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.