Golpe de Estado – day 14

This morning I ran across this quotation by E. B. White in an e-mail from The Writers’ Almanac:

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

This is a beautiful time of the year here in Santa Rosa de Copán. It is usually sunny and warm – even hot – during the day until a thunderstorm brings heavy rains and very comfortable temperatures. It's great sleeping weather.

Two weeks tomorrow morning Zelaya was picked up by the Armed Forces and forced out of the country. In some ways it feels as if it happened yesterday and in other ways it feels as if it had not happened at all.

Besides my work and talking with people I know, I’m doing a lot on reading on the internet, trying to find out as much as I can – comparing stories and sources, trying to understand the situation and to bring as much light and truth on the situation as I can. I am inveterate reader, who is always seeking (and storing) information. I hear a lot of rumors but I try to share in my blog only what I have experienced myself or which I can verify.

Since I have not come across major stories today, here are a few things I read or heard today, though, that I’d like to pass on:

• Interim government Finance Minister Gabriela Nunez said this week she expects the economy to shrink by up to 2 percent this year after growing by 4 percent in 2008 -- a far cry from forecasts for 2 percent to 3 percent growth predicted earlier this year.
• Demonstrations continue – from both sides. An ecumenical prayer service with Catholic, evangelical, and Jewish participation. One of the organizers was the San Pedro Sula president of the Bakers Association, who was one of the leaders earlier this year of the opposition to raising the minimum wage to 5500 lempiras a month, about $290.85, if you work in the city.
  
• This week Cardinal Rodríguez has spoken out forcibly against Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, “I want to take this opportunity to say that we totally reject the meddling of the Venezuelan president. We are a small country, but a sovereign one.”
• Several of the Honduran congressional who refused to acknowledge Micheletti as president are experiencing intense pressure. There is an unconfirmed report of one deputy’s house being raided by about 100 soldiers. (I mention this because the source of this is reputable.)
  
• The curfew, from 11:00 pm to 4:30 pm, continues until next Tuesday, at least.

How to understand all this? A reader sent me a reference to a very “thought-provoking article” that I think might help – “HONDURAS: Coup d'Etat - What's In a Name?” by Diana Cariboni. In the article Cariboni wrote:

The current constitution was drafted in 1981 by a constituent assembly that met under military tutelage – characteristic of political life in this country for a good part of the 20th century – and amidst a broader Central American context of guerrilla warfare, dictatorships and U.S. interference.

Nevertheless, since then the country began to build institutions that it previously lacked, in the areas of electoral, judicial and human rights issues, access to public information, and transparency in state finances and procurements.

But nearly three decades of fragile democracy have brought neither prosperity nor development to this country of 7.5 million people, where eight out of 10 people live on less than a dollar a day according to United Nations statistics.

Indeed, Honduras is the third poorest country in Latin America, after Haiti and Nicaragua.

I've heard a few slightly different statistics, including some saying that Honduras is the second poorest - after Haiti. But it’s hard living in Honduras today. For the poor, hunger has been increasing this year – even before the coup – because of the global economic crisis.

The insecurity in the nation and the lack of resolution of the conflict trouble me, though I feel personally safe and spiritually at peace.

To help me during this time I have been reading from two books of Orbis Books’ Modern Spiritual Masters Series: Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings and Mohandas Gandhi: Essential Writings. This quote of Gandhi’s helps me keep things in perspective:

Our task is to work away on behalf of what we consider to be right and just and to leave the result to God, without whose permission or knowledge not a blade of grass moves.

Peace – with justice and reconciliation.

Pray for us and work for and with the poor - wherever they are and wherever you are.