I woke up before dawn and turned off the fan due to chilliness. The rooster was already crowing in the dark, as they do. I was able to fall back asleep. To my surprise, I was one of the last to get up. It wasn’t even 7 am, and Honduras is on the same time as U.S. Central, so no one was too far off their internal clock.
Ellen lived in Portland, OR, and Betty in NYC. Emily and Diana lived in San Antonio but were originally from upstate New York. Meg lived in Dearborn, MI. Meredith and I were both from the Twin Cities, and Lisa was living in Duluth, MN. Corie hailed from Worcester, MA, and Ale from Charlottesville, VA.
A bunch of delegates were out at the picnic table in the backyard, including Meredith smoking her cigarette at a polite remove. The sun was already strong. I moved to the shade nearby to protect my bald spot.
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| Meredith, Meg, Diana and Lisa |
We had a nice breakfast with eggs, tortillas and beans and headed off to San Pedro Sula for a press conference. We went back the way we’d come the day before and negotiated the traffic of a city with twice the population of Progreso, passing a city square and a stadium.
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| The wall around the MADJ building |
The press conference was in a one-story building surrounded by a white wall, like most residences of at least moderate means. The bus parked on the street, and we entered through a motorized gate. For this and all of our official functions, we wore blue vests that said “Witness for Peace” on the front and “Derechos Humanos” (“Human Rights”) and “Observador Internacional” (“International Observer”) on the back. We were greeted by some compañeros y compañeras (“comrades”) and María Dolores Cabrera, one of the leaders of MADJ.
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| The MADJ press conference for the Bremen Solidarity Award |
(When referring to groups including both men and women, everyone seemed to use both masculine and feminine forms, as in “compañeros y compañeras,” rather than just the masculine form, as is traditional in Spanish. I took this as an attempt to avoid female erasure in the language.)
MADJ is the Movimiento Amplio por la Dignidad y la Justicia (“Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice”), an organization started by Honduran lawyers in 2008 that supports local resistance movements. The press conference was to announce their receipt of the Bremen Solidarity Award, a prestigious human rights award from the city of Bremen, Germany.
There were others milling about, people who’d taken the bus from far away to be there. Corie, Ale and Meg spoke with them warmly, apparently out of familiarity. Meredith did too a bit while the rest of us hung back, due to shyness and a lack of Spanish skills.
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| Ale, Víctor Fernández and Corie |
We were also joined by Raúl, a 20-something man from Tegucigalpa who would be our translator for the next week. He became, arguably, the backbone of the whole operation, providing excellent translation for almost all of our partner meetings and interactions with Hondurans, as well as being a source of joy, humor and gravitas.
We entered the front room of the building and sat in back. Ellen and Meredith prepared their camera and mic to record the proceedings. People filtered in, many hugging Corie and Ale before taking their seats. A few media members arrived later, setting up video cameras. Eventually, the program began, a bit later than advertised, a phenomenon I called “schedule drift,” endemic to Latin America.
At the table in front sat 4 representatives of MADJ: Martín Fernández, the general coordinator; Víctor Fernández, María Dolores Cabrera and Magdalena Díaz, whose husband, Ramón Fiallos, had been killed in a protest at Jilamito. Darwin served as the MC. They introduced themselves and then turned on the video from the Bremen group.
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| Martín Fernández and María Dolores Cabrera of MADJ |
The video was shot in an ornate, Gothic church and clean, modernist offices. Although the Germans spoke Spanish, it was a stark contrast from our surroundings. Part of the video depicted Honduras. But why weren’t they here? I thought they could’ve shown more solidarity, considering it’s in the name of the freaking prize.
It’s not like they have much to fear in Honduras. They’re German! They enjoy the same bubble of protection in Latin America that we Americans have. But Martín and Víctor flew to Bremen shortly thereafter to receive the prize, so it’s not all bad (as long as Bremen footed the bill).
It went for maybe an hour, each representative saying their bit about the group’s work. Then we broke for lunch. The media conducted some interviews while some simple food was served.
Most of the WFP group clustered in back while Ale, Corie, Meg and Meredith chatted with the locals. This became a running theme of the trip, as with most of my trips to foreign lands. We’d traveled thousands of miles to meet them, but closing those last few feet was beyond us. We wanted to learn more about these people, but actually talking to them was a tall order.
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| The Salvemos al Merendón crew (Magdalena Díaz is in the middle, wearing the checked skirt.) |
I think the class divide was what kept us apart more than the lingual or cultural barriers. It’s the curse of being upper-middle-class. I was, unconsciously, taught to believe that poverty was a communicable disease. I guess it’s also a sense that there’s a fundamental difference between us and the Poor, not necessarily a moral failing on their part, but maybe an intellectual deficit. I was looking down on them from academic heights of arrogance.
But, even more than that, the higher you are on the socioeconomic ladder, the more uptight and reserved you tend to be, and I’m certainly no exception to that rule. The richer people are, the more cautious they become, because they think they have more to lose.
Betty expressed some envy of me, saying that I could just go over and talk to the Hondurans if I wanted to. She seemed to be goading me to do so. I told her I didn’t remember enough Spanish from high school (or Oaxaca) to carry on a convo. I later discovered that Betty’s Spanish was, at worst, comparable to mine.
A woman had come over to get us to pose for a picture holding bumper stickers printed with the message “Salvemos Al Merendón.” (“Let’s save the Merendón,” a local mountain.) I didn’t understand what she was saying, but one of us did, so we went up front to provide them a photo op.
In the afternoon, we gathered in Martín’s office to listen to him talk about MADJ. The place was nice and clean, but not fancy. A TV showed footage from security cameras outside. This was another recurring theme of the trip. I felt no sense of dread, but it was a reminder of the ever-present threat of violence, from the state, gangs or a murky combination of the two.
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| Martín in his office |
MADJ was started by lawyers in 2006 during their hunger strike protesting injustice and impunity in the legal system. (God, if only lawyers in the U.S. were that conscientious! Can you imagine American lawyers doing that? I guess they do sometimes, but not nearly enough of them.)
They support indigenous peoples’ struggle for survival and self-determination in the face of extractive megaprojects like logging, mining and hydroelectric dams. Even though the dams are not generally extractive in their operation, their construction pollutes the local water supply, and none of the projects benefits the local communities. The jobs created go to outsiders, and the profits accrue to the elite.
They challenge the megaprojects’ legitimacy by questioning their social value. They’ve tried to set up areas free of extractive capitalist enterprises, where the government can’t effectively sell concessions. They’re demanding projects that benefit local communities instead of displacing them for the elite’s benefit.
They take a three-pronged approach: Legal, Communications and Formación (training and debate). Decisions are made at the grassroots level. Members come from multiple socioeconomic classes.
The tight nexus of state and corporate power has put them at odds with the government. The organization is barred from holding bank accounts.
Martín explained how internecine quarrels among drug traffickers (including the government) generate violence. The violence creates insecurity, unease, impunity and a lack of economic investment. The rich build walls around their houses.
The violence and poverty fuel immigration. As a result, remittances from Honduran migrants provide 17% of the national budget. But banks exploit this by charging high fees.
After speaking with Martín, we visited MADJ’s pirate radio station, Radio Dignidad, out back. It provides them a wide reach and access to a largely illiterate population. They had a transmitter pole tied to the building and a little room for a studio. Ellen and Meredith were into that, as the resident media-makers. Ellen recorded audio at most events, and Meredith took pictures with her fancy camera.
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| Darwin in the Radio Dignidad studio |
After a tour of the radio station, we went back to Progreso. There was a lovely dinner waiting for us from the quiet woman in the kitchen at La Fragua. There were also geckos on the underside of the awning in back. They were reminders that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, momentarily shaking me out of my detachment.
We discussed US policy toward Honduras that night in the classroom. I’m sure I chimed in with something, but not as much as I wanted to. The US provides Honduras with $500 million a year in economic aid and $2.5 billion a year in security aid, just to give you an idea of where our priorities lie. The security aid mostly goes toward protecting the interests of Big Business. (I’ll be covering US policy in more depth in later installments.)
Raúl slept in my room that night, depriving me of my privileged status as the only delegate with a room to himself. But I gained a roomie who didn’t snore, which was nice. He was usually off in the evenings, typing on his laptop, translating audio on his ear buds, hard at work or “on that grind,” as the kids say. He’d be up late doing that or something else. I usually didn’t know what he was up to.
I had another shower that night in the military style. I don’t usually shower every day, but the heat and nerves made me sweaty. It was also an attempt to wash off the anxiety and tension that built up over the course of the day.
I went to bed at 10 that night, because we had to leave at 4 am the next day. I didn’t actually get to sleep until 11, but that was good enough for me. Having to get up that early made me anxious, so I was glad to just get 5 hours of sleep.
My cot was much more comfortable than I expected. That may have had to do with being on a mission I believed in and being with people with whom I felt a spiritual kinship. It was nice to be with Americans who shared my concerns about people in other countries, who don’t just try to put it out of their minds, who are aware of and actually willing to confront their own complicity in the crimes of the American Empire.
I’d been unwilling and unable to confront my complicity emotionally. It was only getting out of the Imperial Core and confronting the victimes face-to-face that freed me from that paralyzing fear of the Other, the Unknown, the External Proletariat whom I exploit. Of course, the benefit derived from this exploitation is only material. The emotional, social and spiritual harm it does me is arguably much greater.
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