Living under a coup – a month already

I really don't want to post this entry. It's got too much speculation about the political situation. And I'm really tired of all this relajo while the needs of the poor go unmet and their voices unheard, while people are tired and confused and don't trust the media, while the society becomes polarized and people demonize their opponents - and the poor continue to be ignored.

But I ran across something good just minutes ago. There is a website from an evangelical perspective that tries to look at the situation from a Christian concern for the poor. <http://www.ajs-us.org/honduras_political_crisis.htm>. Some nice background and a rather strong statement from Honduran evangelicals.

Now on to my political ramblings.

One month ago today, military arrested the president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, and deported him to Costa Rica. Since then this country has made the world news. Years of being the second or third most poorest country in Latin America and decades of corruption by a two party system that keeps the parties in power while leaving the poor at the wayside have been ignored by the world.

Some try to make this a conflict between Zelaya and Micheletti; others make it a conflict between Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and the forces of “democracy”. But for the poor here what does all this mean? Though Zelaya offered some hope for the poor, the corruption of his government and his ineptitude undermined these efforts and hopes. Micheletti had hoped to be president for a long time and there are real concerns about his ties to economic powers and corrupt politicians.

I mentioned in a previous entry that the military came out in favor of pursuing the negotiations process. El Tiempo, the least conservative mass-circulation newspaper, did publish a report today on the military’s openness to the San José accords. But there are other reports from General Romeo Vásquez, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military, that say that this only means that they support the Roberto Micheletti government in the negotiation. Go figure. I am tired of all this spinning and don’t think I’ll attempt to try to make sense of this.

In the meantime the Honduran congress set up a commission to study whether to agree to an amnesty as suggested by the San José accords. The Supreme Electoral Council is okay with moving up the elections after all the parties are consulted. And Mel Zelaya waits near the Honduras-Nicaragua border. Delay, delay, delay. Today, however, the US revoked diplomatic visas of four officials involved in the coup and is investigating others. They still will have their tourist visas, though.

Sunday and Monday there were reports that supplies for the people waiting for deposed President Mel Zelaya near the border have been stopped by authorities and only water allowed through. The situation was pretty desperate yesterday and many, including Zelaya’s wife, were phoning people throughout the country. The situation was obviously exacerbated by the curfew from Friday noon to Monday morning - almost three days. Yet there were reports that the Honduran Red Cross was bringing water and food.

Elsewhere in the country, two people were shot dead and more than 15 injured in Honduras on Sunday when fans of rival soccer teams clashed outside a stadium in Tegucigalpa following a match, Reuters reported. More violence. Where will it end?

Something odd happening?

Today at the lunch program for kids there were a few people taking pictures. One of them asked me if I was a volunteer, since she wanted to interview me. I said that I’d have to attend to the kids first and she had left when I had finished serving the kids. She was a reporter from the radical paper El Libertador. I’d seen their website a few times, but since yesterday evening until a few minutes ago I had not been able to access it at all.

Something like this happened to me with the website of the Jesuit-run reflection and action center in Progreso, Eric-SJ. First I got this message that their account was suspended. Then only an error message that “Firefox can't find the server at www.eric-sj.net.” Nor can Safari.

Strange – or deliberate?