What is going on?

What is going on here in Honduras?

Honestly, I am at a loss to understand or explain. So here are a few thoughts and questions.

I am reluctant to write about this because I don't have enough reliable information. But I want to share my doubts and questions.

COVID-19 continues to devastate the country.

There are dire reports that the public health system – already devastated by corruption, lack of supplies, and more – is near collapse. What that will mean I don’t know, but it could be catastrophic.

The Honduran president ,Juan Orlando Hernández, and his wife have tested positive for COVID-19, but many people don’t believe the reports. Reportedly the president was admitted to the well-equipped Military Hospital on Wednesday. Many believe he has faked it – for whatever reason. There are even memes with two photos – one of him being tested, the second of his announcement; he has not facial hair in the first, but has substantial facial hair on the second. I have no idea what is up; the test may have been a week ago and so the facial hair is just normal for one who hasn’t shaved.

This past week it was made known that the court of the Southern District of New York would be dealing with two Guatemalans whose testimony could further implicate the role of the president of Honduras in drug trafficking. As Insight Crime reports,

"The two cousins, Otto and Ronald Salguero, turned themselves in to US authorities and are set to appear before a court in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), according to a report by Univisión. Last December, the US Justice Department charged the two men with being part of a drug trafficking ring in Honduras and Guatemala led by Tony Hernández, the brother of current Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández. “These defendants conspired with the corrupt Honduran officials they bribed to facilitate the importation into the US of large quantities of cocaine for the Sinaloa Cartel,” wrote US Attorney Geoffrey Berman in the indictment. A witness in the case against Tony Hernández told US prosecutors that the Salguero cousins were present at a meeting where Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo” and the former leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, gave Hernández $1 million to finance the presidential campaign of his brother Juan Orlando in 2013."

If the name Geoffrey Berman sounds familiar, he’s the US attorney who Trump is possibly firing, since he won't resign. Berman has been involved in investigating various practices of persons allied with the US president as well as in the case against the Honduran president’s brother for drug trafficking. Is there any connection?

Also, is there any connection between the announcement of the positive tests of Juan Orlando Hernández and the allegations coming from the NY Southern District?

I have no idea – but I think many people here are skeptical. But I don’t want to make any accusations, especially since I don't have complete information.

As I see it, what is clear is that there is not much confidence in the Honduran government. It continues to have the support of the Trump administration, but what about the Honduran people?

There are many more questions about what is happening here. Most interesting is that the Honduran administration keeps pushing two treatments of COVID-19, which were developed by Honduran doctors (one who is in the US) but do not seem to have had careful scientific testing. One includes the use of hidroxicloroquine which may have disastrous results for people with heart problems. (I don’t want them to use it on me.)

There are more questions than answers.

But there are also serious problems. Although the government has set fines for non-use of masks, there are many people who do not use them, even in Dulce Nombre. Some people complain about them being hot; some see them as a sign of fear and weakness; others see them as unnecessary since there have been very few cases of COVID-19 around here.

But, this week the country began a series of steps to re-open the economy of the country in stages related to the situation of various municipalities based on several factors (density of population, number of cases, and medical capacity.) Yet, I just saw a notice that these steps will not continue in the Tegucigalpa area, due to more outbreaks of the virus.

Pray for us.

If I get reliable information, I’ll pass it on. If you see anything wrong in this blog post, let me know so that I can correct it.

It’s confusing.

But the rains have begun, in force, and I’ve been able to rejoice in some beautiful views.

Gang truce in Honduras - second thoughts

I wrote yesterday on this blog about the truce between the two major gangs in Honduras.

I still hope that this will be a major step in controlling one aspect of the violence in Honduras.

Yet it is important to recognize that gang-on-gang violence is not the major source of violence in this country. It accounts for between 2% and 30% of the killings here, depending on what source you read.

Very significant are the revenge killings related to drug-trafficking, probably more than 23%. Drug cartels operate here – some very openly, some with the assistance of politicians, all with the consent and assistance of at least some of the police.

There are also concerns, expressed by the leaders of the gangs in their press conferences as well as by human rights organizations, of killings carried out by police and other government officials.

Some of these deaths are related to the land-struggles in the Aguan region of northeast Honduras and other areas.

There are also the killings of journalists and human rights advocates. The numbers may not be high proportionately but Honduras is a country where journalism and human rights advocacy carry risks of being killed.

But there are also the revenge killings, which I hear about more often than I would like.

Some are related to land.

I recently heard of the death of a woman by someone who was contesting a road on the woman’s property. The perpetrator was denounced and arrested. However, persons associated with the perpetrator threatened to kill all the family if they testified when the case went to court. All pulled back, except for one man. They offered him 5000 lempiras (abut $250) to shut up. He refused and was shot and killed a few days ago by three hooded men.

There are also cases when someone is killed and the family members kill the perpetrator because they see no way that he will be arrested and convicted.

These cases point to three of the most serious problems related to violence here.

First of all, there is the culture of revenge and the lack of cultural responses to conflict that don’t escalate into violence. Here there is a great need of work on developing a consciousness of alternatives to violence and transformative responses to conflict.

Secondly, people are reluctant to speak up in the face of injustice, in fear of suffering recrimination from the perpetrators.

But there is also, more seriously, the lack of a police and judicial system that deals with killings and violations of law. There is an investigative branch of the police, but very few cases of violence are investigated and even fewer result in prosecution. Impunity is rampant. People have very little confidence in the courts and the police.

In fact, some people fear the police as themselves perpetrators of violence. And the idea of militarizing the police could, I believe, cause even greater problems.

And so, the truce between the gangs is a tiny step in dealing with the violence here.

Where do we go from here?

The Blood of the Poor

Some who come to visit Honduras are very concerned about the security issues, especially since the two major cities, San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa, are among the five cities in the world with the highest percentages of killings.

This is not helped by the Honduran newspaper which often put bloody scenes on the front page and have three pages of “Successos,” reports of crimes and other violent events, replete with photos of bloody bodies.

Of course, most of those killed are the poor – caught in a web of organized crime, drug trafficking, police corruption, and a “justice” system in which very few crimes are investigated and very few killers are brought to trial and convicted.

But there is one aspect of the blood of the poor that is not seen – the effects of the extremely rich and the political and economic elites that profit from the poor. The world caught a glimpse of this in the bloody deaths in the Bangla Desh clothes factory. But it is much more pervasive, as people die from the effects of a society with glaring inequalities.

Dorothy Day once wrote about St. Ignatius of Laconi, a Sardinian Capuchin brother of the eighteenth century, whose feast is celebrated today by the Franciscans. He was the questor, the official beggar for his friary.

As Dorothy Day wrote in in May 1952 Catholic Worker:

      One way to keep poor is not to accept money which is the result of defrauding the poor. Here is a story of St. Ignatius of Sardinia, a Capuchin recently canonized [1951]. Ignatius used to go out from his monastery with a sack to beg from the people of his town, but he would never go to a merchant who had built up his fortune by defrauding the poor. Franchino, the rich man, fumed every time the saint passed his door. His concern, however, was not the opportunity to give alms, but fear of public opinion. He complained to the friary, whereupon the Father Guardian ordered St. Ignatius to beg from the merchant the next time he went out.

      “Very well,” said Ignatius obediently. “If you wish it, Father, I will go, but I would not have the Capuchins dine on the blood of the poor.”

      The merchant received Ignatius with great flattery and gave him generous alms, asking him to come again in the future. But hardly had Ignatius left the house with his sack on his shoulder when drops of blood began oozing from the sack. They tickled down on Franchino’s doorstop and ran down through the street to the monastery. Everywhere Ignatius went, a trickle of blood followed him. When he arrived at the friary, he laid the sack at the Father Guardian’s feet. “What is this?” gape the guardian. “This,” St. Ignatius said, “is the blood of the poor.”

Here in Honduras there are church leaders who are tempted to receive the gifts of the rich and to curry favor to the political and economic elites. The temptation affects church leaders from bishops to rural pastors. 

I know of at least one case where a priest was offered money for the church from a local drug lord. He refused. Another priest was offered money by a local politician for himself, but he publicly made sure that the money went directly to the church

 But there are at least two towns that have gorgeous new churches which are probably paid for by drug trafficking or other organized crime leaders.  

And who knows how connected other church leaders are to the powers that support and conserve the radical inequality here in Honduras (and throughout the world). According to Monseñor Luis Alfonso Santos, bishop of Santa Rosa de Copán during the 2009 coup, the coup was the work of political and economic elites. Why was it that he was one of the few religious leaders to condemn it? Another prelate, in 2010, actually compared the leaders of the coup to the founding fathers of Honduras.

The temptation of money and power is strong – for all people, especially those who hold positions of power in the economic sphere, the church, and the state. But it is also a temptation for all of us.

Let us always remember “the blood of the poor.”

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The quote from Dorothy Day can also be found in Robert Ellsberg's By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day,  pp, 108-109;