Seven Days in Sunny Honduras 

A satire, published in the Summer 2016 issue of Planted by the Waters

Ecumenical Peace Institute/CALC • P. O. Box 9334 • Berkeley, CA 94709 • (510) 990-0374 • www.epicalc.org 

Seven Days In Sunny Honduras: A few suggestions for the curious first-time visitor
               by Adrianne Aron 

(Maybe you’ve been to Central America before, but, as President Reagan once said, “You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries down there.”)

Day 1 SATURDAY – a cultural experience

Visit the Plaza Morazán in the heart of the old city of Tegucigalpa to see the crowds and street vendors and musicians, and the huge equestrian statue honoring General Francisco Morazán, who was president of the republic in 1830. Look closely, decide if the man on the horse looks Honduran. Could it be that the story Galeano told in The Open Veins of Latin America, and García Márquez repeated in his acceptance speech for the 1982 Nobel Prize, is true? Did the Honduran guys who were sent to Europe to commission a monument to Morazán really blow all their money on booze and women, and wind up bringing back a mounted Marshal Ney of Napoleon’s army — which they picked up on the cheap at the flea market in Paris? Galeano recanted after he was shown the name of the sculptor on the statue’s base, but some skeptics believe the signature is a forgery.

Day 2 SUNDAY - a religious experience

Visit the cathedral, where Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga presides. Sometimes called the “Vice-Pope” because he is Chief of the Council of Cardinals, he is also sometimes called “Cardinal Golpe,” (“Cardinal Coup”) for his support of the 2009 coup that overthrew the government of Mel Zelaya, the popular legal president of Honduras. See the side of the cathedral where CARDINAL GOLPE was spray-painted in bold letters by the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP). Every day, in the weeks following the coup, the denunciation appeared, and every night it was washed away by the anti-graffiti workers employed by the church. Back In 1991, two years after the massacre of Catholic priests in El Salvador, Fr. Rodriguez and Col. Juan López-Grijalva, of Batallion 3-16, the Honduran Death Squad, lectured as guest speakers at the U.S. School of the Americas (SOA), where the killers were trained.1 If the Cardinal is in, ask him to comment on Fr. Ernesto Cardenal’s observation that “To bless the sword of Goliath is not the same as to bless the slingshot of David.”(2)

Day 3 MONDAY – a post-religious experience

Still mindful of religious thoughts lingering from Sunday’s cathedral visit, go to the National Security Office, to inquire about several matters:

1) Is it still true, as reported by the New York Times, that the website of this office states: “All people shall obey the governing authorities, because there is no authority other than God, and those in place have been established by God”?(3)

2) Berta Cáceres, the famed environmentalist, was assassinated by men whose names she had reported to Julian Pacheco, Chief of National Security, because they had been making threats against her life. The prosecutors in charge of the case even have recordings of the killers discussing the crime. Still, the National Security Office did nothing to protect Berta Cáceres. When God placed Mr. Pacheco as chief of the Office of Security, were there instructions to deny certain people protection?

3) Is it true that Mr. Pacheco is not one of the individuals being investigated in connection with the assassination of Berta Cáceres?

4) Mr. Pacheco received training at the SOA/WHINSEC. Was the National Security Office’s decision to withhold protection to Ms. Cáceres consistent with the training he received at SOA?

5) In the photograph posted by Karen Spring on www. aquiabajo.com 6/8/2016, Mr. Pacheco looks proud as he stands with President Hernandez and members of the Special Reform Commission for the Purging and Transformation of the Police. The Commission was created by national decree on April, 7, 2016, at the instigation of U.S.-funded Evangelical Christians.(4) One of the commissioners, pastor Evelio Reyes, has instructed his congregation “not to vote for homosexuals or lesbians,” because they “corrupt the model of God.” When God placed Mr. Pacheco as chief of the Security Office, was that model part of the deal?

Day 4 TUESDAY – a patriotic experience

With thoughts of security in mind, go today to the United States Embassy. Get clarification of the following advisory, which appears on the Embassy’s website: U.S. CITIZENS WHO FEEL AS THOUGH THEY ARE IN DANGER, HAVE BEEN DIRECTLY THREATENED BY A GROUP OR INDIVIDUAL, OR WHO HAVE SPECIAL SECURITY CONCERNS, SHOULD CONSIDER HIRING THE SERVICES OF A PRIVATE SECURITY FIRM WHILE THEY ARE IN HONDURAS. (5) According to the Violence Observatory of the National University, there are currently 700 private security companies operating in the country, and most of them are not legally registered.(6) How does one make an informed decision about which company to hire? Many of the 100,000 security officers employed by these companies lack minimal qualifications and receive little training, though they are armed to the teeth. Can the embassy recommend a company? Does the embassy know what percentage of the former military and police who are working for these companies are associated with a death squad? Also, if one must call the police, which is it better to call—a high-ranking official in one of the anti-drug units, or a high-ranking official employed by the drug cartels?(7) Does the embassy know of any investigators who can be trusted not to cover up evidence of the crime? Finally, is the embassy still hosting missions of the Denver-based Chamber of the Americas? Can visitors find out how to purchase a community in Honduras? Presumably, even if one is not a corporation, one can take advantage of the new ZEDEs (Employment and Economic Development Zones), to erect a semi-sovereign mini-country with independent laws and judiciary, and the right to make one’s own private government, in disregard of Honduran law.(8) Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man (Forbes estimates his fortune at US $60.6 billion), and Bill Clinton (of the Clinton Foundation, which Forbes estimates as having an endowment of US $46 billion) have both been involved with the Chamber in Honduras, and former Deputy Foreign Minister, Alden Rivera, expressed the hope that their presence would do much to promote Honduras “as a tourism destination to the world, thereby attracting foreign investors.” If one invests and makes a mini-country, but engages in activities outside the free market model, what guarantee will there be that the U.S. government will not invade the mini-country, declare it a failed state, and take over its assets?

Day 5 WEDNESDAY – a military experience

Visit Soto Cano Air Base (formerly known as Palmerola), home of the Southern Command. Ask for spokesperson Robert Appin. Show him the copy of USA Today, 8/16/2009, which quotes his email to the Associated Press that said U.S. forces at Soto Cano “were not involved in the flight that carried President Zelaya to Costa Rica on June 28, and the American troops had no knowledge or part in the decisions made for the plane to land, refuel and take off.” Thanks to emails of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, we know that U.S. officials were aware of the plot to overthrow the democratically elected government, and that Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Craig Kelley met with the planners a few days before the June 28, 2009 coup. The diplomats urged the Honduran generals to find a nicer way to express their discontent with President Zelaya. But the planners’ idea to kidnap the president in his pajamas, take him to the US army base, and then fly him out of the country, prevailed. Did the planners simply forget to mention to the U.S. Southern Command that the plane would be stopping at Soto Cano for fuel? A failure of communication? Is any part of the FY 2017 $106 million in bilateral assistance that the U.S. budgeted for Honduras slated for improved communications? What part of the additional $12 million counter-narcotics aid was designated for “secure communications equipment,” as compared with other forms of support to the Honduran military?(9) How will communications be affected if H.R. 5474 passes? This bill, introduced on June 15, 2016, calls for all U.S. military and police aid to Honduras to be suspended until the Honduran security forces’ human rights violations cease, and the perpetrators are brought to justice.(10)

Day 6 THURSDAY – a rural experience

For this experience, private security is definitely recommended. The 2009 coup marked a sharp rise in attacks on activists for social and environmental justice in the countryside. According to Global Witness, in 2015 Honduras was the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists.(11) If the trip to rural areas is deemed too risky, travelers should consider staying in town and reading Prisión Verde, a bestseller by Honduran novelist Ramón Amaya Amador. Written in the 1940s and set in the banana plantations where Honduran campesinos tried to organize against their desperate exploitation, the book is so remarkably current, it could have been written last year. In Honduras, 75% of the rural population still lives below the poverty line, unable to meet basic needs. Foreign investors and big money operations continue to usurp the land and despoil the environment, pushing the impoverished indigenous people into ever more desperate conditions, then describing the “development” as a favor to the dispossessed inhabitants. In reference to the Agua Zarca dam project that Berta Cáceres was killed for trying to stop, Fox News on June 6, 2016, three months after her assassination, titled a story “Honduras Hydroelectric Dam Seeks to Generate Profits for Local Communities.” The article explained that the Agua Zarca project “is under construction in an area inhabited by indigenous groups living in extreme poverty in a country where 16.5 percent of the population gets by on less than $1.25 daily, according to U.N. data. The idea . . . is to generate profits and for those profits to flow back to the communities.” In 2011, Fr. Roy Bourgeois and Lisa Sullivan of SOAWatch led a human rights delegation to the Aguan Valley in Northern Honduras, to support a community under siege by a big operator who wanted to convert the area into plantations for the production of palm oil. Small farmers were resisting the takeover of their parcels. The big operator’s private security forces had sealed off the area, making it impossible for anyone to come or go, but Fr. Roy and his little delegation were determined to cross the line, in solidarity with the hemmed-in people. At the last minute a call came from Bertha Oliva of the COFADEH human rights office in Tegucigalpa, instructing the delegation to turn back because the movement needed them alive. (COFADEH is the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras). The following day the land usurper’s private army shot a man dead on the same access road where the SOAWatch group had turned around. The killer need not fear punishment. Less than 4% of homicides in this country that has come to be known since the coup as the murder capital of the world, result in convictions.(12)

DAY 7 FRIDAY – an urban tour

An interesting way to spend a final day in Honduras would be to visit places that represent relations between the United States and our neighbor Honduras. Possibly there is a map showing the intervention sites of U.S. Marines’ landings in Honduras—in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924 and 1925—or where the Contra troops President Reagan called “freedom fighters” were based in the 1980s while they launched attacks on schools, clinics, and hundreds of other civilian targets across the border in Nicaragua, in an effort to destroy the Sandinista revolution. Or, there might be a Yelp-like map of the country showing the locations of restaurants familiar to U.S. visitors: Burger King, McDonald’s, Subway, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, KFC, Denny’s, Popeye’s, Little Caesar’s… Or best of all, see if you can find Col. Juan López-Grijalva, a retired Honduran military officer with strong attachments to the USA. Since he last left the United States, in 2004, there seems to be no record whatsoever of his whereabouts. In 1963 this man attended the Officer Cadet Course at the School of the Americas. In 1969 he trained again at SOA, and in 1975 he was a guest instructor in the school’s Command & General Staff College. López-Grijalva (sometimes spelled Grijalba) then spent the 1980s as a key member of the CIA-created Battalion 3-16,13 organizing death squad activities. Promoted to Director of the Honduran Department of Investigations (DNI), he authorized kidnappings, tortures, murders, and other monstrous human rights abuses committed by the state security forces. In 1991 and ‘92 he came to the United States again, as a guest speaker at the SOA. In the mid-’90s he retired to a condo in Miami, evading an arrest warrant in Honduras that charged him with the 1982 murders of two leftists who were disappeared, and whose bodies turned up five days later in a vacant lot in the town of Choluteca.(14) After Hurricane Mitch caused massive destruction in Central America in 1998, Hondurans residing in the U.S. became eligible for TPS (Temporary Protective Status), an immigration status allowing them to stay in the country. López-Grijalva was granted TPS, despite the outstanding warrant in Honduras, which should have disqualified him from even entering the U.S. Richard Krieger, a resident of Boynton Beach, Florida, has compiled a list of some 800 suspected torturers and other human rights abusers believed to be living in the United States, and it was Krieger, acting on a tip from Honduran human rights activists, who spotted López-Grijalva and got him arrested in April, 2002. According to the Miami Sun Sentinel, the Department of Homeland Security revoked López-Grijalva’s Temporary Protected Status because of his involvement in “serious non-political offenses” prior to entering the United States.(15) The newspaper did not specify what a political offense might look like. Ultimately, he was deported, on June 11, 2004. With the help of the Center for Justice and Accountability, six of López-Grijalva’s victims won a case against him in a Miami federal court, marking the first time that a Honduran military leader was held responsible for human rights violations.16 The court held López-Grijalba liable for torture, extrajudicial killings, and disappearances, and ordered him to pay $47 million to the plaintiffs. Remarkably, the Attorney General in Honduras began procedures to prosecute López-Grijalva in his home country. But where is he? If you are not able to locate Juan López-Grijalva, maybe you can continue the search after you return to the U.S.A., the country that was so hospitable to him in past years. If this killer is still alive, catching him could be a wonderful way to wind up your fascinating week in sunny Honduras.

End Notes
1. Linda Cooper and James Hodge, “U.S. Delegation Enters Tense Honduras,” 7/8/2009. http://ncronlinr.org/news/global/us-delegation-enters-tense-honduras Accessed 6/8/16.
2. Ernesto Cardenal, “Revolution as an Act of Love,” Acceptance speech for the Peace Prize of the Guild of German book sellers, 10/14/1980.
3. Oscar Martínez, “The Macho Cops of Honduras,” New York Times, 3/7/2014. 4. Karen Spring, “U.S. Funded Evangelicals and Coup Supporters Behind the New Commission to Purge the Honduran Police,” http://www.aquiabajo.com/ 6/8/2016. Accessed 6/8/16.
5.http://honduras.usembassy.gov/mobile/privsecfirms.html Accessed 6/11/16.
6. “3 Times as Many Honduran Private Security Agents as Police,” TeleSUR, 1/7/2015 www.telesurtv.net/ Accessed 6/10/16.
7. Elisabeth Malkin and Alberto Arce, “Files Suggest Honduran Police Leaders Ordered Killing of Antidrug Officials,” New York Times, April 15, 2016.
8. Peter J. Meyer, “Honduras: Background and U.S. Relations,” Congressional Research Service, 5/23/2016, p. 23. http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34027.
pdf Accessed 6/8.16.
9. Meyer, p. 12 http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34027.pdf Accessed 6/8/16. 
10. To add your Member of Congress as a co-sponsor of the bill, contact his or her staffer, and have the staffer contact Arya Hariharan ([email protected]) in Rep. Johnson’s (GA) office.
​11. Cited by Hon. Henry C. “Hank” Johnson and Hon. Keith Ellison in March 16, 2016 request to Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Treasury Jacob Lew to “address appalling levels of violence and extreme violations of civil rights in Honduras.” The Congress members call for an immediate stop to “all assistance to Honduran security forces, including training and equipment, given the implication of the Honduran military and police in extrajudicial killings, illegal detentions, torture and other violations of human rights.”
12. Omar Rivera, “Solo el 4% de los Culpables de Delitos son Sancionados,” La Tribuna (Honduras), 11/30/ 2015. Cited by Meyer, n. 34, http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34027.pdf Accessed 6/8/16.
13. “Plan to Establish an Intelligence Battalion of the Honduran Armed Forces” CIA document released by WikiLeaks, dated 21 July 1983, stating “2. THE INTELLIGENCE BATALLION WILL BE UNDER THE DIRECT CONTROL OF LT. COL. JUAN (LOPEZ) GRIJALVA, J-2 OF THE ARMED FORCES GENERAL STAFF.” http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000283027.pdf
14. Newsweek, “Found: A Foreign Fugitive,” 4/18/2001. (For unknown reasons, the warrant was annulled when LópezGrijalva returned to Honduras after being deported from the USA).
15. Ruth Morris, “Death Squad Suspect Deported to Honduras,” Miami Sun Sentinel,10/22/2004.
16. http:cja.org/what-we-do/litigation/reyes-v-lopez-grijalba/ Accessed 6/8/16.
​
 

---