Language and politics

The situation here in Honduras is serious. It’s very tense in the capital, Tegucigalpa, though it’s seemingly very calm here in Santa Rosa.

The President, Mel Zelaya, against the decisions of the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Electoral Commission, the head of the Human Rights Office, is going ahead with a referendum this Sunday to see if the people are in favor of a fourth ballot box – to determine if the people support a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. Congress is investigating the president to see if he is competent – mentally and otherwise – to continue serving. If deposed, the president of Congress, Roberto Micheletti, would become president. Yet, according to an AP report, Zelaya seems to have the support of many “labor groups, farmers and civil organizations who have long felt marginalized in a country where a wealthy elite controls the media and much of politics.”

In a previous post I noted my thoughts. Yet as I try to understand what is really happening, I am finding a lot of rhetoric – in the worst sense of the term — that may only serve to deepen the crisis.

There are charges that the current president, Mel Zelaya, is trying to make Honduras like Venezuela, that he is leading the country toward communism, etc. He has not been a good president and has not exactly done a lot for the poor, though he did raise the minimum wage. His call for a referendum on the question of a new Assembly to rewrite the constitution might be self-serving (so that he can run for the presidency again). He has made alliances with ALBA, the group the includes the presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

But when I read reports on the situation in the press, whether in English or Spanish, I find the language very slanted. When Mel and his followers went to get the ballots from the army base where they were stored – perhaps in fear they’d be confiscated by Congress and cognizant that some military leaders had opposed distributing the ballots – the crowd was called a “turba” in a Spanish article – and a “mob” in one column from the US.

An Associated Press report began “With backing from Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, Honduras' leftist president…” Other reports present him as almost a Chavez clone, noting that during a two hour speech he “at one point burst… – Chavez-like – into song.”

Anther report on remarks of the President of the United Nations General Assembly bluntly identified the Maryknoll priest Miguel D’Escoto as “a left wing Nicaraguan priest” as if to undermine his concern about a potential coup.

I have received an e-mail from a US person involved in Honduras with a video from the right wing Human Rights Foundation with the sender’s concern that “Decision (sic) are being made to force a revolution.”

Such inflammatory rhetoric is exactly what Honduras (and any true politics) do not need.

Zelaya and his supporters are also not beyond exaggerating. At the speech noted above, he said “"Congress cannot investigate me, much less remove me or stage a technical coup against me because I am honest, I'm a free president and nobody scares me." He has called Congressional President Roberto Micheletti “a pathetic, second-class congressman who got that job because of me, because I gave you space within my political current.”

The Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez had said “There is a coup d'etat under way and it must be stopped.”

Will this rhetoric escalate – into a coup or into violence? I pray not.

I know that a mere re-writing of a constitution will not make life better for the people of Honduras.

But what really galls me is that many of those who are opposing Zelaya in the name of the constitution do not really respect the constitution in practice. They are corrupt politicians, in power to enrich themselves and their followers.

Caritas Honduras recently sent out a booklet with three very interesting documents on the crisis. If you can read Spanish you can find them at the following sites. All of them were written before the latest news reports.

Hacia una verdadera Transformación Nacional
http://www.caritas.hn/noticias/nota_1.htm

Comunicado de la Conferencia Episcopal de Honduras
http://www.caritas.hn/noticias/comunicadoconferencia.htm

Comunicado de la Comisión Nacional de Pastoral
http://www.caritas.hn/noticias/cuartaurnapastoral.html

But the editorial on the first page of the publication is to the point:

The political and social crisis the country is now going through is the result of the wearing out of the representative democratic model which hasn’t proved able to respond to the needs and aspirations of the Honduran people and this is shown in the deepening of poverty, the concentration of riches in the hands of a few, the increase of unemployment and social exclusion, the insecurity, as well as the lack of access to health, education, housing, and land – problems which have deep historical roots….
It is undeniable that the country is living at a difficult juncture, but it is a valuable opportunity that can help us pass from a formal democracy to a real democracy, which is manifested in the well-being of all. To do nothing, or let others take advantage of this opportunity for themselves would mean strengthening the unjust political and economic structures which are the causes of this crisis.