Golpe de estado – day nine

After all the drama and tension of yesterday things are fairly quiet here – and, I think, throughout the country, except for a few demonstrations in the major cities.

Today I spent a lot of time at Caritas – meeting with the program workers in the morning, as is our usual Monday routine. Father Efraín, the director of Caritas Santa Rosa, went off to a national meeting of the directors of Caritas, a meeting which had been schedule months before. I presume there will be a lot of discussion and debate, especially in light of the differences between the message of the Santa Rosa Diocesan Pastoral Council released by our bishop, Monseñor Santos, last Thursday in the cathedral San Marcos Ocotopeque, and the message of the Bishops Conference released on national tv and radio by Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez last Saturday.

But while meeting this morning, one of the staff who works on citizen participation programs told me that one of the security advisers of the interim government was retired captain Billy Joya, who is alleged to have been involved in death squads in the 1980s. This could be ominous, unless he has experienced a change of heart.

The afternoon was not very exciting – thank God. Between keeping up on e-mails, news, and other communications, I looked over the half-year report on the Citizenship Participation program. I have been impressed about the efforts that our three field staff do in three municipalities. Working with other non-governmental programs they have been training people in everything from how to set up an organization to how to hold a public hearing with the mayor and the municipal leaders. They’ve worked with local Transparency Commissions that are meant to be watch dogs over the municipal governments as well as with the Social Ministry leaders in the parishes. It’s hard work and has had lots of challenges; in at least one case only members of one party participated in a public event that was planned; in some cases it has been hard to get women involved, even though that is a underlying goal of man Caritas programs. But the program has been able to give the people they work with some skills and some sense of power. However, it has been a difficult month, because of the polarization that Honduras has been experiencing weeks before the coup.

When I got home I had dinner with Sarah who is volunteering here for a month. Then after some reading and computer work I headed out for my local base community meeting. The place where we meet was dark, but I ran into the leader and his wife who told that it had been canceled since they thought we would have another 6:30 pm curfew. No, it’s only a 10:00 pm to 5:00 am curfew.

Waiting is hard – and I feel that tension among some here. What will come next? I have read that Zelaya will meet with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton tomorrow and also that there are several representatives of the interim government who will meet with folks at the Organization of American States.

I hope these are steps that lead to real dialogue and some advancement toward peace with justice.

We shall see and we shall keep praying!