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The second of three reflections from my visit to Honduras exposes the injustices of the economic development model that was imposed on the country.

The Evil Temptation
Jesus was put to the test by the devil in the desert after having fasted forty days and forty nights. The desert and the forty days allude to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. The liberated people had to start a nation in which the law prevailed. That will always be God’s plan, a kingdom far from oppression. The devil (evil personified) wanted to co-opt Jesus. He told Him to be self-indulgent, eat well and not look at those who are starving. The devil insisted on diverting Him, and told Him, throw yourself from the pinnacle of the temple, and You will see that everyone admires You. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
Matthew 4: 1-11

The Honduran people dream of peace born out of respect for the right to:

• social security, work, a fair remuneration, rest, recreation, organize labor unions
• education, form a family, food, health
• participate in the culture that belongs
• peaceful coexistence
• clean environment, without pollution or the deterioration of nature
• eradicate discrimination and economic inequalities
• the self-determination of the nation and indigenous peoples
• not compromise the resources of future generations
• human dignity and political representation of migrants and vulnerable groups

However, the Honduran rulers succumbed to the temptation of the devil and betrayed the people. And instead of founding a nation that honored the covenant with God, they denied the economic, social, cultural, environmental and peoples’ rights; instead, to recognize them, they dismantled restrictions on the penetration of foreign companies and favored land grabbing, water, minerals, forests and other goods of Creation.

Mapa de Honduras

Exercising his presidential mandate, Manuel Zelaya applied a series of measures that altered the historical relations subordinated to the geopolitical and strategic interests of the United States and the Honduran business elite. The following were a few adopted measures during his mandate:

1. Reduced forestry exploitation. Measure praised by environmentalists and condemned by companies such as Home Depot, Wood Products International, Heritage Creation.
2. Declared a moratorium on mining concessions and banned open-pit mining, and approved decrees to provide land to the peasantry. This disposition was celebrated by the communities defending their habitat and abhorred by the Canadian and American companies.
3. He took control of oil terminals of Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and DIPPSA; paid one million in debt for electricity services and reduced the cost of energy and fuels to 50%.
4. Increased the minimum wage of the working day by 62%. This measure was applauded by the working class and hated by the industrial sector.
5. Sought to invigorate democracy introducing mechanisms of direct citizen participation. This measure was loved by popular movements and feared by business, religious and imperial elites.

Zelaya saw his country as sovereign and as such he acted. The military-business-religious-media-imperial forces conspired to stop changes that altered the power and interests of the national elites and the United States, and their response was the blow against democracy.

The Tegucigalpa declaration of the Mesoamerican Forum puts it this way: We understand, without a doubt, that the free trade and energy security and military political treaties signed with North America, the Panama Puebla Plan, Mérida, Colombia, the Northern Triangle, the Model Cities, the zones of special development, among others, are motivated by anti-national interests and constitute real neocolonial occupation processes that are operationalized through mining, energy, forestry concessions and various processes of dispossession and privatization of social and common goods. The country does not respond to the demands of its nation, because it obeys powerful foreign interests.

The dispossessed Honduran people who were denied the right to a long and healthy life, to high levels of education, to a decent life full of hope for people, communities and creation, left the country and put in evidence this gagged memory.

Honduran steps
unmask
impiety,
an imposed regime,
that nothing gave,
everything ate,
everything transferred.
Wounded go,
to the controlling North
of dreams, disrupter.
Honduran steps
show
scam
perversity,
and hatred
to the truth,
to the rightfulness,
to justice.
Exhausted
for everyone, nothing
for them, all,
they walk forward.

In the Mesoamerican Forum, the ex-deputy Bartolo Fuentes of the Freedom and Refoundation Party (Free), whom was falsely accused of having organized the Honduran exodus, gave a word. He said:
The Honduran government is happy that the Hondurans are leaving, because they are not going to make riots in the streets anymore and because they are going to send remittances. The contribution of Honduran migrants in remittances exceeds the amount generated by all export products (coffee, maquila, African palm …) to the Gross Domestic Product. The Honduran government does not care about those who leave, if they worried, they would have long ago secured decent living conditions in a country where 3 of 8 million Hondurans live in extreme poverty, with barely a dollar a day to survive. If they cared, they would have protected the 300 who left daily in the transit from where they left to where they arrived so that not many died on the way. What bothers the Honduran government is that the exodus has made noise, that it has not been silent; it bothers them because the exodus unmasks the failure of the Honduran political regime.

Exdiputado Bartolo Fuentes

The Honduran exodus shouts:

• Listen to their cry and unite your voice to theirs so that the looting of Honduran wealth ceases and the just society is born.
• Hear their cry and strongly condemn the criminalization of the migrant population and demand that they be treated in accordance with International Humanitarian Law.
• Hear their shout and demand that the US interference in Honduras and the blind indifference to justice and moral order, stop.

The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So, I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—.
Exodus 3:7-8 New International Version (NIV)

Hear the Lord voice.

Read the previous and the following reflection by clicking on these links:

Introduction
Reflection # 1
Reflection # 3