2009, image by Javier Chauran, used with a Creative Commons license

January

Remember proposition 8? Rick Warren, author of bestseller “The Purpose-Driven Life” came under fire for his posture on proposition 8 and gays.

February

February was a slow month, but not without the epiphany of Don Quijote: Humility + Self knowledge = Self Control.

March

Manuel Zelaya called capitalism a repugnant concept, admitted his desire to remain in power, and brought our constitution into the news for the first time, four months before he was to be removed from office. In the meantime, drug-filled planes from Venezuela were crash-landing in the Honduran jungle, and the pink tide overtook El Salvador.

April

A visit to beautiful La Estanzuela national park, Evo Morales’s reelection bid, and the flu pandemic were the only things I was able to blog about in this very busy month for me.

May

Earth Day celebrations in the Macro Plaza of Monterrey dominated my blog, but not my real life. Although I didn’t blog about it, I was suddenly jobless in May, leading to very few entries as hunting for a new job took most of my time.

June

I never expected the arrest of Manuel Zelaya. I was brought back into blogging only a few days earlier, when Zelaya fired the chief of the armed forces in a move that seemed calculated to provoke a self-coup. In one day, traffic to this site almost tripled, and a few days later, increased more than 600%.

July

Overwhelmed by reading the news far into the night and churning several long blog posts a day, July was punctuated by Operation Beehive, where Chavez lent his plane so Zelaya could try to land in Tegucigalpa at the same time as “innocent” people who were paid to be there would charge on armed military. The result: Isis Obeth Murillo was shot and killed, but not by the military, apparently.

August

August saw vandalism in Honduras reaching new levels, even the burning of buses and businesses, while the Zelaya camp gleefuly tarred the Micheletti government for repressing “peaceful” manifestations. Amnesty International was completely fooled, and published a report, that while is not as biased as Zelaya’s claims would have it, show they could not have conducted an impartial investigation. In the meantime, Zelaya was travelling the world, seeking support. He even came to Mexico, but his welcome became stale very quickly when he recognized Manuel Lopez Obrador’s shadow government in a comment.

September

September marked a new low in Honduras as Manuel Zelaya surprisingly returned to Honduras. His dreams of an apotheosis were not to be fulfilled though. His returned forced the interim government to establish the strongest measures yet. Curfews were placed, to separate Zelaya’s supporters from innocent civilians. I also found video proof of Zelaya’s intent to change the constitutional protections against reelection, which, according to article 239 of our Constitution, automatically removes him from office.

October

The greatest news of the month was Honduras’s qualification to the World Cup. Hondurans had a reason to celebrate that overshadowed our terrible stress and brought unabashed joy to all of us. October saw the Tegucigalpa/San Jose accord fall flat on its face, but allowed the US to recognize the November election.

November

The Honduran election, and Zelaya’s attack on them, dominated the blog. He called the elections spurious, and refused to participate in the unity government that the Tegucigalpa/San José accord called for.

December

Congress decided not to reinstate Zelaya, and he has gradually lost support from Hondurans and in the world. Both he and Micheletti are considered one of the 25 people who mattered in Time magazine’s annual Person of the Year article.

2009 has been a very difficult year. For the first time I’ve considered politics as important in my life. The Honduran constitutional crisis has impacted me like nothing else before. But this has also been a very rewarding year. I look to 2010 eagerly, and ask God’s grace over Honduras, Mexico, my family and friends.

¡Feliz año Nuevo 2010! Happy New Year!

Zelaya's oath of office in 2006, image: ATV

Shocking news! The Proceso Digital newspaper has reported that this morning, Honduran president Roberto Micheletti resigned as part of a deal designed to transfer power smoothly and clean the slate for president-elect Porfirio Lobo. It reports that early this morning Manuel Zelaya accepted political asylum in Venezuela and was escorted there by none other than General Romeo Vasquez, after landing briefly in Palmerola airport.

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Image by Smythe Richbourg, used with a Creative Commons license

With the gross commercialization of Christmas, we tend to forget the basic message of the celebration: the gift of true freedom. An almighty God saw the suffering and poverty of humankind and decided to do something about it. Instead of being born in a palace and ruling us with an iron fist, he was born in a smelly and dirty barn, his crib: a feeding trough. Instead of respect and honor, his being born of a teenager who wasn’t even married could only have generated a mountain of sneers and gossip to last a lifetime.

But why should God have taken the trouble to become a human? Some take offense at having someone suffer for them without their being asked, and see it as a manipulation designed to elicit guilt. Many times they are right, because this is a favorite proselytizing tactic of religious people masquerading as true believers. And then, they see the threat of an eternity in hell and are even more offended. But who is responsible for hell? Aren’t we humans creating, with our actions, our own hell on Earth, and our own little private hells in our minds? Imagine being free of our bodies for an eternity, only to live our own private hell in our souls forever?

The birth of that poor, despised, presumed illegitimate, Jewish boy was necessary, not to free us from an oppressive political regime like the Roman empire. It wasn’t to forever indebt us to God and enslave us to him for all eternity. It was to free our minds from slavery: the conscious and unconscious slavery to evil, the illusion of freedom.

The desire to do as we please, and not what is best, and the consequences of letting it loose, are the seeds of hell. This desire can begin with child-like self-centeredness, and end with murder and genocide. It can begin with an absence of love, and end with a shooting spree or massacre. It can start with a glance, and end with adultery and promiscuity.  It can start with an honest desire to do good, and end in a self-righteous religious lunacy. It can seem very pious or very carnal, but in someway or another, all of us are infected with it.

How does the birth of a child free us from the desire to do evil? He lived a perfect life, and died the death we all would have deserved, to pay, in his own eyes, the debt of humanity. Now we all have the choice and freedom, either to believe in him, and be free to do right or wrong in the security that all our imperfections are paid for, or to reject him and do as we please, but in reality live as slaves to our own selves. Heaven or hell are our choice, and they begin today, in our own minds.

The Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal finally published their results today, after over 30 urns were subjected to a recount. The final number of votes: 2,300,056 out of 4,361,382 registered voters.

This gives an abstention rate of 47% and a participation rate of 53%. Not terribly good, but over half the electorate, and if we take into consideration Hondurans overseas who could not vote because Zelaya shut down the consulates, the balance could be even more in favor of participation.

The hard data:

PN: Porfirio Lobo, 1,213,695 votes, 52.77%
PL: Elvin Santos, 817,524 votes, 35.54%
PINU: Bernard Martinez, 39,960 votes, 1.74%
PDC: Felícito Ávila, 38,413 votes, 1.67%
UD: Cesar Ham, 36,420 votes, 1.58%
Total Valid Votes: 2,146,012, 93.3%

Blank votes: 61,440, 2.67%
Null votes: 92,604, 4.03%

Voted: 2,300,056 people, 52.74%
Abstained: 2,061,326 people, 47.26%

TOTAL: 4,361,382 registered voters, 100%

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Photo by misswired

DGIC (the Honduran FBI) investigators reported to the press yesterday that the murder of Nicolle Rodriguez Cabrera may be related to gang violence and/or soccer hooliganism. Apparently there were members of a soccer fans association inside the car with Nicolle when she was murdered. The DGIC report forced President Michelleti to apologize for blaming her death on Zelaya’s supporters. (I would like to see other presidents apologizing, I haven’t seen one in a very long time.)

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Image: El Proceso Digital

Edwin Canaca Jr., the son of Honduran journalist Edwin Canaca, was murdered in Tegucigalpa early this morning.  His death occurred under similar circumstances as yesterday’s murder of pregnant 16-year-old Nicolle Rodriguez Cabrera, also a journalist’s daughter. Two men on a motorcycle followed him home from his job at a fast food restaurant and sprayed the taxi he was riding with bullets, also killing the driver, who was not identified. His wife was wounded in the incident, and is recovering in a Tegucigalpa hospital.

The late Canaca’s father works for the public relations department of the IPM (Instituto de Previsión Militar), the military’s pension plan.

This trend is alarming. Two journalists’ families targeted in two days in serial murders. This is very likely a vendetta, and as such I doubt it is over. I wonder who would be next, and if the authorities are able to protect them.

Screen Capture

Manuel Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti were among the 25 people who “mattered” according to Time Magazine’s yearly “Person of the Year” article. In a soundbite article, Time Magazine journalist Tim Padgett deftly synthesized a five-month crisis into a few paragraphs, albeit slightly patronizing of Honduras.

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Image: Proceso Digital

I have read many reports of politically motivated deaths in the past few months in Honduras. Often these are blamed on the supporters of the current Honduran government. But as Ulf Erlingsson said in his blog yesterday, the murder rate in Honduras has been increasing to levels never seen before. It is relatively easy to find people who oppose the government who were murdered when the murder rate is 60 per 100,000 people. Those eager to blame the government are silent when someone like President Micheletti’s nephew are murdered.

Yesterday, Nicolle Rodríguez Cabrera, the daughter of Honduran journalist Carol Cabrera, was killed on her way home by two men on a motorcycle. Her mother, Carol, had denounced constant death threats in the past few months. We may assume that the murderers were targeting her mother, because they had followed her car, which had several people in it, and shot into it randomly. Cabrera works for Radio Cadena Voces, and has reportedly been a vocal supporter of the new Honduran government.

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Latinobarómetro

The Economist published the results of a poll by Latinobarometro, a non-profit based in Chile. In it we see an 11% increase in Hondurans who say democracy is preferable to any other government (55%), and a 3% decrease in those who say that an autocratic government is preferable to a democratic one under certain circumstances (12%). Some questions explored the confidence of Latin American in institutions such as the Church, the Government, the Military, and the market economy.

For instance, in 2008, only 7% of Hondurans and Peruvians believed that democracy in their nations worked better than in other nations in Latin America. The average for all nations was 21%.

Photo by niznoz

CNN has reported a 56.6 percent voter participation number for the November 29 Honduran election. This is a compromise between the 48% of some media, and the 61% of the preliminary results from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). I am very uneasy that almost a week has gone by without an official validated number from the TSE.

Another interesting factor to consider, is the number of Hondurans who live outside Honduras and are still registered to vote, like myself. CNN reported that if you exclude Honduran expatriates, voter participation was 76.8%.