Rhetoric and Reconstruction in Post-Mitch Honduras
Jeffrey, Paul
While Honduras' political culture tells the poor to follow orders and obey authorities, groups of hurricane victims are working to convert ordinary people into protagonists. When the...
...The question was whether anyone would listen...
...Many of those who have benefited from the injustice of the past see Mitch as merely one more opportunity for gain...
...But he would just smile when I told him that during these meetings no one did any work, rather it was a sort of club where friends drank coffee together and talked about how to get rich off the projects...
...suspende ayuda destinada a Cohdefor,"El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) April 26, 1999...
...If Flores was angry with Martinez, he was furious...
...Hurricane Mitch not only laid bare hillside slums...
...sought to reduce military power and strengthen their own hand...
...The New York Times called for a legislative change of heart...
...5 Flores did not just get mad at Valladares, he got even...
...Romero and other hurricane victims in El Progreso were not content to let government and NGO officials make all the decisions...
...Flores, at times arrogant and inclined to micro-manage, made decisions quickly in the wake of Mitch, accepting only obedience...
...2 ed by the state-run Forest Development Corporation Flores may have been upset that his wife's Fun(COHDEFOR), but the U.S...
...All decisions had to be made at the top of the government, instead of the government opening doors to nongovernmental organizations, municipalities and civil society so that they could take charge of the emergency," Caritas' Calix observed...
...For example, the duopoly of the performance...
...Under attack, Pineda Ponce lived up to his nickname of "PingPong" and announced a new vote...
...Author's interview, Leo Valladares, Tegucigalpa, June 1999...
...Even before all the bodies had been dug out of Soto's rubble, politicians self-righteously called for laws to forbid building in such high-risk zones, although regulations against building on such marginal land existed before the storm...
...One of the more controversial moves was the first of two votes by Congress to repeal Article 107 of the Constitution, which prohibits foreigners from owning land within approximately 25 miles of the country's borders...
...During the first five months of this year, both Citizen Forum and Interforos focused their energies on trying to convince the government to develop a reconstruction plan that would produce a country better than the one destroyed by the hurricane...
...Tourism was in trouble...
...It was a crime...
...A week before Stockholm, with politician Europeans pressing from one side and civil society from the other, Flo- victim, res invited the Citizen Forum to a in a d meeting which produced a joint statement committing the government to transparent management of international aid, decentralization and support for local governments, and combating social and environmental vulnerability...
...9. Thelma Mejia, "EE.UU...
...And the poor paid for it with their lives...
...The night of November 2, as the official death toll in Honduras hovered around 600, news came that the Posoltega mudslide had killed more than 2,000 people in Nicaragua...
...If we don't change things, then Mitch will be a double disaster...
...2 5 In the long run, that kind of spirit, in which the poor become subjects of their own history rather than objects of others, may inspire the deep social transformation that many Hondurans desire in the wake of Mitch...
...7. Hurricane Mitch Update, No.16, (Tegucigalpa), December 12, 1998...
...Martinez suggested that the President, who had just authorized spending $3.5 million to University students in Comayaguela remove mud and debris...
...On April 27, with hundreds of pro-Valladares protesters battling with police outside, the Congress voted unanimously to leave term and limited his job to passively receiving com- the commissioner's mandate unchanged...
...Our work in presenting bridges...
...1 0 The country's wealthy dangerous work than what we did before," he said...
...Mitch is an opportunity for us to reflect about what kind of country we want to have," said Noemi Espinoza, president of the Christian Commission for Development...
...This new agreement is to keep the government honest after Stockholm...
...Government auditors were dispatched to airports and ports to assure that material aid was properly accounted for and turned over to legitimate NGOs...
...Author's interview, Mauricio Diaz, Tegucigalpa, June 1999...
...Mitch demonstrated the total inefficiency of the military," said German Calix, executive secretary of Caritas, the Catholic Church aid organization...
...1 7 Amid the ruins left by Mitch, it seemed the perfect moment to unite around an alternative vision of the country's future, and in late December Caritas called together representatives of several other groups, mostly fellow NGOs...
...2 (March 1999...
...take months to show up in Honduras, as it is conditioned on government compliance with a variety of donor-dictated measures...
...The criticism provided by the Citizen Forum was important but for many pro- Macro-shelt gressive activists it did not go far enough...
...You can't talk about decentralization and strengthening the work of municipalities if most of the reconstruction money is going to be controlled by large central agencies like the public works ministry and FHIS [the government-run social investment fund]," declared Castellanos...
...Author's interview, German Calix, Tegucigalpa, May 1999...
...Post-Mitch grassroots organizing is beginning to impact local communities as well as national politics...
...COPECO didn't have a clue what to do...
...authorities "The Forum was questioning Flores' model of government, not the model of social organization that the country needed after Mitch," said Calix...
...He told me, 'I can't go to Stockholm emergency laws than Mitch could have possibly blown now, they're going to think we're all thieves,' " over...
...2 Indeed, Mitch has come to divide Honduran time into before and after...
...By mid-year, immigration officials were talking about 300,000 Central Americans-mostly Hondurans-having already gone north and another 600,000 ready to go before the end of the year...
...helicopter pilots upstaged the Honduran air force, armed forces chief General Mario Hung Pacheco lamely argued that Honduran helicopters got better gas mileage than the foreign choppers...
...The hillside was not appro- priate for building, but the wealthy Soto family sold lots to the poor there anyway...
...Export-oriented agriculture was also hard hit when Mitch inundated the banana belt along the north coast...
...It allows us to say, 'You made these promises and we're going to keep you to your word.' "21 Although the larger Interforos was still being ignored, the agreement allowed Flores to claim he had civil society on board...
...He called Valladares on March 16, two hours and roads and bridges was finally getting underway...
...For months, civil society had complained of government slowness, ineptitude and centralization...
...What we had before was widespread injustice and 28NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28REPORT ON CENTRAL AMERICA corruption...
...Such poor performance during the crisis provided Flores with the opportunity to assert greater civilian control over the generals...
...Yet loans in the package will push the country's foreign debt from about $4 to $4.5 billion, and much of the money will victims were nt to let the it oversee the :tion efforts...
...When the Berrinche hill collapsed into the Choluteca River in downtown Tegucigalpa, it brought down scores of houses...
...Agency for International daci6n Maria was criticized for failing to file reports Development (U.S.AID) suspended $3 million in aid about the money and material it received, but many to COHDEFOR in March because of corruption in the observers believe his response to the commissioner's awarding of contracts to harvest trees...
...6. Author's interview, German Calix, Tegucigalpa, May 1999...
...Tourist facilities were only slightly affected by the storm, but prospective visitors abroad assumed there was no place left in Honduras to spend their vacations...
...In this time of calamity," Moreno continued, "there's a risk that international assistance will perpetuate the arbitrary use of public institutions, of public delinquency disguised as legality and immunity, and greater controls of democratic spaces...
...The beautiful part of this is the new level of participation that we're achieving," said Romero who was elected president of the urban hurricane victims committee...
...Some traditional assumptions about power no longer held true, while others were reinforced...
...By April it represented over 500 different grassroots groups and NGOs, including Citizen Forum...
...When several colonels balked at his revision of their inflated payrolls, Dumas ably faced down the Mitch-weakened officials...
...The two groups turned the heat on the government as it prepared for the Stockholm meeting, repeatedly asking Flores to develop his requests with an eye on citizen participation, decentralization, transparency, sustainable development, environmental protection and combating poverty...
...But there's no new vision there...
...8. "Political storm follows Mitch," Enlace, No...
...Two months before Mitch, Flores had signaled his intention to install a civilian defense minister, setting off a flurry of coup rumors...
...4 Angered by the creative numbercrunching and the ineptitude of the generals' response, President Carlos Flores ordered COPECO to stop offering statistics...
...The country's forest lands are supposedly guard- Valladares recalled...
...Author's interview, Omar Serrano, El Progreso, May 1999...
...Those who oppose the least will help the most...
...he government's massive "Master Plan for Reconstruction and National Transformation," developed in secret by administration technocrats, was finally unveiled in April, at which time the government told critics it was too late to introduce changes...
...2. Author's interview, Noemi Espinoza, Tegucigalpa, November 1998...
...2 3 t will not be easy, but there are already signs of such transformation in the wake of the hurricane...
...ers for Mitch victims...
...In February, 6,000 peasants seized highways and bridges to protest the legislation, which they claimed threatened the titles of thousands of families who received land under the agrarian reform, as well as leaving 400,000 landless people with no hope of getting a piece of farmland to call their own...
...Flores and Dfaz came out of the room with promises to work together...
...The Honduran armed forces were exposed as bumbling and inefficient and lost much of their already frayed legitimacy...
...The model took on renewed importance after the storm as the President sought to jumpstart the economy, which, rather than growing by a predicted 5.5% in 1999, is expected to decline by at least 2...
...Honduras is the third Paul Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary in Central America...
...8 Lending credence to Schori's scenario, several people were hurt in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula when police and soldiers used violence to drive homeless families off land destined for the construction of giant macro-shelters for victims of Mitch...
...The military's Permanent Emergency Committee (COPECO) could not even keep the generator going at its Tegucigalpa headquarters...
...Chances that migrants, mostly rural peasants, might stay home on the farm were greatly reduced in December by Congress when it hastily gutted the country's agrarian reform laws...
...The Swedish minister of foreign cooperation, Pierre Schori, warned in January that Flores faced "a social Mitch" if he did not move faster in responding to the needs of the victims...
...Late on the night of April 20, Congress cut the commissioner's plaints...
...Yet political calculation and authoritarian imposition reigned behind the scenes...
...In the wake of Mitch, 15,000 purchase a helicopter, could students were mobilized to aid in reconstruction efforts throughout Honduras...
...Polkmica destituci6n del canciller," IPS, January 15, 1999...
...Political storm follows Mitch," Enlace, No...
...The Presiager of COHDEFOR, Antonio Ortez, received a letter dent is afraid that Valladares will continue with this from U.S.AID advising him of the aid suspension, he type of investigation," said sociologist Julieta Castelfired a staff member implicated in illicit post-Mitch lanos.' 3 Valladares agreed...
...It calls for rebuilding lots of schools, for example, but doesn't rethink an educational system that excludes a large portion of the population...
...European governments also consulted each other...
...Flores described the ravages of Mitch and asked for help...
...Battered by the criticism, Flores was grabbed by a Swedish diplomat who steered him back to his hotel room to meet with economist Mauricio Dfaz, head of the Interforos delegation...
...After the man- report was more than just another tantrum...
...See "Chiquita's Brand of Crisis Management," p. 30.] Even if the government could reverse the damage done and create new jobs in the maquila and the agroexport sectors, it would be too little, too late...
...If we left all the decisions up to the politicians we'd still be in a disaster...
...Flores alternately ignored and attacked Interforos and Citizen Forum, rattled the saber of regulation over uppity NGOs, and then tried coopting some of the protagonists, offering three Citizen Forum leaders top-ranking government jobs...
...Author's interview, Leo Valladares, Tegucigalpa, June 1999...
...In the postMitch landscape, however, nongovernmental organizations, church and other civic groups have not just accepted their fate...
...A massive and prolonged exodus of Hondurans toward the north began within days of the storm...
...Families in the Soto neighborhood had clung to the steep hill- side with the tenacity of the poor who had come to the city seeking a better life...
...The Valladares report had obviously touched a nerve...
...Foro Ciudadano,"Declaraci6n," December 1998...
...The President tried to be physically present in every affected zone, but if he didn't show up, neither did the dona- tions...
...He called Congress President Rafael Pineda Ponce and ordered that Valladares' mandate be destroyed...
...In December, for example, the Citizen Forum, a group of progressive academics and businesspeople, had claimed that "reconstruction without citizen participation does not assure democratization of the country nor permit transparency...
...The military lost the right to draft youth, as well as control of the police and several government agencies...
...most corrupt nation in Latin America, according to a 1998 study by Transparency International, and nothing was impossible for the rich...
...As word leaked out the next day, European ambassadors threatened possible aid cuts...
...For news crews from around the world, Flake patiently called provided the right mix of concern and urgency...
...2 (March 1999...
...The conflict came to a head on July 30, when the country's radio and television stations broadcast three hours of martial music while Flores and Dumas met with disgruntled officers from the high command, who had reportedly been organizing a coup attempt...
...Author's interview, Mauricio Dfaz, Tegucigalpa, June 1999...
...1 6 In response, the progovernment press vilified the Citizen Forum...
...5. Author's interview, German Calix, Tegucigalpa, May 1999...
...No one criticized Flores for fiddling while Honduras washed away, but his hands-on, authoritarian style was part of the problem...
...The Soto family made millions on that land," said Ram6n Custodio, president of the Honduran Human Rights Committee...
...Five Interforos representatives were also integrated into the official Honduran delegation...
...Such is the case in El Progreso, where Mitch wiped out hundreds of houses and left people like Nod Romero living in a neighborhood school, which served as a government-built macro-shelter for weeks...
...I In January, Flores lost patience with Martinez and sacked him...
...have better spent the money to build new houses for 2,500 Congress in March, the country's agrarian reform was families left homeless by Mitch...
...The government was not interested in suggestions from Interforos and the Citizen Forum, claiming it got civil society feedback from the National Convergence Forum (FONAC...
...Author's interview, Julieta Castellanos, Tegucigalpa, May 1999...
...The government went to great lengths in the initial weeks of the emergency to avoid the obvious examples of corruption that characterized the aftermath of Hurricane Fiff in 1974...
...ey was to be econstructing "as' ravaged cture-what ign diplomat "a feeding for public icials...
...looked with dollar signs in their eyes at hundreds of "It's easier to investigate human rights violations than miles of destroyed roads and nearly 100 washed-away acts of official corruption...
...Those who confuse and agitate others the least will help the most," the President declared...
...The political culture here tells the poor they should follow orders and obey authorities," said Omar Serrano, a Jesuit who assists the committee...
...Author's interview, Julieta Castellanos, Tegucigalpa, May 1999...
...reestablished, had remained the power behind the Permanent throne until this decade...
...When they failed, he sent his photogenic Hondur Cincinnati-born wife, Mary Flake, who has consciously modeled her- infrastru self after Jackie Kennedy, out to face one fore the cameras...
...Bananas are the country's second most lucrative export after coffee, and the largest company, the Tela Railroad Company, a subsidiary of Chiquita Brands International, lost 80% of its crops...
...1 4 Big money was to be made in reconstructing the With a decline in outright brutality by military country's ravaged infrastructure-one foreign diplo- forces, today Valladares is focusing on white-collar mat referred to the rebuilding efforts as "a feeding crime, a change that implies new risks...
...Threatened by such headline-stealing competition, the generals inflated the death toll overnight to 5,000, recovering their place in the world's lead paragraphs...
...In Stockholm the government put on a multimedia show, handing foreign donors glossy illustrated reports on the damage and the government's plans, as well as CDs with videos of all President Flores' major speeches since the hurricane struck...
...Opening up coastal areas to investment is part of a three-part economic development plan that was the foundation of Flores' economic policies before Mitch...
...Castellanos, one of the signers, said she had no illusions...
...19 Interforos produced its own alternative plan, which was long on transformation but short on reconstruction...
...The presentation did not convince donor representatives, who subjected Flores and his ministers to grueling questions afterward regarding the role of civil society in the design and execution of the projects...
...After years of lethargy, Interforos gave civil society a new and stronger voice...
...On the other hand, the hurricane further reinforced the current government's authoritarian style, and the crisis was seized upon by "Mitch demonst inefficiency of th The military's Emergency Con have a clue v the country's economic elites to accelerate privatization efforts...
...After having lost face during Mitch, however, the military had no choice but to accept Flores' decision to appoint journalist Edgardo Dumas to the job on January 28...
...Flores blasted his critics in a January 25 speech to Congress...
...Although compromise legislation was approved by Vol XXXIII...
...But things did not look good for Flores...
...He is the author of Recovering Memory: Guatemalan Churches and the Challenge of Peacemaking (Life & Peace Institute, 1998...
...It provides for new bridges and roads so that the President can finish his term with lots of new things built...
...Afro-Caribbean groups, fearing the change will bring cultural devastation to Garifuna communities along the north coast, argued against a wholesale repeal of the clause...
...By pushing a pretty face out in public," noted Calix, "the government managed to avoid a lot of criticism...
...The opportunity that Mitch of possible abuse...
...Yet FONAC, which is controlled by political parties, functions merely as a rubberstamp for government policies...
...he military took the lead in relief efforts, but its ineptitude contributed to the continuing erosion of military power in Honduras...
...Author's interview, Julieta Castellanos, Tegucigalpa, May 1999...
...4. The numbers game would come back to haunt the government in January when journalists began reporting discrepancies between the government's figures and the actual number of victims...
...Author's interview, Nob Romero, El Progreso, May 1999...
...Promised additional revisions never took place, and the official nationwide toll remained 5,657 dead and 8,058 missing...
...Out of that meeting came a new group, Interforos, which expanded rapidly in subsequent months...
...Several officers have been charged with murder and torture, and even General Hung was indicted in May for authorizing a private security firm linked to drug traffickers...
...In late June, Interforos began designing a new, permanent structure that would guarantee civil society influence in how the resources were used...
...We've never seen anything like this before...
...I grew tired of warning the President, who is my personal friend," said Martinez...
...The President emerged from the meeting to announce the firing of the vice minister of defense, General Roberto Lazarus, and several other high-ranking officers...
...Two days later, however, the fired proportionate response makes sense to me," he said, employee showed up with a letter from President Flo- "is that they were worried we would investigate other res ordering Ortez to reinstate him.9 things...
...This is more trough for public officials...
...It was not much...
...The government promises, the President promises, but they don't comply...
...7 Despite the Honduran government's efforts to present an image of itself as acting on behalf of all Hondurans, the priority of most politicians-in the name of encouraging post-Mitch foreign investment-was to hand over further concessions to the private sector and foreign corporations...
...Other Hondurans, especially the poor, see Mitch as an opportunity to reconstruct a more just and democratic country in the wake of the storm...
...For example, the government government's budget, which was released in May, awarded munici- reconstru( palities-which are supposed to "If e w receive 5% of the national budgetonly 1.06% of the $1.4 billion total decision package...
...The only way such a dissales of pinewood...
...Flores could have presented for large-scale illicit enrichment was just cited the report as a vindication of his administration's too big to be ignored...
...2 0 Hurricane If anything, the government propos- not conte al decentralized responsibilities but not resources...
...The television images are clear: from the ruins and mud the President and the first lady emerge reaching out a hand to their people," stated Ismael Moreno, coordinator of the emergency committee in El Progreso...
...No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1999 31 VOL XXXIII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1999 31REPORT ON CENTRAL AMERICA projects provoked Foreign Minister Fernando Martinez to resign in protest from Flores' special Reconstruction Cabinet in December...
...We want transparency," Diaz said, "not just to avoid theft but to insure that the resources are used well and will support authentic transformation of our country...
...NGOs with money for houses were lined up waiting, but committee members insisted on taking the time necessary for them to design their new housing projects the way they wanted them, not the way some NGO technician thought they ought to be...
...The Honduran armed forces, which ruled the country for most of the two decades rated the total prior to 1981 when at least nominal civilian rule was e armed forces...
...The officials have spent all their time fighting among themselves and struggling for political power, so they simply were not prepared to confront an emergency...
...with a preliminary report from the human rights comegislative maneuvering was not the only self- missioner, Leo Valladares, who had surveyed manserving strategy employed by elites in post- agement of emergency assistance and found 17 cases Mitch Honduras...
...He writes regularly for Latinamerica Press, National Catholic Reporter and other church-based media...
...left seriously debilitated...
...All government documents here are worthless paper, because there is no oversight afterward, no accountability," she declared...
...These sites have seen violent clashes as expelled homeless families before beginning construction...
...Author's interview, Thelma Mejia, Tegucigalpa, May 1999...
...Do we want to simply rebuild what we had before...
...If demilitarization accelerated in the wake of Mitch, democracy building faltered as the government threw away an opportunity for transparency and increased political participation...
...Rhetoric and Reconstruction 1. Author's interview, Ramon Custodio, Tegucigalpa, November 1998...
...It's an electoral plan, not a political plan," said Thelma Mejia, editor of El Heraldo...
...Yet the committee of hurricane victims is working in such a way that ordinary people become protagonists...
...While the two plans seemed complimentary, there were inherent contradictions...
...after the report's release, and demanded the document And more trees were logged in highland forests under be retracted...
...And as the President was asking the Clinton Administration to award Honduras enhanced benefits under the Caribbean Basin Initiative to encourage greater investment in the maquila sector, eight maquilas had closed shop and fled to Mexico by June...
...Under the onslaught of Hurricane Mitch, their homes slid away in a matter of minutes...
...Yet the President exploded, claiming the country's two cement companies-one owned by the report made the government look bad in the weeks military-raised prices in April without apparent before a major May meeting with donors in Stockcause, just as the construction of thousands of houses holm...
...Asked why Mexican and U.S...
...it also laid bare the foundations of injustice on which Honduran society has been built...
...Committee members occupied city hall when they failed to get the attention of city officials, finally convincing the mayor to obtain money to purchase land...
...Her personal charity, trough the semi-private Fundaci6n Maria, off accepted donations by the containerful from foreign donors uncomfortable with giving resources to a notoriously corrupt government...
...Author's interview, Leo Valladares, Tegucigalpa, June 1999...
...This came as a crushing blow to Flores, who had hoped more maquilas would absorb thousands of Hondurans left unemployed by Mitch...
...They come not from the debates between political elites in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, but rather at the grassroots where Mitch has given some Hondurans a chance to build new relationships...
...The plan detailed a long shopping list of reconstruction projects totaling $3.99 billion, yet it did not impress those who demanded a new Honduras...
...24 Romero's committee pressured for decent food supplies, finally telling the World Food Program, which had been widely criticized for broken promises and inappropriate shipments, to leave town...
...In nmittee didn't recent years, however, civilian governments have ihat to do...
...Many of the military's planes were useless, grounded by lack of maintenance or spare parts...
...5 When COPECO fumbled in overseeing the national relief effort, Flo- Big mon res handed the ball to his cabinet, assigning each one responsibility for made in r a department of the country...
...The international pressure made the government finally listen to us," says Dfaz...
...3 The agency was prepared, however, to put an advantageous spin on the crisis...
...The lack of competitive bidding for massive 'The Facts Speak for Themselves' [a 1994 report on 32 NALIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON CENTRAL AMERICA military-sponsored disappearances in the 1980s] never provoked such a violent and brutal response from the authorities as our investigation after Mitch...
...eft all the s up to the s," said one rve'd still be isaster...
...This is a strategy aimed at winning hearts and minds on behalf of particular figures or powers...
...2 2 The government came home from Stockholm with about $2.6 billion in total commitments...
...6 wake of Mitch...
...Author's interview, Tegucigalpa, May 1999...
...In the first hours of the "postMitch" era, the political landscape began to shift...
...3. Author's interview, German Calix, Tegucigalpa, May 1999...
...bribes took care of legal obstacles...
...The three legs of his program include an increase in tourism, an expansion of the maquilas and a strengthening the agro-export sector...
Vol. 33 • September 1999 • No. 2
