ruffians that want to convince us they are teachers. Paying tuition in Honduras isn´t that expensive and the education is ok..not perfect by a long shot, but ok and at the very least private schools don´t go on strike every week.

It would cost less than 100 dollars a month per student in Honduras to pay for their private tuition. How many students are there in the public school systems? What do we spend now? What would be the savings or extra costs?

Talking About Lupus

2010-06-30T22:58:00.001-04:00

I want to discuss something that I have sometimes mentioned, but on this blog I have never discussed. I have Lupus. A daughter of a neighbor was recently also diagnosed with Lupus, because of similar signs and symptoms to my illness. Living in Honduras sometimes has its challenges and this is one of those things that proves difficult in Honduras so I have decided to talk about an illness that is very personal to me.

I was diagnosed with Lupus about eight years ago. It was very difficult for me, because it meant facing the reality that my child bearing days were over and that a miscarriage of twins not only led to the diagnosis of a lifelong illness that took the life of my paternal aunt, but also meant I was infertile after having children during early years.

In Honduras not too many people know what Lupus is or how it is treated nor do they even understand what doctors must see you and how to react to the illness. Lupus of course is characterized as a very serious autoimmune disorder that manifests in different forms and can be genetic, drug induced, or even unexplained. In my case it is genetic and in my neighbor´s case it is unexplainable. Her Lupus is more aggressive than mine is. I have faced extremely difficult boundaries in finding adequate treatment and access to qualified doctors for Lupus and I have to wonder how many people in Honduras go without ever being diagnosed with the disease and instead try to explain it off on other issues, fatigue is most likely related to anemia here as people tend to self medicate. The pain in joints as either a case of flu or even arthritis. When hair comes out they think perhaps that it is nervousness(as many ask me when I lose hair if I am a nervous person, and I tell them no I have an autoimmune disorder and they just look at me strange, but rarely ask what I mean.) Those who are close to me have learned a great deal because I get rashes from the sun on my arms and neck, but I try to stay out of the sun during the hottest part of the day and I rest during the day for a few hours(my siesta), and I take showers sometimes three times a day to keep myself cooler.

I have found that even the pharmacists here tend to not quite understand the disorder and usually become interested when I ask for antimalarial medication and corticosteroids at the same time. The pharmacist up the street has became an expert in knowing and learning the combinations that may help me depending on my symptoms because going to a specialist isn´t always an option here even though I live in a large city. A nurse comes to give me a shot that understands my illness and checks on me every few days now that I am going through a flare again.

Fighting Lupus is very difficult and even in the US people often do not understand what the illness is so imagine here where people sometimes still think that illnesses are supernaturally inspired. I have had people in the US argue that Lupus is a pretend illness(they confuse it for things like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia which both are real illnesses, but sometimes people do not believe it) when you tell them that Lupus can kill you they look at you like you have lost your mind. Of course more people know now that it is a serious illness compared to ten years ago. Then some others think that it is a disease that is always fatal, but are often surprised when you tell them that it is an illness where you can live a normal life span if you take care of yourself, but that some people die because of complications from the disorder.

One positive thing that has came from my facing Lupus was my neighbor´s daughter being alive because of me. Her Lupus attacked her kidneys. She also got the rash and had the pains that I suffer and the terrible fatigue that overcomes you. Her mom came to my house in tears and said...´I don´t know what is wrong with my daughter, help´and I went to talk to her, she told me her symptoms and what she was feeling..and I looked at her mom and told her she needed to go to the hospital. Her daughter was having a flare that involved her kidneys so they started aggressive treatment and diagnosed her daughter with Lupus. She came home and cried and cried..it broke my heart as well to know this young lady of 24 was facing what I face every day of my life. She said if it weren´t for me they would have just blown it off as not serious or heat rash and anemia. I told her not to worry that the doctors would care for her and that together we would face the future. My neighbor lost her hair and I feel for her, but it is coming back slowly and I commented that maybe it would be even more beautiful than before(she had gorgeous hair).

I have to wonder how many illnesses or disorders in Honduras go undetected because of the lack of information on disorders. Lupus is very common in Latinos, Native Americans, blacks, and Mediterreanean ethnicities. It is my hope that information will lead to knowledge.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/lupus/DS00115/DSECTION=lifestyle-and-home-remedies

Pepe Lobo Says That Someone is Trying to Remove Him as President

2010-06-11T00:27:00.000-04:00

I am not sure how true this is. I haven´t heard much rumbling in news media here in Honduras like I did before Zelaya was removed. I find it interesting and clearly he must have some inside information to be making such a statement.

He evidently has some names and is questioning why the Public ministry has not yet started investigating the situation and when they are going to investigate. I agree this should be investigated.

According to La Prensa Pepe Lobo has said that he has received written threats to the effect that he is going to be the victim of a coup de tat.

US Puts Venezuela On Black List of Terrorist Supporting Countries

2010-06-01T23:41:00.000-04:00

What this essentially means is a block against selling any military grade material to Venezuela or trading military equipment or military exercises with the country.

The bigger picture here is that this means that the Obama administration considers Chavez a terrorist supporter and that Venezuela supports international terrorism and permits it to exist.

I personally think that the embargo is too light...there needs to be a full embargo against this zealot!

However, my hats off to the administration this is something they got right. I imagine a lot of it had to do with the recent videos of a Spanish reporter in Venezuela and the terrorist training camps as well as the Spanish judge making the very forward statement of state sponsered terrorism in Venezuela.

I don´t normally like to talk about other countries on my Honduran blog, but this time I will make a definate exception considering that Chavez has made us public enemy number 1 in his book.

On other notes ...

Rafael Correa admitted that his country was wrong to deny Pepe Lobo´s plane fly over permission the other day and said that apparently he had not been consulted and that it was a mistake on the part of the aviation leaders in his country. At least someone admits when they screw up...but I think that he only admitted it because he came under serious criticism by several countries.

Pepe Lobo Declares State of Emergency Due to T.S. Agatha

2010-05-30T18:50:00.001-04:00

At noon today all airports in Honduras were closed due to the storm and the lack of visibility in the country. Last night the rains came down very hard though the rain has been light most of the day today we went without electric for about three hours this morning. Clouds are again building and the temperatures are lower than normal.

Most of the damage done in the territory is in Tegucigalpa, Olancho and Southern Honduras, but San Pedro has it´s share of flooding as well.

Classes have been suspended for the departments of Choluteca, Valle, Lempira, Santa Bárbara, Ocotepeque, Copán Francisco, Comayagua. En Francisco Morazán, Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, La Lima y Choloma and Progresso, Yoro.

So far in Guatemala and El Salvador there are 24 deaths registered due to the storm and Honduras has the remnents of the tropical storm over the national territory.

Most of the country is under either a green or yellow alert. There have been mudslides, heavy rain over the past three days with a continous threat of rain still, the rivers are at maximum capacity. Since the rains started there have been 4 deaths in Honduras.

Weather reports are calling for 72 hours more of heavy rainfall in most of Honduras.

In the capital in one neighborhood the ground opened and gave way destroying at least a dozen houses and leaving several without homes or anything they owned at 4:30 in the morning.

A bridge has collapsed in the capital of Tegucigalpa and in the department of Olancho three bridges have collapsed. There is surely more to come in reports and I will add that information here. This first serious tropical storm brings a gloomy forsight to what the hurricane season may hold for Honduras this year.

My Answer To Alternet's Outrageous Lies On Honduras

2010-05-29T23:31:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the New Honduras, Where Right-Wing Death Squads Proliferate

By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet

Posted on April 27, 2010, Printed on May 29, 2010

http://www.alternet.org/story/146608/

Things are back to normal in Honduras. Yes, things are pretty normal in Honduras.

At least that's the message of right-wing president Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo Sosa and much of the international community.

That is because it is true and Pepe isn’t really a right winger the party is a centre right party not a right wing party…the right wing party would be the Democracia Cristiana party.

Several U.S. and international agencies are in the process of restoring aid to Honduras. U.S. biofuels, mining and other businesses are ramping up for increased investment in the impoverished Central American country. The massive repression of public protests, curfews and censorship that followed last summer's coup d'etat have abated.

And why shouldn’t they restore aid considering that Pepe was elected freely? We already were still receiving fuels…that never stopped, mining was done by private business so that never stopped either as it wouldn’t be very beneficial to US interests to not get the gold would it? Other business never stopped either…business is not government ran here or in the US nor is it controlled nor was Honduras every fully sanctioned because the situation here wasn’t what you try to make it to be and the US knew this that is why it was never declared a military coup…because it wasn’t. Massive repression of public protests? Where and when were any protests that were peaceful repressed? If the protests got violent they were removed from the streets for obvious reasons…no one has a right to be violent while they protest in any country. Yes, there are curfews in the US as well so your point? Censorship? By whom, when and where? There was no censorship....those that were breaking the law were removed from the air, the same as the FCC does to vulgar and racist djs in the US.

But this image ignores a new reality in Honduras: the emergence of what many are calling death squads carrying out targeted assassinations, brutal attacks and threats. They have created an extreme climate of fear for the campesinos (peasants), teachers, union members, journalists and other community leaders involved in the resistance movement that continues to oppose the coup and Lobo's election.

Death squads? You mean the Resistance right?? That after all is who is behind the recent killings in my opinion. Attacks? When and where? Threats? You have got to be kidding me. Targeted assassinations? Who was targeted for assassination? Extreme climate of fear for campesinos? No the only fear they have is that they cannot invade private property and take it from the rightful owner. If they want to own property they have to buy it now…and that is the way it should be.

Dozens were killed in street violence between the June 28 coup and the November 29 election,

Dozens? Only one death according to the final investigations could be even loosely associated with the military and that was even questionable. When you try to tear down the fence of an international airport with threats of violence then you shouldn’t be surprised when you are treated like violent criminals and someone ends up dead, but there was one problem, the police were using rubber bullets and the bullet that killed the man in this instance wasn’t killed by a military or police issue bullet.

with the deaths largely attributed to police, military forces and other coup supporters. Flat lie refer to the above. Please show me even a single death that was directly related to the police, military forces and supporters…the white shirts is the group I was involved with and we did not carry ANY weapons…not even rocks though quite a few times we had rocks thrown at us by the resistance and were fired upon with guns as well. I have photographic proof, where is yours?

Lobo has tried to distance himself from the coup regime, but since the election, at least a dozen people have been killed and others beaten or raped in attacks with clear political hallmarks.

More bullshit. Who was killed, beaten or raped due to the government…you might have some where the resistance and Chavez are involved, but not Pepe Lobo…perhaps if he did what you accuse him of so freely it might calm down some of the crime in the streets.

The victims include a teacher shot in front of his students; a young union leader whose body was found with signs of torture after she disappeared; the daughter of a prominent anti-coup TV reporter shot in her home; five journalists killed in March alone; and a TV reporter killed April 21. In December, well-known gay rights activist Walter Trochez was kidnapped in Tegucigalpa and interrogated about the resistance while being pistol-whipped in the face. He escaped, but was murdered a week later. In February, a woman who was raped after a post-coup protest was kidnapped and terrorized by men including the rapist, who said "Pepe says hi," a clear allusion to the president. And not a single one of these things was attributed to the government. The teacher was killed by THEIVES that were trying to rob students and teachers and he resisted. The journalists interestingly enough almost all have been PRO government, so how is the government killing their allies? What post coup protest and where is the proof that any of this happened? I live here and never heard anything like this and am quite sure it didn’t happen since the rest of your story is full of inaccuracies. I would be akin to insist that Pepe Lobo sue you for libel as there is nothing you can substantiate here and it is absolutely false. He asked for international, US, Spain, and Colombia all to assist with the investigation of the murders of the reporters and other murders that have occurred. How is he involved if he is asking for international assistance with other independent police forces that are known for their ability to solve crimes?

Authorities have largely attributed the murders and attacks to random crime and gang violence.

You have never been to Honduras or you would know this is true…even Tiempo which is not pro government attributes it to random crime and gang violence…which is absolutely the cause.

Street crime has been at epidemic levels in Honduras for years, and has reportedly increased since the coup.

Wrong, crime tripled under Zelaya and had escalated during his term as he was allowing DRUG TRAFFICKING in the country now we have the same situation on our hands that they have in Mexico. Are you going to blame Mexican authorities for the murders that the cartels commit as well?

And a few prominent victims of attacks or threats have been coup supporters.

So that really works against your theory doesn’t it? Especially since it is not just a few victims but almost 75% of victims.

But international rights groups say a trend of violence and threats against community-based resistance leaders is undeniable and part of a highly orchestrated campaign to tamp down the popular resistance movement which continues to call for a new constitutional assembly and a reshaping of Honduran society, including the restoration of worker protections and social policies instituted under deposed president Manuel Zelaya but terminated since the coup. Considering that the major part of the resistance movement are Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and other illegal immigrants the government is right in removing such threats…I assume you are referring to the deportation of illegal immigrants from ALBA countries…and sorry, but they don’t have a right to resist anything in Honduras, if they don’t like the government here they need to go home! Workers protections…workers in Honduras are entitled to a 13th and 14th month salary bonus by law, they also get a separation from employment payment if something happens that they lose their job, so please show me how these protections are less than those in the US? They seem to be more than the protections in the US where you can be fired for any reason and be given nothing more than your last paycheck. Our society doesn’t need reshaped and the people by the majority do not want it reshaped, that is why Pepe was voted for in such large numbers.

"They've pulled away from the mass repression in the streets and gone for individual assassinations," said Victoria Cervantes of the Chicago group La Voz de los de Abajo, who met with resistance groups in Honduras after the coup and the election. "You don't look like a military regime, and it's cheaper than sweeping up people in the streets. But it terrorizes large groups of people, perhaps more effectively than the mass repression."

She met with resistance groups…did she get PROOF instead of just allegations? I can insist that Obama is murdering Hispanics in the US as well, but that doesn’t make it true. This is a woman who lives in Chicago and is out of touch with the reality of what is occurring in Honduras. She can meet with anyone she wants, but she doesn’t live here! My bet is she belongs to the Socialist Workers Party and would gladly hand us to Chavez on a silver platter. Ask the workers in Chavez’ world how their rights are working out…most of them have no rights any longer.

This spring at least one campesino has been murdered and at least four shot in a land struggle in the Bajo Aguan area, where campesinos are trying to reclaim land from wealthy palm plantation owners. Campesinos who occupy and lay claim to unused land have long suffered violence from police and hired guns. Zelaya was largely supportive of such campesino movements, which are legal under agrarian reform laws, but the conflicts have escalated since his ouster.

If you break into someone’s home and onto their private property with a gun in your hand do not be surprised when you get shot and killed…especially when you kill the security guards protecting the property. Reclaim land they sold right? Oh interesting that you left that part out…yes, they were GIVEN the property for FREE in the 90s and they SOLD it to Facusee, now they want to demand it back. This man employees 3000 workers on this one property and he paid his workers during the entire debacle. The land isn’t unused it is valuable land where a working palm oil production was going on…I love how you classify it as unused land. Zelaya was very good at using people for his own gain. Ask him what happened to that land of his that he was going to gift to these same campesinos? He still can give his property away if that is his wish but he has no right to give away other people’s property. These campesinos don’t always just go after wealthy land owners either. They have stolen small plots of land from the very poor as well. I know of someone who lives in a middle class neighborhood and is in the lower income levels that lost 15 acres of land to an invasion and it was land that was passed down from family member to family member and was all he had to live with and now has to work at minimum wage along with his wife just to get by. So much for the wealthy land owner situation. I also am not a wealthy land owner but THREE TIMES this year we have had to chase invaders off our land and our land is not unused either. It is well used and also legally owned by us. No one has the right to steal someone else’s property just because you deem them to be wealthy…and I am far from being ultra wealthy.

In the Bajo Aguan area, locals say, former Colombian paramilitary members have been hired to terrorize campesinos. And Billy Joya, a notorious member of the "Battalion 316" death squad during the 1980s military dictatorship, has reportedly returned to train militias to fight drug traffickers and "guerrillas," which is taken to mean the resistance movement. Post-dictatorship, Joya was charged with illegal detention, torture and murder of opponents. He has since lived in Spain and the U.S., continually pleading his innocence while working as an international businessman and security adviser. A 2006 report by the Mesoamerica Institute for Central America Studies says Joya worked as an adviser to Zelaya’s security secretary Alvaro Romero. Another of Zelaya’s cabinet ministers, Milton Jimenez, was among the six students Joya was charged with illegally detaining and torturing in 1982.

No in the Bajo Aguan area they were removed fairly peacefully because they refused to negotiate with the government for land that was offered to them in a more than fair way. The military, not any Billy Joya removed them.

While the land struggles Joya was hired to fight predate the coup, campesino and resistance leaders say they are integral to the larger struggle over Honduras's political and economic future which has driven the past year's events.

In light of the violence and human rights abuses, Honduran and international rights groups have decried Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's move to restore more than $30 million in aid, including military aid. After the U.S. announced on March 4 that it would fully restore all aid to Honduras, the Inter-American Development Bank agreed to release half a billion dollars suspended since the coup. The International Monetary Fund has committed $160 million in new funding, and the World Bank also recognizes the new government. The Organization of American States is considering re-admitting Honduras, at Clinton's behest. Many Latin American governments have likewise recognized or promised to recognize Lobo's regime. But governments including Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Argentina, Bolivia and Nicaragua still refuse.

Care to take a look at the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua’s human rights abuse record? Oh interesting how you forgot about the abuses in Cuba and dare mention them…what about the abuses in Venezuela? Chavez is a scumbag dictator and with a straight face you call a freely elected government in Honduras a regime.

The restoration of aid, while theoretically a boon to the poor, is crucial for the Lobo administration and business interests that backed the coup as a symbol of legitimacy.

So starve the poor is your theory? Ok either you are for the poor or you are against them.

"The main lobbyists for lightening the sanctions from the U.S., the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank were coming from the business sector," said Alex Main, a policy analyst with the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "They were very worried about the economic effects [of the coup] and since they themselves were involved they had to defend it."

The business sector and the middle class…don’t forget the middle class and even the poor felt that the sanctions were unfair and harming them more than anyone else. The business sector employees the poor, how do you think the poor put food on their table? If it weren’t for the businesses the poor would starve.

Cervantes and Alexy Lanza, a Honduran now living in Chicago, said during October and January visits resistance members told them they want aid withheld regardless of the economic impacts, to avoid legitimizing the coup and elections.

Hondurans living in Chicago have no clue what they are talking about and I bet that Cervantes hasn’t lived in Honduras in at least twenty years. I have never heard of Victoria Cervantes so my bet is she is just a blogger and nothing more. Interestingly enough the only thing I can find is that her blog was founded in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch she said. Hurricane Mitch occurred October 29, 1998. So that means that she was likely already in the US at that time and probably had been in the US for awhile. My husband has been in the US for 17 years. I somehow doubt she has been there less time. If she wants to discuss what is going on in Honduras and complain about Honduran policy she frankly needs to move back to Honduras.

"The resistance is worried about normalization of this new golpe (coup government), where death squads, privatization and intimidation become the new normal," said Lanza.

What they need to do is get back to work and stop worrying about normalization. They have the right to vote and they should have made their voice heard at the ballot box. Death squads? Don’t make me laugh this is pathetic. What does privatization have to do with death squads? The country is capitalist and we don’t want to be China or Venezuela or Cuba. Since your site praises more the faces of Che Guevarra than it does indio Lempira I have to question your loyalties. Are your loyalties to Cuba or the US and Honduras? If your loyalty is to Honduras why are you in the US? If you hate privatization and capitalism why are you benefiting from it by living in the US instead of Cuba? If you are worried about Honduras why aren’t you working for Honduras in Honduras?

Main pointed to Lobo's appointment of former military commander and coup leader Romeo Vasquez Velasquez to head the Hondutel telecommunications agency as a prime example of coup plotters profiting from the new regime. Vasquez has said he will use his authority over telecommunications to do surveillance on drug traffickers and others; many take this to include the resistance. He promised an integrated government there isn’t much that Romeo Vasquez Velasquez can do to harm anyone as director of Hondutel. In fact, he has done a pretty good job of rescuing it from the thievery that occurred under Chimirri who bankrupted the telephone company.

"That's ugly stuff, and it didn't even merit rebuke from the U.S.," said Main. "The U.S. could have crippled Honduras with trade restrictions, the U.S. was in a position to change things in a matter of days, but they chose not to."

Not really, they could not legally restrict trade since that is in the private sector through CAFTA and CAFTA can’t be blocked for political reasons.

Honduras has relatively little trade with countries other than the U.S. and its small Central American neighbors. And its maquiladora sector, producing textiles largely for the U.S. market, has been hard hit by competition from Asian producers and the economic downturn.

Now this is absolutely false, while Honduras does most of its trade with the US it also has trade with Spain, the other Central American countries who threw a fit when we shut down the borders, China, Taiwan, Japan, etc…there is quite a bit of trade with the Asian countries. The most popular vehicle in Honduras is the Toyota and that is not an American car.

Hence the political situation in Honduras would seem to have little impact on the U.S. or regional economies and to be of relatively little interest to other governments. But Honduras's economic and political symbolism has far exceeded its actual economic impact since the coup. All sides see it as a symbol of the tension between an increasingly integrated and powerful Latin American bloc excluding the U.S. and based on the social democratic Bolivarian ideals advanced by Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador…or the previously dominant neoliberal model characterized by the influence of the U.S. and multinational companies.

And who is harmed by trade embargoes? The maquilas which is where the POOR work. So who is hurt? The poor.

"Honduras can be seen as a test case -- people in the State Department are nervous about what they see as the [Venezuelan president Hugo] 'Chavez menace' and the growing left in Latin America," said Adrienne Pine, an assistant anthropology professor at American University and senior research associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). "Honduras would seem like a weak link easy to pick off. If they can succeed there, similar coups can be carried out in places like Nicaragua and Venezuela."

A weak link and easy to pick off? We didn’t turn out to be so easy to pick off, why? Because Honduras is able to self produce. Honduras has gold, silver, other minerals, even oil yet not explored, they grow enough food to support the country entirely have enough meat products to self sustain so no the country would not be as harmed as you think..it would be much more harmful for US businesses that are invested in Honduras to face a sanction or for the US tax base which includes business here like McDonald’s, Burger King, Wal Mart…yeah I can see the US trying to sanction Wal Mart…lmao.

COHA executive director Larry Birns noted that the symbolism is so important, the U.S. has been willing to alienate powerful trading partner Brazil -- which vehemently opposed the coup -- with its stance. "Washington almost made a calculated decision that Honduras was more important than Brazil, it was a decision which country the U.S. will identify with," said Birns. Brazil is good at internal politics but they suck at external politics. Brazil was following their master Hugo Chavez since they are signed onto ALBA.

Under the brief reign of coup leader Robert Micheletti, the Honduran Congress voted to withdraw from ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, in Spanish) the Latin American trade and support bloc that had provided low cost or free medical care, tractors and other necessities to Honduras. The prime feature of ALBA is the PetroCaribe alliance wherein Venezuela had provided Honduras oil on generous credit terms: 20,000 barrels of crude a day, 40 percent of it paid at just a 1 percent interest rate over 25 years. The Honduran government is still technically party to the PetroCaribe arrangement, but since Venezuela does not recognize the Lobo government, no oil is forthcoming. The Lobo administration has reportedly engaged Zelaya's former UN ambassador, Jorge Arturo Reina, as an ambassador to ALBA to try to restore oil assistance.

Withdrawing from ALBA was a GOOD thing it was costing us more than it was earning us and no we don’t want to be ran by Hugo Chavez or want our military subject to his whims…which include an attack on the US. Generous terms? No it was a long term loan which is not smart. It was the regular price loaned to us with interest over twenty years…that was a disaster waiting to happen. We have had stable oil prices despite all this…why? Most of our oil never came from Chavez. Um no he hasn’t…I have read nothing like this or heard anything like this from Pepe Lobo as he wants no part of ALBA and if he wants to be supported and not end up like Zelaya he would be smart to stay away from selling Honduras out to Chavez.

"Lobo would be happy to keep PetroCaribe and even go into ALBA and get all of the member countries to recognize his administration, but he knows it is impossible for him to do so and not alienate his allies, the Honduran business elites, conservative political groups, the military -- all of whom orchestrated, funded and backed the coup -- and of course the U.S.," said Rodolfo Pastor de Maria y Campos, Zelaya’s deputy chief at the Honduran embassy in Washington through February. He now works with the advocacy group Hondurans for Democracy. "He depends on all of the above to remain president and has been warned to behave if he wishes to prevent being kicked out like Zelaya." It is never smart to go against the people who vote for you is it? A president certainly faces impeachment if they don't obey the law.

Any aid is sorely needed in the country known as Latin American's third poorest after Guyana and Nicaragua. But Hondurans say the economic impact of the coup and subsequent repression paired with the economic effects of stepped-up privatization and neoliberal policies mean increasing poverty, rural migration to already overburdened cities and migration to the U.S. and other countries. Which proves why it isn’t smart to sanction poor countries because those who suffer are invariably the poor…except that the US also has proof now that Zelaya stole funds from USAID that was provided to Honduras.

"There are people leaving daily, much more than before," said Luther Castillo Harry, a doctor in the Atlantic coastal communities of Garifuna, African-descended Hondurans considered indigenous. "Many of them are dying on the way to the U.S."

Actually the economic situation in the US has kept a lot of poor from leaving but there is no more than before and probably less than before leaving to go to the US. In my neighborhood which is middle class no one has left. In the very poor area close to mine very few have left and most have returned in a few months of leaving.

Since government funding was revoked after the coup, Castillo has seen 11 local community clinics with live-in doctors shuttered, and the hospital he runs struggles to secure basic necessities and medications.

Even if this were true it goes to show how it affects the poor to place sanctions, but the problem is it isn’t true. The medical funds and medicines were not stopped and never are during sanctions. Even Iraq received medical assistance.

This is just one example of how conditions for Hondurans living outside the elite business and military class have deteriorated since the coup. A report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research notes that after healthy economic growth under Zelaya, the economy contracted since the coup, and the coup regime's curfew alone cost about $50 million.

Last night I took my son to the public hospital and I went as well…both of us were ill from the rains that had flooded our area. He had an infection that had proliferated in a scratch on his arm and turned into staff and I had a virus and bacterial infection from the flood waters. Both of us received medical attention for the price of 40 lempiras which is less than $3 and the medicine that was available we were given and the rest we received a prescription for and the doctor prescribed the lowest cost medication he could which included something for me for dehydration since I didn’t want to be hydrated via IV. The cost of our medicines was less than $20 total and we had about seven prescriptions between the two of us. We were also seen immediately with no wait. If it had been the US it would have cost us hundreds of dollars plus prescriptions that are very expensive. So much for your theory about lack of medical care.

"Tourism has been crushed, really large sectors of the economy are just not functioning, the whole public sector has just been devastated," said Pine, author of a book about maquiladoras, violence and alcohol in Honduras. "At the height of the massive repression there were almost constant curfews, so people were forced to stay inside their homes and weren’t able to go to work. Many lost jobs, businesses folded, people who survived by selling things on street had no way to maintain themselves."

Tourism has not been crushed…Roatan and Utila were unaffected by the political situation. Maquilas is not tourism that is a factory sector. Roatan and Utila are tourist areas as is Tela, Ceiba and Tegucigalpa. None of it has been hurt. The ex pat community did a fabulous job of making sure that false information did not stand, such as what you want to spread.

Lobo's proposed new budget won't help. It raises taxes but cuts spending on most social, education and health programs, while increasing budgets for the military by 23 percent and expanding subsidies to promote business by 15 percent. Who are you to complain about his budget? Do you pay taxes like I do in Honduras? Remember we have no income tax.

Honduran and international rights groups say the U.S. must reverse course to suspend aid and otherwise pressure the Lobo government to stop human rights abuses and allow the peaceful resistance movement to follow its course, including the call for a popular assembly to vote on drafting a new Honduran constitution. It was exactly this proposal, which, contrary to propaganda would not have extended Zelaya's term, sparked the coup in the first place. Peaceful resistance? ok now I known you have never been to Honduras and certainly not during the past year. It is illegal to overthrow the constitution. Yes, Zelaya had every intention of extending his term and that has already been verified. Furthermore, what Honduras allows or doesn't allow is not the international community's business and a movement that could not even get 200 thousand signatures is not as popular as you want to believe.

Honduran groups and international groups are still calling for embargoes? Really…the exception may be the resistance but I don’t know of any groups calling for trade embargoes and sanctions on Honduras.

Honduras is one of few Central American countries that has never had a powerful united leftist movement. Hence during the civil wars that wracked the region in the 1980s, Honduras was not at war itself but served as "an unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the U.S., in Birn's words, to carry out its proxy wars. Honduran residents and U.S. analysts say events of the past year may have galvanized a new level of political resistance and coordination in Honduras. Why is it a tragedy that we have never had a powerful leftist movement? Civil wars that wracked the region went on in El Salvador and cost 100,000 lives and in Guatemala lots of lives also were lost as well as Nicaragua…why is it a tragedy that we didn’t have a Civil War in the middle of that chaos?

"Honduras will become a tinder box," said Birns. "That was one of the great things that happened under Zelaya – he set forth a chain of events to create a new country no longer willing to tolerate receiving miserable handouts from society." A possible civil war because of Zelaya is a great thing? How utterly disgusting a thing to say in your opinion a country mired in civil war and lots of civilians killing each other over politics is a wonderful thing. SHAME ON YOU!!!!

Since its days as a banana republic run essentially as a huge plantation for foreign companies, Honduras has been economically enslaved by foreign interests who capitalized on its resources and labor pool giving little in return. Many critics say this pattern was furthered across the region with the adoption of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which was signed by Zelaya and originally shepherded by former president Ricardo Maduro. No it was ratified under Zelaya, but Ricardo Maduro signed the agreement. However, the CAFTA agreement has brought more trade deficits to Honduras than it has helped.

Opponents say CAFTA has already increased poverty, economic inequality and displacement in Central America. I don’t know that it has increased poverty, but it has caused inequality and displacement in Central America as the trade agreement is largely to the favor of the US and not Central America. ALBA and CAFTA both created more deficits which is not a good thing for an already stressed government budget.

"The recent surge in violence in Honduras -- like last year's coup -- has its roots in the country's profound political and economic polarization, brought on by decades of failed trade and economic policies," said Todd Tucker, research director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "Honduran leaders should have long ago cultivated an economic development strategy with substantial yet targeted state involvement and a focus on value-added manufactures and the domestic and regional

market. What Hondurans got instead was a series of governments that did the opposite." Not true. Trade deficits and unequal treatment in the international sector is something Honduras is used to and we don’t blame other Hondurans for that.

Main thinks if the targeted attacks, threats and murders continue without censure from the U.S. or international agencies, the resistance movement faces a dim future.

"They're picking off resistance activists from different sectors," he said. "If they can keep doing it with impunity, I don't see how the resistance can survive."

The resistance movement has all but disappeared. In fact, in the elections the UD came in dead last in the election and they lost seats instead of gained. That is not very positive for their movement and showed how unpopular their movement was with the community at large. They have the ability to participate in the elections just like anyone else…if they want control they need to lobby for that control and campaign just like everyone else…this Victoria Cervantes character would rather see a violent revolution in a country she long ago abandoned for the US and its capitalist society. I would beg to differ with her in that she has nothing to lose if people start killing each other here and she has nothing to gain either. Come preach this crap from her pedestal here in Honduras…other than that she is just another Honduran who left Honduras for life in another country and has no business commenting on Honduras as long as she remains outside.

But Juan Almendares, a Tegucigalpa-based doctor well known internationally for his public health and human rights work over three decades, is confident the resistance will bear fruit. He sees it as the convergence of long-time campesino struggles with a growing awareness of environmentalism, labor rights, LGBT rights and other issues among the Honduran public.

Juan Almendares? The same man who got every one of his degrees from the USA? He has spent his life protesting not doing medicine. He has spent his life teaching at a University and living the life of a wealthy man while fooling the poor with fancy words. An example of how things should be done is Mayor and Doctor Zuñiga who is mayor of San Pedro Sula and was the director of Hospital Catarino Rivas the same hospital I went to with my son last night. This man has done open heart surgery for poor with NO CHARGE and is a cardiologist and surgeon. He is an incredible example and he is a liberal and won the election here. Some are not happy that they lost their jobs after he took office but he looked at who had continued doing their job and who had been not showing up for work(insubordination) and fired those who were insubordinate which is what most jobs do. He didn´t look at political colors for those he would hire either. Zelaya fired him from his director position for refusing to make people sign the assembly agreement in exchange for medical care and if they didn't sign not give them treatment. I notice you didn't mention those things in your report. You also don't mention the reporters killed while Zelaya was in office either. You also fail to mention the murders of gay activists while he was in office and the murders of more than a few woman.

"The resistance is the most beautiful experience of my life," he said. "It's transformative. The spirit of the people has been released. This is a pre-revolutionary process, with solidarity and unity. It's a new pueblo, a new people."

Burning cars, throwing rocks at private citizens, attacking children in a church bus, painting with spray paint on monuments and churches as well as private homes is what is beautiful to you?

Kari Lydersen, a regular contributor to AlterNet, also writes for the Washington Post and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in Chicago.

© 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/146608/

Two Million in Honduras Have No Access to Electricity

2010-05-27T11:33:00.000-04:00

In Honduras only 69.1% of the population has access to electricty. In the city the access is 94.4% while rural areas are only 44% access rate. Some of the difficulties are that the rural communities are in very remote sections of Honduras. Unlike in the US there are quite a few off grid areas in Honduras because of the distance from a city and the fact that they are in very mountainous areas. Another difficulty is income level differences from people that live in urban areas and those who are in rural areas.

In San Pedro Sula the access to electricity is almost 100%, but in Lempira it is just 26%. This difference is astounding. However, there is a solution to the lack of a power grid in these areas. Alternative off grid sources. These homes would likely never need more than perhaps the ability to run a few lightbulbs and a room fan at most. It seems a solution wihtout overbudening the system is to use solar and wind energy in these areas instead of investing in burdening the grid even further. This would also help the literacy rate as well as income rates for these areas and stimulate growth. This also would assist Honduras out of the tailspin they seem to be in with the third world status.

Living in the city makes Honduras seem almost as modern as the US in some ways, but when you go to areas like where we own our property in San Cristobal de Vallecito, Olancho where the electric access is 0% you realize just how vast the difference in modernization there is between one area and another. We plan on putting in solar off grid power for the house there, but I have to wonder how having such access would help that community prosper.

Honduran Horchata! The real stuff!

2010-05-22T22:45:00.000-04:00

Ok most of you know my neighbor died May 2. His first wife whom I never had the pleasure of meeting died some 20 years ago from cancer. Their daughter gave me an invaluable recipe of her mother´s that is famous here out of gratitude to me for the love I have demonstrated to them..and I am going to share it here for all of you...the woman´s name was Joyce so I call it Joyce´s Honduran Horchata..

1/2 pound of ayote seeds, ayote is simply a type of pumpkin seed from the cushaw pumpkin...most Hispanic stores have them in the US.

1/2 pound morro seeds which can pretty much also be found in any Hispanic supermarket..

5 mini lempira bags of cinnamon sticks

2 mini lempira bags of all spice(pimienta gorda)

1 pound of miga rice(basically broken rice)

grated lime peel, ice, 1 to 2 kilos of sugar

You can also add peanuts to the mix if you like but she didn´t

Start to toast the ayote seeds till they are slightly crunchy and add the morro seeds to the mix and continue toasting till everything is toasted medium , break up the all spice and add it to the mix, continue toasting, place the rice in water and set for two hours then rinse well, if you are in the states you can add this to a grinder and grind with a small amount of water till it is thick and creamy or if in Honduras take to one of the mill grinders in your area that grind up the nixtamal for tamales or tortillas, tell them to pass it through twice, check it to see if it is grainy or smooth if it is still grainy ask them to pass it a third time..take mix home, add to 3 gallons of bottled water(in Honduras) add sugar to taste and mix...the add lime peel and mix again, crush ice well and add to the mix...serve up this perfect creamy tropical drink on a very hot day!

Preparing for a Bad Hurricane Season

2010-05-22T22:22:00.000-04:00

Americans aren´t very adept at floods and hurricanes unless they live in areas prone to that. I dealt with Hurricane Mitch here in Honduras in 98, going through my first hurricane ever and of course my first earthquake last year on May 28 was also here...interesting how both things that terrify me happened to me here! I am not scared of tornadoes and know on instinct how to act because I grew up in tornado alley...but hurricanes, wind, and things that shake the ground and my house? Fahgitaboutit! At least with a tornado I could hide in our storm shelter and felt when one was coming before it happened...earthquake...well no warning except the crazy chickens around here going bananas at the wrong hours...

Our first serious rain happened a few days ago and as you know it flooded part of our neighborhood and I came out unscathed...but I am worried about a hard rain that lasts longer than 90 minutes or a hurricane..ouch! They said our drain system isn´t ready and there is no money to prepare it...so we are on our own.(Welcome to Honduras!)

Neighbors have been gathering all the rocks that were brought with the last flood and the sand in burlap bags...I was curious as to this movement till my neighbor brought me some bags and told me to get sand while I could...I asked why...she explained to me that putting them bags in front of your entry doors and the gates keeps the water out...ok that makes sense...so off I go gathering rocks and sand...rocks in a bucket to haul where we can build a fence that will direct the water away from the house..what a perfect excuse for making a small garden! and the burlap bags of sand to keep out water.

Most houses in San Pedro Sula are concrete block houses which is a good thing. When the floods come we can simply move everything to our second story..our house floors are tile, our walls concrete...not much that water can do to either of them...or even sand and mud brought in from flooding..my husband is bringing a pressure washer to clean the house if needed after such a situation. So now I have about 4 sand bags to place in front of the doors, not enough btw, but I suppose it will work..and rocks in a hand built wall to keep the water directed away from the house...behind that wall I took advantage that it is also planting season...and I planted three ´mar pacifica´flower bushes...they look amazing! The mar pacifica in English is known as the hibiscus rose. One of them is yellow, then a pink one and a red single leaf tree one that I love...and I also took advantage and planted a persia lime tree, guava tree, and a pomegranate, and then also a mandarin tree...so I have been rather busy. Now let´s keep my fingers crossed and hope I don´t kill the poor things...I have been doing pretty good with these plants in containers for about a year and decided to transfer them since this is the best month to do that...not to mention the amazing shade they will provide...oh and I planted a palm tree, but it is a slow growing ornamental one so it will never be really huge.

When they mentioned 18 storms and the first bad rain hit I was about ready to pack and head back to good ol Georgia where all I worry about is tornadoes on occasion and sometimes there is flooding but not serious usually. I have had time to think about it though and I am determined that I won´t let the storms run me out of my dream home...yeah my dream home in the middle of Honduras! Me and it are attached at the hip and I am determined...the first time I walked into this house it was an absolute MESS! I bought it from a bank auction as it was a foreclosure..and there were no windows, the second story was incomplete, there were no iron bars, no gate, no doors, no woodwork, no bathrooms completed, no kitchen completed, the house was an absolute horror...but when I walked in with the banker, my eyes hit the stairs and I looked at him and said this is it...he about fainted! I fell in love with the stairs..yeah no kidding! Since then we have added ceder and mahogany wood to the interiors such as doors, cabinets, etc..and we have put in ceramic tile, finished the bathrooms and tiled them and placed modern appliances in the house..the baths are still a bit small but I have been discussing that with my husband and we have plans for enlarging the baths..We have decided to do something else after the horrible electric bills we have been getting from the ENEE electric company demons..yeah demons...I am convinced there is a demon in our meter that accelerates it to charge us more! So guess what...I am cutting them off! We are going to go SOLAR in the very near future...I can´t wait to see the ENEE meter reader´s face when he shows up at my house and I have solar panels on the house and a solar air condition system...all for less than 20 k....so we will be sort of off grid...I wonder how they will try to fix that? Can we roast the meter demons and make them ultra crispy chickens? I have spent a good portion of the week also cruising the internet checking out solar packages...because we will also be adding it on the house we are going to build in the mountains of Olancho since there is no electric there and it is off grid..and I am not about to live without electricity even for a weekend..yeah I am a spoiled American! but here we have mosquitos as big as the state of Texas and it is hot, humid and you get sticky by even looking outside so I need air and I need a fan at the very least as well as having things like refrigerated coca cola! I thought I was the spoiled one..till my husband went up in the mountains thinking he was going for the weekend...the first time he went after we bought the property...things change and he is more American than Honduran now...and he didn´t make it till sundown before he was headed back to Juticalpa to a nice cozy hotel room where I was waiting! I laughed and said I thought you were a rough tough Olanchano that could handle it...he looked at me and replied, it was hot and the mosquitos kept biting me! I was amused...anyhow I have been gloating and thinking about how I will be able to hand ENEE their pink slip for the past week...maybe more people should do that and they might think about how they are treating their customers more often...or more likely since it is government ran they might make solar panels illegal!

Start of Hurricane Season

2010-05-20T01:38:00.000-04:00

Well in Honduras folks it is considered winter. What that means really is hurricane season, because we don't really have a winter per se. Today a storm moved in that was unbelievable...it reminded me of flashfloods in Texas.

At about three this afternoon the sky started getting dark and well darker, I didn't pay much attention other than to think that maybe we would finally get some rain, but the sky has been fooling us for days...yeah who was I kidding..then the raindrops started pounding so I skitted home quickly and as I got there the clouds burst open and the rain started hammering down. I got inside and went to get on the computer, poof the lights went out, oh well I will sit here for a few minutes I thought and wait...about thirty minutes later they came back on and poof out they went again for about an hour...but before the hour was out, I had broom in hand chasing the water OUT of the house. All of my neighbors were flooded and only I was left...it only got to the door though thank goodness! So off I went with my broom to help my neighbors chase the water out of their houses and they were really flooded...oh boy...this is going to be a long hurricane season....tomorrow I will post some of the pictures...as I sit here it is still raining just not as hard..I will have to make a mental note to never pray for rain again during hurricane season!

Teachers, the Docente Law and Parents!

2010-05-18T21:26:00.000-04:00

For the past five years teachers have been so incorrigible they are almost impossible to deal with. Granted some teachers are in the classroom giving class. I was impressed to see one of the schools in our neighborhood giving classes, but as usual for them they always do. They were there during the time after Zelaya was removed and never missed a beat, to this moment even with the possible rewrite of the docente law they are still there educating children. These are examples for what teachers should be. The school is la Espinoza and deserve our applause at their dedication to the children.

On the other hand we have the children and secondary children that are losing their education due to teachers like the ones that are in the Resistance movement. These teachers stay in the streets and have failed for the past five years to finish even one term of 200 days of classes. They demand their pay even when not working, burn tires in the streets, and today hit parents that were protesting against striking teachers...the motive demanding that these terrorist teachers give classes. I was shocked beyond comprehension that MEN who are teachers and have the nerve to call themselves professors, went over to the hunger striking parents that were pacific and hit them and tried to attack them. The parents were WOMEN. What kind of man hits a woman? Do these teachers think only they have the right to protest? Or do they believe in protecting everyone´s right to protest?

I dare one teacher to explain to me why you deserve to have the Docente law in effect? Why do you deserve it when you do not educate the children of Honduras complying with the promise to protect the most vunerable citizens of all, children. I want to see the law removed and for Pepe to find his ´huevos´and tell each and every one of you that if you are not in class by Monday morning that he will replace you period. That each teacher that is not in their classroom will be removed and a replacement will be hired, even if they have to hire temporary teachers like the bachilleres that were hired during I believe the Maduro administration. I bet that will wake you up to what your responsibility is. I want him to tell you that you can have the Docente law back when you prove you deserve it by giving at least three years of dedication to our children, meaning you don´t miss a single day of class even if you have to give classes under a friggin tree. Not one day or you go back to square one.

I am so tired of this nonsense and it is incredible for me that as serious as the situation is for Honduras that teachers have the gall to not teach children. If they want to strike FINE, but do it AFTER CLASS!

My Son and Afghanistan

2010-05-16T22:18:00.000-04:00

Well most of you know that my son is in the National Guard and has been training to go to Afghanistan. He has marching orders for July 9, 2010. I am terrified for him. I don´t quite know how to act right now. I can´t really sleep well and I am scared for him beyond all belief. He is my oldest son and the fear grows inside me as each day passes. I never thought I would find myself in a battle of my patriotic feelings for my country, the US and the pride that he went into the service and my downright fear for him being sent to this war that I have long ago lost belief in. I at first believed in this war, but long ago it lost meaning for me. I understand that we had tragic events in 2001 and at that time it was the right thing to go after Bin Laden, but I am not sure what is right or wrong anymore now that it is nine years later and we are still there.

I ask readers who have children there, or children who went or are just following along to please pray for him and his safe return. I know that prayer in numbers works. I have placed some pictures of him here that are both military and non military so that you can see the child...er man...to me he is still just a kid even at almost 20...that you are praying for. May our voices be heard...

The History of a De facto President and Two Real Military Coups

2010-05-16T16:19:00.000-04:00

Many international communities and even people inside Honduras, that are too young to remember who Oswaldo Enrique Lopez Arellano is call what happened on June 28, 2009 a military coup. What happened that day was anything but a military coup. I am going to concentrate on the life of the late Oswaldo Lopez Arellano.

Today Oswaldo Lopez Arellano passed away during surgery for prostate cancer. He was born June 30, 1921 and passed away today May 16, 2010 at the age of 89. He first attained power through a coup in 1963 ruling until 1971 and then again from 1972 to 1975. The current constitution was written in 1982.

Oswaldo Lopez was fluent in English and had attended an affluent school in Tegucigalpa known as the American school. At the age of 18 like most young Honduran men he joined the military. He then became a pilot in the Honduran Air Force. Lopez eventually became a Coronel and then became a General. He married and had five children.

Lopez also served in the interim presidency briefly during a 1957 coup, but resigned after elections were held. He actually served as a de facto president after a coup that removed Ramon Villeda Morales. Villeda was a Liberal president that wanted to oversee the democratization of Honduras and was elected by the General Assembly(not free elections). Just ten days before an election that would have reelected Villeda, a then very popular president, Lopez committed a coup de tat against Villeda and removed him to Costa Rica. Villeda relocated to New York and died there in 1971. San Pedro Sula´s international airport is named after him. His son was in the truth commission that defended Micheletti in Costa Rica this past year.

Looking back at 1956 and the first Military Junta. Julio Lozano Diaz was removed by a military junta October 21, 1956. During this administration for a brief period Lopez was named as part of the military junta.

Military General Lopez took control after a coup October 3, 1963 and remained in control until June 5, 1965 during a very unstable political era. On June 6, 1965 he was elected president by the Constitutional Assembly(remember what I said about Americans not understanding the word Constitutional Assembly? Well here you have it, the assembly names the president, he isn´t elected and the entire constitution is rewritten to his and his supporters liking, not to the liking of the public, during this time all rights are suspended).

Not everything about Lopez Arellano´s government was bad, in fact there were quite a few good things that came out of his government. However, Lopez was a populist president, not a liberal or nationalist president.

Among improvements that occurred during his government are:

Improvements to the roads of the litoral Atlantic, North and Occidental areas.
Construction of marketplaces, centers and subcenters of health, public office buildings, school rooms
Creation of the Technical Center Honduran-German
Completion of the Hospital in Tegucigalpa known as School Hospital.
Founding of Workers Bank
Founding of National school of Forest Sciences in Siguatapeque, National School of Agriculture, and others.
Decree of a law guarantee of education, retirement for elderly, magestrate pensions
Creation of the Anthropology and History institute, and agricutural reform.
Creation of the Port Entry
Finished the Second level of the hydroelectric plant at Yajoa Rio Lindo

Lopez was in control during the war between El Salvador and Honduras known as the Soccer War. (Football is what Hispanics call it).

The war was a little more complicated than that. During this period about 300,000 Salvadorans lived in Honduras, most of them in Honduras illegally. Most of the Salvadorans had come in search of fresh lands to cultivate. Lopez initiated a massive deportation campaign of Salvadorans and turn over those lands to Hondurans. There was also a huge problem at the border between both countries and border disputes were at a boiling point.

On July 14, 1969 Honduras was invaded by the National Guard of El Salvador. They bombed several sections of Honduras including Tegucigalpa, Choluteca, Juticalpa, Sta Rosa de Copan, and Catacamas. For a short time El Salvador managed to take control of Ocotepeque, San Marcos de Ocotepeque, and a few other bordering towns like Goascaran, Alianza, La Virtud, and Aramancina. The attack was reported to the Organization of American States. Eventually the agression was propelled and El Salvador was pushed back into its borders and the Treaty of Lima was signed. In it though, Arellano agreed to allow elections in Honduras.

On July 4, 1972 Lopez again created a coup against the government. This time removed was Dr Ramon Ernesto Cruz. During this period he took a reformist line. He also affirmed his divorce from the traditional red (liberal) and blue (nationalist) parties.

One of his first acts was to contain the invasions by campesinos into public and private property. During this period he created the organization INFOP (institute of Professional Formation by decree 10.) This organization was created to improve the quality of workers and their education to the benefit of the businesses in Honduras.

Lopez also was in control during the famous Bananagate. Most Americans recognize the Bananagate term in fact, it is from this act that Banana republic became a term against countries like Honduras. In 1974, Standard Fruit Company and the government came head to head. Lopez raised the price of tariffs on Standard Fruit and Standard Fruit did not wait to react...they came full force with their economic strength, they began the destruction of 100 thousand boxes of bananas a week and reduced exports. Eventually the government relented and reduced the export tariff also in effect was the bribe that was paid to the government to reduce that tariff. Standard Fruit Company paid 2.5 million in exchange for the removal of tariffs. The day after all of this came to a head Lopez Arellano was destituted from his charge as president and General Juan Alberto Melgar Castro took his place.

However, before Bananagate brought down Lopez he was faced with Hurricane Fifi on the 14th of September 1974 Hurricane Fifi came ashore. This hurricane devastated extensive zones of Honduras and caused the death of at least 10,000 people especially in Choloma a suburban area of San Pedro Sula. The neighborhood where I live was completely under water during Hurricane Fifi, but was not flooded during Hurricane Mitch of 1998. During Fifi almost 40% of exported products were completely destroyed and over 15,000k2 were destroyed. Eventually it took 600 million dollars to rebuild the infrastructure in Honduras and two years for agricultural exports to be replaced.

Manuel Zelaya Running Around Like a Stuck Pig

2010-05-16T14:35:00.000-04:00

Manuel Zelaya is back to traveling everywhere again trying to get support to make Pepe give him amnesty for his crimes. He is complaining that he should not only receive immunity from prosecution, but that he should also be allowed to hold a political position in Honduras and move politics including a Constitutional Assembly.

Americans mostly do not understand what a Constitutional Assembly is, because they have never faced one in their lifetime. It is a complete rewrite of the Constitution in which every guarantee is suspended for a period of two years and there are no elections. During the time of Lopez Orellano when the Constitutional rewrite occurred here and a military coup in 1963 there were 3,000 deaths. A bit of irony is that Lopez Orellano died today from Prostate Cancer, but I will discuss his life and the politics surrounding him in another article later today, since I am depending on my father in law to give me vivid details since he lived the two coups that occurred then.

What is interesting is that Zelaya has traveled to Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc to try to get support for his plan of reconciliation. What he has failed to understand is the entire world understands he is no longer president and that Pepe Lobo is the Constitutionally elected president of Honduras. He also has failed miserably in understanding the laws of his own country. In Honduras, due to abuse, several years ago all immunity for political leaders was suspended. No political leader has any immunity from prosecution for common crimes they commit. They can receive via Congressional decree immunity for political crimes, this has already occurred for Zelaya. He insists that he is innocent, so if he is innocent why doesn´t he just come face the music as his ministers have done?

He claims that he will suffer persecution and not receive a fair trial, but to date only 1 is actually convicted and he is out while he appeals, the others are out on bail while they defend themselves of the charges they face. So how is it that he is not going to receive fair treatment if all of his ministers have received fair treatment? What does he base this accusation on? Pepe is not affiliated with the former interim government and he was elected. He has no reason to offer Zelaya anything other than a fair trial...he isn´t going to lose his presidential spot, there is nothing at stake here. If Zelaya wants to return he can at any time return, he must however face trial...just like any other citizen in Honduras that is accused of a crime.

Zelaya is accustomed to being able to buy his way out of trouble. Many wealthy citizens are able to attain this via ´mordidas´that they give to officials. Normal citizens are not able to obtain this type of escape which is nothing but corruption anyway. For once a rich man understands what it is like to be treated like a normal citizen and evidently he doesn´t like it. His father killed a priest, nuns, and several environmental protesters in Olancho and was liberated of his crimes along with a powerful general in the military, he thought this would be the case with him too...but he was sadly mistaken.

Docente Law May be Unconstitutional!

2010-05-14T11:31:00.000-04:00

The Docente is a controversial law that has protected teachers and unions when they go on strike from any recourse by judges, the government, etc to make them go back to class and teach. It seems they use the docente law to strike for almost any reason even political and still be paid for not working.

In the last six years the teachers have not completed their 200 days of class in even a single year. The last year was so bad that the school year was basically cancelled and students were automatically promoted without adequate instruction to go to the next grade. The reason for their strike was purely political. They had been receiving their pay, the argument was not about their contract as their rights were being protected by the new government, it was simply about politics.

The teachers have once again decided to strike and once again make students pay the price. Their reason this time is that the government has removed 10 department heads from their positions. These department heads were removed for violations of their contract and even corruption they committed

I can only hope and pray that the Supreme court does throw out this law as an unconstitutional violation of children's guarantee of an education via the Constitution. The largest guarantee that Honduras can have of sucess in the future is if they educate their children. They can pave all of the streets in the world, build modern buildings, invest in fighting poverty, but if they don't guarantee and insist on the education of the children of Honduras there is no future in this country and the cycle of third world status will never end.

Teacher strike in 2009

Using LPG gas tanks to power Stoves

2010-05-13T22:05:00.000-04:00

In Honduras people do not have natural gas that is piped into the house like in the US. Here we have stoves that are LPG or propane gas. We connect them to a tank that is filled by either Tropigas or Ecogas and then the gas stove is used to cook on. Almost all homes use this type of cooking unless they live in the mountains and then they usually use a wood burning stove that is made out of clay or adobe. Most homes do not use electric stoves for a few reasons including that they do not get to an adequate heat to cook tortillas properly and the food tastes different(no it really isn't in their head it is different) and electricity is very expensive in Honduras. I use air conditioning which is clearly a luxury and last month my electric bill was L2133.43 which is about $113. I know the people in the states are thinking that this doesn't sound expensive, but try paying that kind of an electric bill when the person is earning minimum wage in Honduras which is L5500 (I make more so I can obviously afford more). As I just pointed out 5500 is minimum wage, that is about $291.

Today an LPG tank exploded in a restaurant and injured several people. These tanks are clearly dangerous to have and people have been killed or injured when these tanks explode. I am guilty as charged of having such a stove myself. The US is fortunate to have a large enough natural gas supply that these tanks are not needed, but steps need to be taken to make either electricity affordable for these countries where income is so low or to make these tanks safer.

One thing we are looking at is making our home partially solar and our main focus being on water being heated and air conditioning. If this project comes to fructation I will speak amply about it here or if someone that reads this has had any success with any electric saving projects let me know here and I will be glad to listen.

$2 million found Drug purchase suspected, Zelaya?

2010-05-12T01:22:00.002-04:00

Three people were captured today in San Pedro Sula with $2 million in their posession. Our city for the past few months has been literally under siege with the violence that is encompassing it and today this capture which was so ironic.

Many here have accused Zelaya of being involved in narcotics trafficking that comes straight from FARC and Chavez. Now today in this bust was a man by the name of Carlos David Padilla Rosales, of Catacamas, Olancho. Now most Americans wouldn't see the significance of that...but Olanchanos do. This man is family of Manuel Zelaya Rosales. The Rosales'in Olancho are all related to Zelaya....and Zelaya's family on his mother's side. Dollars in Honduras and the US are tracked, hopefully they investigate this one to the very end.

If it doesn't mysteriously disappear that is 38 million lempiras that he state can use to recover economically.

After the bust the other day in that they discovered that Zelaya had been building a fully operational clandestine airport in Catacamas, Olancho in the former controversial base( where my husband was stationed from 1986 till 1992) in el Aguacate. This project had been ongoing since 2007 and is almost finished and was constructed in a clandestine fashion. Why would a president do such a thing without the proper authority to do so unless the use for this airport was an illicit one? The Aeronautics division had to be involved and yet he never informed them or consulted them of the project nor did he get permission for the funds used from Congress. Theft, misappropriation of funds, ursurpation of power anyone? We have it in spades here...but one positive thing, they removed the first group of campesinos from Bajo Aguan and apparently there were no injuries or deaths as previously expected would occur...so hats off for this administration finally doing the right thing...not giving in to terrorists and thieves.

Updates for Worryworts

2010-05-12T01:14:00.000-04:00

Ok I have received emails from some folks around that are worried because they haven't seen me and with the violence and things going on got worried. I am alive everyone, just apparently behind on my job. A few things have happened and on May 2 my dear neighbor and friend of 10 years passed away and it was very difficult, he suffered from liver cancer and he really suffered these past few months. The actions of the hospital convinced me that the US would be making a fatal error if they embark on national health care. We have it, my neighbor who had not been a drinker, but had been affected by Hep B years ago, bled to death, because they did not have an ability to do an endoscopy to discover if he could be fixed internally. Later we found that would have been impossible as his hepatic vein ruptured, but knowing that would have made acceptance of what happened easier. I really miss him, he was close to my father's age and gave fantastic advice and told stories that kept me on the edge of my seat with interest...RIP don Felipe. He would have turned 62 on May 3 the day after he passed.

Threats have gotten to me as well. I received a few of them, but I guess I am a glutton for punishment, I won't back down.

Update: An Arrest Has Been Made

2010-04-22T20:54:00.000-04:00

An arrest has been made in the murder of Georgino. A 21 year old taxi driver, Fredy Omar Ayala Dubon has been arrested based on evidence at the crime scene and he was in possession of the cell phone chip for Georgino´s phone. The phone has not been found.

Early reports say that the taxi driver drove the shooter to the scene, but it is too soon to know if Fredy Ayala was the driver or the murderer.

The FBI from the US and Spain as well as Colombia are assisting with the investigation as well as the investigations of the other murders of reporters this month.

Wanted For Murder of Georgino, 6th Reporter Murdered in a Month

2010-04-22T17:02:00.000-04:00

In one month we have had six reporters murdered and the last one was murdered leaving his job. however, there were witnesses and there is a 250,000 lempira reward for information leading to arrest of this person.

Georgino Orellana, was a wonderful person, ballet teacher, university professor, and a reporter. The murder of this man was so senseless and has caused so much pain in the population. Now that we need the human rights groups they are no where to be found, but after events in June 2009 they were all over the place and making judgement calls, but now that there are real violations going on...what did the UN do? Call for Honduras to invalidate the anti gang law...have they lost their minds?

If you have seen this person or know who this person is please contact the police at the 2st station in San Pedro Sula.

Facuseé Says No Deal on Bajo Aguan and I Don´t Blame Him

2010-04-22T13:13:00.000-04:00

A few days ago the government announced that they had come to an agreement on Bajo Aguan with MUCA and the invaders to the properties there. They forgot one little very important detail...discussing the agreement with the owner of the property, Miguel Facuseé.

MUCA wants the property that is to the right that borders with Toccoa, but Facuseé said that property is not for sale. He will not allow that to be a part of the agreement because he does not want the invaders to border with his neigbhors for fear that they will also try to invade his neighbors´ properties. I don´t blame him I wouldn´t let that deal go either. He also is a bit miffed that not one of them is facing charges for the murders of the security guards that have been killed, robberies that have happened in the area, and for the invasions themselves for ursurping land that is privately and legally owned.
Facuseé also pointed out that his workers in that area total 4,000 and they need to be consulted about whether they want new bosses or not, he has continued paying them even though they haven´t been able to work since December and this land will benefit just 3,000 members of MUCA, but at present employees 4,000. This deal should ahve never happened.

Update on Bajo Aguan Conflict

2010-04-12T02:22:00.000-04:00

Today the military was dispatched to Bajo Aguan with a possible order to remove trespassers from the plantations that they invaded by force leaving thousands unemployed and leading to announcements by Standard Fruit of the closing of their plantations.

It is imperitive that the government take control of the situation regarding invasions to protect investments in Honduras for exportation purposes and to protect the employment of thousands of Hondurans that depend on these companies every day.

The National Resistance Front that caused so much chaos after Zelaya was removed is now trying to sieze properties in Bajo Aguan and complaining about the possible removal of these invadors. If they want property they can buy it just like the rest of us do.

They invaded the property of Miguel Facusse at first in May 2009 and then extended their invasion to over 4,000 hectacres of land that they are demanding be given to them FREE. In fact, in reality their demand is for 14,000 hectacres of land free of charge.

The government needs to act swiftly and NOT negotiate. You do not negotiate with criminals and terrorists. Each and every time someone´s property is invaded, whether it is government or private it needs to result in not only removal but incarceration of the individuals for violation of human rights and trespassing as well as violating a private property using terroristic actions.

Conflict in Bajo Aguan, Colon

2010-04-06T03:12:00.000-04:00

The ongoing conflict in Bajo Aguan has been complicated. I had not completely understood what was going on there and wanted to refrain from writing about it on my blog until I understood the situation a little better and what was behind it. The inequality between rich and poor sometimes is more than apparent so I wanted to give both sides the benefit of the doubt before making judgement or opinions.

Some of what I have read has suggested that the area of Bajo Aguan is a very high conflict area and has been for quite a few years. Landowners and sharecroppers are at each other's necks and have been for years.

Over the past few months share croppers have decided to invade private owned lands that are production areas for African palm oil. Their reason is that they think that the land should belong to them instead of to the owners. This in spite of the fact that over three thousand Hondurans depend on employment at these production sites.

In the latest conflict six deaths have occurred. The share croppers are demanding over 20,000 hectacres of land be GIVEN to them free of charge.

The private owners of this land are Miguel Facusse and two other owners. This land was bought by Facusse and the other business owners in the 90's from this same group of share croppers. The land had already been ceded to them by the government once, free of charge...and three years later they SOLD it to him.

Pepe Lobo has offered the sharecroppers that he will give them 6,000 hectacres to be divided up among 3000 sharecroppers which adds up to 2 hectacres per sharecropper for free..how nice the government give someone something for being a violent terrorist...yet these people have the nerve to reject the offer and still insist on their way....

My opinion is they sold the land for the price they wanted...no one forced them to sell. When they sold they have no right to go back and complain about the sell and demand the property back, especially after the property has been heavily invested into by the owner.

If you invade someone's house you are a criminal and a burgler...why should the owner of the house be forced to give you his house just because you decide it is unfair he has a house and you do not. A person does not get something by stealing it...you should work for it. I understand they are poor and the government should extend to them low interest loans to buy property that is low cost and in control of the state. That should never be permission to accept invasions to private land though regardless of how much land the person owns.

The government is not going to avoid conflict by giving in. What they will have to do to put a stop to these types of armed conflicts is when someone invades someone's property send the military or the police and arrest them...put them in jail like the criminals they are. You do not negotiate with terrorists, you do not negotiate with burglers you put them in jail.

These types of things do not happen in the first world because the first world would never put up with a thief or burgler invading someone's private home and saying that they demand it be given to them. The burgler would be arrested by the police and prosecuted in a court for the theft.

Pepe should call their bluff on this one and send in the military. I do not believe he has the guts to do it, but if he did I would think it perfectly acceptable....after all these 'campesinos' already sold the property and a few of them aren't old enough to actually be making any claims to this property. One of the invaders was only 22 years old...how was he old enough to make claim in the 90's....I highly doubt he even knows the first thing about farming or caring for property. In order to take claim they should have to reimburse the government for the cost of the land and they should have to submit documentation that they are a agricultural engineer...if not no land..period....you don't give land that is agricultural to someone who hasn't the foggiest notion how to run that land and you don't give it to them for free. I suspect in another 5 years they will be selling their land again and we will be facing another invasion...one day the government will wake up and get tired of this game.

Fruit Punch Honduran Style

2010-04-03T18:56:00.000-04:00

I tried this recipe the other day to make fruit punch..it was fantastic..wow!

Apples sliced in thin slices
sugar cane cut up in long strips, raisins, dried plums*prunes*, chamomile, guayaba cut up, pineapple sliced, ripe plantain*just a little* sliced thin, tamarind, cinnamon sticks, jamaica flowers and about two cups of natural sugar as well as 3 to 4 liters of water, bring to boil and then let simmer for 30 minutes or more till the water is heavy and rich with fruit...you can serve either hot or cold..if fresh fruits aren't available use dry fruits...the chamomile should be either steamed in a strainer or a tea bag and removed...I loved it...

A Deserved Hat´s Off to Our Mayor Juan Carlos Zúñiga

2010-03-16T13:20:00.000-04:00

Our mayor has had guts that most other administrations have not had. He is doing a fabulous job with what he has to work with. Our city is bankrupt or actually worse than bankrupt...but when he went in he cut the payroll from 5,000 to 2,500 and that might make a bunch of people mad, but how do you continue with a bankrupt government and no way to make payroll? You lay off the folks you do not need.

There was some controversy that went his way that wasn´t deserved. He was accused of favoring family for the printing of the toll booth tickets contract, which is illegal...but they aren´t family. He already submitted to the court without a court date...he appeared at 8 am sharp with documents in hand to show he had nothing to do with who was awarded the contract and that he is not related to the people who won the contract even though they have the same last name. He submitted birth certificates and made clear that he was running a transparent government. He also invited USAID to review all of the procedures undertaken in his administration to show that it is a clean transparent one.

You would think that this would make people happy with the Dr Zúñiga (for those who read my blog and do not know him he is a cardiac surgeon and former director of Catarino Rivas Hospital and was fired by Zelaya for not supporting his reform project. However, apparently some people are less than happy as he just placed a formal complaint for receiving death threats.

Rixi Moncada Still Believes She is A High Government Official

2010-03-16T11:33:00.000-04:00

In Rixi Mocada´s court hearing she presented a half baked argument that her judicial proceeding cannot be heard in a reglar judicial court, because she is the CEO of the ENEE...um Rixi, News flash! You stopped being the CEO of ENEE on June 28,2009 and there was an election in November and a new president inaugurated and a new ENEE official named after January 27, 2010 you are not any official...you are unemployed chicky and the same justice the peons get you will get...not good enough? Too friggin BAD!

There can be one of two things wrong either this woman is that mentally ill that she really believes she is the CEO still or she is just pretending so that she can see how much she gets away with. Whatever it is I hope she spends a long time in prison.

Dominicans Disgusted With Zelaya

2010-02-05T16:58:00.001-05:00

Looks like President Fernandez of the DR really screwed up with this one...he agreed to let Zelaya stay in his country for awhile till he figured out what he wanted to do. The people there are up in arms wondering who is paying for Zelaya´s house and stay there. I wonder that myself.

Then yesterday he started running his mouth about Honduras and how the international community should reject the government and punish us . Zelaya what precisely for? For removing your corrupt butt from office? For electing a new president in the most voted elections in history...ones that weren´t corrupt like your election was...what a monumental mistake that was made with your election..we should have thrown you out on your ear 4 years ago. When are you going to get it...you aren´t the president in Honduras..you don´t call the shots. Lobo doesn´t answer to you, he answers to the people of Honduras...you aren´t here so keep your mouth shut and do everyone a favor and stop embarrassing your family, yourself and the people of Honduras as well as the people of the Dominican Republic.

Breaking News: Chavez´ Vice President Just Resigned!!!

2010-01-25T21:41:00.000-05:00

He is saying for personal reasons and Chavez accepted his resignation..I think the fallout has begun and Chavez is about to be couped by the public instead of the military...Ramon Carrizalez was also the defense minister..uh oh!
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2010/01/25/3809021-chavezs-no-2-resigns-citing-personal-reasons

Chavez Defeated By the Little Mouse That Roared

2010-01-25T21:10:00.000-05:00

Chavez has been driving the US nuts for quite a few years now and with his oil he beat his chest obnoxiously much to the dislike of many Americans and others who had lost a taste for him. In June, Hondurans stood up to one of his buddies, Zelaya and he has been hiding like a coward in the Brazilian embassy since causing much grief for the Brazilian president Lula de Silva.

Chavez threatened Micheletti with an invasion and Micheletti said ´bring it on... I have 7 million Hondurans eagerly waiting for you to arrive Chavez backed down and complained that it was a US backed coup. He was wrong. It wasn’t a coup at all or well yeah it was. It was a coup against ALBA and his idiocy. We couped Chavez from afar...and without touching him.

Since he messed with us his world has crashed down. He is facing 60% inflation, had to devalue his money, and cannot figure out how to get his drug trafficking through Honduras...since June 28 Honduras has been nicknamed things like the little country that could..the Mouse that Roared...etc.

We stood up for our democratic form of government and the constitution and threw out a certain dictator that loved Chavez to boot..And dared Chavez to set foot here...he didn’t dare.

Now he threatened economic chaos on Honduras that he almost succeeded at but the private sector came together to defend the country economically to prevent fall out...and they held strong. Now the table has been turned and he is the one fighting off economic chaos, his electric company is crashing...70% of Venezuela is about to lose power, and 60% inflation. And money worth nothing...well he is about to be ripped limb from limb by Venezuelans. The US just has to sit back and watch the show...in the process all of Latin America has taken a sharp turn right. So apparently what is happening here also infected Massachusetts with Brown’s victory. The voters are fed up folks. You better listen.

Chile swung right for the first time since Pinochet was removed from office. Brazil has lost its left lean as Silva is trying to recover his image for sympathizing with one of the worst dictators in the region, Hugo Chavez. ALBA has come crashing down and with it the dream of a monetary unit that would outweigh the US dollar and collapse the US economy. Had Honduras bowed to Chavez the outcome could have been a fall out that no one could have stopped instead he is reeling and most likely screeches like a mad man if anyone utters the word ´Honduras´.

A word of advice to evil socialist dictators…no hay más macho que el pueblo Catracho!

Oh I Love It...Fireworks Start

2010-01-16T23:53:00.000-05:00

Pepe said in response to Oscar Arias calling him weak and unable to get Micheletti to resign...

Poor thing, if he doesn´t recongnize me I am not worried about him. What matters to me is my country and what my people want. That is why we have a Plan for the Nation.

It gets better folks

Roberto Micheletti also responded to him...I about fell out of my chair...the air is getting tight...

He said to Oscar Arias´latest tirade ´I think, with all due respect, that Oscar Arias needs psychological help.

Generosity in Honduras Never Fails to Amaze Me

2010-01-15T20:18:00.000-05:00

Today donations were gathered in the Central Park in San Pedro Sula for the firemen to take to Haiti. They commented on the international aid that Honduras received in 1998 when we were hit by hurricane Mitch and said that it is time to pay forward.

A private charter has been scheduled by the Rotary Club of Tocoa, Colon, Honduras. The telephone companies Digicel and Tigo have been collecting donations via text messages and have said that 100% of the donations will go to those affected by the earthquake in Haiti.

This tiny country that has suffered economically in the past few months and is very poor has donated the little they have to help those who are in a more serious situation than our own. I think that God will smile down on Honduras and rain many blessings on her.

12 Days

2010-01-15T20:06:00.000-05:00

In just 12 days the new president Pepe Lobo will be inaugurated to office. A new page will be turned in the history of Honduras and perhaps we can put the crisis behind us.

Micheletti has been an excellent president. He has been named an honorable lifetime Congressman. He has been named as the vice president of Liberal International. People here consider him a hero by and large on both sides of the fence.

I really wish he had been the president for a full four years and not just the short six months that we have had him as president. He could have really lead Honduras on the right path and cleaned up a lot of the corruption. Honduras needs more than anything for clear attention to be paid to the corrupt aspects of government from the police officer that takes a bribe to ignore a ticket or expired registration to the president who takes payments to ignore or facilitate drug trafficking or corrupt deals to go through.

Just six months ago this country was teetering on the edge of turning into a dictatorship and losing all the freedoms that had been a struggle to obtain. Since 1982 Honduras had come a long way and grown in their passion to protect the form of government that we have. I was terrified of what the future held. I worried every instant on which country might invade after the first days of the removal of Zelaya since so many had condemned us without knowing all the details of what exactly occurred and what we had dealt with for three years prior to his removal.

In the end we rid ourselves of Zelaya. He is hiding like the snake that he is in the Brazilian embassy terrified to come out and face the music on his criminal charges. All the while the charges that the Military command is facing they have showed up in court and shown honor to their uniform and admitted that they removed him from the country which is technically illegal, but explained that they were avoiding a certain bloodbath in Honduras if he were left in the country. I believe that Zelaya has ordered people close to those that oppose him killed. Micheletti´s nephew and a friend of his was murdered, reporters children have been kidnapped or murdered including a pregnant daughter of the reporter for channel 8 the state ran newsstation. A congresslady´s husband was kidnapped and later released after awhile in captivity. It saddens me to think that a former leader looks at life so cheaply and is so egocentric that his position in the presidency is more important than the citizens or lives of individuals. He does not love the country of Honduras he is only capable of loving himself.

When I look around at my friends, neighbors, and family I feel great passion for the way they have defended themselves against tyranny and can only pray and hope that citizens of the US would unite and act in the same fashion against certain loss of their constitution and freedom. I have been inspired by this tiny country that has taught me a great lesson in humility and pride. I am humbled by the great ability they have to demand change.

Obama,Kelly,Clinton and Bribery

2010-01-09T09:36:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I was watching the news when it said that Craig Kelly had came to Honduras to discuss the situation and he had meetings with Zelaya, Micheletti and Lobo.

When the meeting was over it came out that he brought with him an financial package in the millions of dollars range in exchange for resignation of Micheletti. This in spite of the fact that the State department and Obama have both been informed that such an action would be illegal and that Michletti would not resign. He again reminded them that it was illegal at this point for him to resign and that there is really no reason.

We are less than three weeks from the inauguration of Pepe Lobo as the next president. How can they justifiy wanting Micheletti to resign at this point? What is the point? What was their plan? To assist Zelaya back into power where he could declare elections invalid and sit in power for the next four years?

Never mind that Obama flat out broke the law in the US as well.

The law in the US is clear in the Foreign Corrupt Practices act that you cannot offer money or other gain to a leader in exchange for him doing something that is illegal in his own country or the US. The US came and did this anyway. My question is when is the US going to investigate this act of corruption on behalf of the US government and find out who gave the authorization and who is it that is responsible for the bribery and CHARGE them with the crime.

I Apologize For My Absence

2010-01-07T00:12:00.000-05:00

I have been ill and it makes it a bit difficult to come in and post very much.
I wanted everyone to know that it isn´t serious it is just taking me longer to get over this crud than normal and the cold weather isn´t helping any.

Give me a few days and I will be back to my old self.

Christmas In Honduras

2009-12-25T18:42:00.000-05:00

Christmas in Honduras is not like you experience Christmas in any other place in the world. Hondurans have a very unique way of doing things and I actually love doing Christmas here. It makes Christmas in the US seem so boring.
Why do I say boring? Well if you ever wondered what it might sound like to live in the middle of a war, go to Honduras on Christmas Eve. There are so many fireworks cracking that you will sware that the place is being carpet bombed. Kids and fathers in delight are popping fireworks, sometimes entire rounds of the little crackers at a time. The neighborhood goes house to house, drinks homemade wine, you are fed endless plates of tamales, roasted chicken, baked or grilled pork leg, rice, and don´t dare say..´I´m not hungry´..just grin and stuff more food in your face. I don´t think a soul in Honduras falls asleep a minute before 4 am. Then the next day firecrackers continue to pop as the kids spend the rest of the fireworks collection they have amassed. The moms sweep up the mess the fireworks have left behind and warm tamales and warm leftovers with tortillas and Coca Cola or Pepsi and oftentimes Banana soda. I think today I was the only one who washed clothes and hung out laundry..I didn´t see anyone else with laundry hanging, but I couldn´t resist taking advantage of the breeze that was blowing and I have a washing machine so I threw a load of towels in and washed them. I also took a nap because I was worn out from being awake till the wee hours of the morning...that is when you really realize what being 38 years old feels like.
I received some Godawful news last night and all of my neighbors were around to keep my spirits up, hug me and pray with me for a few minutes. My oldest son Julio is being sent to Afghanistan in June. His job there will be to diffuse bombs and man a machine gun. He joined the Guard so we knew there were risks, but had hoped that the worst was over when he had signed so that he could get the college money to become an architect. Now we know that fate didn´t play out that way and he is going to war like so many of our sons and daughters before him. I will be brave, but I am a mom and cannot help but feel scared for him and feel like he is just barely over being a kid and surely cannot be grown enough to do dangerous things like difuse bombs. My husband to worries for him as he spent six years in service here in Honduras doing the same thing, diffusing bombs. He cannot picture this young man being sufficiently prepared for such a dangerous job. He said we will deliver it in God´s hands that he will bring him home safely.
What I was impressed with is there was no endless amount of support for me and my child and even though not everyone agrees with the war there or understands it, even I do not understand it fully, everyone was supporting me and him at that moment and praying for his safe return and commented on the brave soul and patriot that he is. With such a support from this community I have learned what real family and neighbors feel like. They have truly made Christmas have meaning to me that goes beyond presents and the latest toys and electronics. Many in Honduras do not have money for all the latest gadgets, but almost all of them celebrate Christmas and enjoy festivities with one another. I think every American should experience one Christmas Eve in Honduras.

Siesmographs Going to Be Installed in 2010

2009-12-22T15:19:00.000-05:00

Two siesmographs to measure ground movement will be installed in Honduras in the Cortes area. The two siesmographs were donated and cost about $6,000 a piece.
The machines will be installed where they can send measurments live via internet.
Honduras is located between two tetonic plates The Carribean and the Cocos. These two plates have activated more than 200 faults in the territory of Honduras.
The Northern region of Honduras has been the most affected by the movements since May 28th´s major earthquake of 7.3. Most of us have felt movements that did not seem to be registered on the geological websites either in Nicaragua or in the US and would be confused about whether we imagined it or not. However, after research by La Gringa in Ceiba she found out that often the US geological service does not register every earthquake here(yeah right...only since June 28, before that they were even registering the tiny ones.) and that Nicaragua´s site might not pick them up and they do not update immediately. So now we have our own to register our movements and then we will know for sure if the ground is really moving or if we are really going bananas.

Nominate Micheletti for the Nobel Peace Prize!

2009-12-19T19:28:00.000-05:00

It seems there is a bit of a movement in Miami amongst Hondurans to nominate Micheletti for the Nobel Peace Prize for the incredible strength and security he brought to the people in Honduras and his magnificent ability to keep the country from falling into chaos and an eventual civil war.

What he did was short of a miracle considering the incredible pressure he had coming from the ALBA countries and at one point from many allies as well. He took a stand and kept our pride without letting this fall into a war. I agree he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize...this man is a hero in my book.

If you are interested in signing the petition to nominate Roberto Micheletti for the Nobel call 304-643-5840 or 305-643-0577. I think he is a national hero and absolutely should be given this prize in 2010.

Extreme Injustice

2009-12-18T16:48:00.000-05:00

I of course mostly speak about Honduras on this blog. I try to limit myself to that...but every once in awhile something happens that is so shocking that there is no way I cannot do anything but address it. Especially when it refers to the way Hispanics are treated in the US. How many Hondurans, Mexicans, our friends or family, have been treated badly for being the wrong color and for no other reason.

The other day a sleepy coal town named Shenandoah, PA was once again turned upside down. This town has lived in turmoil since July 2008 when six teenage football players kicked Luis Ramirez to death. Luis Ramirez, 25 was from Mexico and had been in the US since he was 18 illegally. He had two children, a boy and a girl, Eduardo and Kiara and intended to marry their mother, Crystal, 24.

However, justice was not served. The boys involved covered up, lied, and the police helped them. The boys faced a slap on the wrist for their crime instead of murder...they got simple assault...this man is dead and they got simple assault? Something is seriously wrong with this picture. The Justice Department started an investigation and if it were not for this investigation and murder the corruption secrets of this tiny town might never have been found out.

In 2006, there was another Hispanic man beat to death in this town...but that time it was a Puerto Rican and he was beaten to death in a jail cell by the cops...they then tried to cover it up and make it look like a suicide. His family was smart enough to get a second autopsy that shows his death was not from any hanging but from being beaten to death. A suit is in progress for wrongful death against these scum bag cops. Why was there no investigation?

David Murphy, a black man, was also arrested by these thugs and he was beaten and denied his blood thinning medication and he had a heart attack and lay on a prison cell floor where no one could hear him..he spent four days in the hospital. The police told him if he said a word or tried to sue that he would end up like that Mexican who hung himself if he sued them or told anyone.

Here is how they investigate in this town of Shenandoah, PA

Minutes after the last kick and punch were thrown in a fatal beating in a public park in Shenandoah on a summer night in 2008, the cover-up began, federal prosecutors say.

Instead of investigating the vicious beating of Luis Ramirez, police officers of the small borough helped the young men conceal evidence and concoct a less-damaging version of what happened that night, advising the young football players that they "needed to get their stories straight" because the man they had just beaten might die, according to an indictment

In the following weeks, Lt. Moyer called one of the parents of the men involved in the beating, advising them to "dispose of the sneakers he wore during the assault" on Mr. Ramirez, the indictment states.

I am utterly disgusted that this is happening in my home country. In the US I had always had the illusion when I was younger that our justice was served honestly and that our cops were straightforward and honest...that world came crashing down the night that Kathrine Johnston was killed in Atlanta, Georgia by Narcotics police who had a bogus warrant and planted drugs in her home. This caused an outcry in the community that an investigation was launched and something so sick was uncovered that it left everyone wondering if those idiots had put more innocent people in prison. It was revolting. In the end, justice was served, but this woman cannot be brought back to life nor can Luis Ramirez, David Vega, or any of the other people that suffer from police brutality, racism, and corruption.

I find it hard to complain about 3rd world police corruption when I am smacked with corruption so vile in my own country that it makes the Honduran cops look like saints.

Reporter´s Daughter Murdered By Resistance

2009-12-17T08:56:00.000-05:00

Micheletti openly accused the National Resistance Front (a terrorist organization in favor of a dictatorship by Zelaya) of murdering a young girl by the name of Catherine Nicolle Rodriguez. This young girl of 16 not only was murdered, but she was 8 months pregnant when they shot and killed her. The baby was able to be saved at Hospital Escuela but unfortunately Catherine died.

Karol Cabrera is her mother and she is a reporter with Radio Cadena de Voces and Channel 8 the state run television station.

Micheletti directly blamed radio stations like Channel 36 and Radio Globo for their role in causing hate to be raised in the country and for encouraging terrorist activity of this nature. This is a disgusting act and should be repudiated by all. It is sad that they found the need to shoot a defenseless, pregnant teenager.

The police have said that they do have evidence that is leading to suspects in the crime, so with hope these criminals will receive their just punishment and not escape prison. Unfortunately, in Honduras we do not have the death penalty for disgusting trash like this. Anyone who would shoot a 16 year old that is 8 months pregnant deserves to suffer a very cruel punishment in exchange.

My heart goes out to her family who is suffering deeply with her loss. My condolences and I am very glad they were able to save the life of the little one even though Catherine was not able to be saved.

Sponser a Child Fraud

2009-12-11T19:03:00.001-05:00

(the organizations name and the participants names are not included to protect their privacy)
One of the things that makes my blood boil is these sponser a child organizations that take people´s money and mislead them in return. There are a few reputable organizations out there so they are not who I am talking about.

A person who I met online and now consider my friend after meeting him in Honduras spoke with me about a group where he had sponsered a child for 20 some odd dollars a month. The organization sent him a letter supposedly from the child saying that his money had built this child´s family a new chimney. He decided he wanted to meet the family and this child. The organization said he could have 1 thirty minute meeting in Tegucigalpa(not where the child lives) and it would cost him approximately $2,000 for the background check, transportation, and other stuff related to organization costs) That is outrageous for a 30 minute meeting. This person wasn´t worried about the background check but felt it was crazy to spend that much money and felt they set it at this level to make it where they would not go and meet the family and he was probably right.

The friend of mine set out on an exploration of Honduras, hoping but not expecting, that he would find his sponsered child and their family. He was lucky and found them on his second day in Honduras. In his discovery he found the organization never built a chimney, never gave this child any school supplies or anything related to the organization. He also found out that his child had never sent him the letter thanking him for the new chimney. He was very disappointed. However, they connected and now have a relationship and he helps them directly. The organization was rather upset that he found the child..of course.

This time he came and visited and enjoyed getting to know his sponsered god child much better and assisted the family and talked to them about the needs they have. I was filled with joy that they made this connection and this man truly cares about this child.

I felt I needed to speak about this because these organizations are sometimes not on the up and up and are becoming rich off of promoting that they help the poor without helping the poor at all. If you want to adopt a child per se(understand these people are not giving you their child, they are giving you a sponser or god parent status) then it is best to contact people inside the country that are either ex pats or someone else where you can help a child directly with funds or contact a school about paying a scholarship for a needy child...there are plenty of schools and I can provide you a list if you would like to do that. School for children that is private ranges in prices...it can be very inexpensive to expensive and there are a range of types of private schools from non religious to religious, catholic or evangelical. Some are bilingual some are not. Let me know in email what your price range is and I will match you to a school. You can provide the school with the funds if you distrust providing it directly to the family. You can also purchase books, uniforms, etc on line or send money to the school where they can purchase them.
If you want the name of a family I can put you in contact with several in my immediate area. I do not want your money...but I will be honest with you 20 dollars will not feed a family or the child for a month like these sites tell you. Also, INFA and other organizations here that are orphanages will gladly take donations of food, clothing, school supplies, money, etc. I believe an ex pat here runs an orphanage and another runs a private school(if you guys will post your information it will be appreciated and how they can provide a donation to you..even greater appreciated.) Schools run from as little as 300 lempiras a month to 4,000 lempiras a month for a higher class bilingual school like the American Academy in San Pedro Sula.

If you want to adopt a child from Honduras that is possible as well. You can contact INFA. It is a long process, but well worth it. http://www.ihnfa.hn/
You must be over 25 and under 51 to adopt in Honduras. I am not sure if there are any exceptions to that rule, but you may want to contact them about it if you are out of these age ranges..as I am sure there are probably exceptions to the rule in Honduras.

School and Why I Get in Trouble When I Wander Around US Blogs Too Much

2009-12-07T23:08:00.000-05:00

Every once in a great while I decide to surf...invariably it gets me into trouble...lots of it. Now I have spent two nights wandering site to site and finding myself sometimes amused and sometimes wandering what in the world these strange people are thinking about. I find it harder sometimes to identify with US citizens on line than other Hondurans or other Ex Pats...and it seems to get worse as time goes on.

My latest run in has been one about public school, homeschooling, divorce, and wild nonsense that would make most of us go bananas. After months of talking about stuff here though I needed to read other stuff and now I could kick myself.

I came upon two cases of home schoolers. I used to like home school parents and still do to some degree, but after these blogs I am not so sure that there is not a certain population of home school parents that are completely loony toons.

I hear many refer to the public school system as Satan´s tool and wild things of that nature. Others say that they don´t want to expose their children to different world views that the reason they home school is to isolate the children from that sin filled lifestyle. Then I hear others who just want to make sure their kids get a quality education and felt like they could not in the local school system. The latter I can respect to a degree.

However, children should be exposed to certain things that we do not find so savory so they know how to deal with those life situations when they come upon them. Face it people we cannot protect our children from everything and it is better to deal with the situations as they arise or discuss what is right and what is wrong before those situations come up instead of sheltering the child from everything one perceives as worldly or sinful. Too much sheltering is a bad thing.

When I think about the home schooling that I did over the past year it wasn´t so much because I wanted to home school, it was because I had no choice. The people of Honduras and Ex Pats know well that the situation was wild this year and children lost out on almost the entire school year. I wonder how the home schoolers would feel about US public schools if they had to spend just one year sending their children to a public school in Honduras. They might suddenly realize the fine schools they have before them and that they have been just a little too uppity about.

One thing about US public schools...they are in session every day for 5 days a week from 7 am to 3 pm in most states and they do not miss time unless there is a drastic emergency during the school year. Another thing US students can be sure of, if they are poor they get free lunch and their lunch is balanced. They get free text books and get clean, well groomed schools that are rarely in the desperate shape that some politicians try to paint them as being in. I wonder how many politicians from the US or parents would flat pass out of they took one look at the state of affairs in Honduran public schools. Lead paint, crumbling cement blocks, sometimes dirt floors, no windows, and text books...what text books? Then your child might find himself walking home several times a month because teachers just decided to go on strike because they didn´t like something or another about the government or their uniform, or whatever. I will never complain about US public schools again! US students have it very good and their education is something that is guaranteed and not something that is half baked. I worry more about the parent that calls a US public school, Satan´s tool...being her kids teacher 8 hours a day than I worry about a public school teacher who is well trained and probably a Christian anyway.
I worry about the bloggers that went bananas over a father in New Hampshire wanting his 10 year old in public school so she could consider other people´s view points and perhaps open her mind. They called him every name in the book. I was certain this man was an atheist by the time they were done with him. His own daughter claimed that she felt he didn´t love her because he would not follow her religion and thus was going to hell. That sent sirens off in my head that you cannot imagine..a ten year old doesn´t invent that junk on her own and normal churches do not teach this crap to kids about their parents. I was again certain he was an atheist from those comments. I found out he was a Catholic...I was speechless. How did this child suddenly decide in her homeschool, with her mother 24 hours a day..that daddy was going to hell because he is a Catholic? Oh boy....is anyone else hearing fundamentalist cult whistles yet? I sure am.
The mother went nuts and hired ADF because she thinks that not getting to home school interferes with her religion..what? How does sending your kid to public school deny you the right to practice your religion? It doesn´t. She goes to church on Sunday and if you church requires you home school and not go to worldly public school find another church...something is seriously wrong with a church that requires such nonsense or teaches that daddy will go to hell because he is a Catholic.

Ok enough ranting on that issue..and now my hats off to the public school system in the US. While some of the schools have much to be desired there...the schools in Honduras and the teachers here do not hold a candle to the teachers there. If they would stay in school the full year they might give US schools a run for their money, crumbling walls and all.

20 Days Till Christmas: Christmas In Honduras

2009-12-05T20:10:00.000-05:00

We have 20 days till Christmas and I will be celebrating my second Christmas here. Christmas in Honduras is very different from Christmas in the United States. We have no concept of Thanksgiving as a marker here so you start seeing Christmas things in October here. However, Christmas is not near as commercialized as it is in the United States.

I was having a very difficult time getting in the Christmas mood this year, but one of my neighbor´s 22 year old daughters has been bugging the snot out of me about when I am going to put up my lights and tree for Christmas...well today I caved and she won and I put up the lights and tree. I have a poinsetta decorated white Christmas tree...with red poinsettas all over it and gold balls with poinsetta Christmas lights that have two settings. I also have garland lights for the house that I put on the second story railing. She was so pleased with me...she calls me ´suegra´to bug me because she says she is going to steal my 19 almost 20 year old soldier son when he come shere and that they are going to run away and get married...(she is joking of course, but anything to tease me).

I suppose the more I look at the lights the more I will get in the mood...

In Honduras tamales at every house during Christmas...you go from house to house to house...drink grape wine(it is really good), eat tamales, eat pork leg that has been baked, the kids set off tremendous amounts of fireworks...and yes there are Christmas gifts and new clothing, but not to the level of the states..most kids get one or two gifts and new clothing here..no one really gives mounds of gifts like the states. I really enjoy Christmas here because it is not just family, but friends as well. I love the house to house to house stuff and while the firecrackers give me a headache the kids have fun...So grab a bottle of grape wine, a bottle of fresh made rompopo, tamales, fireworks and Christmas is ready...

75 Days in the Brazilian Embassy: Now What?

2009-12-05T12:48:00.000-05:00

Zelaya has been in the Brazilian embassy for 75 days today after he snuck in on September 21 and found that he had to exile in the Brazilian embassy to avoid capture by the military.

Now the elections have passed and Pepe Lobo is the next president and he will take office on January 27, 2010 as required by the Honduran Constitution. The world is recognizing the electoral process and one by one turning their backs on Zelaya. The next country is Brazil...they are considering recognizing the election results since the elections were clearly fair and transparent. If they recognize the elections what happens to Zelaya? How much longer can he continue inside that embassy prison cell he created for himself? He has been abandoned by everyone but his family and Rasel Tomé.

He was abandoned by Tamayo for what was rumored to be domestic violence that occurred between Zelaya and his wife Xiomara. Tamayo apparently got in the middle to stop him from hurting her and an argument broke out. Tamayo used the excuse that his sister needed him in El Salvador, but he hasn´t been to El Salvador in 26 years until now...so it is highly unlikely that his story was true...apparently Zelaya beat Xiomara so badly she had to be hospitalized and it was more than Tamayo could deal with so he left the embassy and faced deportation instead.

Zelaya clearly is suffering from mental problems that probably have been compounded by the situation he has found himself in. I am sure he never dreamed that the embassy would become his prison. He miscalculated how much following he had and it was too late when he realized that the Resistance could not carry him back to the presidency and that the Civil War he dreamed about had not occurred.

Now that elections have passed even the Resistance has recognized that Lobo will be the president come January and they accept the results of the elections...their goal they say is the Constitutional Assembly...of course that will not happen, but how bad has it really gotten when his following abandoned him outright and were clear they no longer were calling for Zelaya´s restitution since his term would end on January 27 anyway. People are starting to come to their senses now.

So what is this man going to do? He cannot continue in the embassy. The sensible thing would be to ask for asylum and get a way out of the country without being arrested or turn himself in and face the music that awaits him. The military feels so safe about the situation that they retired barricades that had been at the embassy for over 2 months. They are still guarding the embassy to arrest him if he comes out, but there is no danger of the embassy coming under siege now.

The real question is if Brazil recognizes Lobo, will they make Zelaya make a choice on what he is going to do? His days are numbered regardless. The Brazilians need their embassy and he has got to decide what his destiny is....I suspect that the Zelaya property in Catacamas will soon have a for sale sign hanging on the gate...and Zelaya will be an asylee in another country...I cannot picture him facing the music.

The real thing to celebrate is that elections were so peaceful and that the crisis is all but ended. No one will stop holding their breath though until he is out of the embassy and Lobo is sworn in as president of Honduras.

Now the doors are open to the future for Honduras and what Hondurans do with it will depend on them..this can easily make Honduras a first world country even as small as they are...will they jump at the chance or remain on the sidelines is the real question.

Letter from Our President Roberto Micheletti Bain

2009-12-04T19:36:00.000-05:00

Dated November 29, 2009 and printed in Spanish in the Prensa.

I want to add my own thoughts. If it were not for the other ex pats, my neighbors, my husband, friends, and many other Hondurans I do not know how I could have made it through without running for the hills. Many times I was scared and many times I was afraid we just would not make it with everyone against us, no matter how wrong they were. It was difficult and as many others living in Honduras I spent many sleepless nights and anguish for what would come next. President Micheletti wrote precisely many of the things in my mind. While some things may have been lost a bit in translation because the letter is long I have done my best to translate it here and it took me about two hours. I appreciate any corrections of errors as I am tired now and refuse to proof read it...as I think it is important to write here what he had to say. I love Honduras and I am so proud of the people here and what they stand for. I have long wondered exactly what it meant to defend democracy and be proud of who you are and now I know and I understand in every grain of my being.
Now to the letter

Heroic people of Honduras:

I present myself before you to celebrate with complete satisfaction today the elections. I want to take a few minutes in this time that I am absent to tell the nation a few words that will serve to consolidate the job that is being done by all Hondurans in good faith.

We have lived without a doubt one of the most important historical journeys of our country, of Central America, of Latin America, and of the world that lives in Democracy. We have confirmed to the world that all the countries, however small, have large spirit in everyone of the citizens that participate in the construction of their future.

For this reason, I salute, with my heart in hand all Hondurans that today exercised their right to vote. They defied the international pressure, the fear that was sowed by radical sectors of society, the intimidation of the enemies of the state, and all that planted hate to stop the exercise of clear liberty in the sovereign right to insist on respect for our laws and concur with the enthusiasm at the ballot box to elect our next president.

Every vote emitted represents a value of the Hondurans that we give to our liberty to decide. Every vote is the voice of a community that asks for respect and in change promises to respect the law over all things. For this reason I bring before you the thought of Albert Einstein when he said ´My ideal politics is the democracy To let every man be respected as an individual and not idolize any man. We have given clear proof that this thought is alive in Honduras and that gives us pride.

More over every vote is the validation of the strength that Honduras has to correct their path and continue constructing the nation inside a democratic and republican system. Honduras is not the property of anyone more than the Honduran citizenry and it has become the responsibility of politicians that love Honduras to assume the responsibility to return us to the path that respects the law.

If in the walk it has been precise to go away from friends, it is sure that we are on your time and proud Honduran citizens will give us the reason. The friends will return and their heart will open the doors to this valiant nation, progressive and always indebted to democracy and the law.

No one better than the children of this land of Morazan known how much pain and anguish it has costed to have the right to complete this journey full of decisions and dreams. No one more can understand how much anguish it has been for Honduras to confront our brothers and the destruction of the national harmony.

No one more than Hondurans can understand that a new day is born and a new moment is coming closer in this government team of transition to complete their job of turning over power without conditions to the governor who has been elected by the people.

And of course, no one more than Hondurans will savor tonight the exquisite flavor of dignity, of liberty, of the right to defend their national honor at the ballot box.

As a part of this government team it satisfies me to get to this point, nights without sleep, days of conflict and a interminable time of affliction proceeding this moment when we complete one more pass to the process of service and protection of the most expensive patriotic values.

If initially the journey was complicated and delicate it was because the international community left us alone in the job of defending our nation and our laws, every moment lived in front of the nation signifies for the government team and for the thousands of citizens that we have been strengthened, a proof of force that all Hondurans will be able to rise up.

The best proof that we are a nation with a future is in the smiles that we have seen on the length of the journey of the interminable lines of voters. Every heart, every volunteer, every dream closed in the vote, it brings back the faith we have tried to rescue since the start of the process.

On the path many things have changed. Today we are a country with proven sovereignty, without fear to defend our dignity before even the largest countries, and with faith in that if we act inside of the law, we all can win. Beyond that the discourse, today our Honduras has come forward to prove to the world that it is a nation of dignity, free, without imposition, and with much pride for itself.

Our constant prayers had their reward, the Honduran people have reacted and it is presented more than never an example of dignity and of complete promise to democracy.

I thank the electors for this act of faith in the future. They are not acts of support for a government but more than that…every vote was a confirmation of what we are as a nation and that we deserve respect from everyone and that we will be relocated within international concert, as a country of brave people, with values and plain decision.

Nothing more than this would have been possible without the backing of the citizens who are responsible for the protection of democracy and the sovereign liberty of the Honduran community. We are at the end of the day a team has formed with citizens of diverse tendencies to confront this job of making sure that the law is respected above all factors of distortion.

The Congress of the Republic, the Supreme Court, and the Electoral Tribunal, the Attorney General, the Prosecutor, the Police, and the military should feel satisfied for the lighted path of their jobs and promise to the liberty in this country. Of all of them we can feel most proud because of their support that this nation required in this moment to continue the path of the dignity and today we have moved a little further forward.

As a part of this team of government I am convinced that I will have no larger satisfaction in my life. I am serving my country, my convictions, but beyond all I am serving every person who believes in this country, in our future, and our capacity to move forward.

The votes have concluded. The government team salutes all of the citizens and all of the candidates, the winners and those that had the bravery to confront the situation and make proposals to save the country from the worst influences.

I salute the leaders of all of the corners of the country, where the electoral process has been a total sacrifice, but where without a doubt, the hope is the reason to work so that an idea converts into a project that we will all follow.

The country’s history will applaud the strength of the candidates of all the parties that participated enthusiastically. In the personal I have to share with them the emotion of the celebration of the win of the community against others with the power of our words and the faith in our future, to those enemies of the process I ask that they honor the will of the people by means of a vote.

Without tremendous valor demonstrated by the candidates these elections would have never occurred. Thanks to every one of them for demonstrating with their actions their promise to the future of this nation.

In the same form I thank the enthusiasm of the electoral authorities, of the political parties, and the delegates of the electoral tables, because they are the guarantee of the will of the people that was totally respected and backed by transparency. I will cite the words of Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg speech on November 19, 1893 ´The world will little note nor remember for long what we are saying here, but never will they forget what they did here´ I am sure of this and all that each one of the guarantees of our free elections will bring the spirit of pride to be written with strength in this page of national history.

After this moment of euphoria that precedes this announcement of the results the government team detains itself for a moment to share some reflections about the passes that we are going to have to take so that the country will complete its new holy cycle of democracy.

It is important that we have national unification in our projects of the future and for this reason we all must walk together without error to the methods of the reality that exists for us.

Not only do we have in front of us the job of recovering what has been lost in these months of conflict, if not more beyond that we have to work together so that the poverty, lack of education, insecurity, and all of these problems that steal our dreams are jobs that will start immediately without excuse or any delay.

This job only can be started by the new government if it has before it a United Honduras, convinced of its strength and with a promise to the future. From the Congress of the Republic that I am proud of having worked with as with all of the political jobs and business initiatives that have developed from me personally I have known the reality of this country. However, in front of this government team I have completed this vision and for this I proclaim that now we unite as a country, work together to go beyond political colors, to advance as a nation so that we complete the remaining tasks.

This process of unification will place great virtues of Honduras beside its unintimidated bravery as a sovereign nation. The development of human potential and business potential will be in the hands of the most extraordinary example of power and valor as a nation.

We have demonstrated to the world that we are a country where dignity should be respected. Now our job as a community is to orient this same valor to find the methods that are most important to facilitate the lives and jobs of our children and grandchildren. WE are the ones who have the responsibility to protect and develop the country. We together insist in our authorities to guide the nation and the state respecting law and putting themselves at the service of our needs and community.

I take advantage of this reflection to the future to thank the backing of moral leaders of this country that was given in this moment of our democracy. Without their bravery , without the promise of those sectors of society and without the significance of them and the abuse they dealt with and the anonymity of their aggressors, this country could never have advanced so rapidly to such a complex method that today we are celebrating.

Honduras, today more than ever, we are on our own path without conditions, orders, more than ever we have demonstrated that we are the owners of our own destiny, designers of our future, and doctors of our own health as a nation.

We have lived in our future and to make our phrase a classic of the philosopher Plato ´The liberty is in being owners of your own lives´

God Bless Honduras and Long Live Honduras!

Honduras Takes Sharp Turn Right

2009-12-01T16:17:00.000-05:00

After a wild four years in left field Honduras has taken a sharp right turn. Not only did Hondurans vote for the ´cachurecos´(Nationalist Party) for the presidency in which Pepe Lobo is now the president elect with a huge undeniable margin, but they also swept away much of the ´reds´ power hold on the country in mayor seats and Congress.

Cachurecos won 252 mayor seats and Reds won just 46 with 2 still in dispute. In Yoro the entire department went from Red to Blue and the Reds do not control a single seat.
In the department of Cortes another traditionally Liberal department the Reds only won 1 seat and San Pedro Sula is in dispute right now awaiting a recount and final tally to determine the winner.
In the department of Santa Barbara with 28 mayorships the Nationalists won 22 mayorships and Liberals won just 6.
The department of Paraiso where the dramatic border event by Zelaya took place and was traditionally Liberal as well also went to a blazing blue...13 mayors are now Cachurecos and 7 Reds.
In the Department of Olancho where Zelaya and Lobo are both from the department is also now deep blue. While 20 mayorships now belong in blue hands only 3 are red.
In Colon where Nationalists usually barely make head way they control all but 1 of the mayor seats.

The projection for Congress is that the Cachurecos will control more than 70 of the 128 seats leaving just 58 for the opposition. This is an important event since Cachurecos are known for being a solid voting block and for following the lead of Pepe Lobo...if he says to Cachurecos vote for this...they do and as a solid block. So clearly the right has unsurmountable power in Honduras....Now what will they do with it since it is probably the first time in hisotry that they have held so much power in their hands.

The difficulty in the hotly contested mayor seat of San Pedro Sula is a seat I would not want if they begged me to take. Two doctors, a cardiologist (Liberal Candidate) and a gynecologist (Nationalist Candidate) are in competition for the seat and the vote took place smooth and it has turned into a close election that brings back memories of the US 2000 presidential election between Gore and Bush. There are 426 urns that are sealed with the results inside and results were to be left out of the urn and in a sealed envelope, yet poll workers did not follow instructions and sealed it in the box leaving in question the mayor seat of the Industrial Capital of Honduras. The TSE in San Pedro is not authorized to open the urns and they are being transfered to Tegus for scrutiny in front of both candidates and other observers. There is also some question about manipulation of the closing count making it necessary to hand count all of the ballots for a confirmation. Today the results should be clear as to whether the Reds or Blues will control the 2nd largest city in Honduras and take a bankrupt municipality in their hands. It is one that should not be envied and needs critical life support. San Pedro is not just handicapped it has literally 1 foot in the grave. The municipality is completely bankrupt from the corruption that has siezed it for four years. Both candidates are good and while the seat was held by a liberal previously Zuñiga is not your average candidate..he ran on the Micheletti ticket and is very popular as is Bendañas. Zuñiga is a cardiologist that has long assisted the poor even before he was in the political realm as is true for Bendañas as well. Zuñiga stood up to Zelaya over the 4th ballot box and lost his executive status with Catarino Rivas Hospital in San Pedro Sula. What is even more interesting is that Zuñiga was originally on the Micheletti ticket.

Huge Victory for Honduras

2009-11-30T19:39:00.001-05:00

I stood upright for hours from just after midnight Sunday morning until Monday 3 am while the elections started their journey. Normally as an international observer I would not have had to stand so long or do such a long shift but disaster almost occurred. They had so many urns to deliver that they ran out of custodians for the urns. I was picked to be the observer while the presidents of the voting tables became custodians and after the elections I became custodian with presidents as co custodians until the custodian arrived it made it difficult for me to observe any of the other schools, but I was informing how the votes were going in the other schools in the neighborhood and everything seemed to be very smooth and quiet in the other areas with people voting and going home. The vote did start a little late in all of the three schools in our neighborhood but voting was extended till 5 pm as there were lots of people waiting to vote in the two upper schools and there was a steady stream even after 4 at the smaller school where I was located. I picked the school, because I had been told that there was a few of the Resistance members that had incorporated into the tables and were going to be assessors to throw the election in the neighborhood which would have gave illegitimacy all around. I was really glad I was there, because there were a few incidents but they were quickly resolved and the military and police acted completely professional during the entire time.
There were two leftist political assessors with no credentials that consistently interferred with the election process by making rude comments of which they were advised quite a few times with my presence to not be doing things that violated the law. Well four o´clock came and it was discovered that we were going to have to stay till five. Everyone was very tired so I sort of understand their wanting to go home, but the two assessors said...no it is the tables decision to close or not and no one can tell them what to do. The major from the military told her clearly that she would have to leave if she kept involving herself in the process and furthermore, that she would have to stop making political based comments. Then said to all of them that if one of them stepped to abandon their spot until 5 he would arrest them and they would be forced to stay in the room present, under arrest, until the 5 pm time frame and then they would be taken to jail for boycotting the election and trying to defraud electors. They stayed and the resistance assessors were quiet up till they tried to start talking about ´coup´and ´farce´in the elections etc. The major asked them how 6 years in prison sounded and that he would not touch her but the police would be glad to take her to a cell that was awaiting her. She really did become quiet then and about 10 minutes later left the election location in disgust with her inability to invalidate the process that was taking place.
When they started to count the ballots it took until 10 pm to count the votes. The counting went very smooth and quiet with no interuption considering that the resistance had left the building.
We then had to wait and go to the area where ballots were turned in and I went with the soldiers as they asked me to go and receive the other ballot packs and urns. I accompanied their pick ups since they were absent their custodian and things went smooth with no real problems to be noted...just very tired poll workers everywhere.
When we arrived back at the location with all of the urns the custodians had finally arrived and it was 1:30 am so I was able to go home and fall into bed with no further knowledge of life until the next morning. However, I was so proud to participate.
Pepe Lobo is the president and as the vote looks it looks like Dr Zuniga is the mayor of San Pedro Sula, Ricardo Alvarez is the mayor for Tegucigalpa. Elvin Santos was very gracious in his consession speech. I could not have been more impressed with his impressive ability to communicate peace, professionalism, and pride in Honduras...he will probably win if he runs again in the next electoral process and that would not bother me a bit. I for now though am very happy that Pepe Lobo is the new president elect.
The story of Dr. Zuniga is an interesting one. He is the liberal candidate for mayor and he only had three weeks to campaign which made it difficult. However, he had a lot of people and was well known....bi partisan people like him not for his politics but his personal character is impecable.
Dr. Zuniga was the director of Catarino Rivas and he is a cardiologist and has helped poor people in the community for years and long before he ever went into politics. Zelaya wanted him to assist him with creating votes for the fourth urn and Dr. Zuniga said that he would not do that and that it was WRONG and corrupt and that he was not that type of person. Zelaya fired him as a result and today the ´pueblo´has voted for him to become the next mayor in just 3 weeks of campaigning..impressive...and a clear message to corrupt officials and to Zelaya about his fourth ballot plans.
Meanwhile....Zelaya was in the Brazilian embassy screaming that the elections were fraudulent and that he was going to nulify the elections. He called for the world to not recognize the elections. I wonder how he managed to count the ballots, scrutinize the voting process and all that jazz from inside the Brazilian embassy? Did he forget that he is in jail?

Spinning the News on Honduras

2009-11-26T22:52:00.000-05:00

International media has outdone themselves since June 28 to spin the news in Honduras to the point that it is almost ridiculous and sometimes outright false...

Here is one more example of media spin from an article written today..
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=347064&CategoryId=23558

False Claim #1 The only leftist in the presidential contest, Carlos Reyes, withdrew from the race, while the anti-coup Resistance Front said it is already too late to ensure a free and fair ballot.

This is absolutely false...Cesar Ham is from the Unification Democratica and he is a leftist to the extreme...Of course Carlos H Reyes was the only Communist which is perhaps what they should have written...

PINU candidate Bernard Martinez is also from a party that is center left...

Liberal Party Candidate is Elvin Santos...Mel Zelaya was a Liberal party member...

In fact the only real right candidate is DC candidate Felicito Avila

The Nationalist party is Center right and that candidate is Pepe Lobo.

The two main parties both have candidates running for presidency and one of the mayors of Tocoa, Colon who had been in the ´resistance´ got on his knees and begged for forgiveness for his errors and joined Elvin Santos in encouraging people to vote.

False Claim #2 Many of those protests have been broken up violently by soldiers and police on the orders of the coup regime, with a toll of a dozen deaths and hundreds injured and arrested. While the leader of the de facto regime, Roberto Micheletti, resorted at one point to a state of siege and has forced anti-coup media outlets off the air for weeks at a time.

Most of these protests have been violent and the soldiers have done an extraordinary job of keeping thier cool. There have not been a dozen deaths either. He actually also resorted to a curfew because of the looting of private homes and businesses and attacks on private citizens..which clearly warranted the situation of a curfew. The media outlets that were forced off air would not have been on the air in the US in the first place...they were calling for violence and for blood to flow in the streets and one of the announcers is an anti semite who calls Hitler a hero that should have finished the job...and to make it worse he raped his ten year old daughter, went to prison on a ten year sentence and was pardoned by ZELAYA.

False Claim #3 But while the coup plotters accuse Zelaya of seeking to extend his stay in office, any potential constitutional change to allow presidential re-election would not have taken place until well after the incumbent stepped down in January.

Coup plotters...your bias is clear.. Zelaya was attempting to extend his stay and he said so himself on live television. Also, the attempt to make constitutional changes was not for him to do that was unconstitutional and the Supreme Court said so...what part of that can you folks not understand?

OAS Fails Again

2009-11-24T18:35:00.000-05:00

The OAS had an emergency meeting behind closed doors. The subject of course was Honduras. The meeting was held in secret, but it is clear that their goal was to convince countries to unite against the elections and to not recognize them until Zelaya is returned to power. (Oh what to do with those naughty citizens in Honduras that just do not want to do as they are told by papa Insulza...)

They were unable to move people from the idea of elections being the right thing to do. Not recognizing elections before they are held is extremely unusual and as far as I know has never occurred. This is the same as telling the public they have no right to decide for themselves who will lead them. It almost feels like the OAS thinks that Hondurans are too ignorant to fix this situation via elections.

The US however has changed their posture a lot since the signing of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord and so far the US government has honored their deal with Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Elections will be recognized as long as there is no funny business in the electoral process. They finally recognized in the sensible fashion that these elections had been scheduled by Constitutional provisions and not by the present government. They recognized that the previous government oversaw the primaries so to not recognize them would essentially mean they had not recognized the primaries that were held under Manuel Zelaya. I actually think that the US woke up and smelled a rat and they were looking for a way to change their position. When DeMint contacted them he gave them an out and a way to change their position without losing face. I probably would have respected it more if they had just said that they had reviewed evidence and that the evidence suggested that they had been holding the wrong position and were changing their minds, but either way I will take the change of heart gladly.

Instead of the OAS worrying and wringing their hands over Honduras they should really be directing their attention at Venezuela and the situation that is threatening to spin out of control there. They also need to be taking a closer look at what is going on in Nicaragua and stop worrying about Honduras as Hondurans are about to resolve the conflict for themselves and the OAS has further destabilized their legitimacy for their posture on the elections.

Thank goodness that more than the US came to their senses. There are 5 and maybe 6 OAS members that are going to recognize the elections. The US, Columbia, Peru, Canada, Panama, and we are still waiting on word from what the official position of Mexico is going to be, but it appears at this point that they are going to recognize the electoral process in Honduras as a legitimate one. It is about time people came to their senses.

How Badly the Media Duped Americans and Europeans

2009-11-24T10:18:00.000-05:00

I often had wondered how the misreporting had affected the international community and in particular Europeans and Americans. I know that it is easy to dupe people via the media and generally while the media may report half truths it converts into outright lies when it is passed from one person to another.

Yesterday, on another group in a discussion about free speech a poster from the US came out and said you want to just convince us that your military junta and military coup de tat is legal and ok. Then she went on to say , ¨The military removed your president at the point of a gun at the beheadst of the Elections tribunal with no formal process whatsoever. ¨ She also said ´whatever happened to that agreement that Micheletti signed that was to allow Zelaya to serve out his last months in office.´
She further went on to say that Zelaya was elected by a landslide. She told us we didn´t know what we were talking about when someone from Venezuela and myself corrected her positions.

Now for those of us living here we know that absolutely none of what she was saying is true. Zelaya was certainly not elected by a landslide. He was involved in the closest election in recent history and he was elected by the lowest electorate turnout ever.
We also know that the Elections tribunal had nothing to do with his removal that would be the Supreme Court that issued the arrest warrant against him and the Congress who removed him. I wanted her to explain why that is not a formal process since it is the way it is defined in the Constitution that the Supreme Court has the authority to issue arrest warrants against politicians. What was even more sad is she claimed that we(people who live in Honduras and Venezuela) didn´t know what we were talking about and that she knew more about what had occurred than we did. Yet, she didn´t even know that the agreement did not say that Zelaya was going to return or how he was actually even removed or why. This is an American who is of the Progressive persuasion. I can only shake my head at how misinformed people can be about issues that affect Latin America.

Her and another poster complained about the CIA funded and trained military. I pointed out that in Senate testimony no proof whatsoever has been provided that suggests that the CIA either funded or trained the Honduran military ever. Testimony further goes to suggest that while the 3-16 might have had something to do with some of the disappearances it was not at the orders of the CIA and that most of the disappearances were caused by the Contras and not military forces in Honduras and that further there was absolutely zero proof that this had occurred at orders of the Honduran government. Ambassador Negroponte testified to this information before the Senate and he was the ambassador during the 80´s in Honduras. He investigated claims and could find no proof of the allegations yet groups like SOA Watch repeat these claims, Media Matters, CNN, Democracy Now, Democratic Underground and so forth in the progressive loops all repeat these claims...not once do they consider looking at testimony or proof that soldiers in Honduras were trained not by School of Americas(which isn´t CIA, it is Army), but they were trained by Ft Bragg, North Carolina soldiers. Furthermore, I find it incredible that the SOA Watch continues to make claims that soldiers are still being trained by a school that no longer exists...yet they never mention Daniel Ortega...hmmm
The media should present the facts with zero slant...if it is an allegation it should not be included until they have the facts to prove what they claim...allegations are what causes false perceptions and accusations against the innocent.

Why Recognizing Honduran Elections Is Right

2009-11-24T05:39:00.000-05:00

Recognizing the electoral process in Honduras is recognizing the fundamental rights of the people to have a voice.

The elections were programmed by the Honduran constitutional process which dictates that they occur every four years and the last president was elected on November 29, 2005. That candidate was liberal party candidate José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. I will not go into whether fraud did or did not occur then as it is not important to this electoral process which clearly does not include him.

The preliminary vote for the candidates that we have today was held last year in November. The election was held late due to a natural disaster that occurred then. However, while I recognize that there was serious flooding and good reason to delay the primaries many felt that Zelaya wanted to do away with them all together at that time and there was a feeling of uneasiness growing in the population at that time as to his plans of turning over the presidency when the time came. The vote was held though and out of that primary came the following candidates: Nationalist Candidate: Porfirio Lobo Sosa, Liberal Party Candidate: Elvin Santos, Christian Democracy Candidate: Felicito Avila, PINU Candidate: Bernard Martinez (and the first Garifuna candidate ever), and UD Candidate: Cesar Ham. At that time Honduras also had their very first independent candidate: Carlos H Reyes. However, Carlos H Reyes has resigned his aspiration to the presidency. It is clear that on November 29, 2009 elections were scheduled to be held and during that same time frame Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales still held the presidency. So the process is legitimate even though he claims it is not.

The US and some other countries have decided it is difficult to not recognize the voice of the people and to also not admit that the process was one that was scheduled previous to the present government of Roberto Micheletti Baín. One cannot argue that the electoral process has come out of his government with a straight face, because in reality the electoral process commenced during the government of Zelaya. The US and others recognize this complicated situation as well as the recognition of the voice of the people as being a solution to the crisis. It is important to observe the elections because a government cannot determine if they are fraudulent or not if they have not observed the actual process and whether it was a clean election. So the observers are arriving at rapid pace…and we all welcome this. If anything these elections should be closely observed by every country that is involved in this situation to determine the legitimacy of the process and reserve preconceived notions. My only exception to this is that I do not believe it to be beneficial to have observers from the ALBA countries. ALBA has a predefined interest in the elections not being recognized and therefore has an interest in not recognizing the process as legitimate.

In just 5 days and 5 hours we will hold elections to select a new president and move forward from the crisis that has surrounded Honduras since June 28, 2009. However, there are many questions that remain. Many say what happens after elections? Where do we go from here? What happens to Zelaya who is still huddled in the Brazilian embassy and complaining profusely about the situation he has found himself in and the elections? A few months ago he was praising the US and now he is complaining bitterly about their decision to recognize the elections and their decision to respect the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord and the decision of Congress regardless of what that decision might be. Congress has decided to wait until December 2, 2009 to debate on Zelaya and what happens to him. I believe that he has discovered that the vote is not going to be in his favor and therefore he is complaining bitterly about the agreement and backed out of it when he discovered that he could not manipulate the Congress into returning him to the presidency. His ranting has surely not assisted in giving anyone the desire to return him to the presidency or to be convinced that he has repented from previous actions. If anything he seems more determined than ever to continue on with his illegal actions that he had previously undertaken and ended with him being removed from the presidency he held. The Honduran constitution worked and with a united government it has held strong.

It does not really matter whether you are from the right or left at this point, voting is the only thing that matters. Everyone should vote so that the democracy is strengthened instead of weakened. Voting is a duty of every citizen regardless of their political stances and that includes the Resistance. If they hope to have a voice in government and attain their goals…I have to question how they plan on doing those things if they have boycotted the process and have no voice in the government.

Elections and Views of Two Taxi Drivers

2009-11-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

As I rode to the closing of the Nationalist campaign in San Pedro Sula today I rode in one taxi that was a person saying he is not going to vote. When I rode back in another taxi that person was a Nationalist. The attitude was very different in both drivers. However, both were not very adept at what is actually going on in the country and both were poorly educated.

The first driver was convinced that Zelaya was tricked into signing the Tegucigalpa San Jose Accord because he believed that he had been told that he would be returned on November 5 to the presidency and the Congress was just a formality. I do not believe that someone who is supposed to be intelligent enough to be president is able to be tricked into signing an agreement that says something very different from what he is claiming he was promised. This is a convenient excuse and more propaganda to lead the ignorant into believing he was duped. Before I got out of the car I turned to him and said…you know why voting is important? He looked perplexed at my question and said no. I looked straight at him and said in the US, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and women fought for more than 100 years to have the right to vote and in Honduras for just 27 years has the community had the right to vote and to ignore that struggle is to spit in our ancestors faces and stomp on their graves for that struggle. He was silent and thanked me and said that he would consider my thoughts and decide on whether he would vote or not. Will he? I do not know…but I hope he will take my words to heart because I meant every single one of them. His attitude had indeed changed from the moment in which I had entered his car to the moment I left it at the rally.

When I had enough of the rally because it was really very crowded and very hot at the same time I decided to not wait for the buses to leave and deal with the crowds which I hate. So I went and found another taxi. This time I stepped into a totally different attitude. This driver was indeed going to vote and felt like Liberals were divided for a long time to come and that their division had handed the presidency to Lobo on a silver cake platter. He said they may as well inaugurate him after seeing the campaign rally there is little doubt he will win. I was impressed with his observation and asked what his thoughts were on the situation in the country. He was very pronounced in his opinions and still like others held the opinion that none of the presidents or hopefuls has ever really cared about Honduras. He felt it would take a group of Americans or Americans and Europeans running the country for at least 8 years to change attitudes and the direction of the country. He said we need people like you who know what justice is about. I considered his thoughts…and sympathized with them. He said look I am not educated and never was, I am poor or lower middle class like most of the country and our only hope is a government that will lead for the people and not for a handful of people who tag along for personal benefit. I felt that was a dead on target point. Impressive for an uneducated taxi driver. However, his next statement would take me by surprise. Evidently in recent days he had been robbed, the robbers stuffed him in the trunk of the car and he is sure if he had not pulled the emergency release and escaped they would have killed him. He was so suddenly angry at this that he said that they need a president who will either kick out or do away with all of the gangs, thugs, robbers, and general undesirables in the country. He said Hondurans are a hard working people, but those of us who do not want to work ruin it for everyone that does want to work and do something for themselves. While I found his words to disturb me I found it even more unsettling that I found myself agreeing with him as to truth in his thoughts. I disagree with doing away with undesirables as attractive as that might seem. However, there does need to be a strong stance taken in reference to the undesirables in this country.

What I do know about this entire experience separate from my experience at the rally itself was that people from identical backgrounds have taken entirely different positions on this crisis and I hope that in the long run it is for the positive and not the negative of Honduras.

One thing is clear and that is that Manuel Zelaya was able to divide Hondurans irregardless of identical backgrounds and that division will take many years to heal if it were not for the peaceful nature of Hondurans I am afraid that this country would have been mired in a civil war at this point and I am thankful for their peaceful nature because it may take them further than other countries without the need to hurt over those they have lost before the crisis is resolved.

photos courtesy of La Prensa of campaign closing rallies in San Pedro Sula.

Lunacy from the Democratic Underground

2009-11-22T00:41:00.001-05:00

I saw an article that made me spit coke everywhere. I had to add this here because it is an absolutely FALSE report.

Their claim is that the government is requiring everyone to turn in their guns starting Monday...not quite true at all. What is true is that from Monday until December 2, 2009 you are not permitted to carry a gun with you in the car even if you have a permit...be reminded folks in the US...that a person must have their gun registered in the first place to even own the gun. So if they don´t have paperwork yes they will take them to jail along with the gun...it is illegal to carry an illegal gun..however, if a person with a legal permit is found to be carrying a gun it will simply be detained and they can pick it up again after December 2. That my friends is a very different story from what Democratic Underground or AFP is telling folks...

I did not bother with the know it alls at Democratic Underground ..Judi Lynn will tell you that she knows more about what is going on in Honduras than people who live here do...I did send an email to AFP asking that they correct the false story.

Judi Lynn will also make the false claim that 26 people have been murdered by the government in ethnic cleansing...I want her to name these 26 people and provide her proof the government ordered their murders. I wonder if Judi Lynn realizes that Honduras has the highest murder rate in the Americas? Does she realize what fantasticly low number 26 murders in 4 months is if ethnic cleansing were going ...I want to know what ethnicity is being cleansed?

Stupidity Abounds in the Resistance Thugs and The Boycott

2009-11-21T23:56:00.001-05:00

The supposed grandmother of their group claims that the constitution needs to be written again because it is ancient and the documents are outdated. She claims, ´No one follows it anymore anyway because it is so old.´ They have ancient articles that cannot be rewritten. Does this woman know what those articles are beyond the presidential term limits? I wonder if she thinks that Honduran borders should be a debatable subject or for sale? I wonder does think a president should be able to change the form of government? Should he be able to give precious resources away to other countries like Chavez? That is what the stone articles entail....protecting sovereign rights.

This ridiculous claim left me speechless.

The US Constitution...a document I consider sacred..is indeed ancient and I dare say someone would get the snot kicked out of them in the US fo saying such mockery. The US Constitution was ratified June 21, 1788. The Honduran Constitution January 11, 1982. So this elderly woman who is three times as old as the constitution thinks the document is ancient. For crying out loud it is 27 years old...that is not ancient...I was born in 1971 and I for sure do not think I am ancient..if someone said the things she said about the US constitution I would slap them silly.

What leaves me even more dumbfounded is they have bought this crap about boycotting the election...they are convinced that the vote is rigged and that no one should vote anyway. If you do not vote you lose your voice. How ridiculous can a person be to try to prevent people from voting? Isn´t will of the people what should be heard? They have choices...but they seem to want to take their choice away. These same folks will be crying about how they aren´t represented in a year...and I will be the first to say it is your own cotton picken fault.

This same grandmother even flat out lied when she claimed that it wasn´t them stealing, looting and throwing rocks or spray painting buildings...it was the military she claims...interesting that there is photographic evidence that proves she is a dirty liar.
Now I was always taught to respect my elders so it bothers me some to say that about an elderly woman...but to blatantly also needs to be pointed out....

What is even worse is that Zelaya and the Resistence are not content with just boycotting peacefully and not voting themselves...they want to force others to not vote against their will. They have elaborated violent measures such as ´miguelitos´to prevent the vehicles from being able to transport the urns or ballots. They have elaborated bombs like those found in a car last night close to colonia Satelite.
So they are not content to allow others to participate because they are crying over not getting their way. So instead of accepting what happens they intend to throw a temper tantrum that includes harming other Hondurans.

Racism is another issue along with an envy complex among the Resistence. They are angry that others have more money than they do. They are complaining about Jews, Turks, and Americans...yet when they go to the US they are the first to scream racism because they are Hispanic. Interesting.

Micheletti, Zelaya, Congress, the International community and Elections

2009-11-20T15:49:00.000-05:00

Oh boy there was no way I could pick so I just decided I would go for all of it in this update.

Micheletti announced last night that he was going to consult with members of the government about taking a leave of absense from November 25-December 2. That made everyone stop momentarily and say ..what? I have decided it is probably actually not that big of a news piece as it can be a few things, but most of it is speculation and it probably adds up to --a vacation. I am exhausted from all of the crisis stuff so I can only imagine how he feels as president. I do think that there was probably some suggestion in the factor from the United States since Kelly was here just a few days ago and so Micheletti decided to give them that in exchange for their recognition of the election process and the legitimacy of people being able to choose for themselves.

The biggest concerns in my middle class area were what if there is violence. However, that was put to rest by another blogger who stated that he had said he would go back immediately at the first sign of violence. That set me a bit at ease again. My mother in law is worried to...she has seen more than her share of uprisings and since she lives in an area that had trouble in the 80´s with invasions from both Nicaraguans and Salvadorans she gets scared and it makes me bite my nails..and I never do that. I love my dear mother in law to death and anything that makes her jittery affects me.

Naturally the Zelayista blogs like Honduras Coup 2009 were rattling on about how it must be some elaborate evil plot of some sort...whoever the writer RNS is I suspect that his credibility could very easily be impeached he surely is very easily impeached with his absolute denial of any other opinions than his own. He calls readers who disagree with him misguided...never mind that constitutional experts also disagree with him.

He seems to concentrate more on tenses than the actual things that are said...conspiracy theories have never worked with me. They claim he is being slick by saying that he might step aside after consultations during that time period...never mind that he has to consult to find out if he can legally do this during the time frame and if he cannot legally then he will not...what difference does it make it is for a week for cripes sake!

They also go out of their way to blame Pepe Lobo for the removal of Zelaya. I want to see where he voted in the removal or went to speak to the Supreme Court before it occurred...just beg this blog to show me one piece of evidence that he directly removed Zelaya...and before they embark on it ...I should tell them I know Pepe Lobo personally so I know for a fact he had NO influence on the situation that occurred on June 28. He was profoundly concerned about the situation that Honduras was finding itself in, but he did not go and pull strings as they suggest. It is wise people to make sure you have evidence against a person before making false accusations against them. I myself questioned his silence and took it directly to him and it was explained to me and I was satisfied with what I was told as a result.

They complain that an extraordinary session should have been called a week ago..but they never considered that all of the opinions that were solicited are not in yet and they need that before any session can be called. They also are not considering the unfairness of not letting these Congress members complete their campaigns before a session is called....you cannot violate the rights of many for just one person.

They also go out of their way to call the Tegucigalpa-San Jose accord illegitimate...I find that an interesting word since BOTH sides willingly signed it and no one was forced to do so. That alone makes it legitimate so I would like to see their reasoning that the agreement is not legitimate...lol.

Zelaya of course is raising sand about Micheletti and making dozens more false claims as he has done all along. His letter to Obama revealed the lack of credibility he has...there are not hundreds of assasinations as a result of the political situation in Honduras...that is just maddening and ridiculous. I would have loved to see Obama send him a return letter asking him to name these hundreds of assasinated people...

In the end elections will be in just 8 days and nothing is more legitimate than the vote of the people of a country. It will be those who use their vote who decide who will be in charge come January. The vote on election day is the one way that everyone has an equal voice....rich, poor, black, white or brown...all have the same single vote and united voice. What is more legitimate than that?

Nine Days Till Elections...The Road Ahead

2009-11-19T09:26:00.000-05:00

We are exactly nine days from the elections and Honduras has come a long way. The president who wins the elections will clearly have a long road to travel. He will have a harder job than those that came before him. He will have to actually work to clean up the corrpution, deal with the crime that is overwhelming in areas like San Pedro Sula, deal with the explosion of narcotics trafficking that has almost overtaken the country since Zelaya became president. He will have to deal with the international community looking at his every move in order to discredit him. He will have a small section of the population that will consider him illegitimate.

The president that takes charge will have a bankrupt government that will have to make hard decisions and have to lobby hard the loans and aid to rebuild from bankruptcy. The government will also have to present equal justice to the poor and the wealthy and do something about education. Teachers are already lobbying for their raise.

Teachers lobbying for a raise makes my blood boil. What precisely have they done to deserve a raise? They spent the entire school year in the streets on strike or loafing. They need their pay cut and all raises structured around the results they give as a teacher. The first step is rewriting their docente law so that they do not use it to abuse their position and hold the public hostage. The government should be required to pay them on time and they should be forbidden from strikes except outside of school hours. If they do not like those terms they are welcome to find a job in the private sector.

More to come...

A Rebuttal to Roberto Quesada´s Editorial in Honduras This Week

2009-11-18T18:14:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, the military coup in Honduras and the United States’ announcement to recognize the elections, without reversing the military coup is another coup to all of Latin America and undoubtedly a regression in relations. The other day, while waiting at a traffic light, I told another driver who was wearing a hat with the image of Obama, “Obama has let us down in my country Honduras, they are about to recognize some elections under a state of terror”. The traffic light changed and each of us accelerated and quickly lost sight of each other.

Actually that is incorrect in my opinion. Elections where the people choose who their new leader is has always been the solution and always will be the solution. Violeta Chamorro is one example of that, Pinochet is another; elections have always resolved governments seen as illegitimate. What is undeniable is that elections were already scheduled for November 29, 2009 from the moment that Zelaya was elected. The Supreme Elections Tribunal is a separate entity from the Executive office and is separate from Congress. The primaries were held under Zelaya and the candidates are the same with the exception of Carlos H Reyes who withdrew his candidacy on his own.

The elections were and always will be legitimate and it is ridiculous to not hold the elections. Zelaya did not want elections to occur period. He wanted to erase them…that is why he chose to hold the illegal referendum when he did.

Ambassador Hugo Llorens, as you can see, this military coup concerns even children.

Your son is feeding off your outrage and he should not be exposed to it. The children should be left out of this situation entirely. Furthermore, military coup it is not. If this were a military coup then Roberto Micheletti would not be at the helm. The leader would be Vasquez Velasquez and there would be no Congress and no Supreme Court to make any decisions. If you doubt that then you need to refer yourself to other military coups that have actually occurred including Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Aristides in Haiti.

Nobody believes the story that Hondurans should resolve this issue "Honduran style". That banner belongs to the de facto government. The US has always intervened in our country. Perhaps the rumor that the Obama administration allowed the Republicans to twist its arm on Honduras is true. If so, then I think Mr. Obama's decline is imminent.

Really? I believe that Hondurans should resolve it. I think that outside interference has had the tendency to mess things up worse as history has shown. Who better to resolve this than Hondurans with a mediator to keep a war from breaking out? Yes, they have always intervened and that is precisely why they should desist from it further. That is how we became a banana republic in the first place. No the Republicans did not twist his arm as he promised a long time ago that he was not going to involve himself in internal matters in other countries and he is trying hard to keep the promise.

Many of us still hope that the US will change its ways in Latin America and that it will adopt positions emphasizing human equality and dignity for their own sake, regardless of ethnic background, creed, or religion. At the Summit of the Americas, celebrated this past April in Trinidad and Tobago, in which Mr. Obama promised a new era of relations with Latin America, he gave us much reason to be optimistic. He succeeded in removing much of the distrust we naturally feel for the US. Unfortunately, the announcement by the US government that it would recognize the elections in Honduras without reversing the military coup only dashed our hopes.

It should not dash your hopes considering what it means is moving on past the situation and not keeping things status quo. Furthermore, there was an agreement named Tegucigalpa-San Jose that was signed by both sides and agreed to and thus far Micheletti has held up his end of the deal. Zelaya is the one that is throwing a fit as if he were a child. He needs to grow up. If he could not bribe Congress into reinstating him that is just too bad he agreed to accept what they decided.

We, the truly democratic people of Honduras have already overthrown the military coup at the intellectual, informative and moral level. But then came Thomas Shannon’s announcement which gave oxygen to the dictatorship which was beginning to expire. You are aware that this move served to turn back the hands of time and return the US to the days when it created and backed dictators in Latin America. Recall President Theodore Roosevelt's comments about the dictator Somoza in Nicaragua, "Yes, he is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch".

Actually that is incorrect…Zelaya was huddled in the Brazilian embassy from Sept 21 forward and people were jumping ship right and left before Shannon came and when Shannon came he brokered a deal…both signed no one was forced…so now if Zelaya is honorable, and I do not believe he is, he would stick to the agreement. It is sort of like you agreeing to sell your land, signing the sales contract, spending the money, and then deciding you do not want to sell and aren´t going to give the money back either.

Do not think for a moment that the US’ announcement to support an electoral process conducted under a military coup which has left in its wake more than thirty peope dead, four thousand violations of human rights, and repressions of freedom of speech is only having an impact on Latin America. No. Inside the US, labor unions and immigrant, religious and artistic organizations are repudiating what has happened and believe that if the US does not reverse the military coup in Honduras, the time will come for payback at the ballot box.

More than 30 dead people? Name them and provide proof that Micheletti ordered them murdered….unless that is you are going to include Micheletti´s nephew , Concho Gomez and the brother of Callejas. Sorry, but being dishonest and exaggerating does not help the cause it just makes you look ridiculous. You talk about payback at the ballot box. Well that is precisely what we are saying you should do instead of trying to insist that Zelaya be reinstated and elections cancelled go to the ballot box and vote for your choice even if it is a punishment vote.

While we were looking at photos related to the coup, my son asked why they had done that, and I easily responded, "Look, you as a US citizen have medical insurance, a doctor, immunizations. You go to a nice pre-kindergarten. You have everything. You even have a cafeteria where you eat for free. You go to the park and you play and it is safe. This is what President Zelaya wanted for children in Honduras. He wanted children to not have to walk barefoot. He wanted them to have enough food to eat, to be able to play, to not die because of a lack of affordable medicines. He wanted them to have the opportunities to study. In short, he wanted the Honduran people to one day have a better life. He wanted them to have a lifestyle at least half as good as that enjoyed by children in the US.

That is not what Zelaya wanted for children in Honduras. He had 4 years to do the job and do what he wanted and he did nothing of the sort. As a US citizen a child does not have free medical insurance, free cafeterias, etc. If he wanted them to have better educations then he would not have been promoting children being out of school while teachers were in the streets. During his entire administration not one time did the teachers complete their 200 days in classes. If you solve the teacher strikes then you have solved half the problem already. Until you deal with teachers that are terrorists then you cannot move forward.

So then my friend Ambassador Llorens, what else do you need now to rescue democracy in Honduras. Does it take a genocide, a massacre? Andres Pavón, the president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) has already alerted us about a massacre plan to help perpetuate the dictatorship in power. Not too long ago, Mr. Obama spoke at the funeral for the three victims of the massacre last Thursday at Fort Hood. He said, “No religion could justify these cowardly killings”. I would add to this that absolutely nothing justifies a military coup or the recognition of elections under a military state of terror in which more than thirty people have already lost their lives.

They called Andres Pavon to show the evidence and they would investigate he has NO evidence so please elaborate why he went to the media and not to the police first? Should a person not try to stop such a massacre by showing evidence? You cannot make false accusations in Honduras as that is a crime. If he has evidence he needs to bring it forward. Even a massacre will not perpetuate Micheletti in power. The elections are going to occur, the votes will be counted and that will be that. If there is a massacre I welcome outside police such as CSI units from the US to go and investigate the situation and determine who is at fault. Kelly seemed to allude to the violence being caused by the Resistance and he is right. I have watched their violent mannerisms and frankly they have brought much of their pain upon themselves.

You know all too well that social injustice in Honduras runs deep. You know that President Zelaya is innocent.

So it is a figment of our imagination that we watched him on live television commit the acts he did? If he is innocent then why not face the courts? He was offered the opportunity to face a court in an international court. If he is so innocent why would he refuse? Is the International Court unjust too?

You know that the dictatorship lead by Mr. Micheletti and Gen. Romeo Vasquez Velasquez have systematically violated human rights.

No, no one knows anything for a fact. If you have evidence you are welcome to present it at any time and particularly on this forum. Evidence speaks, not just words or baseless accusations.

You are aware that the only way to reverse the military coup is to reinstate the constitutional president, Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

Really? So the way to reverse the military coup in Nicaragua was to reinstate Somoza? Or was it to have elections and let Ortega leave power?

The upcoming elections will only worsen the crisis, and those who support them will be nothing more than direct accomplices. Meanwhile, what Mr. Obama expressed in Trinidad and Tobago about a new era of respect in relations between the US and Latin America becomes wet paper, and the only option for Latin American countries is to align themselves more with the southern part of the hemisphere and strengthen their relationships with other continents... regions with which we can share a mutual respect.

Direct accomplices? No that is incorrect they will be Honduran citizens exercising their right to suffrage because if you do not use it then you will lose it. If you do not vote you cannot complain about the candidate you get stuck with. Voting resolves the worst of conflicts. Insisting that Zelaya be returned to power is not the resolution it is only a path to a blood bath because while there are some that want him back in power there are just as many and indeed more that do not want him back in power and elections cancelled. Cancelling elections is not saving democracy it is subverting it.

My impression from his description at the bottom and in his editorial is that he lives in the United States. He does not have a clue what is actually happening in Honduras as he is not here. He speaks about Hondurans, but he is married to an American with an American child and lives in the United States. If he is so worried about democracy and the betterment of Honduras why isn´t he living here?

Padre Tamayo in Custody of Salvadoran Authorities Now

2009-11-17T05:08:00.000-05:00

Tamayo has left the Brazilian embassy and was taken into custody by the Salvadoran diplomats and El Salvador has promised that he will be returned to El Salvador on Wednesday.

Tamayo early on involved himself in the Resistance and was deposed from his priest position in the cathedral in Salama by Catholic authorities for his failure to follow orders from the church to desist from his activities.

Tamayo continued and when Zelaya returned to Honduras on Sept 21 he also hid inside the Brazilian embassy. He was stripped of his Honduran citizenship for trying to boycott elections.

Now the question is...when does Mel come out and turn himself over to authorities?

Reward Europe by Traveling for Vacation

2009-11-16T19:42:00.000-05:00

Hondurans and Ex Pats as well as Americans...we should reward Europe by visiting some of their most famous destinations.

Liberal International made our Interim president Roberto Micheletti vice president and their base is located in London. Of course you all know that Liberal International is mostly European and I was estatic about their move this last weekend. So estatic that I think we should reward them with our vacationing there.

However, setting up a trip to Europe is difficult and so I have decided to share some tips with links to places that can set you up for your vacation.
http://www.cheaperthanhotels.co.uk/France/Paris/

Imagine touring fabulous France. Visit Paris first and stay at one of the many hotels that you can view at the above link where something is available at incredible rates for everyone. There is so much to do in Paris from shopping to visiting the Eiffel Tower.
Or if you would like to drift back in time and imagine what it must have been like to be a prince or princess you can visit the many castles that are in France such as Palace of Versailles that belonged to King Louis XIV in 1682

Then you have Rome where you can go and visit where Catholicism began. You can lose yourself in the beautiful ancient Rome where civilization became mighty. The best is you can do it for an incredible price. I have always dreamed of visiting Rome so this may be the right time to go.

Or Venice where you can travel and fall in love all over again. There are few cities as romantic as Venice. an you imagine a price of 50 Euros for a beautiful hotel in Venice? Now you can..explore the stunning cathedrals and architecture in this most lovely city.

Then after all of that you can visit Amsterdam. Who could visit Europe without going to Amsterdam? You can visit the Anne Frank house where she hid from the Nazis, visit and see Van Gogh or Rembrant all on the same trip making it an unforgetable vacation.

Ocean Front Myrtle Beach Hotel

2009-11-16T18:46:00.001-05:00

Talking about Myrtle Beach has gotten me a bit excited and you must of course have a place to stay if you are going to be at the beach there is no better place than staying on the beach itself.

Towers on the Grove is an excellent spot in Myrtle Beach. What is even better is you can go to their site here and register for the sweepstakes they have going in which you can win a free stay for 4 luxurious nights in a 2 bedroom condo on the beach..and I love free.

Towers on the Grove has 1,2 and 3 bedroom condos with full kitchens and private balconies. I loved that because I could fix myself a snack and head straight back to their 500 foot long beach front or jump in the wonderful tropical style pool. My son loved the lazy river the best.
Go here for their great special rates

Your husband can golf and you can hit the beach with the kids or just relax at the resort. You cannot lose and right now the rates are fantastic for Christmas or book ahead of time for Spring Break. Learn about their Golf packages here.

What a fantastic way to pay back South Carolina for Senator Jim DeMint´s dedication to ex pats and Hondurans in this crisis.

A Fantastic Place to Relax in the States

2009-11-16T18:32:00.001-05:00

http://www.ttimesonly.com/

Ex Pats and Americans here is a fantastic place to go to and relax in the United States.
If you love golf, peaceful atmosphere in a resort then this is certainly the place to go.
You have the beach, golf and plenty of entertainment for a variety of rates starting at $30.

I spent 10 years in South Carolina and Myrtle Beach is fantastic and to top it off with a few rounds of golf is even better. When we went we stayed at Grand Shores and it was quite the memorable experience for me.

The guys and girls can hit all three courses in Myrtle Beach in a To Dye For Package...
This includes the Dye For Barefoot Resort Course, Legends Moreland and Prestwick.
What is best is you can do all of this golfing right along the beach.

Click on the link below for reservations and special packages and I promise you that you will not be disappointed. I was so thrilled with this that I felt the need to share it with my bloggers since many will be going to the states for vacation and it is a place that should not be missed on your vacation.
TTimes

Below are some pictures of the fantastic scenery at Myrtle Beach Golf Courses.

Click here for a list of the resorts in Myrtle Beach reward Senator DeMint for his dedication to Honduras by visiting Myrtle Beach and let him know how greatful we are.

Debating Hillary´s Change of Heart in Honduras and Recent Murders

2009-11-11T22:03:00.000-05:00

I have been in a state of shock since the US asst sec (soon to be amb to Brazil) Tom Shannon showed up in Honduras to broker a deal between Zelaya and Micheletti and walked out with a deal known as the Guaymuras Dialogue and then Tegucigalpa/San José Accord. The accord consisted of several points including that Congress would decide if Zelaya would be restored to power after they consult with the Supreme Court. I was in shock and could not understand how Shannon got Zelaya to agree to sign this document. I have went beyond it since I think it was a political play by Zelaya that went afoul.(He thought he would play victim and convince the world that the big, bad Uncle Sam made him sign it with the claim of threats against his son Hector)

Anyhow, I had to scratch my head on why Hillary Clinton would change her radical ´it was a coup and he must be reinstated or no elections for you people´ position.

For four months she has stood that the elections would not be recognized and cut visas for normal citizens in retaliation for Honduran citizens celebrating Zelaya´s overthrow.

Then I decided it was a mixture of things. I might be wrong about this but Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration are surely in a fix over the Honduran crisis. Honduras just did not bend to any of the ´punishments´that they measured out to it. Honduras almost seemed like an incorrigable child to some of the world.

First a real fly in their ointment was Senator Jim DeMint who vetoed the nominations for Shannon and Valenzuela until the administration adjusted their positions on Honduras and the ´coup that was not a coup´.

Senator DeMint held a piece of irresistable candy in front of their noses and they bit it off...he said he would remove the veto and let the nominations go through if they recognize Honduran elections even if Zelaya is not restored to power. I bet Hillary speed dialed Shannon and rushed him to a plane...she didn´t want to show up as we already didn´t like or trust her anymore...

Also, Zelaya has been a total embarassment to the Obama administration. They had no clue they were supporting someone that was more insane that Saddam himself. The cowboy hat wearing thug thinks he is God himself not to mention the harness of possible drug trafficking ties (oops...a no no for US support)

Obama´s popularity numbers started to take a nosedive less than a month after the Honduran crisis that he could not seem to get control of. The crisis threatened to show the world how little control he had over foreign policy. Not to mention the other things that were crumbling around him like a termite infested piece of wood.

Then Obama and Hillary ..er Shannon ...swoop in to save the day with the accord. However, the next day Zelaya insists that the US wants his reinstatement and he was ´threatened´by Shannon if he didn´t sign the agreement. They supposedly threatened that they would throw his no good drug trafficking flunky son Hector Zelaya in prison for drug trafficking if he did not sign...we may never know the real facts behind what was said in the room, but he signed and knew what he was signing...and I know Zelaya is lying when he opens his mouth.

Zelaya is positive that point 5 means he has to be reinstated...or so he claims..and then Shannon torts back that no one ever told him he would be reinstated that it was up to Congress to decide that and that the US would recognize the elections regardless of whether he remains a prisoner in Brazil or not.

I can almost see Zelaya fainting over this realization...

Then Chavistas everywhere started boo hooing and whining and OAS said that they would not recognize the elections and Honduras just smiled and said ´ We don´t care´
Hondurans already realized that De Mint dangled a forbidden fruit that Hillary could not resist..and she took the fruit and caved...it made her look like a hero(except to Hondurans who know better) and De Mint gave her the nominations she so wanted..

Zelaya also had carried on with nonsense about civil war and insurrection and death would be the only thing that would keep him from being reinstated...etc.
June 28...and here we are November 11, 2009 only 17 days till elections and Zelaya is still crying foul and the country is seemingly absent of a civil war.

We do have the question of investigating some recent kidnappings and murders though that are ironcially all people that Zelaya deems ´golpistas´.

Enzo Micheletti, Roberto Micheletti´s nephew and his friend were found murdered execution style in Choloma...

Col Concepcion Jimenez murdered in front of his home. Those arrested as suspects have been released.

kidnapping of the defense minister´s father...who has been safely released after a ransom was paid.

kidnapping of Concepcion ´Concho´ Gomez in Juticalpa, Olancho the husband of a Nationalist Congress member.

murder of Rafael Callejas´youngest brother. For those of you who do not know who he is ...Callejas is the former Nationalist president of Honduras from 1990-1994.
There have been arrests in this case, but I have not heard what the hypothosis is yet behind this murder.

murder of a mayor of Jacon, Yoro, between Olancho and Yoro. He is a nationalist mayor as well and was up for reelection. He was killed along with one of his body guards and the other was injured in the shooting, but one of the delinquents was also killed in the shooting. While at this point the police are working on the theory that he was killed by enemies they have not discarded completely that there could be a political factor to this murder.

Question is when are the human rights organizations going to decry these murders that perhaps were ordered by Zelaya and the resistance?

Breaking NEWS!!!!

2009-11-10T18:25:00.000-05:00

The US representative Craig Kelly is in the office of the President Roberto Micheletti Baín and he is reassuring and confirming with Micheletti that the US will be observing and validating the elections in Honduras and that they consider the elections a solution to the political crisis that has had a hold on the country since before June 28.

Craig Kelly is here trying to bring both parts to the table to complete the accord that was signed by Zelaya and Micheletti in October. The US position is clear that both parties understood completely what they were signing and that Zelaya understood when he signed that he might not be returned to the presidency if the Congress voted against him.

I think the US became more than fed up when Zelaya accused Tom Shannon of threatening him with throwing Hector Zelaya in prison for drug trafficking.
They have decided the way to solve this is recognize the elections and wash their hands of the whole mess. The US knows that it does not matter if the OAS does not recognize the elections because the US is the primary trading partner with Honduras.
They also know that Chavez´days are numbered with his country going to hell in a handbasket faster than he can throw insults.

The OAS, Chavez and Zelaya want to Deny Hondurans the Right to Vote

2009-11-10T18:07:00.001-05:00

The OAS and the Resistance along with Zelaya and Chavez have unilaterally decided that Hondurans do not have the right to elect a new leader, because we do not bow to their demands threats. We have misbehaved it seems, because we refuse to allow socialist reforms and a dictator and criminal to be restored to power.

The US will observe the vote and an outpouring of volunteers as well including ex presidents of foreign countries. When a country has fell into a political crisis elections have always been the answer.

Here we just want to vote and move on.

Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan leftist who made up a story and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and almost lost the prize when it was found that she had made up most her story. She is a Mayan who is a member of a leftist guerilla group that believe that Europeans and mestizos are evil and should be purged from America. So racist, leftist guerilla fighter should not be putting her 2 cents into the Honduran crisis. Calling Micheletti a dictator tell me she has no clue what she is talking about. She praises Chavez and condemns Hondurans...and she could not carry 3% of the vote in Guatemala.

“To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Louis L´ Amour

Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration [of Independence], is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can “the consent of the governed” be given, if the right to vote be denied?

Susan B. Anthony

Micheletti Sends Communication About Agreement

2009-11-08T23:06:00.000-05:00

The Spanish language version of this communication to the public and the International community is on El Heraldo.hn I have translated the communication for my English speaking readers.

Communication from the Presidency of the Republic of Honduras

The government of Honduras to the public and international opinion reiterates that their position is to respect to the letter, point by point, the Agreement of Tegucigalpa/San Jose subscribed to on the 30 of October 2009, as a result of the Guaymuras Dialogue. In the same way, we reiterate our promise to continue with the process that has already been started in compliance with the points in this agreement.

1. The Government of Honduras subscribed to the agreement in good faith, confident that this would accomplish national reconciliation and fortalice the democracy of Honduras, and continue with the promise in their total compliance. The agreement was finally accomplished as a result of a long process of dialogue and negotiation, below certain mediation of distinguished functionaries of the North American government and the Organization of American States, OAS. IT is necessary to remember, that several times, during the dialogue process, Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza as well as the government of the United States, expressed that both respected whatever agreement that the two parts come to.

2. Surprisingly and while the government of unity and reconciliation was being formed and at the same time initiating the process to comply with point number five and install a Verification commission contemplated in point number 6 we discovered that one of the parts, for differences, declared that the agreement was dead and unilaterally decided to retire from the process, denying to provide proposals to the integration of the Reconciliation Cabinet.

3. This disagreement has been used by the other part as a pretext to retire unilaterally of the process of compliance of the agreement and declare it failed. This change of attitude of one of the parties, coincides with the pronouncements of Rio Group, especially the countries of ALBA, who have demonstrated scepticism of the agreement to ask ´How is it that Mr. Zelaya is able to subscribe to this document? Then finishing to declare it a failure.

4. It is not unusual for there to be distinct positions on how to comply with the points of application of an agreement, but good faith is demonstrated by resolving these disagreements inside the parameters of the agreement. It is for this reason that a Commission of Verification was convened and their labor consists among other things in watching the conduct of both parties to keep them inside the parameters of the agreement and to help resolve the differences that come about. The process is now developing and is lead by the Commission of Verification; the commission is not there to renegotiate the agreement as some want to do. They are there to assure compliance with the same agreement. I hope that the members of the high commission of Verification, not taking sides for either party, or offer declarations that tend to complicate more the disagreements and not celebrate that one of the parties has unilaterally retired from the agreement. As well it is unacceptable that the opinions of our Constitution, by the person who offered himself as a mediator in the conflict, gave an unexpected impartial gesture and took sides to justify the dissolving of the agreement in Tegucigalpa.

5. Respectfully we solicit that the OAS and the members of the International community maintain themselves inside of the parameters of the agreement, attending offers of assistance, particularly the contents of point number 3 ´General Elections and the Transfer of Government´ and number 7 ´Normalization of Relations with the Republic of Honduras.´ Both points were made by the parties that came to the agreement. Our country should not be punished because one of the parties decided to declare the agreement a failure in a unilateral manner with the intent to manipulate its content. Mr. Zelaya is trying to act as if he were a victim when in reality his protagonist role is to be the perpetrator of the same problem with is erratic behavior that characterizes him. He pretends again to set at the table and accuse the only party that is complying with the agreement and he is bound to comply with the same.

6. The government of Honduras reiterates their disposition to continue with the compliance of the agreement and insists that the other part return to the same with the end result of being able to comply with the Unity and Reconciliation government without looking for excuses to destroy the agreement with his doubts after he has already subscribed to it.

7. The International community should not below any pretext give rise to one of the parties to unilaterally remove themselves from the agreement that they subscribed to below the title of the OAS and the people who want peace for Honduras. Using the pretext that only because it has things that are not convenient for him and attending to pressures of foreign forces that want to lengthen the crisis and we reiterate the solution is Honduran.

8. Again we make a respectful call to the National Congress to continue with their consultations that have already been initiated and continue forward with the process to decide on point number 5 in the agreement and we insist that the parties consulted proceed diligently with their opinions.

Finally, we remind Hondurans and the International community that we are not in the process of negotiation or renegotiation; we are now in a process of verification of compliance with the points subscribed to in the agreement. The solution is of Hondurans and it should be respected and subject to our internal rights. We continue insisting that Mr. Zelaya continue in the process that has already been initiated and agreed to. We remind him that there is still time to demonstrate that he is truly committed to the agreement of reconciliation of the Honduran People.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras, November 8, 2009

2009-11-08T11:17:00.000-05:00

Many Americans dream of retiring in the Caribbean. However, most think they cannot afford it. Now you can afford it. You can live next to the ocean in a small country for a very low price and a cost of living that cannot be matched anywhere. This country just proved through much controversy that they could withstand much battle against their democracy and remain a democratic country. Honduras is the country I am talking about. During the entire situation Roatan did not suffer one outbreak of violence. The Bay Islands is a very calm and low crime area in Honduras. There are communities of Americans and the language spoken is English. Here I am going to present some reasonable properties for people and you can get into contact with me an American and the broker is also an American.

This 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom house is located in an ex pat community. The cost is just $60,000 and you can get the additional attached lot for $20,000 more. This price has been reduced and in Honduras the prices in communities such as this usually climb very well. They are considered high value communities for their ability to hold value.

Want something bigger. You can get this house featured below for $249,000 complete and with a rental apartment that rents for $750 a month. Nice living and just a short walk to the beach.

Interior pictures are available for these homes upon request. Email me for more details. If neither of these homes fits what you are looking for email me your request and I will find a home or condo to fit what you expect in your price range.

Merena29@hotmail.com name is Cynthia Moreno. Mortgages are available for the homes. If you want to live on the mainland that can be worked out as well.

US Change of Heart on Honduras

2009-11-07T22:01:00.001-05:00

After all of the conflicting statements on Honduras over the past months I am almost afraid to post this here in fear of jinxing things...but I am going to cross fingers, toes, legs and arms while I post so that it does not go poof.

Hugo Llorens announced that the right to vote is an inalienable right and that Hondurans should vote and have their vote recognized.

Llorens ´the right of Hondurans to vote for new authorities is unviolatable´

´Elections are going to occur on November 29 and this is going to be a physical act, a reality and what is clear is that the Hondurans have an inalienable right to elect their leaders, to elect a new president, a new Congress and mayors.´

Is this a sign of resignation that the elections are going to happen whether the international community recognizes them or not? Or did Hugo Llorens finally find his faculties and realize that Hondurans are the only ones who have the right to say what they want about the elections. If they don´t want them they won´t show up to vote. If they want them they will show up to vote. I cannot imagine anyone trying to block elections in a country that has been the wildest thing about this whole process. The threat by the international community to NOT recognize a vote that was scheduled long ago and to NOT recognize the right of the community to pick their leaders without interference from outside. That has to be the largest human rights violation of all. While the international community is busy pointing fingers about terrorists and vandals being detained or swatted with batons they are also busy violating the rights of the people of Honduras to CHOOSE for themselves who they want to lead their country.
Insisting on the restitution of Zelaya has to be the worst proposal of all. Instead of insisting on anything they should have asked us first whether we wanted to restore him or not. Instead they worried more about Zelaya than they did about the entire country.

´Llorens was clear that he sees the elections as a democratic path to resolve the crisis that has a hold on Honduras. You cannot deny the right to vote because that would be an error of huge proportions, ´ expressed Llorens.

Either Llorens is admitting they lost in their attempt to strong arm Hondurans into submission, he bumped his head or he is terrified of the proposed investigation into his activities by Jim DeMint...any guesses on what made him change his mind?

He went further to say that he insists that both sides return to the dialogue table in order to conform the unity government and to be direct and work truthfully to conform this government as quickly as possible.

I am confused. Is anyone else confused? The government has insisted for four months that they were not going to recognize elections. DeMint hangs candy in front of them with the release of their two diplomats to service and asks the GAO for an investigation into the actions of the State Department and Hugo Llorens from January 1 of this year all the way to October 26. Suddenly Shannon appeared in Honduras on a mission and in one day accomplished this mission. Most of us were really pessimistic when he showed up knocking on the door. We were grumbling we are NOT returning Zelaya to the presidency...and that evening at 11:20 he emerges with an agreement that has been signed by the Micheletti team and by the Zelaya team and in that agreement they leave it up to Congress to decide. I doubt any of us closed our dropped mouths for the rest of the night. I was in a daze asking what the heck happened and how did he do that? Doubts flooded our minds and the next day Zelaya whines that he was strong armed into the signing by Shannon and said he had threatened his son with jail.

Meet Hector Zelaya folks...this is who is staying in the US...an alledged drug trafficker...his father´s own words were that they threatened to throw his son in jail for trafficking drugs...and in the US you don´t do that unless there is evidence....

If this guy does not look like mafia and drugs from far away I do not know what does...he does not live in Honduras...he lives in the US...Telemundo reported in July that Junior traveled on an exclusive trip with Joaquin Chapo Guzman a leader of a Mexican cartel. DEA wake up and get busy...

The Grapevine in Honduras also said he was involved in one of the planes that were caught where a Guatemalan was killed. I never got the direct story on that one, but the grapevine works that way in Honduras..you get bits and pieces and have to put the rest together for yourself.

Human rights groups like Amnesty International have made me want to puke on how wrong they have gotten their accusations. I used to respect these organizations and always assumed that they investigated accusations completely before they considered them factual...boy was I wrong. In fact, in their reports they never mention the violations that can easily be proven by the Zelayistas, directly attributed to Zelaya, nor do they mention the violation of children´s rights to education by the teachers and the teacher´s union. In fact, the children of Honduras have been denied their rights for over 5 years since not one time in those 5 years have the teachers went all year without going on strike. Not one time have they completed the 200 days required for classes. This year the violations were so obscene that they had to automatically promote all the students and end the year on October 31 considering it a lost cause. Many parents are livid. Teachers went to the extreme of chaining huge attack dogs to the schools to keep the students and parents out of the school as seen in this picture below.

Then you have attacks by Zelayistas perpetrated by Zelaya and his calls to insurrection against average citizens, private businesses, streets, monuments and private homes. As seen in these pictures below.

Attack on Vida Abundante an Evangelical Church in Tegucigalpa. Children were attacked by Zelayistas in the bus below. They were small children as young as 6 years old. These are the things that Amnesty International does not tell you or report as violations of human rights and they are the very things they need to be reporting so how ´bout it AI correct your reports, investigate the complaints completely and then place a balanced report that puts fault where it belongs.

Telesur, CNN, Reuters and AP all launched a media nightmare in which they completely ignored the facts and reported sometimes blatant lies. They reported that Zelaya was popular and that tens of thosands were in the streets fighting for his return then they showed these pictures as their proof.

Then they were embarrassed into admitting half way that these marches were celebrations of the removal of Zelaya and not pro Zelaya marches. They did not want to admit these tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands in the streets were celebrating not protesting..they didn´t admit it until Hondurans crashed their email servers with emails correcting them and Hondurans started calling CNN Chavez News Network.

They would continue for months to hide these realities that I never saw once in their news sources.

The pictures above are Zelayistas or members of the Resistance do they look like a majority to you? Do you really think that the majority of Hondurans behave this way? Is that how Honduras managed to not mire itself into a civil war in the 80´s when El Salvador and Nicaraguans were killing each other by the thousands? No, it isn´t how Hondurans act...Hondurans believe in obeying the law, but their hands have been tied for too long and they have had no way to fight corrupt officials but the military, Congress and a once very unpopular figure President Roberto Micheletti Baín gave them that hope back and they appeared in celebration like the pictures below

A little banana republic known as Honduras who gained that name by being pushed around by the US and for US and world interference in their politics was finally fed up and this time did not back down. They stood up to the entire world a tiny nation as small as South Carolina in the US said no more and won a battle of wits against the entire world and got to hold onto their right to not have the international community mess in their internal affairs. It will be a long time before the world forgets this battle and we hope that we are an example to other tiny nations that you can stand up to bullies and win...in fact the OAS said this could not stand because it would start to happen in other countries...and Hondurans said...we sure hope so...Good night folks and I agree with Micheletti VIVA HONDURAS!!!

English Version of Guaymuras

2009-11-06T21:31:00.001-05:00

I am going to translate to the best of my ability the Guaymuras agreement so that those who are confused about how it is that the media such as Reuters and AP are getting it so wrong can see why for themself. It is absolutely maddening to see how wrong they get it. I am placing it here in hopes that perhaps they will trip upon my blog and actually take the time to read the English version and perhaps then they can comprehend what it says. For ease I just call it Guaymuras. There is no need to add all the other stuff in there...you all know which agreement is being referred to.

Guaymuras

We, the citizens of Honduras, men and women, convinced of the need to strengthen the state of rights, our constitution, and the laws of our Republic, deepen democracy, and secure the right of peace and tranquillity for our community. We have undertaken an intense and straight forward process of political dialogue to find a peaceful and negotiated exit to the crisis that has grown in our country in the last few months.

The fruit of this dialogue, in which the cordiality, tolerance, and patriotic spirit of all of the participants has predominated. We have adopted a political accord that will allow Hondurans to return to their normal lives and will assure an appropriate climate for democratic govern ability in our country. This agreement we are sure is the path to peace, reconciliation, democracy and the urgent demands of Honduran society.

This agreement demonstrates one more time that the Hondurans are capable of successfully exercising dialogue and thanks to this, society demands, and patriotism we are able to meet these demands.

In virtue of all of the before mentioned we have agreed to the following:

1) Government of Unity and National Reconciliation

To obtain reconciliation and fortalice democracy we will form a national unity and reconciliation government of the diverse political parties and social organizations, recognized for their capacity, honorability, ability to dialogue will be those who occupy the distinct secretaries and sub secretaries of the state and other dependencies of the state in conformation with article 246 and others of the Constitution of the Republic of Honduras.

Considering that before the 28th of June, the executive power had not submitted the general budget for consideration in Congress according to what is established in article 205 sec 32 of the constitution of the Republic of Honduras, this government of unity and reconciliation will respect the budget that was recently approved by Congress for the 2009 fiscal year.

2) Renouncing a Constituent Assembly or intent to reform the Constitution in an non reformable way.

To obtain reconciliation and fortalice democracy we reiterate our respect for the Constitution and the laws of our country. We will abstain from any calls to convoke a National Constituent Assembly, by direct or indirect form. We agree to renounce from any promotion or assistance of any popular consult that has the end result of reforming the constitution in the manner of permitting the re election of the president, modifying the form of government, or of any of the unreformable articles of our Carta Magna.

In particular we will not make public declarations nor exercise any influence that is inconsistent with articles 5,239,373, and 374 of the constitution of the Republic of Honduras. We energetically reject all manifestations that are contrary to the spirit of the mentioned articles and the special law that regulates the plebiscite and referendum.

3) General Elections and the Transfer of Government

To obtain reconciliation and fortalice democracy, we reiterate that in conformity with articles 41 and 51 of the constitution of the Republic of Honduras that the vote is universal, obligatory, equal, direct, free, and secret and corresponds to the Supreme Elections Tribunal, that is completely autonomous and independent supervises and executes all that is related to the acts and electoral process.

In this same way, we realize a call to the Honduran public that they participate in a peaceful way in the next general elections and to avoid all type of manifestations that are against the elections and their result or promote insurrection, illegal conduct, civil disobedience, or other acts that could produce violent confrontations or transgressions of the law.

With the end result to demonstrate transparency and legitimacy in the electoral process we insist on the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to authorize and accredit international missions from this very moment until the declarations of the results of the general elections and the same in the process of transfer of power that will take place in conformity of article 237 of the constitution of the Republic of Honduras, the 27th of January, 2010.

4) Armed Forces and National Police

To obtain reconciliation and fortalice the democracy, we ratify or desire to obey in all extremes article 272 of the constitution of the Republic of Honduras, which says that the Armed Forces are put in disposition of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal from one month before the general elections to guarantee the free exercise of suffrage, the custody, transport, security of the electoral materials and all other aspects of the security of the process. We reaffirm the professional character, obedience, non deliberance of the Honduran Armed Forces. In the same form, we confirm that the National Police should be strictly subject to what special legislation proscribes.

5) Executive Power

To obtain national reconciliation and fortalice democracy, in the spirit of the themes proposed in the San Jose Accord, both negotiation commissions have decided respectfully, that the National Congress, as an expression of their institutional popular sovereignty, in use of their faculties, in consultation with the instances they consider pertinent, like the Supreme Court of Justice, and in conformity with the law will resolve the following in respect to return the title of the Executive power to its state before June 28th until the conclusion of the period of government on January 27, 2010.

The decision adopted by Congress should be on the bases of obtaining social peace, political tranquillity, and democratic govern ability that society demands and the country needs.

6) The Verification Commission and the Commission of Truth

To obtain reconciliation and fortalice democracy we will be subject to the creation of a commission of verification of the assumed compromises in this agreement, and those derived from it. This will be coordinated by the Organization of American States. This commission will be integrated by two members of the International community, two members of the national community, and these last will be picked by each of the two parties.

The Verification Commission shall be in charge of giving faith to the strict compliance of all of these points in the agreement and will receive complete cooperation from all Honduran public institutions.

The non compliance of any of these points contained in this agreement, proven and declared by the commission will produce an activation of methods that the commission will establish for the transgressor or the transgressors.

With the end result of clarifying acts that occurred before, during, and after June 28, 2009 a Truth Commission will identify the actual acts that conducted the situation and will propose to the public elements to avoid these acts in the future.

This commission of dialogue recommends that the next government, in agreement with national consensus constitute the Truth Commission in the first semester of 2010.

7) Normalization of Relations of the Republic of Honduras with the International Community.

With the promise to complete faithfully the compromises assumed in the present accord, we respectfully solicit the immediate revocation of measures and sanctions adopted on a bilateral, multilateral level that in whichever way affects the reinsertion and full participation of the Republic of Honduras in the International community and access to all forms of cooperation.

We make a call to the International community to reactivate as quickly as possible projects in effect of the cooperation of the Republic of Honduras and continue with the negotiation of future projects. In particular, we insist on a solicitation of competent authorities to make effective the International cooperation that is necessary and opportune for the commission of Verification and the future commission of Truth to assure their faithful compliance and the following of the compromises established in this accord.

8) Final Dispositions

All difference in application or interpretation of this agreement will be submitted to the Verification commission, which will determine in accordance with the complaint and in agreement with the Constitution of the Republic, and with legislation in force and on behalf of an authentic interpretation of the present accord, the solution will correspond.

Taking into account the present accord is product of an understanding and fraternity between Hondurans, we vehemently solicit that the International community respect the sovereignty of the Republic of Honduras, and observe completely the sacred principle in the letter of the United Nations to not interfere in internal situations of other states.

9) Calendar of Compliance of the Agreements

Giving the entrance of immediate effect of this agreement after the date of subscription and with the end result to clarify compliance times and the following of compromises acquired to obtain national reconciliation we convene the following calendar of compliance.

30th of October 2009

1. Subscription and entrance of effect of this accord.

2. Formal deliverance of the agreement to Congress so that they can comply with point 5. Executive Power

2nd of November 2009

1. Conformation of a Verification Commission

From the present subscription of this agreement to no later than November 5, 2009

1. Conformation and installation of a government of Unity and National Reconciliation

27th of January 2010

1. Celebration of the transfer of government

First semester of 2010

1. Conformation of the Truth Commission

10) Final Declaration

In the name of reconciliation and patriotic spirit we have convened before the dialogue table, we promise to comply in good faith the present agreement and what is derived from it.

The world is a witness to this demonstration of unity and peace and we promise with our civic conscious and patriotic devotion together we demonstrate our valor and decision to fortalice the state of rights and construct a tolerant society, pluralist, and democratic.

We sign the present agreement in the city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras on the 30th of October, 2009.

11) Thanks

We take advantage of this occasion to thank the international community for accompanying us, especially the OAS, and the general secretary Jose Miguel Insulza, the missions of councilors of the hemisphere, the president of Costa Rica Oscar Arias Sanchez, the government of the United States, their president Barak Obama, and their Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

12) Entering of Vigilance of the Agreement Tegucigalpa/San Jose

For internal effects the agreement has complete effect upon signing. For protocol and ceremonial effect it will be done in a public act on the 2nd of November, 2009

Tegucigalpa, Municipality of the Central District, 30th of October, 2009

Ian Kelly Tap dancing for the Department of State...

2009-11-04T22:09:00.000-05:00

QUESTION: On Honduras?

MR. KELLY: On Honduras. Yeah.

QUESTION: Mr. Zelaya sent Secretary Clinton a letter asking whether there’s been any change in the U.S. position regarding his restoration prior to elections at the end of November. Has there been a response and has there been a change in the policy? Mr. Lagos, the co-chairman of the verification commission said when he arrived in Tegucigalpa that he has to be restored. So the question is: Must that be a condition for the elections to go ahead and be recognized as legitimate?

Of course there has been a change in policy did you guys not read the agreement? Who said he has to be restored? I did not hear Lagos say that did anyone else? Zelaya said that, but I do not believe Lagos said he had to be restored and if he did he needs to be sent home to think about what the agreement says.

No dummy that is not a condition did you not hear what Thomas Shannon said?

MR. KELLY: Well, I think about the letter to Secretary Clinton, I understand that he did send a letter asking for the Secretary to clarify the U.S. position regarding the coup. And our position has been very clear from the very beginning that we did consider what happened in June in Honduras to be a coup. We’ve made our position on President Zelaya and his restitution clear. This is a – we believe he should be restored to power. This is now a Honduran process that was started by the agreement over the weekend.

Ha! This is Kelly´ s way of saying we put this in Honduras´ corner and do not want to deal with it anymore. We are embarrassed the little bitty banana country beat our butts and we´d rather forget it...

Our focus now is on implementing this process and creating an environment wherein the Hondurans themselves can address the issue of restitution and resolve for themselves this Honduran problem. We are committed to the agreement. We’re committed to its implementation. We’ll continue to assist and support the implementation process, but it’s up to the Hondurans to actually carry through.

This is the part Radio Globo does not play for the pro Zelaya club….

I think you’ve heard that U.S. officials have arrived in Tegucigalpa. It’s – we have a member on the verification commission. They arrived yesterday. Our representative is Labor Secretary Solis. They held a formal installation ceremony yesterday, and the commission has been meeting with leaders from various sectors of Honduras to discuss the implementation of the accord.

Yeah…

QUESTION: But my question is whether the U.S. interpretation of the agreement is that Mr. Zelaya must be restored to office prior to holding the elections.

Ok, I am listening….

MR. KELLY: I’m sorry. I’d just like to really emphasize this is – we’ve now – I mean, we were happy that we played a role in mediating this, mediating this dialogue between the two sides. This is now a Honduran process. We will continue to play a supportive and facilitative role, but it’s not for us to interpret the agreement. We want to help the process along, but this is going to be a Honduran process. The next step in it is for the congress to approve it, in consultation with the judiciary. And so we’re going to stay very interested in this and we’re going to support it, particularly Labor Secretary Solis. But this is a Honduran problem that will have a Honduran solution.

Boy that is a lot of dancing and words for something that you could have just said NO to…

QUESTION: Once the agreement was announced, the U.S. dropped its freeze on visas for Honduran personalities. Didn’t that constitute some measure of pressure on --

MR. KELLY: I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to. We opened our – we reopened our visa section. Is that what you mean?

QUESTION: Right. Yeah.

MR. KELLY: I don’t think we’ve removed any of the restrictions, though.

Liar!

QUESTION: Well, was that prompted by an – any understanding of how that – this agreement was to go forward?

MR. KELLY: Well, I think it was just a – it was a gesture to show that we support this Honduran process. We haven’t made any decisions about assistance and about some of the visa restrictions that we have. We want to see how this goes forward.

QUESTION: But the agreement seems to be a non-agreement because now the Honduran congress delayed the vote and the people are back in the streets. So how do you respond to that?

Congress didn´t delay the vote you idiot..they asked for an opinion from the Supreme Court just like the agreement says…doh…how hard is it for the reporters to read the agreement? Who is this idiot asking the question? Someone PLEASE send him a copy of the accord.

MR. KELLY: Well, I think what happened was the congressional leadership met yesterday and wanted to get opinions regarding the restoration from the Supreme Court, the attorney general, and the human rights ombudsman before they considered the issue. This is entirely consistent with the details of the accord. There’s a – I think it’s article five of the accord states that the congress shall consult with other relevant authorities, including the supreme court, in making its decision on restitution. So I mean, I don’t see that this is – in any way runs contrary to the agreement.

Bingo!!! Perfect at least you didn´t uhm…well..oh this time!

QUESTION: On the same topic. What Mr. Zelaya is arguing is that these are just tactics for delaying the implementation of the accord up until, you know, the day of the elections. And the question here is: Will the U.S. still support an election, recognize an election, without implementation of the accord?

MR. KELLY: Look, we’re focused on only one thing, and that’s the implementation of the accord. We’re talking – this is day two and it’s entirely within the rights of the congress to ask for the opinion of the judiciary. I mean, it’s in the accord. So I don’t see any reason for concern on the part of the United States right now.

QUESTION: So then there’s no guarantee –

No guarantee for what? Restitution? Of course not..what part of this is a Honduran Congressional decision did you not understand?

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

QUESTION: So then there’s no guarantee in the U.S. view that Mr. Zelaya needs to be restored as part of this agreement as long as the congress acts one way or the other?

MR. KELLY: Again, you’re asking me to speculate.

Ian Kelly stop tap dancing and answer the question…Shannon was a big boy and answered it and it should not be that hard..

QUESTION: If the congress --

MR. KELLY: We support the accord. The accord is going forward.

Tap dancing again…

QUESTION: If the congress votes not to restore him --

QUESTION: It’s not the same as --

QUESTION: -- does the United States still regard this as compliance with the accord?

MR. KELLY: You have to repeat that question. I’m sorry.

QUESTION: If the congress votes not to restore him or if the congress does nothing before November 27th, does the United States regard that as a violation of the accord?

The 27th? Don´ t you mean the 29th?

MR. KELLY: We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Right now, nothing in – nobody’s voted against anything right now. Everything that’s happening now is laid out in the accord. So we’re going to let the process play out. We’re going to support the process. We’re going to encourage the people to stay focused on this and make sure that it’s implemented.

QUESTION: Another topic? Another topic, Southeast Europe?

Ian Kelly in his head…please folks anything but Honduras…I do not want to talk about Honduras..I hate this discussion pleaaaseeee! Hillary save me…lmao. On a side note I bet Ian Kelly has nightmares about Honduras....

QUESTION: Wait, wait. Hold on a second. You say that you’ve been very clear about your position. You say that you’ve been very clear about your position that it was a coup. But in fact, that legal determination was never made even though there were some steps taken. So that’s (a) not clear.

(b) You say you’ve been clear about Zelaya’s restitution. But it sounds like, and from what Tom Shannon and others have said, that as long as the Honduran – all – the Hondurans can agree, it doesn't really matter to you whether Zelaya gets back into office or not.

Boy either this guy is dense or persistent not sure which yet…but dense is what I am leaning for.

MR. KELLY: All right. Well, first of all, on the first point. We have said all along that it was a coup, but the determination was, was whether or not under U.S. law it could be determined as a military coup. And you’re right; we never made that determination, but we have said on multiple occasions from the President on down that we considered what happened in June to have been a coup d'état, the way that Zelaya was bundled up, put on a plane, and flown out of the country.

I'm sorry, what was the second part?

QUESTION: It appears as though, as long as the congress agrees on something, you're willing to accept it even it falls short of Zelaya being restored before the election.

MR. KELLY: I think what we're saying is that we want the two parties to agree.

Kelly that isn´ t what the agreement says…it says Congress has to agree. Sigh...here we go again folks..

QUESTION: Yeah, and if they agree on something that falls short --

MR. KELLY: We want a Honduran solution. If President Zelaya agrees, if the de facto regime agrees, if it's in accordance with Honduran law and democratic principles, then we support it.

QUESTION: Even if it falls short of his --

MR. KELLY: Well, again, you've got the "if" there. We haven't gotten to that point.

QUESTION: Even when it falls short?

MR. KELLY: Oh, you think it's going to fall short?

QUESTION: Well, it's already fallen short. Come on.

MR. KELLY: Like I said, patience, patience. Stay tuned.

QUESTION: The other thing I want to ask is you say it's now day two, but in fact, we're talking about something that's --

MR. KELLY: No, but the accord was only signed a couple days ago.

QUESTION: Yeah, but --

QUESTION: But you've been calling for his --

QUESTION: You've been calling for his return, or saying that you want him to return, since the day he was packed off to Costa Rica or wherever it was.

MR. KELLY: Well, I --

QUESTION: El Salvador.

Ok dude you are outta here…Costa Rica and El Salvador are two very different countries and it was Costa Rica and we sent him in his jammies…sounds like you need to be packed off too.

MR. KELLY: Okay. Let's just see how it works out.

QUESTION: The verification commission is the arbiter of the agreement, how it's carried out. Does Secretary Solis have instructions from this government on how to interpret that agreement in terms of whether Zelaya needs to be in office before the elections?

MR. KELLY: I don't know if "instructions" is the right word.

QUESTION: Well, as the representative of the United States Government.

MR. KELLY: She, of course, is in very close consultation with the State Department. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Craig Kelly is down there with her. The Embassy is very much involved. But again, we are supporting a Honduran process here. This is – the U.S. is not a party necessarily to these discussions between Zelaya and the de facto regime. By saying that she has instructions, it implies that we are somehow involved in a bilateral negotiation with another party, and we're not.

QUESTION: Well, then --

MR. KELLY: We are simply supporting a Honduran process.

QUESTION: But the commission has to interpret whether the accord has been complied with.

MR. KELLY: That's true.

QUESTION: So Mr. Lagos seems to believe that Mr. Zelaya has to be restored before the congress – before the elections can be held, and therefore that's his interpretation.

MR. KELLY: Yeah, I'm sorry. I haven't seen what Mr. Lagos has said, so it's difficult for me to comment on --

QUESTION: Can we move on?

Not on your life Ian Kelly they want to badger the bee jeazus out of you on this subject…

QUESTION: Can you talk about other topic we are trying to ask something for --

QUESTION: Just a quick one. Will there be --

QUESTION: -- thirty minutes?

QUESTION: -- a reply to Zelaya's letter or not, a formal response to it?

MR. KELLY: A formal response? Well, Secretary Clinton is back in the office tomorrow. We'll see. I don't have an answer to that right now.

Bahahahha boy that is the best dancing I have seen by the State Department in a long time…but it is clear that he is using a lot of words to say we don´t give a crap about what Honduras does. We want elections and beyond that we just friggin don´t care.

Taking a Moment

2009-11-04T20:12:00.000-05:00

Most of us feel so secure in our person and never really think about how one trip could be our last.

This touched so close to home for me on Sunday. My husband´s uncle is from Juticalpa and he raised him so he is like his father. He is a very good friend to a man everyone in Juticalpa knows. Concho Gomez Lobo. This man is 68 years old and he was well known around town. He was humble and never presumed. He did most of his work on his property himself. He has been married his entire life to Guilian Guifarro, Nationalist Congresslady to Olancho.

He was kidnapped on Sunday and most of us know in our hearts that it is related to the Honduran crisis. Now all that is left is to pray.

I ask that each one of you please take a moment and pray for his safe return. He is well liked in the little community of Juticalpa and everyone wants him home safely.

The next message is to the kidnappers in case they see this and I pray they do

Por favor Concho es un amigo de nosotros y nunca deseado mal a nadie. No lo mal trates es un hombre humilde y bueno todos pedimos que lo liberan. Encuentran en su corazon a no seperarlo de su familia, dejenlo ir no vale la pena. Ruego con todo mi alma que entienden la falta que el hace a sus amigos y familia.

Doña Guilian estamos orando por su esposo, yo, mi esposo Reniery, y tio Polo y Rosita. Esperamos que Diosito nos escuche estamos a su servicio por lo que sea. Un fuerte abrazo por todos y cual quier cosa que nesisita avisa a mi tio Polo y le ayudaremos con lo que podamos.

Zelaya Needs Clarification from Hillary

2009-11-04T11:47:00.000-05:00

Zelaya is stuck in the Brazilian embassy like a trapped rat. Shaking the rafters with threats that he would not validate the reconciliation group and the verification comission as well as threats that he would not accept the election results, if he was not restored to power...was met with absolute stunned silence by the US.

They for the first time realized just how ignorant this man is. He just doesn´t get it. He signed an agreement to let Congress decide. An agreement that the US got him to sign by hours of negotiation. The next day he was out trashing Thomas Shannon making fabricated claims that Shannon threatened him with the arrest of his son on drug trafficking charges if he did not sign. Most people met that with a rejection that he could not figure out. I guess he didn´t realize he pee´d in his own back yard with that one since the US does not just arbitrarily charge folks with drug trafficking unless they have evidence and they don´t usually use it as a bargaining tool either. So that confirmed for most of us that the US needs to be investigating Hector for drug trafficking. Also, it confirmed for most of the world that he will lie about anyone to discredit their claims.

At first I did not believe he signed a resignation letter, but now I believe he did sign the letter and backed out later so that he could make a show of things internationally. After his latest antics it seems to be the truth of the matter. Even though he says he didn´t sign the letter, I believe he probably did.

Now, he is calling upon Hillary Clinton to clarify if the US supports the ´coup´as he calls it or if she wants him restored to power. What part of ´I don´t care´ did he not understand in Thomas Shannon´s response yesterday? I don´t guess he realizes that Thomas Shannon was acting on behalf of the administration and her position is the same as Shannon´s. They want to recognize the elections as they are a democratic process. He screwed up this one big time for himself. He probably realizes that Congress is not likely to vote him back in since they voted him out in the first place and he has already made threats against them, the Supreme Court, and the military and police as well as various business people and private citizens that he determines are ´golpistas´ telling them they have appointments with jail was not a smart thing when your fate rests in their hands.

Maybe mind altering gas did get to him. Or maybe abstaining to much from the drugs he was accostumed to taking have affected his ability to reason and understand what was said to him.

Mel Zelaya: The Wife Beater

2009-11-03T20:19:00.000-05:00

Last week Mel Zelaya so beside himself went crazy and beat his wife badly enough that she had to be taken to a private clinic in Tegucigalpa.

The ex priest Tamayo tried to defend her and the ´bigote´ insulted him as well.

Rumor has it that he has went so long without the white stuff he cannot think straight. That may explain why he doesn´t even realize what he signed in the agreement that he thought immediately restored him to power....not quite.

Today the Congress directors voted to send the agreement to the Supreme court, Attorney General, General Procur, and the Human rights (Ramon Custodio) to see what they thought about this. The Supreme Court already gave their opinion and so has the Attorney General and there is little doubt how Ramon Custodio feels.

Human Rights where are you now?

Today the second political figure was kidnapped...and someone we know well. He is someone that EVERYONE in Juticalpa knows well. Concho Gomez Lobo, 68 years old. The owner of the Texaco gas station in Juticalpa and a rancher. He roamed around town as if he were poor in old clothing and doing most of his chores himself.

He is the husband of Guilian Guifarro. I happen to know them as does my husband´s uncle who raised him. This is very sad for everyone in Juticalpa and we pray for his safe return regardless of the cause. Most of us do believe this has to do with the ´resistance´and I blame no one other than Mel Zelaya for this because he knows certainly who he is and I am quite sure that he has the power to get him released. So he better get moving. I am not sure why they had not paid for security with all of this nonsense going on. I realize that don Concho has always been safe and never worried, but it is different now. Of course it is too late to reflect on that and now we just need to reflect on locating him and getting him home safe. doña Guilian keep those soldiers with you and have them knock down every resistance member door from here to El Paraiso!

As you all remember not long ago the Defense Minister´s father was also kidnapped and the wife also blames the resistance for this kidnapping. Neither one of these people were enemy ridden. So who else but the resistance is at fault? A few of the pro Zelaya websites are even gloating about their pain..SHAME ON THEM!

OAS Responds To Zelaya´s Claims

2009-11-02T12:01:00.002-05:00

The Organization of American States had responded to Manuel Zelaya´s claims that his restitution has to be determined before Thursday.

The secretary of Political Matters in the OAS, Victor Rico has said that there is no time limit on restoration of Manuel Zelaya to the presidency. He went on further to say that according to the agreement that was negotiated to resolve the political crisis in Honduras that Congress is the only one with the faculties to make this determination and that it is a sovereign institution and that no one, much less people outside of Honduras, can put time limits on Congress and that this was already established in the agreement.

Next week there will also be an extraordinary meeting in the OAS to reinstate Honduras as a full member of the organization.

It seems to me that perhaps the urgent need to recognize the elections is what pushed the agreement of the OAS to let Congress decide this. It was a sure way to make them look like a winner, let the elections be the solution, and just simply wash their hands of the whole matter. The lack of a time limit tells me clearly that they are not concerned with whether he is restored to the presidency and have let Congress decide, when and if he is restored and that either way they are going to support the decision.

I think that Zelaya failed to make many friends in the process as well and the OAS and the US were looking for anyway possible to dump him. They found the way to dump him and did so pronto.

The quick resolution on the consulates, embassy, the soon restoration of the country to the OAS, and the acceptance of Micheletti tells more than the unspoken words can tell us about the true feelings of the OAS and the US. I believe that Ortega and his antics also have not helped Zelaya in the least. My bets are that the OAS needed to get rid of him and the Honduran crisis because Ortega is next on their list and he is not going to be received kindly. I bet in the next month Ortega is suspended from the OAS and the UN and he finds blue hats in his country after the attack on the US embassy in Managua with his sympathies.

Zelaya Accuses Sub Secretary Shannon of Intimidation

2009-11-01T21:38:00.001-05:00

I knew that it would not be 24 hours before Zelaya changed his mind and came up with another plan. He suddenly realized that his fate rested in the hands of the very people that removed him and they already were saying that they were waiting on the Supreme Court and not likely to change their minds. Zelaya knew he was going to lose this one.

Early today he started with the threats if he wasn’t restored. That tells me that most are probably not taking his bribes and are telling him they aren’t going to restore him. Most of them are looking forward to their campaigns and do not want a bribe that will cost them their seat as a Congress member. So he has found himself in a difficult position.

He told Vanguardia a newspaper in Spain that he was going to cause a lot of trouble if he was not returned to the presidency before Thursday. The Vanguardia described his situation in the Brazilian embassy perfectly by defining Zelaya as being caught in a Brazilian rat trap...it took me a few minutes to stop laughing at the perfect description and the visions that came to my head of Zelaya being caught in a huge rat trap screaming at the world and threatening them as to what is going to happen if he is not immediately released.

What is more interesting is that Vanguardia says that Zelaya was threatened by Sub secretary Thomas Shannon. He claims that Sub Secretary Thomas Shannon said that if he did not sign the document that he would have Hector Zelaya, the son of Mel Zelaya, prosecuted for drug trafficking. Therefore, his complaint is he signed under duress and therefore the document is not valid.

Let’s look at this for a moment. Do you believe that Shannon threatened Zelaya?

I am not sure. That is possible and I believe perhaps for the first time ever that there is a morsel of truth in Zelaya´s accusations. Though I tread on that carefully, because Zelaya has lied so much that it is hard to distinguish between lies and the truth. I think that Shannon should be questioned about it for obvious reasons. If the US has evidence that Hector Zelaya is trafficking drugs he should be detained period and he should be tried for that crime. I however, wonder if it wasn’t him as well that was threatened and he is not saying that because it will not work well to admit that the US has evidence against him that he was trafficking drugs for Chavez. I think that Shannon most likely threatened that they were going to detain him and drag him out of the embassy and take him to the US like they did Noriega in Panama and convict him for all his drug trafficking and for the other crimes he committed...then the sub secretary handed him a pen and he signed. I do not think that Zelaya would sign on a threat against his son and then make the accusation against the sub secretary with his son still in the USA where he could be detained and charged with trafficking drugs. If Zelaya knows that his son is innocent that would not be much of a threat in the US since we all know to charge someone and convict them there must be evidence and good evidence. So he would have most likely told them to get lost that he would hire his son the best attorney money could buy and ruin them for falsely accusing him. Then there is the problem of it perhaps being true. Telemundo reported in July that Hector was friends with Chapo Guzman a notorious Mexican drug cartel leader. We do know that Mexican drug cartels and Venezuelan traffickers as well as FARC have all appeared in Honduras since Zelaya took office. It almost seems like our poor little country is under siege so I hope that Shannon will not let drug traffickers go free for the simple thing of a signature to end the Honduran crisis when it was easier to just arrest Hector Zelaya, arrest Manuel Zelaya and try them, recognize Micheletti and the elections, problem solved.

Micheletti did get his way on the embassy and the consulates as all of them have now been accredited in the US and all of his appointments accepted. That tells me that there were some things active behind the scenes that went in favor of Micheletti. Micheletti did not put up a fuss about signing the document because it was his offer in the first place.

So I will sit down to compose my letter to sub secretary Shannon and ask him to clarify this for me since Zelaya is making a very libellous accusation against him and Clinton and then I will also send a copy to Congress for investigation on whether Shannon has let a drug trafficker run free in the US. I expect a statement from them tomorrow in reference to this because I cannot see the US letting it go unanswered.

Making Enemies
Honduras needs desperately to move beyond Mel so that we can address the real issues. In 2009, before July there were 300,000 people that had lost their jobs. Many of them right after the minimum wage hike that Zelaya touted as helping the poor. It didn’t help the poor, it cost them their jobs since most of those layoffs were minimum wage earners. Many asked him to do it in increments every six months so that it would not impact the market so negatively and he refused in classic style he refused to listen to reason and the poor paid the price.

On January 30, 2009 there was an article in El Heraldo.hn that spoke about Zelaya and his confrontations. The article specifically says ´If there is one thing that can characterize the Zelaya administration it is his attitude of confrontation with the different social sectors of society´

This confrontational style started the day of his inauguration when he lashed out at the petroleum importers. Since that time he has lashed out at every production sector of society in Honduras and many outside of Honduras as well.

All criticism of his administration has been received in a negative fashion by him. Instead of using it constructively to work with society he bristled and fought back constructing media outlets that treated him as a god. First channel 8 (Chavez style) with 24 hours a day non stop Manuel Zelaya (barf). Then radio Globo with his paedophile and Jew hating friend. Could it really get any worse?

Zelaya even lashed out at the thermic energy sector (yes our electricity). He said he would buy absolutely no more thermic energy at bunker price and only clean energy would be bought(remember our society is a third world country folks. Some people earn less than $100 a month so they cannot afford this) However, he didn’t even fulfill this promise and left us without enough thermic energy and a contract for carbon energy that isn’t backed up by financial security.

That isn’t all folks...even the telecommunications sector did not escape from Zelaya. He accused the other telecommunications companies of uniting to destroy Hondutel. Hondutel is the state owned telephone company that was a part of a huge bribe scandal where people went to prison in the United States for what was known as the Latinnode scandal.

Even worse is he absolutely refused to address the many complaints filed about corruption going on inside the government during the previous four years.

Minimum Wage Controversy

In contrary to the recommendations by financial experts, COHEP, and various business advisors he raised the minimum wage from 3,400 to 5,500 lempiras a month. This is a raise of 65% that took place over night which was a nightmare. Sure the people earning the raise were at first celebrating, but they weren’t celebrating when they got their pink slips. Almost 60% of that sector LOST their jobs. He did this raise in the middle of a financial crisis in the country that was already threatening the business sector because of energy prices. Several simply packed up and moved elsewhere. A family member of mine worked in one of the textiles owned by a Korean. He packed his bags and went to Haiti where it was cheaper and less investment risk. He threatened the business sector that refused to pay immediately with sedition. What was interesting is his own employees did not see that increase until after Micheletti took office. So if he was going to charge others with sedition why didn’t he apply that to himself as well? Granted the minimum wage was not enough to survive on, but in most societies the minimum wage does not support people fully. I recognize it badly needed to be raised, but not by 65% overnight. What should have occurred is a raise to 4,000 and then in six months another raise to 4,500 and every six months until it got to 5,500 - 6,000 lempiras. This would have been better absorbed and worked with the economic hardships that Honduras has felt from the US crisis.

Freedom of Expression
Zelaya has complained about the limiting of the free expression of Cholusat sur and radio Globo when both were validly accused of creating insurrection and violence, which is a valid reason to revoke broadcasting licenses. However, Zelaya himself is guilty of threatening many broadcasters and newspapers and making intimidating remarks to silence them. Conadeh accused him of trying to eliminate freedom of expression in Honduras.

During 2006, 6 reporters were killed and 15 camera men or reporters were threatened and intimidated by the Zelaya administration.

In 2007, 8 reporters were judicially processed and 13 were threatened with assassination.

In October of 2008 a reporter was murdered that was associated with Radio chain of voices. Then in 2009 after Zelaya was removed a reporter that had been kidnapped from before his removal was found buried and had been a victim of assassination.

Zelaya´s administration was completely covered with corruption, threats, and a tremendous rise in crime and drug activity. These are things that had not been seen in Honduras since the 80´s. Zelaya´s administration was a very dark period in Honduras and it is time to move past him. If he is involved in drug trafficking or the US has evidence of his son being involved they need to bring it forward for either Honduras to process him or for them to move forward in either international courts or US courts or both. We do not need to let free the very people who have cost hundreds of lives this year because of drugs in Honduras and who brought more than 30 planes registered to Venezuela into Honduran territory carting drugs, money, and guns to further detriment to both the US and Honduras. Send them to jail Hillary Clinton, do the right thing.

How Can the US Media Always Seem to Screw Up the Facts on Honduras?

2009-11-01T01:26:00.001-04:00

Since June 28 I have noticed a pattern in the US media that has made me start to question the entire establishment and their ability to actually report factual news. I don´t just stick it to Fox News like Obama did. I stick it to everyone from CNN, NBC, ABC, New York Times, all the way to Fox News and the Washington Post and back.

In early July the media sources from the US that had came here to do reporting could not even figure out the difference between protesters that were pro Zelaya and anti Zelaya protesters. They were so confused and their facts were all messed up.

Now that the Guayamuras agreements are concluded and signed they have declared it a victory for Obama...really? When did Obama come to Honduras? What precisely did he do to gain a victory? Is he not one of those folks that insisted on the restitution of Zelaya or else? Did we restore Zelaya? NOPE! We agreed to think about it. So please someone tell me how that is a victory for the administration in Washington DC?

I think it was cya for Obama in a situation that he had no clue how to fix and only got worse everytime he opened his mouth. I think he realized that Honduras was not going to retore Zelaya via threats so he decided to deal with it by letting Hondurans work it out...he realized they would never agree to restore him outright so he sent observers to the discussions. Obama actually lost his tail on this situation in Honduras. He realized when the Library of Congress sent a report that said he was flat wrong on Honduras and that they had followed the law and then stood by their report that he better do something. What made a solution, any solution, for him more urgent is the calls by Congress for the GAO to investigate his Department of State and Hugo Llorens as well as the US embassy in Honduras. I think perhaps Obama has much to hide in this and is afraid of that audit which tells me that the Republicans better stick to their guns on this one because they probably hit paydirt if they want an excuse to ditch him via impeachment...if he orchestrated anything that caused the crisis or made it worse he is going to be in a lot of hot water.
Yesterday, I read several sources that said flat out that the US had brokered a deal to return Zelaya to power. My question to them is can they read? Nowhere in the agreement does it say that Zelaya is going to be returned to power...it says ´we will think about it when Congress has time...it is on their schedule...if we don´t get time until after January 27, 2010 too bad...
Honduras, this tiny little Central American Republic, flipped off the whole world and got away with it..no I take that back they didn´t just flip them off..they flipped them off and the International community including the US came at them bearing their teeth and growling and Honduras in its tiny chihuahua way barked with all its might and scared the hell out of the rest of the world and they ran tucking their tails not sure where this banana republic gathered so much strength for a tiny spot on the map...a country smaller than South Carolina in the US...what a tremendous embarrasment for Obama and Co...a complete Foreign policy failure on behalf of his administration and a loss for him as well as the OAS community. Both are debilitated forever for their lack of ability to see this through center glasses instead of leftist socialist hack glasses that Honduras wanted no part of.

A bit of advice for the US media sources for the next time. Do not get your news from Chavez. He hasn´t the slightest clue how to tell you the truth. It is more than painfully obvious that you are getting your information from Telesur. Next time try coming and actually investigating what is going on yourselves and you might save yourself a tremendous embarrassment and a loss of your reputation as a reliable news source.

Here are some of the news media that got their facts completely twisted on Guayamuras and the fact that there was no guaranteed restoration of Zelaya...they in fact called it a deal to restore him..ahem....next time guys read the agreement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/americas/31honduras.html?_r=1
Interestingly enough Ginger Thompson is no longer accepting comments just one day after she posted the article. Maybe she realized that she had made a serious reporting error in that there was not a deal that Zelaya would be returned to power so she had to stop comments before it revealed her error. What surprised me is only one poster said anything about her serious error.

In fact, when I ran a google search I found over 31,000 articles claiming that Zelaya was going to be restored via the deal. Most of them used the NYT exact words in fact. Someone please fire this woman she has yet to get a single article about Honduras correct.

I should not just pick on US media as the Guardian from the UK screwed it up even worse. Here is what they said:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/30/honduras-zelaya-deal-coup
Honduran coup leaders agree to restore ousted president to power De facto government announces that it will sign accord reinstating Manuel Zelaya

ahem...no they didn´t sign an accord that reinstates Zelaya they signed an accord that lets Congress discuss returning him and then they can vote yes or no and what is even better than that is that Congress can delay this all the way till January 27 and no one can do a thing about it as the agreement states there is NO time limit.

Coup leaders in Honduras have accepted a US-brokered deal allowing the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, to return to power and resolve central America's gravest political crisis since the end of the cold war.

No they accepted a deal that would let them think about it and then vote on it after a Supreme Court decision is made and no it isn´t the gravest crisis in Central America since the cold war. I would say that the hundreds of thousands killed in El Salvador´s civil war or in the Nicaraguan revolution would highly disagree with you on that factor and those happened in the 80´s.
The de facto government led by Roberto Micheletti said it would sign an accord reinstating the leftist leader in a national unity government, raising hopes that a dangerous standoff which has increased tension across the region will end without further bloodshed.
Really? When and where did he say this? These are the only folks who have reported this and I think perhaps they have made this up because he didn´t say anything like this in any press conferences that I have seen.
Under the deal Zelaya will return to office and share power with his adversaries; both sides will recognise the result of a 29 November presidential election, which will choose a new leader. If not re-elected, Zelaya would step down in January when his successor is sworn in.
Now I know this writer is clueless and they need a new editor as well. First of all Zelaya cannot be re-elected as he is not a candidate in the election set for November 29 and secondly it doesn´t say anything about him returning to office or sharing power. It says a reconciliation government will be established and there is a set date for that, but not for the return of Zelaya...

Was Honduras Agreement a Larger Plan?

2009-10-30T13:31:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about this since last night. Many things about this agreement do not make sense to me.

First why Zelaya ever agreed to no amnesty is beyond comprehension. I still have yet to understand this one.

Second, Zelaya may be counting on buying off Congress. However, I doubt that Micheletti would have went in and agreed to this without knowing where Congress is going to go with this.

What I think is this is one of those backroom agreements where Congress let Zelaya think he had a chance to get restituted to power so that he would sign the agreement. However, I think the bigger picture is Congress, the presidential candidates, and Micheletti all needed the International community to recognize the elections and to restore assistance to the country as well as restore the embassies abroad. So they agreed to sign with the understanding behind closed doors that Zelaya will not be returned to power period.

Now they have him stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can tell him ´No way Jose´and he will have to accept it and the international community is going to accept it to.