Let’s conduct a small test: there are two sides to the reporting of yesterday’s clashes between the police and Zelaya’s supporters. Let’s see which side, if any, the international media report.

Zelaya’s side: as reported by Telesur. They interviewed a leader named Juan Barahona who called yesterday’s actions, “the most brutal repression that we have lived. They fell on us like enemies, like the oppressors of the people that they are. They took us to the police station that is in Barrio Belén. They released us at five in the afternoon because of the efforts of human rights associations and the pressure of the resistance outside.” He denounced the aggression against a teacher who was shot, and hovers between life and death. “We are fighting against the coup presided by the oligarchs, this repressive coup that has suspended the individual rights of citizens.” he said. Telesur also reported that Carlos Reyes, the presidential candidate for the “popular sector was repressed by the military forces”.

The police’s side: as reported by El Heraldo. “Orders were clear, any manifestation that affects free mobilization of people will be dissolved. Police action was motivated by acts of vandalism committed by people infiltrated among the manifestation. The road block … began at 9:00am in the El Durazno sector, with 1,500 people, composed of union members, leaders of teachers unions and members of the Bloque Popular”. When dislodged, the manifestation decided to move toward the center of the city, sacking businesses in the Belén market. “The police, who followed them, stopped them from committing these acts of vandalism, for which they recieved the applause of the neighbors of the place, saying that they were tired of a few people keeping the country in anxiety. A teacher, named Roger Vallejo was wounded in the head … 80 people were arrested and released hours later.

Since Zelaya’s removal from office, Honduras had not seen violence like today’s. According to a report from Venezuela’s El Universal, there was a major confrotation today between about 2 thousand Zelaya supporters, and government forces.

This is reason for all of us to pray harder for peace, and to convince people to work for peace.

Image from El Universal

Manuel Zelaya is trying to create insecurity in the Honduran armed forces by stating that he has knowledge of officers, some even ranking as high as colonels, that are plotting against General Romeo Vasquez, the head of the Honduran armed forces. Let’s not forget that Chávez was a lieutenant colonel when he staged his failed coup in 1992. Zelaya’s words are very probably false, but if taken as true by gullible military officers, could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But this also very unlikely, officers would be on their guard against this kind of talk.

News anchors and comedians skewered President George W. Bush for his poor choice of words when improvising. But Zelaya is worse. On one occasion, he was leading a prayer in public when he forgot the words to the “Padre Nuestro”, (the Lord’s Prayer) a Christian prayer memorized by billions of Christians from childhood. But most of his verbal gaffes are much less comical, they suggest self-contradictory beliefs.

If we are kind enough to grant him the benefit of the doubt, we could say he misspoke and is confused. But if he isn’t confused, and really means what he is saying, his words reveal deliberate deception on his part.

For instance, El Universal, of Venezuela, reports him saying he is organizing “popular militias, of a peaceful character”. These militias are reportedly being “trained” in Nicaragua. Peaceful militias? What is a militia?

The Oxford American Dictionary offers this definition:

• a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency.
• a military force that engages in rebel or terrorist activities, typically in opposition to a regular army.
• all able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service.

So, a peaceful militia is either doublespeak, an oxymoron, or an army that isn’t at war YET. Latin America doesn’t need another FMLN, another FARC, or any guerrilla organization. But considering Zelaya’s recent failures to get people to come to him, I think this is just another bluff.

Image by Geof Wilson, used with a Creative Commons license

In a masterstroke of diplomacy, Micheletti has been reported by the New York Times as saying he supports Costa Rican President Oscar Arias’s second plan to defuse the Honduran crisis, but that he has been “unable to convince” the Honduran congress and supreme court to agree with it. The plan is unacceptable for Mel Zelaya and Hugo Chavez, because although it is very similar, it is much harder to subvert than the first version; It was no coincidence the two condemned it. Zelaya’s delegation didn’t even consider it, but immediately after having heard it, merely stated that they had already declared negotiations as failed days before.

This deftly brings to light a blunt fact the media refuses to acknowledge or report. I’ve said it on this blog, and repeat it once more: Zelaya doesn’t want to sign the Arias accord. A small but powerful clause was inserted by Arias in order to ease Micheletti’s credible fear that Zelaya would use the plan to get back into power, and then set up the constituent assembly anyway. The clause states Zelaya would have to relinquish his plan of a Constitutional Assembly, or the entire agreement would be declared void. If it were declared void, Zelaya’s amnesty would vanish in a puff of smoke, and he could be imprisoned.

Because of this, Micheletti knows Zelaya will never support the Arias accord, and that is only wearing an increasingly uncomfortable sheepskin to cover his ravenous appetite for power.

Image by Michael Agustin, used with a Creative Commons license

Al Jazeera’s Nicholas Muirhead emailed me Monday, to my great surprise. In the last few years, they have sought to establish themselves as a serious alternative news source, and clean up their image after being associated unfavorably with Al Qaeda.

Al Jazeera has a section on its website called The Listening Post in which they publish reports that are created from videos sent by users. Mr. Muirhead told me they are preparing a report on the overthrow of Manuel Zelaya’s government, and that someone recommended me to comment on it, because I had recently been to Honduras.

The questions he asked me to answer are below. Watch out for subtle red-flag words such as “kidnap”, and “coup” that could skew users’ answers.

1. Following Zelaya’s kidnap, what steps did the opposition take to control the media?
2. What has Zelaya’s relationship been with Honduran media? How much influence does he wield over the media?
3. How fair/accurate has international media coverage of the Honduras coup been?

Mr. Muirhead asked me to explain my point of view thoroughly, but apologized that my answers will probably be edited down to 30 seconds in order to fit the program’s format. Answering each question with two or three sentences took twenty seconds each!

To do myself justice, I uploaded the above four-minute video to YouTube. The topic is not the Honduran crisis as a whole, but only the media’s role in it.

I made a video yesterday that I meant to be my blog post of the day, but YouTube gets stuck when uploading it. After two attempts, I’m starting to lose hope. The video was a response to three questions Al-Jazeera Junior Reasearcher Nicholas Muirhead made me about Honduras

During my three-day visit to Honduras, I had conversations with many people, several taxi drivers, hardware store employees, fellow passengers, family members, random strangers, Hondurans, gringos, all very talkative, all very relaxed, but only one was critical of the new government. Of course, I expected my parents, who are staunch nationalists, to support Micheletti, but my conversations with supporters of the Liberal party were the most interesting. As my trip coincided with Zelaya’s multiple attempts to break in to the country, I expected people to be nervous, and angry. But the great majority of the people I saw were remarkably detached from the political crisis.

When I arrived at San Pedro Sula airport, the air of normality was almost surreal. Everyone went about their business without sign of emotion, and the military were notably absent. Only a small group of police were chatting in a corner, unconcerned. An accountant friend of mine was at the airport Friday, and told me he had originally opposed the “coup, for it was a coup, you know. But after seeing the theatrics of Zelaya, I changed my mind, and begin to think we are better off without him.” On Saturday, while waiting in line at a bank in La Ceiba, the people there were curious about Mexico and Monterrey, but no one talked about Zelaya even in passing. They looked cheerful and at peace.

But between these two anecdotes, I saw a feeble sign of trouble in the country. On Friday a group of thirty Zelaya supporters had blocked the highway into La Ceiba, and were facing an equal group of police in riot gear. I was forced to walk across the protest to get to my dad’s car, a few hundred yards ahead. But no one seemed very angry. No stones were thrown. No tear gas canisters were fired. Everyone was simply standing there, some joking around. A lady was selling “cold water, tamarindo juice, Coca-Cola” as naturally as if the protest were simply a group of shoppers at a local market.

At first I was afraid to take pictures, but my camera barely drew the glance of the police. In contrast, yesterday a security officer in Mexico City airport stopped me taking pictures there, but at this protest everything was surreally peaceful.

Since my luggage never arrived, on Saturday I was forced to buy a new suit, which needed alterations. I had barely hours left before the ceremony and I had to run to catch a cab. Just as I got in, a major rainstorm began, with winds strong enough to uproot small trees. The cab driver and I roamed all over the center of La Ceiba looking for a tailor. We asked a lady selling tortillas under a beach umbrella at the market for directions, and finally found a rundown tailor’s shop in the northwest corner of downtown.

The walls of the shop were of wood, the roof of tin. Inside were a picture of Barack Obama, an old clock, curtains separating the living quarters, and windows without glass, or even screens to keep mosquitoes out. Four apprentices worked in dark and cramped conditions, with worn electric sewing machines. All of them were Garifuna (a mixture of Carib indian and African). A radio talk show provided the background noise. Santiago was the tailor’s name, and he promptly measured me for the alterations to the suit, and told me to be back in an hour.

When I returned, the suit wasn’t ready, because the storm had knocked out power, and the apprentices were sowing it by hand. So we whiled away the time chatting about this and that, and finally the conversation turned to Zelaya.

The tailor told me he was sad that the country was so polarized, and that Zelaya was being kept out of the country by the “golpistas” (coupsters). He said that he was also disappointed that all the news channels were publishing pro-interim-government stories. He said that from the day Zelaya took office, the news was all against him.

I wasn’t very surprised to learn that his major sources of news were CNN and Telesur. I suggested he read Tiempo instead, since it is a local news source critical of Micheletti’s government, but much more truthful.

I told him an experience of mine a few years ago. My boss being wrongly accused of fraud by Zelaya’s protegè, Marcelo Chimirri, who, with the support of the government, sent the district attorney, a crowd of Hondutel employees, policemen with automatic weapons and local news cameras into our office claiming that they had caught a crime “in fraganti”, and that they would take away all the computers, telephones, faxes, and even the television, claiming that they had been obtained with the proceeds of an illegal act.

We were innocent, and successfully sued the government. We got some of our computers back, a year later. But when the outcry against Chimirri was reaching its climax, Zelaya came in and defended him, even when it was very clear that he was the guilty party.

The tailor didn’t have much to say to this, except that corruption is everywhere. I agreed with him, and echoed his earlier complaint about Honduras being polarized (something straight out of a Telesur broadcast, by the way). I told him that we Hondurans should be united, and be at peace, which we both agreed.

When the suit was done I thanked him, and told him I would be coming back next time I needed a tailor. We parted in friendship, which to me was very important.

All in all, Hondurans are very peaceful, and hobbit-like. We tend to face whatever problem we have with a blasè attitude that can be irritating to outsiders. But this is one of our great strengths.

It is now ten years since a constituent assembly rewrote the Venezuelan constitution. Caracas Chronicles presents a fascinating analysis of what it means today, or better said, of what it doesn’t mean. This is very likely what would happened in Honduras had Zelaya been granted his project for a constituent assembly.

For instance, article 23 of the Venezuelan constitution “makes international human rights treaties constitutionally binding within Venezuela, as well as directly applicable by all Venezuelan courts.” This would make Chavez’s shutdown of Globovisión and more recently, of scores of radio stations, unconstitutional, because Venezuela is subscribed to the American Convention for Human Rights. In article 13, this convention promises that:

“the right to free expression may not be restricted via indirect means, such as the abuse of official controls on newsprint, on radio frequencies, or of inputs and goods used to broadcast information, in order to impede the free communication of ideas”

Caracas Chronicles gives other examples in which a constitutional article granting tenure only to teachers that have won public opinion contests has been subverted to mean that no one gets tenure anymore. Teachers are one thoughtcrime away from lifetime unemployment.

By all means read the article in its fullness, but here’s another nugget:

And so the little blue book came to be used as a kind of magic charm, waved around in inverse proportion to how often it was actually read, much less interpreted or – heaven forbid – applied.

In the end, reading the constitution – taking it seriously as text – is a profoundly counterrevolutionary thing to do. It can only lead to the kind of apostasy you keep finding in this blog – hell, earlier in this post, even – where an interpretative discourse is developed to compare the legal standard set out in the text to the reality instantiated day-to-day by those who wield power in Venezuela.

Image by Bernardo Londoy, used with a Creative Commons license.

My parents celebrated 50 years of marriage on Saturday, in a mass at the local Catholic parish, in the presence of family and friends. Father Porfirio, the priest who officiated the mass, is an old friend of our family, and knew my brothers and sisters as they grew up. He didn’t recognize me, as I was a very small boy when he last saw me before.

Now however, almost all of my parents’ descendants and I have left the Catholic church for the Baptist church and an evangelical church called Gran Comisión. Nevertheless, in a touching sign of love and solidarity, my uncle, a Baptist preacher, my brother-in-law, a pastor, all embraced my parents during the traditional moment of peace.

The Mass was followed by a reception at the local Golf club. My sister Eveline had worked all day, together with my nephews Oscar and Joshua, to decorate the room, which looked resplendent in gold and white. About 100 guests, many of them lifetime friends of the family filled the place, together with my nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters, and an extra friend or two.

After a prayer, a toast to my parents, and a feast, we watched a fascinating video with pictures of our family, some of which dated to the turn of the 20th century, with my great-grandparents.

Then there was a brief dance, which only a few of the family felt like joining. One of my sisters, who has a fracture in her foot, was the soul of the party, dancing with a cast, her crutches abandoned nearby.

But the party was cut off much too soon, because of the curfew at twelve. We rushed to clean up and pack everything before leaving back to the hotels and my parent’s house, and in my case, saying goodbye to most of them, as many of us would be leaving early the next day.

Back in the house we enjoyed late night conversations, and eventually retired to bed, tired but extremely happy. A few hours later we were on our way back home, some by car, others by bus, and some by air. A beautiful weekend, and a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Today was very eventful.

• I got to see and photograph volcanos Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl from my plane window.
• But, I arrived in San Pedro Sula today only to find that my luggage had been lost. My dress clothes for tommorow were in my luggage, and also, I had brought my keyboard, so I could play a song for my parents and sing to them. The luggage just might arrive tommorow.
• Once in La Ceiba I saw a crowd of people watching Mel Zelaya on CNN, together with another huge peace march in San Pedro, that apparently involved 40 thousand people. Finally these marches were not ignored by the mainstream media. Zelaya made another failed attempt to return to the country today.
• Finally, when I tried to get to La Ceiba from the airport I found a small group from the Popular Front blocking the road. Very few people attended, as you can see in the pictures below. My greatest surprise was finding my nephew Oscar, my brother, my sister in law Ada, and my nephew Joshua by the side of the road waiting for the protesters to let them through! I had to walk across the manifestations to get to my dad’s car on the other side. but not before I snapped some pictures, as you can see below:

I’m at my parent’s computer now, and our connection is SLOWWWWW. I hope to be able to update more tomorrow.