Potholes, elections, rains, and more

Yesterday I drove back from Quimistan to my home in Plan Grande, Concepción, Copán, on CA-4, the international highway that connects to San Pedro Sula and then, on another road, to the Honduran Caribbean port of Puerto Cortes. The road is a major route for goods from the port and San Pedro Sula to the Salvadoran and Guatemalan borders in the southwest.

The road is, to a great extent, a mess. There are a few good portions, notably from La Entrada to Santa Rosa de Copán. But the road south of Santa Rosa is a disaster, partly because of a major geological fault

The road to San Pedro Sula from Sula to La Flecha is another disaster. I have often traveled this road and I think it’s worse now than when it was really bad ten years ago. They did some repairs some years ago, but it’s really been neglected in the last two or more years.

I think the state of this road is a good metaphor for Honduras at this moment.

Honduras has potential – great coffee, hard-working and welcoming people, natural resources, archeological sites, beautiful mountains, and more. But how can the country go forward with massive insecurity with roads that are treacherous? How can Honduras go forward when many politicians have deep ties with organized crime and drug trafficking? 

We are in the last two weeks before the national elections, which are held every four years. The country will elect the president, the congress, and mayors. There are three major parties and there are serious questions about the presidential candidates of two parties and their connection with money-laundering, corruption, and drug-trafficking. There are serious questions about the fairness of the coming elections – not only because of anomalies in the election process voted on by Congress (which is controlled by one of the parties).

There have also been a number of cases of intimidation of candidates, and even worse. Some candidates have been killed and there have been cases of violence at some campaign rallies, including attacks in nearby San Jerónimo, Copán, where one person died and three were seriously injured. There have also been at least two candidates killed in other parts of our diocese. 

According to a new report, “Honduras' National Autonomous University Observatory of Violence reported that at least 64 people have been victims of political violence between December last year and October this year.”

In the municipality where I live there has not been any violence, but campaign banners have been slashed. Tensions are high.

On a national level, there are also some people and groups calling some opposition candidates and parties communist, attempting to spread fear and more in the population. 

Many doubt the elections on Sunday, November 28, will be fair and transparent, remembering certain irregularities in the last election.

November 28 is the first Sunday of Advent.

We’ll be having Masses and Celebrations of the Word throughout the parish, as usual. But there will be one change. Usually we have the rite of the entry of candidates for baptism (over 14 years old) into the catechumenate on the first Sunday of Advent. This year we’re transferring it to December 5.

To close this blog post on the same note as I started it, I have to write about the dirt roads in our parish. 

The persistent rains, accompanied by cooler temperatures and little sun, have left some roads extremely muddy and slippery. I am glad I have four wheel drive, or I would have gotten stuck a few times.

The causes for these problems are many, including, of course, failure of the government to maintain the roads. 

At this time of the year we often have several days with rain, throughout the day and night; with little sun and temperatures in the low sixties the roads don’t have much chance of drying out.

Since many of the roads are clay, they can become rather slippery. If the authorities have put down gravel, it is considerably less slippery. But there are some road with little or no gravel, some because it has been washed away, some because the gravel was spread out too thinly or was pushed to the side when a tractor was brought in to level the road or fill potholes or trenches. It can get to be quite a mess. In addition, the soil is not stable in some places and there has been at least one landslide in the parish that blocked a road between two villages in the mountains.

But Honduras is going to open a new international airport in the coming weeks at Palmerola (which was a US base for many years, particularly in the 1980s). And it has a military budget of 392 million US dollars (with no wars or threats of war on its borders.)

It is also a recipient of millions of dollars of aid from the US, much of which is supposedly to fight drug-trafficking and decrease the migration to the US. But drug trafficking continues, since it has deep roots in politicians and in other elites. 

And migration continues, since many people see little hope for the future and there is a real lack of security for many people in the large cities, as well as for opposition politicians and human rights advocates. 

It doesn’t look good.

But I’ll try to write later this week on some events that might give a bit of hope.