A quiet Sunday here in Santa Rosa de Copán. (Sounds like Garrison Keillor!)
Yesterday I went out to Dulce Nombre again for the preachers' workshop. I ended up driving the parish pick-up out there since it was in a car repair shop here (for more that $500 worth of repairs!) There was no road blockade and so I got out there and back without any delays. (I returned by bus - I don't yet have a car.)
It wasn't quiet in the whole country. In the eastern part of the country, near the Nicaraguan border, the curfew which was from Friday noon to 6 am Sunday was extended from 6 am to 6 pm today and later extended until 6 am. This means that the area will have been virtually closed down for 66 hours straight. (I thought it was only from Saturday noon, but La Prensa, a pro-coup newspaper, said it was from Friday noon.) This curfew means that anyone on the street can be arrested. Thus some leaders of the opposition to the coup have been arrested. Also the first curfew starting at noon was, from what I’ve read, announced 20 minutes before it was supposed to start.
Is that the only way the Micheletti government thinks it can control the population?
On the other hand, the military seems to be in favor of the negotiations in San José. What this really means is up to interpretation – but, though it’s on the military’s web site, it has not been reported much in the Honduran press. Does that say something?
Meanwhile, I am doing well and expecting visitors this Wednesday. And the curfew is only from 1:00 to 4:30 am here in Santa Rosa and in most of the country – for the time being.
The uncertainty is probably one of the hardest things for someone like me to live with - but I do need to learn more patience.
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Yesterday I finished the collection of Don Helder Camara: Essential Writings from Orbis Books. Full of great inspiration. Here's a quote from page 143 to ponder:
I know a priest who likes to shake hands with the trash collectors when they are loading the refuse into the truck. They try to clean their hands on their clothes. The priest rightly says, "No work stains the human hands. What makes hands dirty is stealing, or greed, or the blood of our neighbors!"
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1 comment:
Dear John,
Had a look at your Sunday blog today and am very encouraged by your quotation from Arcbhishop Helder Camara,so appropriate for a country where 60% of the people work with their hands and earn less that US$2 a day. It also reminded me of another quotation from Dom Helder, "When I feed the poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
Despite all the addtional privations being suffered by the poor in Honduras this last month, the world is beginning to respond to that same question they the poor are increasingly asking. The Inter american Human rights commission is asking why unknown Pedro Magdiel was tortured and murdered last weekend near the border. The Jesuit Radio Progreso is again managing to break the media blackout and carrying the voices of poor asking Why? Be of good cheer.Christ continues to overcome the World, today even in Honduras.
Peace
(Deacon) Mike James
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