HONDURAS: The War Comes Home
SIX YEARS AGO WE CALLED OUR REPORT on Honduras, "On the Border of War." Reagan had been in office less than a year, and we glimpsed only the beginnings of a policy that some Hondurans now refer...
...I'm not an enemy of America, but I do feel offended by the American troops in Honduras...
...Economic Assistance, forthcoming from Westview Press...
...Sadly, we found that oasis gone...
...In "The Military: Willing to Deal," Meza shows how the Reagan years have transformed the armed forces, which have skillfully used the contras as "the ultimate trump card" in extracting favors from Washington...
...Reagan had been in office less than a year, and we glimpsed only the beginnings of a policy that some Hondurans now refer to as "U.S...
...Pav6n, a regional CEDOH leader, had accompanied Ram6n Custodio earlier in the week to present the committee's report to the peace process verification commission making the rounds of Central American capitals...
...Jos6 Isafas Vilorio Barahona, one of three officers scheduled to testify at Inter-American Court of Human Rights hearings, was killed as he waited for a bus...
...According to social scientist Victor Meza, director of the Honduran Documentation Center, the country's embrace of the contras "is the armed forces' exclusive responsibility...
...Much to the government's embarrassment, the newly appointed chairman, Monsignor H6ctor Enrique Santos, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, said his commission would be looking into Honduras' grave human rights picture...
...The presence of the U.S...
...war against Nicaragua, what had happened to this society once termed "an oasis for peace in Central America...
...As a junior officer, Vilorio would likely have fingered his commanders...
...aircraft carrier...
...Indeed, nowhere in Central America has Washington's word and will held sway like in Honduras...
...Contra support activities at the Aguacate base, built by U.S...
...For many, the country had simply shed one stereotype for another-from "Banana Republic" to "the newest U.S...
...Since then it has become clear that there are those who would thwart that investigation...
...But in the process of becoming a stage for the U.S...
...M IGUEL ANGEL PAVON AND MOISES LANdaverde were shot dead January 14 on a San Pedro Sula street...
...A plot was discovered on Dr...
...Embassy is pervasive," said a Western European diplomat, "the United States has God-like powers...
...Honduras was the last signatory to appoint a Reconciliation Commission, yielding only after two months of pressure by the Church and political opposition...
...diplomats, investors and advisers, the biggest Peace Corps program in the world...
...Yet in "Campesinos: Between Carrot and Stick," Medea Benjamin reveals how the reform's snail-like pace under civilian government does little to help the 8,000 families who become landless yearly...
...Tell the politicians they are not making any friends down here," Ram6n Custodio, a physician who heads the Honduran Human Rights Committee (CEDOH), said last summer...
...National Guardsmen during the Big Pine II "exercises" in 1983, have been discreetly moved to the remote Caribbean Swan Island...
...Attempts to distribute land more equitably began in 1962, earlier than most of Central America...
...money, U.S...
...Shepherd is author of The Honduran Crisis and U.S...
...Shepherd, assistant professor of Marketing and Business Environment at Miami's Florida International University, writes that the U.S...
...U.S...
...Custodio's life in December, and on January 5 Sgt...
...And despite Washington's largesse--one billion dollars in aid over the last seven years-Hondurans remain the Hemisphere's third poorest people...
...In this issue's final article, "The Case of the Invisible Aid," economist Philip L. Shepherd looks at the impact of "Reaganomics for Honduras...
...We set out to find just what those "God-like" powers had wrought...
...A 1972 "hunger march" on Tegucigalpa by thousands of peasants successfully forced a deepening of the reforms...
...A LTHOUGH CIVILIANS NOW OFFICIALLY govern, it is clear that those Hondurans executing Washington policy are in uniform...
...Agency for International Development has become a "shadow government" calling the shots in every aspect of Honduran economic policy...
...troops, U.S...
...I have no doubt that the future of Honduras will be the same as that of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua," a former labor minister told our author...
...civilian authorities can do little but reinforce the military strategy with diplomatic activity...
...occupation...
...Benjamin, a senior analyst at the Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, is co-author of No Free Lunch: Food and Revolution in Cuba Today...
...Since 1981, the war has come home...
...In clear violation of the treaty, contra operations are still run out of Honduran territory...
...The men's deaths are tragic commentary on the level of violence that has become commonplace in Honduras, and on the country's non-compliance with the terms of the peace agreement...
...That of great social upheaval and civil war...
Vol. 22 • January 1988 • No. 1
