Articles
Acid drainage and silent death
Op-Ed by Dr. Juan Almendares published in Tegucigalpa Honduras, January 2007
To legislate for death by approving mining concessions—it is a moral challenge for the representatives of the National Congress. First, because historically, mining, tobacco and banana industries have bribed some members of the National Congress, and second, because such actions in Congress has served to catapult a presidential candidacy of the Republic. Third, because both old and abandoned mines, even after being "dead", continue causing serious damage to our Honduran environment and human health.
These impacts haven't been foreseen, or even taken into consideration by the cosmetic legislative reforms. The arguments of the mining industry are listened to more than the ethic and qualified opinion of national investigators who defend the interests of ecological and cultural patrimony, and most of all human and planetary health. It is a moral challenge between the logic of money (and in this case death) and the logic of life. As a consequence, it cannot be assured that there is an ethical multinational mining industry: history has shown otherwise.
Immediately after Hurricane Mitch, we publicly denounced the possibility of contamination due to heavy metals a century after the Rosario Mining Company mine, which operated in San Juancito and other counties in the Valle de Ángeles municipality, was abandoned. We presented a hypothesis at a national level and particularly in the mentioned zone stating that the formation of water-pressure currents would contaminate waters, soil and therefore human health after removing the sediments of heavy metals and insecticides. We set out to analyze some samples with our own resources; however, tests for some heavy metals weren't carried out.
We visited the Boca Mina of Cerro Grande, and we observed that the waters below were very acid. We sent the water to be analyzed in Costa Rica because we were told at that moment that aluminum wasn't being examined. Effectively, the concentrations of aluminum exceeded normal values. We considered that it meant a case of mining acid drainage. We spoke with some local inhabitants and told us that the water had changed its flavor, color and produced itchiness in the body and hair falling. We wrote newspaper articles (some of them weren't published in the daily press, though they were on Internet) denouncing this situation, but there were always deaf ears among the corresponding authorities.
During this month of February, contamination from heavy metals of the waters and the presence of extremely dangerous diseases were denounced by the communities of Cerro Grande, El Carrizal, La Cañada and El Retiro. We are with no doubt dealing with a case of mining acid drainage, which releases heavy metals.
What is mining acid drainage?
Mining acid drainage: the acid formed by mining exploitation, whether by subterraneous or open sky excavations by the action of cyanide. It releases heavy metals from the fragmented rocks, and the result is the contamination of water, air and soil. Mining exploitation leaves a permanent process of contamination which can last for decades and even centuries; it can be superficial or deep; and of high acidity, saturated by sulfate and with high levels of iron, manganese, cadmium, aluminum and other metals. Due to the high quantity of rusted iron, the color of the drainage is reddish, which is why locals say that the water is "muddy".
It is urgent for this anomalous and dangerous situation to be repaired, being this responsibility of the authorities; furthermore, if these authorities are deaf, mute and blind, it is our duty as human beings to denounce before the whole world that other human beings like us are in constant and serious danger. On one hand, there is our solidarity and the health of the communities. On the other, unfortunately, there is the putrid relation that money extends, as a hydra, amongst those who have the power to solve these problems but do not.
Advocacy, science and human rights
(Testimony)
Dr. Juan Almendares
Advocacy is defined as the set of properly planned short-term or long-term actions (strategies), which are properly articulated and addressed to organize and mobilize people, social groups and communities in order to influence or change the plans or decisions of a government or other power sectors, with objectives and goals of achieving changes in social policies which lead to collective well-being, respect to human rights and environmental justice. In order to influence or transform a reality, common sense, intuition, imagination, experience and socio-historical knowledge is required, assimilated through practice, technique, science, culture, art, philosophy, ethics and wisdom. As a consequence, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are two necessary focuses to influence a determined reality.
These transformations aren't possible without the formation of the socio-historical subjects that acquire conscience to carry out changes through organization, practice, critical thinking, theoretical reflection and scientific and technological knowledge. When I graduated as a medical doctor and physiologist I asked myself: is it possible to separate professional activities and the application of knowledge and scientific and technological products from ethical values, the respect for life, dignity and environmental justice?
Can we be indifferent, as intellectuals and scientists, to the structural violence of war, the violation of human rights and environmental destruction?
Can we keep an accomplice's silence before the crimes of humanity, before hunger, the cultivation of ignorance and violent conditions that cause the main diseases?
The simplest logic lead me to think that the cause of disease is not just the presence of a bacterial or viral agent, but the complex interrelation of multiple conditions which engender and develop diseases, and move the economical condition of the social group backwards. These observations developed in me a conscience of responsibility, mostly for the fact that I was one of the privileged for achieving superior education in both Honduran and American universities. Despite my having a positivist formation, I learned from my teachers honesty in the data, and to be consequent with the truth and the ethical principle of not mortgaging consciousness to the service of economic interests or war.
Congruent to that formation, I returned to my country; I found myself with brutal realities which stroke my consciousness all the time. The first shock was to watch children with inflated abdomens, full of parasites, barefoot, dirty, abandoned or dying in hospitals, because when being submitted to prolonged fasts in order to be examined, and not having caloric reserves, they developed severe hypoglycemia. The prevention of this problem was the agricultural and integral reform to improve the life conditions of rural people. However, what was taught at medicine school was to treat parasitism with the medicine of pharmaceutical corporations without having an integral vision of poverty. The use of massive high-cost medications, rather than the rational and ethical use of lower cost medications and at a same amount resulted in an increase of taxation from the State, which contributed with corruption and manipulation of the medications business.
In order to impulse in the health situation, I dedicated part of my life to teaching and research, and became Dean of the School of Medicine and Principal of the National Autonomous University of Honduras. However, for gestating changes, introducing history, ethics and social sciences in the perspective of medicine I was object of threats and stigmatizations. In this process I developed my conscience of service; I researched about alcoholism (interdisciplinary work that served as a base in the founding of the Honduran Institute for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug-dependency), tobacco and drug abuse. I conjugated the scientific activity with advocacy, jointly achieving significant victories with social organizations (the approval and ratification of the Framework on the Control of Tobacco Law of the World Health Organization).
I have been tortured, the object of attempts and death threats, and was even condemned by the death squads in my country for being a scientist committed to human rights, environmental defense, the promotion of peace, and mostly for being incorruptible. I direct the Center for Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims and their Families (CPTRT), which due to the capability of service, scientific research and systematization of data and accusations, has been object of attempts, the destruction of our offices and death threats to the director and personnel. Our research and advocacy team work in the CPTRT promote the approval and ratification the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture of the United Nations, by the Government of Honduras
In environmental pollution affairs, we have integrated technical commissions, and for having an honest position and accusing the use of insecticides forbidden in the United States, I was dismissed from such organizations and threatened in Honduras. Likewise, I have participated in medical research on the severe contamination of heavy metals and the impact it has on health by the mining industry. Our work has mobilized national and international public opinions. This result is an indicator that science attached to truth and ethics is very well articulated with social advocacy.
Through these experiences I have learned that scientific work is inseparable from ethics and the need to link this knowledge to social advocacy. International ethical and scientific cooperation has always had a positive impact on the respect of human rights and environmental justice. I express my recognition and gratitude for the solidarity from the members of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and Paul Epstein, Michael Collins, Michael Pertschuk, Richard Levins, Joel Tickner, Mark Frankel, Laurel Baldwin Ragaven, William Ney, Carol Grandstaff, Carol Petersen, Bev Mabee, Diane Appelbaum, RCT, IRCT Denmark, Madre Tierra Honduras, COHAPAZ, Grupo Amigos de la Tierra Centroamerica, Enable International, Friends of the Earth International, and all the brothers and sisters in the United States of America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America, for whose solidarity I continue living with a vocation for service and dignity.
The Price Of Gold: Extraction, Exploitation And Resistance At The San Martin Mine In Honduras
January 19, 2005
An excellent Rights Action report by Jessica Pupovac that describes the history of gold mining exploitation in Honduras and mentions the current opposition efforts of Dr. Juan Almendares. www.rightsaction.org
GOLD EXPLOITATION YESTERDAY ...
As the story goes, when the Greek God Dionysus granted King Midas one wish, he requested that everything he touch turn to gold. "Are you sure?" asked Dionysus. "Sure I'm sure," replied Midas, knowing full well what it took to ensure replenishment of the royal treasury, expansion of kingdom and all around contentment. Much to his surprise, when bestowed this supernatural power, he discovered that it extended to his food, his clothes and even his beloved daughter, who instantly turned to gold the moment he took her innocent hand. He couldn't touch any useful object without it losing in utility what it gained in monetary value. Realizing the folly of his greed, King Midas quickly begged Dionysus to reverse his fortune. As popular as this story is 2500 years later, the teaching has yet to be heeded by much of our modern world, particularly those who still aggressively seek the infamous "yellow metal."
Gold extraction and exchange, since time immemorial, have taken place against a backdrop of murder, thievery and destruction rather than fair and honest commerce (or supernatural powers, for that matter). The Romans founded their empire on pillaged Spanish gold, the Spanish founded theirs on gold robbed from the Incas, and the 1849 California gold rush, which established the state of California, took place beside brutal acts of genocide against the Wiyot, Yurok, Karuk and Wintu peoples of present-day California.
The 49ers, as well as many of those before and after them, enjoyed the financial backing of the US government. In 1851 alone, the state of California paid over a million dollars to bounty hunters in exchange for native scalps. This is recounted in John Ross Browne's Crusoe's Island (1864), which declares: "Shame ... that white men should do this with impunity in a civilized country, under the very eyes of an enlightened government! They did it, and they did more! For days, weeks, and months they ranged the hills of Nome Cult, killing every Indian that was too weak to escape; and, what is worse, they did it under a state comisión ..."
GOLD EXPLOITATION TODAY ...
In today's global economy, it is trans-national companies from wealthier countries, enjoying the support of International Financing Institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, that continue this violent and colonialist tradition throughout the global south (and indigenous communities in the north). More often than not mineral extraction continues to displace established communities and/or wreak irrevocable environmental damage.
However, we call this practice "the mining industry" and it hides behind claims that it works to help local economies by bringing investment and thus "development" to these impoverished regions. Meanwhile, the systematic destruction of culture and community, forests and rivers, although subtler, is just as oppressive and unjust.
This report points out the fallacy of the "development" claim by exposing the case against the San Martin mine, in Valle de Siria, Honduras. The San Martin mine is operated by Entre Mares, a subsidiary of US-based Glamis Gold Ltd. Local residents claim that the mine is causing detrimental harm to the local economy, the natural environment and the physical well being of local residents, despite the company's claims. What follows is a summary of the price they have paid for gold.
THE PRICE OF GOLD: EXTRACTION, EXPLOITATION AND RESISTANCE AT THE SAN MARTIN
MINE IN HONDURAS
Christopher Columbus first arrived in present-day Honduras in 1502 and his men almost immediately got to work scouring the area, guns in hand, in search of gold and women. Within one generation, the conquistadors were living well off of their booty and slave labor and ruling every town and village in the region. The native Mayans assumed that the Spaniards must eat gold, given their insatiable appetites for the metal. By the second half of the 17th century, mining exploitation in the Americas was the principal source of wealth for the Spanish crown.
IMF, GLOBAL MINING COMPANIES & HONDURAS
There was a lull in mining concessions in Honduras from the end of the 19th century until the early-1990s, when, encouraged by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), then-President Rafael Callejas passed a series of laws reducing controls on foreign investment. Between 1996 and 1997, mining concessions were granted on 30% of Honduran national territory to companies from the US, Canada and Australia.
Then, in 1998, Hurricane Mitch devastated vast regions of Central America in the most deadly Atlantic storm in two centuries. Mitch left 11,000 casualties in Honduras and 20% of the surviving population homeless. Immediately following the disaster, while the majority of Honduras still lay literally under water, mining company coalition AHMON (the National Association of Metallic Miners) presented to Congress the General Mining Law, ostensibly to help kick-start "reconstruction".
The law, passed at once, offered companies an environment in which they could further socialize the costs of mining while giving even less back to the public purse. The law reduced mineral export taxes, guaranteed companies virtually unlimited access to local water supplies, and allowed for unending concessions and reduced environmental restrictions.
The law also reduced local self-determination in two fundamental ways. First, it gave mining companies the right to expropriate mineral-rich lands despite local objection. Second, it took power to grant environmental licenses away from local authorities and gave it to SERNA (the federal Secretary of Natural Resources and the Environment), a notoriously corrupt and inefficient state agency (see below).
Still unsatisfied with the level of investment "barrier" removal, the IMF pressured Honduras to reduce taxes even further in 2000, with the complete elimination of the export tax on mining products.
While Hondurans are up in arms over the privileges granted to mining companies as part of the General Mining Law, mining companies are moving in and making a killing, paying fees as small as $1,500 a year plus a miniscule 1% municipal tax. According to the Executive Revenue Office in Honduras, gold, silver, lead and zinc exports in 1996 totaled $16.7 million (and brought in $208,000 in taxes, already an astoundingly low figure).
After the passing of the General Mining Law, mineral exports skyrocketed to $27 million in 1999 but only brought in a mere $21,000 in taxes. Exports continued to grow and in 2001 reached $84 million. However, the taxes on mineral exports that year were apparently too insignificant to be tallied by the Revenue Office.
So, 500 years after Columbus, plundering gold has been legalized, legitimized and systematized, rather than being called what it is - stealing.
THE SAN MARTIN MINE
In Valle de Siria, Honduras, out of communities situated downstream, the "Environmental Committee of Valle de Siria" has emerged to lead the campaign to close down the San Martin mine. Not at all convinced by the extensive propaganda the company has launched in the area touting the benefits of the mine, the Environmental Committee aims for nothing less than a complete cessation of mining operations.
Since January 2001, Entre Mares has been extracting gold from their 14,100 hectares (54.4 square mile) concession in Valle de Siria, Francisco Morazán. In February 2003, they were granted a second concession, currently suspended, to expand their operations another 1,000 hectares.
ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION
On a global scale, the mining industry deserves a place up there with agribusiness and logging in regards to the damage it causes to ecosystems. Destruction of habitat, contamination and overuse of water sources, road building, and the dumping of huge quantities of waste in mined areas all negatively impact the environment around gold mines.
Within the mining industry, cyanide-leach mines bring a host of additional problems. Cyanide leaks or spills are extremely toxic to fish, plant life and human beings and in recent years communities in Montana and Turkey have managed to outlaw its use in their areas.
However, in Honduras, where environmental activists are often killed or silenced through intimidation, obtaining an environmental license for such a high-risk operation is no problem. The already minimal standards that exist are very seldom adhered to, according to Honduran environmental expert Mario Escoto. Escoto stated recently in the national paper El Tiempo that licenses are conferred more often on the basis of political favors rather than the potential negative or positive impacts of said project.
This is no news to the community of El Perdenal, Valle de Siria, where just two years ago, 3,000 residents organized massive demonstrations outside of SERNA's regional office. Reports state that they "almost lynched" then-Minister Xiomora Gomez because of her indiscriminant issuing of environmental licenses to mining and logging companies in the area.
It is difficult to speak of exactly how much damage is being done to the region because it is the responsibility of these same officials to monitor the environmental impact of the mine, and if they are complying, they have kept their findings secret. Therefore, what follows is a summary of the complaints of local residents, based on the author's conversations and observations while visiting Valle de Siria.
CYANIDE ACROSS THE GLOBE
In the 1960s, the Newpont Corporation of Colorado teamed up with the US Bureau of Mines to "perfect" a technique using cyanide to extract record amounts of gold then being extracted from Shoshone lands in Nevada. The testing of these methods, and their subsequent employment, created a toxic area so vast that the U.S. government proclaims it to be a "National Sacrifice Area".
Cyanide-leach mining produces an obscene amount of rock material waste, and to make a simple gold wedding band, at least 2.8 tons of earth must be excavated. According to the Worldwatch Institute, the 2,402 tons of gold produced in 1997 resulted in 725 million tons of waste, all of which was contaminated with metals, acids, and solvents.
Most operations store the waste cyanide in ponds with plastic liners that break easily, allowing the solution to contaminate the ground water. The impact on wildlife is hard to calculate but between 1980 and 1990 seven thousand birds were found dead near cyanide-laced ponds at gold mines in California, Nevada and Arizona alone. Fish are impacted at far lower concentrations and incidences of massive loss of fish have been reported near numerous cyanide-leach mining operations.
Cyanide spills from mining operations have also been responsible for the deaths of workers and local residents. In 1994, ten miners were killed during a spill in South Africa and in 1998, a spill in Kyrgyzstan killed at least four and left hundreds with ongoing health problems.
It has been documented that Native American communities near the mines in Nevada have suffered hair loss, lead poisoning, cancer and deformed or still-born babies due to their proximity to cyanide-leach mines, and residents of Valle de Siria are just starting to complain of some of the same symptoms.
Back in Honduras, Dr. Juan Almendares Bonilla, of the UNAH (National Autonomous University of Honduras) School of Medicine, has denounced the increase in skin diseases and respiratory illnesses in Valle de Siria. He estimates that of the 50,000 inhabitants of the region, 40% of them suffer from hives and itching brought about by exposure to cyanide.
DEVOURING WATER ...
Forty thousand people are affected by the company's illegal and over-use of the local water supply, according to a motion filed in June 2002 by the Public Prosecutor's office. The motion accuses Entre Mares of not having a permit for water sources they were employing, as those specific sources were never contemplated in the Environmental Impact Study required for consideration for a license.
The motion states that the company was issued permits for the use of 12 wells in the area for daily operations. However, finding this insubstantial, they provided cisterns for local residents (families of mine employees) with homes positioned in higher-altitudes so that they would be able to "purchase" water from these "private" sources. The motion, which requested a suspension of activities for further investigation, was dismissed.
DEVOURING FORESTS ...
Exasperating the water problem in Valle de Siria is the fact that the mine has already necessitated much deforestation, and much more is slated to take place as operations expand. Where the displaced community of Palos Ralos used to stand, 7,000 trees have been cut down to make way for mining operations. This has a detrimental affect not only on water levels, but also on water quality.
The company currently uses approximately 60,000 gallons per day -- far too much for local residents, the majority of whom are farmers lacking sufficient water to maintain their crops. When I visited Valle de Siria in June 2003, although we should have been well into the rainy season, everywhere I went I saw what used to be large rivers (thus "Valle" de Siria) completely dried up, being used instead as roads and pathways. Some locals reported having to walk up to 5 km just to get water for bathing and cooking.
In response, Entre Mares has purchased troughs for local livestock, which they kindly have placed next to former riverbeds. The troughs - empty - read "donated by Entre Mares Minerals." They apparently do not see the irony in this gesture.
PREVENTABLE DISEASES ...
I spoke with a nurse in El Provenir (a community downstream from the mines) who told me that the water shortage has caused unprecedented incidences of diarrhea and parasites. Whereas a few years ago, there were virtually no cases in this small community, within the past year, she has documented at least fifty-two cases, predominantly among small children. She also noted an increase in respiratory illnesses, skin problems and hair loss.
She reported going to the Entre Mares-sponsored health center in San Ignacio (the municipal center) to talk to the doctor about these growing health risks and how to combat them. However, when she approached him, she says, he flatly denied that these things are taking place. She attributes this to both to their location upstream as well as the fact that Entre Mares writes that doctor's paycheck (the clinic was another Entre Mares "donation").
DEVOURING COMMUNITIES AND LIVES ... PALO RALOS
The community of Palo Ralos initially did not want to negotiate. In the beginning, they simply refused to leave their land. However, local authorities and non-government organizations, as well as Entre Mares officials, repeatedly warned them that if need be, the General Mining Law gives the company the right to forcibly displace them for a fee deemed reasonable by the government. They therefore decided to enter into negotiations in order to procure conditions equivalent to those they had enjoyed on their ancestral lands.
The vast majority of residents have not yet received land titles for their new property, but have instead been issued non-binding, computer print-out "certificates." There are rumors that this is because there is gold beneath the community's new site.
The uprooting has also caused a break with their traditions and values as well as division and mistrust of the chief negotiators, and Palos Ralos has not yet managed to re-establish the cohesion they enjoyed prior to displacement.
THE MINE'S SAVING GRACE - "STRENGTHENING" THE LOCAL ECONOMY
However, Entre Mares never claimed that the mine would bring improvements in the local environment or health of local residents, or that culture or community would be preserved. What it did claim is that the mining operations would bring increased prosperity to the region (which, according to neo-liberal development theory, is supposed to directly lead to improvements in the other two areas).
The Glamis Gold website (www.glamis.com) boasts, "Glamis is proud of the positive impact it has had in Honduras and particularly in the area surrounding the mine." The site mentions the doctor provided to the local community of San Ignacio, the homes built for the relocated community, numerous smaller-scale investments (including roads paved with contaminated waste rocks and the aforementioned troughs for livestock that no longer have rivers to drink from). Only one-fifth of the 500 jobs promised with Entre Mares for local residents have materialized.
COMPANY
Entre Mares opened a store in San Ignacio where employees of the mine are able to purchase items on credit, to have the costs taken directly from their paychecks. Locals not employed at the mine can also purchase goods there - a range of Made in the USA products costing less than Honduran products sold at neighborhood stores. Many local shops have gone out of business as a result.
STORES and UNDERMINING THE LOCAL ECONOMY
However, the most drastic impact the mine has had on the local economy is clear when one speaks with any one of the many agricultural workers in the area. They say that the deforestation caused both by the mine and the nearby lumber mills, coupled with the environmental degradation of the mine and the huge amount of water it uses, have caused the majority of crops to fail during the last two years. This year, many people aren't even bothering to plant.
There has been a huge wave of economic refugees from Valle de Siria, migrating to the US in search of work, and almost every family now has at least one breadwinner living in "el norte". The local economy depends highly upon remittances.
ORGANIZING AGAINST THE SAN MARTIN MINE
The local people have organized various roadblocks, marches and denouncements expressing their lack of support for the mining operations. They have also taken legal action against both SERNA and Entre Mares. A denouncement filed by the community of El Provenir in March of 2000 accused SERNA of issuing the license without consulting with the Secretary of Health, environmental experts or potentially affected communities. In Honduras, any pending environmental license with public import must be announced in local papers in order to allow for public debate and input.
However, this did not happen, according to residents, and the motion filed in protest was dismissed because the statute of limitations to challenge the license had expired. Thus, the opportunity for legal recourse simply did not exist.
Later that month, the Ministerio Publico (public prosecutor) filed a suit against Entre Mares for "usurping a water cause, aggravated damage, illegal use of forest products and disobeying authority" on behalf of the "general interests of society." Fifteen days after that motion was filed, Entre Mares changed management at the site. Then they argued that the motion was against the former general manager, rather than the company itself (it states that it is against "the legal representative of Entre Mares Minerals, Mr. Hector Delfino Zamora, Simon T. Ridway.") This argument won over the presiding judge and thus the complaint was dismissed.
Losing faith in the legal opportunities for recourse, in February 2002, a coalition of various local institutions (the Police, Board of Directors de Potable Water, the Libraries and Mayors, among others) signed a letter to Honduran President Ricardo Maduro opposing the mining operations at San Martin.
The letter: denounced the drastic decrease in both superficial and subterranean waters, claiming that the wells for human consumption in many communities have gone completely dry. They accuse Entre Mares of illegally using water from these and other water sources; requested that an environmental expert investigate the water level in the valley to determine the impact of the Entre Mares' water usage; urged that an authentic analysis of the legality of the manner in which Entre Mares' Environmental License was issued be carried out; and proposed the creation of a commission composed of both civil society and governmental representatives to revise and propose reforms to the General Mining Law in order to safeguard the rights of the people in the future.
The letter has not been answered.
REPRESSION OF ACTIVISTS
When I met with the members of the Environmental Committee, they were constantly looking out the windows and looking at one another wondering if they should share their stories with me. Members of the Environmental Committee report being followed, receiving death threats and having their phones mysteriously out of order for periods of time.
Early May of this year, in the nearby Tolopan community of Montana de la Flor, indigenous leader Teodoro Martinez was brutally murdered. Some members of the Committee believe that Entre Mares had been attempting to convince the community that they should sell their water to the company. Teodoro was instrumental in resisting this and other threats to the local environment, and they believe he was killed to send a clear message to those who would stand in the way of business interests in the region.
BOTTOM LINE - BUSINESS AS USUAL
The CEO, President and Director and Chairman of the Board of Glamis Gold have long histories of working in mineral and oil extraction, and they both came to Glamis Gold from British Petroleum Ltd. and BP Minerals. Just a little further south, BP/Amoco controls Colombia's largest oil field and maintains close ties with a number of right wing paramilitary groups who it helped train and employ in the early 1990s. According to a Colombian government report, BP collaborated with local soldiers involved in kidnappings, torture, and murder, as well as intelligence gathering on the anti-oil movement.
The Valle de Siria Environmental Committee is experiencing smaller degrees of intimidation and exploitation, but this is a theme that has been re-played thousands of times in Honduras, in Latin America, and the world over.
Currently, the "Free" Trade Area of the Americas threatens to expand and consolidate corporate rights throughout the hemisphere at the expense of local environmental and labor laws and self-determination, advancing the interests of big business and giving them even more leeway than they already enjoy.
Local San Ignacio Mayor Julio Rolando Escober recently defended Entre Mares' mining operations in national paper El Heraldo, citing as an indication of their legitimacy the permits they obtained from SERNA. Tellingly, at the end of the article, he warns that in any event, if the project is forced to stop now due to local opposition, Entre Mares could sue the government for millions of dollars that they don't have, due to lost return on investments.
And despite the damage the mine is wreaking, this seems to be the bottom line.
This cannot go on. It is not sustainable, it is not good policy and it is not going to be tolerated. International law reform, and the repeal of already existing trade agreements that legitimize this type of exploitation, is urgently needed. Companies should be held accountable to the communities they operate in, rather than the other way around. Local law reform, such as the reform of the General Mining Law that the Environmental Committee is pushing for, is also urgent.
However, essentially what needs to happen is a re-thinking of global development policy. Too often, throughout the exploited countries of the south, the march of "progress" (i.e., profit-centered development) is given top priority and local communities, far from being the beneficiaries, end up pay the highest price. The case of the San Martin mine is the tip of the iceberg.
Any "progress" that necessitates that we turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of large economic institutions is not progress, it is delusion. It is not sustainable economically, militarily, environmentally or politically. The international movement to expose and change these policies, and to defend local rivers, forests, and livelihoods, is growing every day. The resistance is being consolidated and contrary to popular opinion, not only are alternatives possible, they are happening.
You look like a bum!
By Dr. Juan Almendares
September 2005
When I was a child, my mother taught me to be clean and dress simply. Being a factory seamstress, she made my pants with pieces of old clothes, and my shirts with the cloth of flour bags. Some of my shirts had little roosters on them or wheat ears---a reason for being the object of mocking in school and college, but I never felt ashamed of using those clothes that my mother sewed with so much love.
In those times shoes were called "burros", because they were heavy and hard; although with time, being used so much and unable to buy new ones, holes appeared in them and the soles opened as I walked. Friends told me that my shoes "barked". In fact, a college companion once ridiculed me in a sarcastic and naturally cruel way: "Those of you who live below the railroad line and who wear clothes made of flour bags will never be successful; I will be an engineer and you will be a poor porter".
I remember the final exam of the Anatomy course in the first year of the Medicine major. It was a very hard oral test carried out by a teacher different from the class professor. This exam was the panic (cocora) of everyone. When I entered the classroom the teacher, not friendly at all, said to me in a proud and angry tone: "Get out of this classroom immediately; you look like a bum and not like a medicine student. How is it possible that you present yourself without a suit or a tie?" I felt humiliated. However, I apologized to the teacher and told him I would return with the appropriate clothes. The truth is that for economic reasons I did not have that type of clothes; fortunately a student who was outside the classroom lent me his suit, in a size that duplicated my own.
I passed the Anatomy exam with 100% and the teacher congratulated me, but he said: "If you are going to be a doctor you have to be well-dressed". I said goodbye to him respectfully without any explanation, while tears of courage and happiness were welling up in my eyes. In fact there were moments when I studied medicine where I would press my belt to calm my hunger. Often I would sleep very little, since I had to wait for my college mates to fall asleep so that I could use their books; I had no money for food and elegant clothes, much less for books.
These experiences taught me to have no prejudice about ways of dressing. Since then I have rarely worn a formal suit; except on those circumstances in which not using one could be considered offensive to certain people.
Wearing sandals has caused me some problems. One time that I was in a book store, I could observe how a respectful and religious lady directed her censuring look to my feet. She walked to me and very kindly said: "I don't understand how a personality like you degrades himself using those sandals", later giving me a series of compliments which covered the offensive darts. I calmly mentioned to her that Jesus of Nazareth and Mohatma Gandhi also used sandals. She blushed and expressed that "she had actually forgotten that detail".
During Hurricane Fifi in September 1974, being dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, I almost immediately went to the north coast. It was an emergency in which ten thousand university students mobilized themselves in a generous way. I slept three hours a day on the floor of the Francisco Morazán School in San Pedro Sula, and we worked day and night for three months. We developed the teaching with the reality of the communities: the students made their practice contributing in the reconstruction of Honduras. I was object of critique not so much for the educational reform that I was carrying out, but because "such a dean" wore muddy pants and shoes; in fact I worked as a motorist, a concierge, and helped in getting people out of the flooded rivers, all the while treating my patients.
To my critics, being an authority, I was supposed to wear a suit and a tie and drive a good car---mine was so old that water got in from the roof when it rained. Its transmission box only had three gears: first, second, and third, and the reverse didn't work. I thought that was that way---maybe because I have always liked going forwards!
When the Guatemalan earthquake occurred in February 1976, a group of volunteer Honduran medics and nurses worked immeasurably, most of all in the indigenous zones that were almost inaccessible. Some academics invited me to the University Council where I presented myself with dirty work clothes; but the meeting was so solemn that I decided to continue my work in the indigenous zones. I then sent a letter to inform of my experiences and of the Honduran solidarity with Guatemala, which was excellent. These experiences have taught me that we must not stigmatize people for their clothes or shoes. However, in our country, there is a law that discriminates against the poor and qualifies them as bums and criminals; it is the Law of Social Cohabitation. These laws reproduce the racist, unjust, and inhuman policies that the colonizers, neo-colonizers and globalizing capitalism have historically implemented in an authoritarian way in Honduras.
I still dream that one day we will be able to see my countrymen, boys or girls, women or men, with a simple suit that is accessible to every person; that will also serve for work, ceremonies, and parties and at the same time, be a symbol of our cultural identity.
The Tenth Circle
by Dr. Juan Almendares
October 2005
At 5:00 a.m., when I was arriving at my health clinic where I attend for free in Tegucigalpa, I watched with some apprehension a lump on the sidewalk which looked like a garbage bag. However I noticed that something was moving inside and its movement was the weak swinging of the respiratory rhythm. I thought that maybe it was a street dog, which in an inhuman joke had been enclosed and couldn't get out of the bag. Touched by the situation, I tried to open the bag but found resistance. With growing fear I proved that there was something living inside it, which was adopting the fetal position with the intention of saving energy and protecting itself from the cold.
It was a human being without humanity. I reproached out loud and said to myself: "To what we have come that I have confused a human being with a garbage bag? Is it that we treat humans worse than trash?" That fragile body was wet because it had rained the night before; however, I dared to wake it up. It was a young woman, but with the age of eternal misery. I asked her name, and she told me she had none and that she knew not of her origin. "I live alone; I have no identity, no parents, nothing…"
"Where do you live?" I repeated. She answered: "I only know that my home is the streets where I am not alone because the angels protect me at night; when it is too hot they wrap me with cardboards and when it is cold they wrap me in plastic bags. Furthermore, the kids care for me". And then she smiled at me with her unpleasant, largely toothless mouth (brown-yellowish plaque hid the old whiteness of teeth fragmentized by injustice).
She continued speaking: "I like it here in Barrio Guanacaste, because the people don't make noise and at midnight you don't hear any cars. In the morning Don Manuel gives me a cup of coffee with sweet bread. Sometimes I don't eat anything for the whole day". I only saw that her smile masked a deep suffering. "Good people like me and other rude people insult me. They call me "la loquita" (the mad lady), but I am not mad. They humiliate me but I defend myself with silence and laughter. I talk to myself because nobody listens to me".
I didn't know how to begin my conversation, I didn't even have a question. I felt ashamed because I thought that telling her my name and her not having one, she could be offended. However, as a physician, I quickly realized that she was suffering from pellagra, a nutritional disease that affects the mind, the skin and the intestines. So my approximation consisted in telling her that I wanted to be her friend and that I wanted to meet the "angels". "They are very cute", she continued saying, "but nobody listens to them, nobody gives them a job or food; they are not assisted when they are sick, but they are good. They have showed me the path to heaven, which is love; because here we live in hell".
An intense abdominal pain came to her in a sudden way while we spoke. She didn't know that it was the pain caused by the hunger. I confessed to her that I was a doctor. I palpated that abdomen, excavated by her body. I could slide her skin in between my fingers due to the absence of greasy tissue. She rose up her voice to show me something and tell me: "this is the operation they made on my belly, which causes me pain". I carefully examined her and couldn't visualize any signal of an operating wound. If there was a scar it would be the one representing the concretion of the image of suffering. She said she was leaving, and as she said goodby, she added, with a genuine happiness of the poor: "It will be a great day when I see you again!"
On Saturday, October 15th, I worked in the clinic and at around 11:00 p.m. I heard a human being cough while it slept on the sidewalk. I made all the necessary contacts to take her to the hospital because she was dying. I noticed that both for the transferring and for the hospitalization, they asked me if she was aggressive, and I made it clear that she wasn't. There is a perception that poor people, "the mad ladies", are aggressive. It is the preconceived idea that can only come from a brutal system, where violence is dressed with the clothing of democracy.
The management lasted two hours, and in the daylight of October 16th, International Day of Food (International Day of Hunger), I woke her up. When she saw me she smiled: "You are the one that comes to my aid!" I saw that she was scrawnier. Some cockroaches made her company and her pillow was a garbage bag full of sanitary papers, of course, dirty. She extended her arms to me and said: "today I haven't bathed with the night rain". She could barely lift herself up, I got her into the car and she was taken to Emergency at the Hospital Escuela. I haven't seen or heard from her since.
That experience reminded me of the hell which Dante describes in the ninth circle in La Divina Comedia, with its four precincts for traitors. In the 21st century, unlike the Middle Ages in which Dante lived, a "tenth circle" exists, which is the great bag of treason, where money is accumulated through hate, stigma, torture, war and the destruction of the environment. That tenth circle is the violence of a system that excludes and is insensitive to human suffering.
I thought of the "angels" of the "mad lady" and I reasoned, once again, that the road to heaven is in liberation and in human solidarity.
Negroponte's Sins...On Film
Published on Thursday March 2, 2005 by The Nation
This article about a new documentary film, Mr. Ambassador, contains the assertion that Negroponte, then US ambassador to Honduras, interfered with the process of election by staff and students of the Rector of the University of Honduras, leaning on the Supreme Court to annul the re-election of Dr. Juan Almendares. Enable International is attempting to obtain English versions of the film.
Negroponte's Sins...On Film
by David Corn
In mid-February, The New York Times ran a news story headlined "Intelligence Nominee Comes Under Renewed Scrutiny on Human Rights." That was, alas, not quite true.
John Negroponte, who George W. Bush selected to be the first national directory of intelligence, does have a checkered past that warrants examination. As I and others noted when Bush appointed him UN ambassador in 2001 and then ambassador to Iraq last year, during the time Negroponte was Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s, he was the boss of the contra operation. Worse, he ignored serious human rights violations and oversaw an embassy that smothered reporting of abuses committed by the Honduran military, an ally of the Reagan administration in the not-that-secret covert war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
The Times article (of February 19) noted that human rights advocates were now complaining about the Negroponte appointment and accusing him of having covered up human rights abuses. The piece reported that Jack Binns, who had preceded Negroponte as ambassador in Honduras, opposed the nomination because he believed that Negroponte had misled Congress about human rights violations in Honduras and that Negroponte might tailor intelligence to fit the administration's policies. But this "scrutiny" has not extended much beyond the human rights lobby. Hill Democrats have not made a fuss about Negroponte's appointment. Senator Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who in the 1980s was the leading foe of Reagan's actions in Central America, has declared Negroponte a fine fellow and fit for the job. Congressional Democrats have demanded an investigation of Gannongate, but none have pushed for the declassification of a 1997 CIA inspector general's report that concluded Negroponte's embassy had censored reporting on human rights abuses. (About 70 percent of the report is redacted.) And there's been little discussion of Negroponte's suitability for the post on the shouting-head television shows.
In its coverage of the appointment, the Times stuck with the old journalistic convention of he said/she said reporting, noting that some human rights fuddy-duddies were accusing Negroponte of having covered up human rights violations and that Negroponte's supporters were maintaining he's a great guy. That is, the Times was doing nothing to determine if the human rights critics were justified in their opposition to Negroponte. Yet the Times has on its staff one of the experts on Negroponte's tenure in Honduras: a reporter who cowrote a convincing series published by the Baltimore Sun in 1995 that concluded Negroponte's embassy had smothered reporting on human rights abuses. Ginger Thompson and Gary Cohn wrote the pieces, and today Thompson is a correspondent for The New York Times in Mexico City. Has the Times put her on the Negroponte beat? I don't know. But it would be a pity if the newspaper of record did not make use of this resource.
In the meantime, Democrats--and anyone who claims to care about human rights anywhere--ought to see a new documentary called The Ambassador, which was made by Norwegian filmmaker Erling Borgen. In a delightful coincidence, Borgen had decided to make a film about the U.S. ambassador to Iraq that explored his past in Honduras. The film is in Norwegian, but Borgen's small production company sent me one of the first copies of the English version.
The documentary does not disclose new revelations about Negroponte's days as our man in Honduras. But it is powerful indictment, for it presents human rights victims directly speaking about and to Negroponte, who supported a military and a government that killed and disappeared hundreds if not thousands of civilians. Honduran human rights leaders note that the fates of 179 Hondurans who disappeared during the Negroponte years have yet to be determined. In the film, Bertha Oliva, one of those human rights advocates (whose husband was disappeared), says, "I want to use every possible medium to make Negroponte tell hundreds of families of the dead and disappeared in Honduras where they are. He must stop hiding the truth." Noemi Espinoza, who runs a Christian aid organization in Honduras and who worked with refugees in the 1980s, says that Negroponte's embassy falsely accused her of being a subversive. After the Honduran military raided her office in 1982 and detained and tortured two coworkers, she fled to the United States.
The documentary--more than once--shows Negroponte testifying before the Senate in 2001 and saying there was "no substantiation of any systemic human rights violations" in Honduras. The statement seems either a lie or a fantasy, as various Honduran human rights advocates describe the extensive pattern of human rights abuses practiced by the Honduran military when Negroponte was ambassador. At the time, he was working closely with the Honduran military and the United States was training and supporting the now-infamous Battalion 316, which the CIA's IG report linked to death squad activity. In the documentary, former Ambassador Jack Binns recalls that after the Reaganites moved into the State Department in 1981 he was ordered to tone down his reports on human rights abuses--which included cases of disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial assassination--and was fired when he did not. Negroponte replaced him. Negroponte's focus was managing the war against the Sandinistas, and Honduras was providing key bases for the contras. It would have hardly helped the cause to issue critical reports on human rights atrocities committed by the Honduran military. The documentary quotes an unidentified embassy staffmember "close to Negroponte" who says that the embassy's reports were written "as if they were describing the human rights situation in Norway."
The film highlights Zenaida Velasquez, whose brother disappeared in 1981. She has been searching for him ever since. "It's like having a wound that is bleeding," she says. She describes a meeting she and other relatives of the disappeared had with Negroponte: "Negroponte was not making eye contact with us....And of course, denying everything. I just wanted to shout at him, 'Liar!'...He totally denied having any information on human rights violations. But he promised he would investigate and let us know later. Of course, we never heard back from him."
Leo Valladares, the former head of the Honduran Human Rights Commission, tells the filmmakers, "It was a dark era when anyone who was considered suspicious lost all of their rights. They lost the right to an independent court of law. They were abused and tortured. Many were killed." Dr. Juan Almendares, who was the principal of the University of Honduras at the time and a leading critic of US involvement in Central America, claims that Negroponte leaned on the Supreme Court of Honduras to annul his reelection as head of the university and that the court obliged. Gilda Rivera, a student in the early 1980s who protested against the United States, says she was rounded up with five other students and tortured for eight days at a secret torture center. Looking straight into the camera, she says, "Mr. John Dimitri Negroponte, as a victim of human rights violations in Honduras, I ask you, if you have any respect for mankind, to tell what you know, so justice can be served in Honduras. So the victims can finally get peace." Almendares, who now treats past torture victims by bringing them back to the military bases where they were tortured (and which were built with US funds), says, "My message to you, John Dimitri Negroponte, is that you must renounce your position in Iraq and that you confess internationally to all your involvement in war crimes." I can only imagine what Almendares might say about Negroponte's promotion.
The film does not provide new evidence that Negroponte killed human rights reports. But such evidence can already be found in that CIA IG report (even though it has been heavily censored) and in the Baltimore Sun series. The film, though, does make a compelling case that there is no way that Negroponte could have been unaware of the rampant and systemic human rights violations committed by his partners in the contra war. Yet for two decades he has denied he knew anything. This man, then, is either out of touch or not being honest. In either case, his appointment should be thoroughly scrutinized. If Bush wants America to lead a global campaign for freedom and democracy, he should not be entrusting a top post to a fellow who has credibly been accused of ignoring, if not condoning, war crimes. © 2005 The Nation
It is Not Possible to Govern Without Honesty or Truth
By Dr. Juan Almendares
December, 2004
On December 23rd, when leaving their homes to celebrate the Christmas and New Year, 28 persons were massacred, including nine girls and boys. They were passengers of the urban transportation system that connects Camelecon to San Pedro Sula. To this date it is not known who committed this infamous crime. A serious and in-depth investigation is required before announcing who was responsible. Two days prior to the massacre, President Ricardo Maduro declared that "he increased personal security and that his family was fearful of an attack by organized crime." (Daily Tribune, December 21, 2004).
Personally, as a member of activist organizations concerned with the defense of human rights, I reputiate and condemn the causes of abominable crimes and support the victims of crime. To an equal extent, my solidarity is with President Maduro and his family and with whichever member of government, whether civil, political, or military, who has been wounded or killed in serving his duty within the law and justice system. I know physically and spiritually what is it to be the object of assassination or torture, and for that reason, I reject all forms of violence that attacks all forms of life.
I continue to be an advocate for the right to life for all, each and every citizen, without distinction of class, religion, ethnicity or sex; because I believe the law needs to apply to those who break the law, whether white collar or blue collar. Consequently, I have condemned the massacres in the jails, La Ceiba and San Pedro Sula, the assassinations of boys and girl and young people; crimes that continue to go unpunished.
We are in essence against all forms of violence, including the death penalty, and are for the application of justice through the right hands; because violations of states' rights and justice in the form of brutality is just as criminal as the most horrendous crimes.
Without criticizing any particular agency, I have continued to criticize the policy of zero tolerance that continues to be a farce; because the violence continues to grow and has become more abominable. The promotion of the application of justice in the appropriate hands, such as the authorities of security, while pretending to cover up those who have committed a crime, results in the application of justice in the right hands, partially for the authority and security, pretending to condemn those who committed the crime; it does not result in the prevention of violence. I have thought that the President should offer one million lempiras to denounce the crimes, and that he himself should be conducting and directing the search in order to reflect that the Department of Security is not competent to resolve these problems.
The main political discussions are: war against the delinquents or maras; death penalty, suffering and torture; justice in the hands of a few, and stigmatization or prejudice against the defenders of human rights.
The population needs to know about the causes of violence. Each day that is lived in fear and insecurity, however, the government denies the truth, and their actions demonstrate the opposite. Here in Honduras, no one feels safe, from the President of the Republic to the most humble, lowly citizen.
Are we really at war? Certainly there is a war against the delinquents and the stigmatized sectors of the population where there has been an armed assault. There is symbolic language, general violence, violent responses and the many stories of innocent persons who have been massacred.
The death penalty has become politically correct in this election year; in reality we are shown that the laws apply to the poor, but not to the upper class and that in a system where some high ranking officials are corrupt, we will continue to have massacres on a daily basis. Others apparently do not support the death penalty but have the belief that delinquency needs to be punished or made to suffer, and slowly, physically or mentally, in ways that are cruel and degrading and inhuman.
The other security policies are those that stigmatize the defenders of human rights. This format originated with the Doctrine of National Security in the 1980's. The insecurity and fear that the Honduran people actually suffer is worse now than in the 1980's. The true causes of the violence in Honduras are the corruption, the hunger, and the lack of jobs, and the turning over of our country to the multinationals.
The Second International and the Opinion of Executives of the World Economy in 2003 determined that out of 100 countries, Honduras ranked 6th among the most corrupt countries in Latin America. The Social Forum of Interrogation on the External Forces and Development of Honduras (FOSDEH) estimated that the government of Honduras lost 351 million dollars through corruption in 2004.
The FAO of the United Nations released information that in Honduras, 25 persons die daily from hunger and that this situation affects one million Hondurans. (Ansalatina 2004). As Franz Hinkelammert, referring to the globalization of exclusive capitalism, explains, "Nevertheless, the excluded also need to live. If the modern sectors are at a standstill and do not even plan for a work force, then there will arise division or breaking away of the excluded groups, called 'informal groups'…They will also live in poor homes and poor neighborhoods, and their children will attend poor schools. Problems of prostitution and drug addiction will begin to break apart this informal sector, the same as any other criminal activity that arises to divide the poor conditions of life."
Zubiri said the spoken truth signifies confidence and security. When there is no truth in government and when general injustices exist, the consequence is that credibility is lost. Acting in an ethical, transparent manner toward the poor, with the real participation of the people, is the only way to recuperate the sentiment of justice and respect for human life.
The massacre that occurred in Camelecon, like all the other massacres in the jails, the assignations of children and youth, environmentalists, of ethnic groups, farmers, and leaders need not remain unchallenged. Raise up our voices, join arms and hearts against organized violence, symbolic violence, environmental injustices, and free trade agreements that create poverty of the people and the criminal mark against the multinationals. "Only the truth will set us free."
Honduras: An Experimental Country?
by Juan Almendares
Published in La Tribuna, El Tiempo, Tegucigalpa, June 2004
Experiments are developed when a scientist manipulates the reality studied, with the objective to obtain a result to prove or demonstrate the ideas or hypotheses that are pre-supposed of such phenomenon which has been modified with the intervention.
The development of every experiment involves ethical and bioethical aspects. The foundation is to reproduce the reality of the phenomenon studied. The experiment that takes place in one country and is exported to another, without caring about its implications to life and the environment, violates ethical principles of dignity and human life.
To experiment on others without consulting them harms the autonomy principle; that is, the capacity to decide about their bodies, psyches, families, environment, communities and the entire nation. In any case, it lessens the autodetermination and sovereignty of the people.
In some industrialized countries, precautionary principles are put into practice, prohibiting experimentation which damages ecology and health. However, the laws in poor countries lack such designations.
Experimentation, when developed under ethical principles, is positive for technological and scientific progress; but when it is amoral, it becomes manipulative, violent, producing fear, terror, and in many cases results that are extremely dangerous. The results are illnesses, mental health alterations with environmental impacts that can last for years and affect several generations of living creatures. As an example, the genetic problems and pollution caused by the mining industries can be noted.
Comprehended within violent experiments are the bellicose ones. The United States of America used Honduras as a training area for mercenaries forces in 1954 which derogated the Jacob Arbenz government in Guatemala, as well as for the Nicaraguan contra revolutionary forces in the 1980's.
Hundreds of Honduran soldiers have been trained in torturing techniques in the Escuela de Las Americas, in concert with Pinochet militaries from Chile and the militaries from Argentina. Back in Honduras our soldiers constituted the 316 Battalion, responsible for our "disappeared". After the U.S.A. made experiments of low intensity conflict war in Honduras in 1983, which were based on the CIA Manual of Torture, they are now applying these inhumane practices against Iraq in that war and occupation.
In the current XXI century, death squads who murder children and youngsters, with all impunity in Honduras, were trained in the Escuela de Las Americas (The Americas School).
Other violent ways of experimentation of the New National and International Security Doctrine have manifested with the social cleaning acts of the penitentiary centers. Two massacres have taken place, one on April 5, 2003, at El Porvenir Penitentiary in La Ceiba, where sixty-eight persons were killed by police and military forces; the other one, on May 17 of this year, where 105 people were massacred by criminal negligence, permitting them to burn and die intoxicated by carbon monoxide, and others electrocuted inside the San Pedro Penitentiary Center.
Ecological destructions are almost always associated to human rights violations. Honduras has been experimental ground for the banana "single-hand-crop", with massive use of pesticides for which damages have been scarcely attended. In the 1980`s the USA wanted to export fecal and radioactive wastes and turn us into a garbage disposal. There was a response from the ecological groups. In the 1990`s, the Stone Container Corporation planned the destruction of one million pines in order to substitute eucalyptus trees, but the popular reaction aborted the project.
The traumatic evictions of peasant and indigenous communities, with burning and demolition of their houses, and the murder, torture and persecution of leaders, all have been a practice of the recent years. The massive destruction of the forest by wood industries has generated protest of communities with the consequent murdering of several ecological leaders.
One month after hurricane Mitch in 1998, our country was over-flooded with cyanide lagoons from the mining industry, which occupies one third of the national territory. Water and ground pollution with heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic is one of our worst national tragedies.
The tobacco multinationals made genetic experiments in Honduras. The banana enterprises actually have genetic investigation centres where, in all likelihood, transgenic experiments unsupervised by any recognized committee of ethics and bioethics are taking place. The other experiment taking place in Honduras has been the transgenic corn cultivation. Five hundred hectares were cultivated in 2002 and two thousand in 2003 (source: Jose Santamarta, Director de World Watch).
On the other hand, transgenic goods have been imported from other countries without the Honduran consumer being properly informed about their consequences. The rejection to the international transgenics is because they cause allergies and resistance to antibiotics, they alter the quality of the food, they cause loss of biodiversity, they affect the genetic seed banks, and they can cause unforeseeable environmental and planetary health damages.
According to the PNEUMA Sub regional workshops report, the legal framework that regulates transgenics in Honduras is thought of as weak; the necessary judicial instruments are not available to approach these particular subjects (Santiago de Chile 2003).
This legal weakness mentioned above is evidenced in Article 8 of the Honduran Rules for Biosecurity with emphasis on transgenics, which says: The assessment committees who evaluate public health, production and environment of the genetically modified organisms are integrated by representatives of the companies that use, promote or regulate the use of transgenics.
Governments and organized sectors have a moral and political commitment and should not permit Honduras to continue being used as an experimental country. Therefore we must reject every policy from any government that exports war, torture, environmental pollution, mental illness and transgenics to Honduras.
Package: Torture for Honduras
(This May 2004 article by Dr. Juan Almendares contrasts torture in Honduras now and in the past with that in Iraq, and the role of the United States in both)
In April 2004, during the commemoration of the first anniversary of the El Porvenir killings where 68 persons died in the penitentiary centre of La Ceiba, I visited the airport of El Aguacate. This is an old military base located near Olancho, Catacamas, which was active during the1980's, being primarily occupied by North American troops and Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries (or Contra).
In the Aguacate base a North American priest named Guadalupe Carney was tortured, as well as some other Honduran and Central American citizens. One of the old buildings was torn down; the handles where they used to tie their victims are still there and the suffering is still inscribed by the people that were tortured. Three soldiers watch this airport to prevent possible landings by any small plane or helicopter, since this is one of the zones where the drug cartel operates.
The visit to such monument of terror gave me a chilling sensation, since the memory of the trauma of being a torture survivor illuminated the history of suffering.
I reflected on the pain suffered by the relatives of those massacred; who still, after one whole year, can neither identify nor claim 19 bodies belonging to their sons and relatives because they are still in the morgue for investigation purposes. Within this macabre scene the Government of Honduras, following United States foreign policy dictates, has demanded that the United Nations investigate the human rights situation in Cuba—ignoring the fact that the North American base of Guantanamo on the Cuban island has been alleged internationally to be a center for practicing torture on its imprisoned persons.
John Dimitri Negroponte came to Honduras in the1980's as a United States Ambassador, to practice his lessons learned in Vietnam and to become the main strategy planner of a low intensity conflict war in Central America. Honduras was the main stage of the mercenary troops and one of the most important training and operational centers for the Military Intelligence Agency of the United States of America, commonly known as the CIA.
The package: Torture for Honduras, prepared by the CIA, was written in 1983 as a training manual for human resource exploitation. That was a year after John Dimitri Negroponte's direct intervention, in conjunction with General Gustavo Alvarez and the President Ricardo Suazo Cordova, which had the purpose of violating the autonomy of the University, obliging the Supreme Court of Justice to annul my re-election as Dean of the National University of Honduras. The reason for the annulment was because we were considered a threat to the Honduran (and American) state security by our fighting for peace and human rights while strongly opposing the United States' military occupation in Honduras.
The word "package" here does not mean, in English, simply a package, but it has other implied meanings of "fraud or contraband": torture has been programmed and sent by the CIA as a package to be practiced in Honduras. In stark contrast, the United Nations Convention against Torture, for some unknown reason, has not yet been signed or ratified by either the United States government or by the Honduran government.
The world is horrified, as well as we are, by the torture applied to the Iraqi prisoners, but in Honduras several hundred military and police officers have been and are still trained with CIA manuals inside the "School of the Americas"; the practice of torture continues to be a daily event. In the last several years "death squadrons" have operated with absolute impunity, torturing and killing children and youngsters without the authorities determining who is responsible.
The inappropriately-called "Anti-gang Law" or Illicit Association Law, besides being unconstitutional, has served to increase torture and has been provided with tools in an immoral way for political campaigns of congressmen and presidential positions.
In a shameful fashion for Honduras, through their foreign policies the United States of America still uses us as a territory and training center, making us a satellite to the School of the Americas and one of their spokesnations of their war policy. Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the world, has dollars to send troops to Iraq with insurance that covers only natural deaths but lacks any social warranty, should they die in combat.
Due to his experience in Honduras with the successful application of the Torture Manual elaborated by the CIA, Ambassador Negroponte was rewarded with the position of US representative to UN Security Council, and now is becoming the new US ambassador to Iraq. Most of my fellow citizens ignore or fail to grasp the fact that Honduras had a key role in this international geopolitical scenario.
The Congress of the Honduran Republic has to investigate the practice of torture by police institutions. They must separate the Criminal Investigation Unit from the Ministry of Security, and prohibit Honduran soldiers and policemen from going to the School of the Americas and training centers of the CIA, and also as mercenary troops to Iraq or any other country.
Torture is an incompatible act with the exercise of democracy. Peace, justice and respect to human rights are essential for the mental health of the people and their governments.
Prison for the Freedom of Speech
(This article from February 2004 by Dr. Juan Almendares was in response to a Honduran Court's recent decision regarding the Honduran journalist, Renato Alvarez)
Without liberty there is no life and without life there is no liberty. In the vital process, movement is needed to accomplish autonomy, to acquire the capacity of reproduction, growth, development, memory, learning and knowledge.
Liberty is necessary for the interchanges between energy and matter (feeding, nutrition and metabolism) with other beings: plants, animals and the whole environment. However, another primary need is the social relation made through practice and work, which is fundamental in the construction of speech, thoughts, interior psychic, subjectivity, conscience, spirituality and culture.
To speak or use language in any form is not only to move the tongue's muscles; and the larynx or to make the vocal cords vibrate or resound the lungs or use the hands; but it is necessary to have the liberty to conjugate in an integral manner body, mind and spirit in the history of life, culture and humanity.
Ideas cannot be manifested, if there is no freedom to develop thoughts. Critical reflection over the environment, and the reality—social, political, economical and moral— is to think. When a government does not exert democracy, the recipe is to be silent. The state promotes that all information should be swallowed, chewed without being digested. What is being assigned is to be a robot of the system. Adulation and servility are awarded and critical thinking is punished.
Liberty of speech is a fundamental right consigned in the Human Rights Universal Declaration of the United Nations as well as in the constitution of each country, because it is inherent to each social being and to human dignity. When violated, all civil, political, economical, social and ethical rights are harmed.
To silence the voice of true justice through fixed and false procedures, recurring to juridical, ideological violence and state's policies is to strangle liberty; this is proper of police and fascist states where everything that is predominant is threat, repressive and punitive control.
If the authoritarian power does not have moral legitimacy, it imprisons whoever manifests against lies and injustice. It hides and deforms facts to favor impunity and corruption.
In Honduras, during the past year, violations of the freedom of speech right has been increasingly exposed; such a case is the one of journalist Renato Alvarez, widely known as a social communicator—honorable, responsible and wise in his critique.
La Tercera Sala del Tribunal de Sentencia (equivalent to a Third Court of the Criminal System) condemned the cited journalist with the penalty of reclusion for two years and 8 months; although he will not be recluded because the judge suspended the execution of the sentence for 5 years. Nevertheless, he has been punished with the lost of his paternity rights, the exercise of voting and not being able to be elected to any public position or celebrate mercantile contracts.
I add myself to the solidarity act towards Renato Alvarez, as well as with all the honorable journalists, because we cannot permit Honduras to build an immense prison for the liberty of speech. Liberty is the way to demand governments not to sell our country or for the prevalence of violence, impunity and corruption.
Gangs: The Fatal Compulsion To Belong
By W. E. Gutman
Mr. Gutman is a veteran journalist on assignment in Central America since 1991. He lives in southern California. His investigative article written in April 2004 is taken from the Casa Alianza webpage (see Links).
President Maduro's "Zero Tolerance" policy has failed to curb the rise of gangs in Honduras. It has also been derelict in preventing the cold-blooded murder of gang members by agents of the state.
Tegucigalpa -- Shaved heads. White T-shirts. Baggy pants. Tattoos, some gruesome, some menacing. Inviting bullets, they stand on street corners, flashing cryptic hand-signals or daubing walls with intricate graffiti that mark territory or warn of imminent turf wars. Striving to set themselves apart from society, they conform to another set of self-styled conventions that often cost them their lives. It's the "vida loca" at its most nihilistic extreme: Filled with self-loathing, they seek each other out, poised for a kill. It's a form of suicide by proxy. The enemy is a mirror image of what they have become. Death is the ultimate payback. Their last breath, they privately concede, is a final cry of despair that can only be heard from the grave. Abused as children, now feral and aloof, they get even by inspiring terror and hostility in the communities they have occupied. And, with unsettling regularity, they bring upon themselves bloody reprisals by a constabulary that is both exasperated and out of control.
According to the CIA, about 500 gang cells operate in Honduras' main urban centers. The most notorious -- the Mara Salvatrucha and the "18" -- boast a membership exceeding 100,000. Their members wreak economic havoc, to the tune of millions of dollars lost in crimes against property. They sow a climate of fear and bring on social devastation through violence, drug trafficking, addiction, loss of life and family disintegration.
Gangs, or "maras," are not a new phenomenon in Honduras, where gang culture has flourished for decades. For many youths traumatized by poverty, family violence, sexual abuse and early life on the streets, gangs offer a tangible, if deceptive, sense of solidarity and belonging. For many, it is the "home" they never had as children. If need be, they will defend it with their lives.
THE POLITICS OF EXPEDIENCY
Frustrated, short on resources -- shorter yet on imagination -- Honduras has reacted to maras by reviving old counter-insurgency protocols, which define gang members as "terrorists," and reinstating methods widely used during the "dirty war" of the 80s against suspected leftists, namely wholesale assassination.
According to Bruce Harris, director of Casa Alianza, an advocacy group dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of street children in Central America and Mexico, "the past seven years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of murders and extrajudicial executions of children and youths in Honduras. The involvement of members of the security forces and other people acting with the implicit consent of the authorities is no longer rumor but verifiable fact. We have concluded that there is a glaring discrepancy between the words uttered by the government in public, and its deeds."
Casa Alianza, which has routinely accused Honduran security forces and the business sector of collusion, claims that 2,200 children and juveniles under the age of 23 were murdered between January 1998 and February 2004. Most were shot, execution style, in the head. Some were slain because they bore tattoos identifying them as gang members.
Although reports of serious human rights violations by security forces are widespread, the perpetrators are rarely brought to justice. The moral outrage the crisis has elicited has also led to increasing curbs on freedom of the press as authorities try to prevent critics from airing their views. To his credit, such pressures did not prevent distinguished veteran journalist and Tiempo columnist Billy Peña from issuing this exclusive statement:
"President Maduro was elected because he promised our people a 'Zero Tolerance' crime policy -- meaning the eradication of gangs and other criminal elements. Alas, this strategy has failed. The police have misinterpreted the spirit and corrupted the letter of this mandate. Gangs as a whole have not been eradicated but many of their members are being exterminated. Apparently, since there are no rehabilitation centers for delinquent youths, the easiest way to neutralize them is to eliminate them.
What is immensely sad, I believe, is that Honduran society has turned a blind eye toward violence. Extrajudicial executions have become as common as bread and butter. Ironically, exterminated or not, the gangs still control the streets and whole neighborhoods in their grip. Nothing has really changed."
THE POLITICS OF COLLUSION
Indeed, almost every day authorities discover the cadavers of youths who were shot, execution style, in the head. Some were summarily killed because they bear tattoos identifying them as gang members.
These recurring purges, no longer denied by the Ministry of Security, assumed a new and disturbing character when Police Commissioner Maria Luisa Borja accused National Police Director, Coralia de Coca, of tampering with 10 AK47s allegedly used by police to carry out extrajudicial assassinations.
The mastermind of this assassination, according to Borja, is none other than the infamous former Police Commissioner Juan Carlos "Tigre" Bonilla. Borjas has repeatedly accused Bonilla of heading a death squad involved in the targeted execution of presumed delinquents. It was not until Casa Alianza began to exert international pressure that Bonilla appeared before a judge who promptly released him on $1,000 bail. An internal police memo obtained by this writer describes how Bonilla headed a death squad that operated with the knowledge of, and under police jurisdiction. Coralia de Coca appeared before a hastily convened kangaroo court.
Despite testimony by an armorer who admitted to corrupting the evidence on her orders (he cleaned the barrels and changed the firing mechanisms) she was released. The Public Ministry had notified Security Minister Oscar Alvarez 24 hours in advance that they were going to sequester the weapons with the hope that he would protect the incriminating evidence, but Alvarez passed the information to Director de Coca and she ordered that the evidence be destroyed.
Borja, who continues to be vilified and threatened with murder, also alleges that the police run "safe houses" around Honduras where "undesirables," among them homeless children and youths are tortured and executed.
THE POLITICS OF DECEIT
No analysis of gangs is complete or fair without a probe into the arcane character of Honduras' judicial system and the lengths to which it will go to cover its tracks.
Sources close to this reporter have suggested that the Ministry of Security may have colluded with President Ricardo Maduro by falsely informing him that policemen accused of extrajudicial killings were being punished when in fact they had acted with total impunity and been accorded unconditional protection by police top brass. The president then went on to assure the nation that the police was not involved in criminal acts, thus shrouding -- some say by design -- a serious problem under the cloak of his office's prestige and reputation.
Showing regrettable insensitivity, President Maduro would later make things worse by arguing that the people had elected him to protect "the interests of honest people, not delinquents." A member of the National Congress who spoke on condition of anonymity told this reporter that the statement was widely greeted as a subliminal declaration of complicity and guilt.
"We are witnessing the heights of moral bankruptcy in this country," the legislator asserted. "The president is neither blind nor deaf. He knows what goes on. Persecution will engender more crime, not less. Surely Mr. Maduro understands that a nation racked with so many ills -- corruption at all levels, rampant inflation, an astronomical foreign debt, hunger, misery, injustice, crime and violence -- is incapable of policing itself. It will take a great leader, surrounded by people of good will who put the nation's interest ahead of their own to clean up the mess. Until then, Honduras will continue to sink in a quagmire of its own creation."
THE POLITICS OF SUBMISSION
It is the inevitable fate and unenviable obligation of economic vassals to play by their masters' rules. Taken to the limit, such compliance induces further acts of meekness and passivity that invite scorn and erode national self-esteem. It came as no surprise when Honduras, in step with the U.S., voted at the U.N. to censure Cuba's human rights record. Predictably, and given its own dismal history of persecution and assassination, Honduras' asymmetrical posture is being seen as a shameless act of cowardice and hypocrisy by a mercenary nation given to political harlotry. Contempt turned to derision when it was learned that, as Honduras cast its ballot, the president's wife, Aguas Ocana de Maduro, was in Havana seeking Cuba's help for victims of child sex abuse at home.
Meanwhile, gang warfare and extrajudicial executions continue unabated. President Maduro's "Zero Tolerance" policy is being seen by a growing segment of Honduran society as a sonorous but empty and disingenuous slogan. Others call it an outright failure.
"All it takes for a society to spiral down the slippery road to disintegration is a faltering economy, widespread discontent -- and someone to blame," says Bruce Harris. "What we have, is the lack of political will to end the carnage. Whatever it is -- reluctance or sheer incompetence -- events sadly suggest that this culture of impunity may outlast us all."
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