I got back to Granada Saturday afternoon just in time to catch the second half of Alabama's 32-13 victory over Florida, a good way to start my last few days here.
The cheapest flight home I could find leaves out of San Jose, Costa Rica (one country south of here) on Dec. 17 early in the morning. So that means I'll be traveling a little farther than expected, but I refuse to rename this blog cause Bama Rica isn't as clever a title.
I had a talk with my boss about ending the internship early given the circumstances of my flight being in less than two weeks and he was fine with it. I also just want to take the rest of my time to enjoy this whole experience and reflect on what a ride it's been. It feels like it's all ending very suddenly, though I've got a few more amazing things to see before I head out.
My next stop is Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua. It's two volcanoes connected by a little isthmus of igneous rock in the middle of the lake, and supposedly "the biggest island in the world found in a freshwater lake." I've been hearing about this place for years. Not only is it supposed to be other-worldly in its beauty but it's actually home to a number of environmentalist projects in farming and conservation. I've met some of the North Americans and Europeans who live out there working in these environmentally friendly projects and I was surprised to learn the scope of these projects' influence and outreach. Ometepe just sounds like one of those natural havens for people trying to think of ways to save the world.
I will leave for Ometepe tomorrow on a four-hour ferry ride down the lake from Granada (Lake Nicaragua is one of the biggest lakes in the world), spend a few days there and then I believe go to San Juan del Sur on the southern Pacific coast for Dec. 11, which happens to be my birthday. Celebrating it abroad with no one I am remotely familiar with should be interesting.
Also, I hear it's quite cold right now in my sweet home of Alabama. Last night around midnight I sat with my now former boss and roommate around a courtyard in rocking chairs, sipping tequila on the rocks and admiring the needle in the thermostat on the wall, which was trembling just beneath the 90-degree mark. This morning, as usual, I woke up mopped in sweat and kicked the one cover off me and lied there in my shorts for a while before slowly peeling myself from the mattress and took a long shower in cold water. The heat just never gives up in Granada.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Furious rant
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - There's something fishy about these official international observers, and I feel like a lot of them exposed their true allegiances tonight at the Marriott in Tegucigalpa where the Supreme Elections Tribunal and all the hundreds of media here were set up to cover the elections returns.
In interviewing international observers tonight, I noticed a strange trend: not one of them had ever been an official elections observer before. They talked my ear off with all kinds of lofty rhetoric about how Honduras is speaking for itself now and what a great democratic fiesta this was and how Hugo Chavez lost his shot at taking over Honduras. Very few of them spoke in a way that was clearly non-partisan. After lots of questioning, many revealed they had allegiances to right-wing interests that had wanted the coup government to be recognized from the very beginning. This all made me start to question just how legitimate are the people hired to say the elections are legitimate? I wasn't the only one. And then this happened.
I was walking by a Chilean observer who got in a heated argument with a latina journalist I believe was working for Al Jazeera. She had also pointed out how inexperienced a lot of these observers appeared to be, and this guy and another observer got into it with her. Suddenly all the Honduran journalists and Honduran observers swarmed her and her argument with these two observers got drowned out by all these Honduran journalists and observers - IMPARTIAL PROFESSIONALS - shouting "Long live Honduran democracy!" and holding up signs for the cameras.
I got the Chilean guy's attention and he slipped out and I interviewed him. He acknowledged this was also the first time he had been an election observer, but he "has a law degree" and thinks he's capable of handling this job. OK, fair enough.
But while we were talking the crowd got even bigger around this poor woman and everyone around her was shouting "FUERA! FUERA!" (Out! Out!) and she actually had to flee the hotel because she was being verbally assaulted by these people, that's why I'm not sure who she was with.
Even the Chilean guy said "I disagree with her, but that over there's a bit much."
And some of those official Honduran observers chased her downstairs and out the door, and once she was gone they started whooping with fists raised towards the second floor balcony where we all were, and they all started chanting "Honduras! Honduras!"
It was just an unbelievable display of golpista mob rule. Dissenting opinions not welcome. The other international journalists were also shocked by the whole sight. Me and a French TV journalist were so incensed and talking about it that we started to draw the eyes of those same bastards who chased away a journalist who dared to ask a legitimate question about this cherry-picked group of international observers.
I'm still furious. Is this how we're supposed to know that democracy and transparency and freedom of dissent are still alive in Honduras? When the pro-coup media and pro-coup observers swarm people for asking questions and chase them all the way down the stairs and out the door?
Disgusting. Horrific. Any other words that come to mind I'll just shout off the balcony later once I get a much deserved drink.
In interviewing international observers tonight, I noticed a strange trend: not one of them had ever been an official elections observer before. They talked my ear off with all kinds of lofty rhetoric about how Honduras is speaking for itself now and what a great democratic fiesta this was and how Hugo Chavez lost his shot at taking over Honduras. Very few of them spoke in a way that was clearly non-partisan. After lots of questioning, many revealed they had allegiances to right-wing interests that had wanted the coup government to be recognized from the very beginning. This all made me start to question just how legitimate are the people hired to say the elections are legitimate? I wasn't the only one. And then this happened.
I was walking by a Chilean observer who got in a heated argument with a latina journalist I believe was working for Al Jazeera. She had also pointed out how inexperienced a lot of these observers appeared to be, and this guy and another observer got into it with her. Suddenly all the Honduran journalists and Honduran observers swarmed her and her argument with these two observers got drowned out by all these Honduran journalists and observers - IMPARTIAL PROFESSIONALS - shouting "Long live Honduran democracy!" and holding up signs for the cameras.
I got the Chilean guy's attention and he slipped out and I interviewed him. He acknowledged this was also the first time he had been an election observer, but he "has a law degree" and thinks he's capable of handling this job. OK, fair enough.
But while we were talking the crowd got even bigger around this poor woman and everyone around her was shouting "FUERA! FUERA!" (Out! Out!) and she actually had to flee the hotel because she was being verbally assaulted by these people, that's why I'm not sure who she was with.
Even the Chilean guy said "I disagree with her, but that over there's a bit much."
And some of those official Honduran observers chased her downstairs and out the door, and once she was gone they started whooping with fists raised towards the second floor balcony where we all were, and they all started chanting "Honduras! Honduras!"
It was just an unbelievable display of golpista mob rule. Dissenting opinions not welcome. The other international journalists were also shocked by the whole sight. Me and a French TV journalist were so incensed and talking about it that we started to draw the eyes of those same bastards who chased away a journalist who dared to ask a legitimate question about this cherry-picked group of international observers.
I'm still furious. Is this how we're supposed to know that democracy and transparency and freedom of dissent are still alive in Honduras? When the pro-coup media and pro-coup observers swarm people for asking questions and chase them all the way down the stairs and out the door?
Disgusting. Horrific. Any other words that come to mind I'll just shout off the balcony later once I get a much deserved drink.
Election morning
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - It's been a very slow day thus far, so I thought I'd take the time to make an update about my trip to the polls this morning.
I hitched a ride with Bloomberg reporter (and former Nica Times reporter) Eric Sabo this morning to several polling places not long after they opened around 7 a.m. Each had a handful of soldiers and police, but no overwhelming presence was visible anywhere in the streets. The city was dead this morning, as if it were any other Sunday. There's no sense that really anything is happening in Honduras unless you talk to some people in the modest crowds at the polls.
Those voting will tell you how important these elections are for democracy in Honduras. For some it's about their candidate, but for most it's about sending a message to the international community. There's no fear of violence, nor any real fear of fraud taking place. Without a doubt, there will be a lot of people who don't go to the polls, but it probably won't be significant enough for Zelaya's supporters to gain momentum on keeping the elections from being recognized. That's really their only hope at this point for having any say in Honduras' political future.
In other words, the only people who have anything at stake today in the elections themselves are the two main candidates for the presidency, Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos (from Zelaya and Micheletti's now very divided party) and National Party candidate Pepe Lobo, who barring a huge surprise should win today. Which one of them wins, in my opinion, really won't have more or less effect than the other on Honduras' future. It appears now there's more at stake on Dec. 2, when the congress votes on and likely rejects Zelaya's restitution.
At this point I really think the Resistance and the international community are out of options. The support of the United States was crucial in keeping the hope of Zelaya's restitution alive, and the Obama administration jumped the gun following the signing of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord in saying it would more than likely recognize the election results. Micheletti can pat himself on the back for signing that accord which gave the interim government ample loopholes to take advantage of. They were able to get Zelaya to agree to calling for a unity government that the interim government on its own got the right to decide and agreed to let the same congress that certified his ouster have the vote on his restitution without setting a deadline. That was crucial, because it let congress put the issue off until after the elections without drawing condemnation from the U.S., even though it was understood in theory that they would do it more promptly.
Polls close at 4 p.m. and I think the results may be known as early as 7 p.m., but that's probably optimistic. In the meantime I'll be here in the lobby of the Clarion Hotel with a few other journalists watching the local news and following the other blogs. Here's hoping Hondurans can find something to celebrate on an otherwise very uninspiring day in Central American politics.
I hitched a ride with Bloomberg reporter (and former Nica Times reporter) Eric Sabo this morning to several polling places not long after they opened around 7 a.m. Each had a handful of soldiers and police, but no overwhelming presence was visible anywhere in the streets. The city was dead this morning, as if it were any other Sunday. There's no sense that really anything is happening in Honduras unless you talk to some people in the modest crowds at the polls.
Those voting will tell you how important these elections are for democracy in Honduras. For some it's about their candidate, but for most it's about sending a message to the international community. There's no fear of violence, nor any real fear of fraud taking place. Without a doubt, there will be a lot of people who don't go to the polls, but it probably won't be significant enough for Zelaya's supporters to gain momentum on keeping the elections from being recognized. That's really their only hope at this point for having any say in Honduras' political future.
In other words, the only people who have anything at stake today in the elections themselves are the two main candidates for the presidency, Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos (from Zelaya and Micheletti's now very divided party) and National Party candidate Pepe Lobo, who barring a huge surprise should win today. Which one of them wins, in my opinion, really won't have more or less effect than the other on Honduras' future. It appears now there's more at stake on Dec. 2, when the congress votes on and likely rejects Zelaya's restitution.
At this point I really think the Resistance and the international community are out of options. The support of the United States was crucial in keeping the hope of Zelaya's restitution alive, and the Obama administration jumped the gun following the signing of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord in saying it would more than likely recognize the election results. Micheletti can pat himself on the back for signing that accord which gave the interim government ample loopholes to take advantage of. They were able to get Zelaya to agree to calling for a unity government that the interim government on its own got the right to decide and agreed to let the same congress that certified his ouster have the vote on his restitution without setting a deadline. That was crucial, because it let congress put the issue off until after the elections without drawing condemnation from the U.S., even though it was understood in theory that they would do it more promptly.
Polls close at 4 p.m. and I think the results may be known as early as 7 p.m., but that's probably optimistic. In the meantime I'll be here in the lobby of the Clarion Hotel with a few other journalists watching the local news and following the other blogs. Here's hoping Hondurans can find something to celebrate on an otherwise very uninspiring day in Central American politics.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Citizen Coup
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – My mornings here always start with a walk through downtown to a local café or restaurant where I get breakfast. I buy two or three newspapers on the way and spend most of the morning reading them so I have a thorough grasp of the local take on everything affecting the country.
After a few days of repeating this process, I realized how hard the media down here make it for anyone to have a firm grasp of the situation. Reading these newspapers is painful. They’re wishy washy, they’re biased and there’s no reason to believe a single one of them is presenting the truth, since they rarely use attribution anyway.
The two big papers that support the coup, El Heraldo and La Tribuna, each about 60 pages usually, both dedicate about 20 pages a day to election coverage. With all that copy, you’d expect the average reader to take away a firm interpretation of the previous day’s events, the issues at hand, and how feasible the candidates’ plans for accomplishing their goals would be.
Not in Honduras. What these papers want is for people to go vote, to make a point to the international community and to give yet another victory to the oligarchy that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya (who now resides in the Brazilian Embassy 10 blocks away from my hotel) and pays them to openly refer to his supporters as terrorists. In fact, relatively few of these articles focus on health, education, poverty, crime or any other part of the myriad of domestic issues facing Honduras.
As we get closer to Sunday’s elections, they way their coverage leans becomes more obvious. They preach about threats of a Zelayista boycott from unknown sources, a boycott they present as being well-organized and violent, intent on disrupting the vote in anyway possible to, in La Tribuna and El Heraldo’s words, “prevent our democratic celebration.”
And why would they say that, I wonder, when yesterday in an interview I did with Juan Barahona, the leader of the entire Resistance Front Against the Coup, he said leaders are specifically telling all Zelaya supporters to not vote and stay at home?
“We’ve told people to stay at home and not to vote,” Barahona said. “We won’t be protesting on election day.”
The mainstream media have not once reported that this is what the Resistance is telling people. Instead they’re trying to justify the army calling up 5,000 reservists for election week by fabricating a plot by the Resistance to turn out in large numbers to keep people from voting. The military could use support in the press, considering Andres Pavon, director of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras, recently came out saying the military is planning a “massacre” against Zelaya’s supporters. Pavon was also the first to predict back in the summer that a coup was being plotted against Zelaya.
On Wednesday, La Tribuna ran a full-page story glorifying Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos – who resigned as Zelaya’s vice president to run for the presidency – for walking through a Tegucigalpa neighborhood and ripping down posters that called on people not to vote Nov. 29. The posters said “No to the elections! Yes to a constitutional assembly,” the issue Zelaya was ousted from power over, “In the face of this electoral farce, we promise not to vote!” But the headline read “Elvin destroys propaganda that incites apprehension and fear.”
What? In America, the headline would have been “Cute publicity stunt, Elvin.” And even though voting is not mandatory in Honduras, today La Tribuna reported that government prosecutors are trying to find the people who made the boycott posters and press charges of “electoral misconduct” against them.
Last time I thought about it, voting wasn’t as important to democracy as simply doing what you think is best for the common good and not persecuting people who see differently from you. Democracy is defined in Honduras by those who support the coup as more a policy of “doing what our masters tell us.” And to them there’s nothing more undemocratic than letting a giant segment of the population make a peaceful political statement on the day of elections by refusing to vote for candidates they don’t believe in.
Over the last 10 years voter abstention has gone from 25 percent (in 1997) to 44 percent (in 2005), even before the country’s leaders oversaw the region’s biggest political crisis in decades. With most of the international community still undecided on whether to recognize the election results, the pro-coup media know very well that a lot of political leverage is at stake with voter turnout. And if voter turnout is lower than ever, who wants to place bets that the Zelayistas get blamed for scaring people away? The possibility that people think the two main candidates are opportunistic snakes in the grass (which they are) or that people expected the results to be fraudulent won’t even get mentioned.
There is potential for a terrorist attack come election day. One could even argue that Barahona knows it and that’s why he’s telling his people to stay away from the polls. There have been reported attacks with small explosives against various political parties’ offices around the country, but they’ve caused very little damage or gone off when no one was at the building. Also interesting is that not one of these stories has been accompanied by a photo of the reported damage. Every story about these incidents links them to the Resistance without ever once getting comment from a Resistance leader, including stories on the arrests of four men believed to be planning an attack against interim President Roberto Micheletti in El Progreso this week.
There’s a lot of uncertainty here, and the Honduran media have only fuelled it. I expect there will be some arrests on election day, but ultimately enough people will come out to vote, the losers will concede defeat, the Resistance will be painted as weaker than ever for not showing up (and all it took was the threat of a massacre, wimps), and eventually the Honduran elections will be recognized worldwide. On Dec. 2 the congress will probably vote against returning Zelaya to power, he’ll probably be tried for various crimes, the coup leaders will get away Scott free, and a dangerous precedent will be set for future left-leaning leaders. No matter who is elected, the true driving force of democracy here will remain in the hands of the privileged few and they’ll spend the rest of their lives patting themselves on the back for how they handled that one close call.
After a few days of repeating this process, I realized how hard the media down here make it for anyone to have a firm grasp of the situation. Reading these newspapers is painful. They’re wishy washy, they’re biased and there’s no reason to believe a single one of them is presenting the truth, since they rarely use attribution anyway.
The two big papers that support the coup, El Heraldo and La Tribuna, each about 60 pages usually, both dedicate about 20 pages a day to election coverage. With all that copy, you’d expect the average reader to take away a firm interpretation of the previous day’s events, the issues at hand, and how feasible the candidates’ plans for accomplishing their goals would be.
Not in Honduras. What these papers want is for people to go vote, to make a point to the international community and to give yet another victory to the oligarchy that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya (who now resides in the Brazilian Embassy 10 blocks away from my hotel) and pays them to openly refer to his supporters as terrorists. In fact, relatively few of these articles focus on health, education, poverty, crime or any other part of the myriad of domestic issues facing Honduras.
As we get closer to Sunday’s elections, they way their coverage leans becomes more obvious. They preach about threats of a Zelayista boycott from unknown sources, a boycott they present as being well-organized and violent, intent on disrupting the vote in anyway possible to, in La Tribuna and El Heraldo’s words, “prevent our democratic celebration.”
And why would they say that, I wonder, when yesterday in an interview I did with Juan Barahona, the leader of the entire Resistance Front Against the Coup, he said leaders are specifically telling all Zelaya supporters to not vote and stay at home?
“We’ve told people to stay at home and not to vote,” Barahona said. “We won’t be protesting on election day.”
The mainstream media have not once reported that this is what the Resistance is telling people. Instead they’re trying to justify the army calling up 5,000 reservists for election week by fabricating a plot by the Resistance to turn out in large numbers to keep people from voting. The military could use support in the press, considering Andres Pavon, director of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras, recently came out saying the military is planning a “massacre” against Zelaya’s supporters. Pavon was also the first to predict back in the summer that a coup was being plotted against Zelaya.
On Wednesday, La Tribuna ran a full-page story glorifying Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos – who resigned as Zelaya’s vice president to run for the presidency – for walking through a Tegucigalpa neighborhood and ripping down posters that called on people not to vote Nov. 29. The posters said “No to the elections! Yes to a constitutional assembly,” the issue Zelaya was ousted from power over, “In the face of this electoral farce, we promise not to vote!” But the headline read “Elvin destroys propaganda that incites apprehension and fear.”
What? In America, the headline would have been “Cute publicity stunt, Elvin.” And even though voting is not mandatory in Honduras, today La Tribuna reported that government prosecutors are trying to find the people who made the boycott posters and press charges of “electoral misconduct” against them.
Last time I thought about it, voting wasn’t as important to democracy as simply doing what you think is best for the common good and not persecuting people who see differently from you. Democracy is defined in Honduras by those who support the coup as more a policy of “doing what our masters tell us.” And to them there’s nothing more undemocratic than letting a giant segment of the population make a peaceful political statement on the day of elections by refusing to vote for candidates they don’t believe in.
Over the last 10 years voter abstention has gone from 25 percent (in 1997) to 44 percent (in 2005), even before the country’s leaders oversaw the region’s biggest political crisis in decades. With most of the international community still undecided on whether to recognize the election results, the pro-coup media know very well that a lot of political leverage is at stake with voter turnout. And if voter turnout is lower than ever, who wants to place bets that the Zelayistas get blamed for scaring people away? The possibility that people think the two main candidates are opportunistic snakes in the grass (which they are) or that people expected the results to be fraudulent won’t even get mentioned.
There is potential for a terrorist attack come election day. One could even argue that Barahona knows it and that’s why he’s telling his people to stay away from the polls. There have been reported attacks with small explosives against various political parties’ offices around the country, but they’ve caused very little damage or gone off when no one was at the building. Also interesting is that not one of these stories has been accompanied by a photo of the reported damage. Every story about these incidents links them to the Resistance without ever once getting comment from a Resistance leader, including stories on the arrests of four men believed to be planning an attack against interim President Roberto Micheletti in El Progreso this week.
There’s a lot of uncertainty here, and the Honduran media have only fuelled it. I expect there will be some arrests on election day, but ultimately enough people will come out to vote, the losers will concede defeat, the Resistance will be painted as weaker than ever for not showing up (and all it took was the threat of a massacre, wimps), and eventually the Honduran elections will be recognized worldwide. On Dec. 2 the congress will probably vote against returning Zelaya to power, he’ll probably be tried for various crimes, the coup leaders will get away Scott free, and a dangerous precedent will be set for future left-leaning leaders. No matter who is elected, the true driving force of democracy here will remain in the hands of the privileged few and they’ll spend the rest of their lives patting themselves on the back for how they handled that one close call.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Amid boycott, Honduras prepares for vote
Bamaragua note: This is a shortened version of a story that will run in the Nov. 27 edition of The Nica Times
By Mike Faulk
Nica Times Staff
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – There's more on the line than just the presidency when Hondurans go to the voting polls this weekend.
On Nov. 29, five presidential candidates are set to square off in an election that is expected to boil down to two candidates, the conservative National Party's Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, who has a commanding 16 percent lead in the polls, and center-left Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos, who severed as vice-president under deposed President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya.
All of the candidates are running on platforms that call for improvements to education, health and safety in Honduras.
But the real issue heading into this weekend's elections is the future of Honduras' democracy, and whether or not the elections will be able to restore any credibility or legitimacy to the country's embattled political system.
Since the June 28 coup against Zelaya, Honduras has been entangled in Central America's worst political crisis in decades.
Many countries in the region have said they won't recognize the elections unless Zelaya is restored to the presidency before Sunday. Congress announced last week it will vote on the ousted president's temporary restitution on Dec. 2 – a move Zelaya rejects as a violation of the agreement he signed earlier this month with de facto President Roberto Micheletti.
Still, many Hondurans are hoping a strong turnout at the polls will help bring constitutional order back to their country, while winning back recognition and cooperation from the international community.
A Cid-Gallup poll published last month showed that 73 percent of Hondurans hope the elections will be the solution to the five-month-old political crisis.
But as election day approaches, that now looks like tall order, according to Roberto Reyes, spokesman for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. Voter turnout has declined over the last decade, with just 56 percent of the country's 4 million eligible voters casting ballots in the 2005 elections, Reyes said.
Sunday's voter turnout could be much less, as Zelaya's supporters call for a national boycott of the elections.
Reyes said the presidential election has turned into a fight for the hearts and minds of Hondurans – Micheletti supporters insist the elections will prove the democratic system still works in their country, while Zelaya's supports insist the whole thing is a sham.
Ever since the coup, Reyes said, there's been an ideological war waged in the streets.
“On the day of elections, we'll see who wins the battle,” the electoral spokesman said.
By Mike Faulk
Nica Times Staff
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – There's more on the line than just the presidency when Hondurans go to the voting polls this weekend.
On Nov. 29, five presidential candidates are set to square off in an election that is expected to boil down to two candidates, the conservative National Party's Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, who has a commanding 16 percent lead in the polls, and center-left Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos, who severed as vice-president under deposed President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya.
All of the candidates are running on platforms that call for improvements to education, health and safety in Honduras.
But the real issue heading into this weekend's elections is the future of Honduras' democracy, and whether or not the elections will be able to restore any credibility or legitimacy to the country's embattled political system.
Since the June 28 coup against Zelaya, Honduras has been entangled in Central America's worst political crisis in decades.
Many countries in the region have said they won't recognize the elections unless Zelaya is restored to the presidency before Sunday. Congress announced last week it will vote on the ousted president's temporary restitution on Dec. 2 – a move Zelaya rejects as a violation of the agreement he signed earlier this month with de facto President Roberto Micheletti.
Still, many Hondurans are hoping a strong turnout at the polls will help bring constitutional order back to their country, while winning back recognition and cooperation from the international community.
A Cid-Gallup poll published last month showed that 73 percent of Hondurans hope the elections will be the solution to the five-month-old political crisis.
But as election day approaches, that now looks like tall order, according to Roberto Reyes, spokesman for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. Voter turnout has declined over the last decade, with just 56 percent of the country's 4 million eligible voters casting ballots in the 2005 elections, Reyes said.
Sunday's voter turnout could be much less, as Zelaya's supporters call for a national boycott of the elections.
Reyes said the presidential election has turned into a fight for the hearts and minds of Hondurans – Micheletti supporters insist the elections will prove the democratic system still works in their country, while Zelaya's supports insist the whole thing is a sham.
Ever since the coup, Reyes said, there's been an ideological war waged in the streets.
“On the day of elections, we'll see who wins the battle,” the electoral spokesman said.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The King Quality Nine
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras - I got here around 1 a.m. last night after a calamitous bus ride from Granada.
I rode with King Quality, which on a sign in Spanish says it provides "the royal elegance of the ground plane." Whatever. It was an hour late picking me up. Nine of us were supposed to meet a connecting bus once we crossed the border into Honduras that would take us to Tegucigalpa, but said bus wasn't at the rendezvous point when we arrived. After half an hour of chewing out the fine King Quality staff, who wanted to leave us there to find and pay for some other means of getting to Tegucigalpa at 10 pm, they did just that. Nine of us stuck in the middle of nowhere, about two hours from Tegucigalpa, stuck in the parking lot of the Hotel Oassis. Guess who the only gringo was?
We were there for an hour and a half, maybe two, until finally some of the guys talked this man with a big truck into hauling all of us up through the mountains. Two other guys decided they'd just rent a car. I threw the most into the pot for us to get out of there, so they insisted I take a seat inside, where there was room for three passengers. The other four, all of whom fortunately had jackets, huddled down in our luggage in the back and then we were off.
I got to my hotel around 1 am, but woke up in a pretty good mood this morning. Traveling around always puts me in a good mood, especially since the climate is much more temperate in Tegucigalpa compared to Granada's inferno.
If anything has ever taught me that time is money, it's been working freelance. With that said, look at the time, adios.
I rode with King Quality, which on a sign in Spanish says it provides "the royal elegance of the ground plane." Whatever. It was an hour late picking me up. Nine of us were supposed to meet a connecting bus once we crossed the border into Honduras that would take us to Tegucigalpa, but said bus wasn't at the rendezvous point when we arrived. After half an hour of chewing out the fine King Quality staff, who wanted to leave us there to find and pay for some other means of getting to Tegucigalpa at 10 pm, they did just that. Nine of us stuck in the middle of nowhere, about two hours from Tegucigalpa, stuck in the parking lot of the Hotel Oassis. Guess who the only gringo was?
We were there for an hour and a half, maybe two, until finally some of the guys talked this man with a big truck into hauling all of us up through the mountains. Two other guys decided they'd just rent a car. I threw the most into the pot for us to get out of there, so they insisted I take a seat inside, where there was room for three passengers. The other four, all of whom fortunately had jackets, huddled down in our luggage in the back and then we were off.
I got to my hotel around 1 am, but woke up in a pretty good mood this morning. Traveling around always puts me in a good mood, especially since the climate is much more temperate in Tegucigalpa compared to Granada's inferno.
If anything has ever taught me that time is money, it's been working freelance. With that said, look at the time, adios.
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