Urgent Plea from Radio Progreso in Honduras
Urgent Plea from Radio Progreso (my translation)
Sun, 08/16/2009 - 12:30 -- APHelp! Our Voice, Radio Progreso and ERIC SJ
Our Voice in the political crisis:
Radio Progreso and the Team for Reflection, Investigation and Communication ERIC of the Jesuit community in Honduras
Saturday, August 15, 2009
HELP!
Radio Progreso was placed under siege by an army contingent the very day of the coup d'etat. At gunpoint and without a warrant, the military penetrated our facilities and forced us to silence our equipment.
On August 14th, our radio sent two of its reporters to cover the protest that the resistance front had organized in the city of Choloma, between San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortés, in the north zone of the Honduran Atlantic. Radio Progreso would cover the events when the protesters were savagely attacked by the police contingent.
At noon, our reporter Gustavo Cardoza transmitted the news about the teargassing, the arrests, the physical attacks that the police were carrying out right and left on the protesters. All of the sudden, Gustavo Cardoza said that a policeman was pointing his weapon at him and immediately reported that other police were coming after him. Our reporter tried to run, and told them that he was a reporter for Radio Progreso. It was then that we heard his cries, and the blows that our reporter was receiving.
The transmission from our reporter was abruptly suspended. The police kicked him, hit him in the back, in the stomach, they threw him in a vehicle and laid him face down, and in the trajectory they kicked him, hit him with rifle butts, and attacked him with the worst possible insults.
Luckily, the Association of Lawyers in Resistance to the Coup and the Association of Judges for Democracy acted with speed and diligence, and although some of them were shoved and insulted, at the end of the day they managed to get the police to free our reporter and some of the other protesters who had been captured and tortured.
Before the world, we give testimony of our defenselessness. We raise our voice, our clamor before the community of international human rights organizations, because here, all those of us who oppose the de facto regime are exposed to barbarities, while the organisms of the state that are responsible for overseeing justice and human rights, instead of protecting us, point their accusing finger so that they can exterminate us. People of the world, don't leave us alone!
Having been an old rabble-rouser myself in the past, I know that feeling of no one caring about your cause.
Bless your heart for updating us, Mr. Bohemian, and for caring so deeply. I read your discussions with other commenters, but in the end it seems like there are no good guys and bad guys, which is often the story, i suppose. But cruelty on that order is just so sad. There is so much evil in the world, and so much of it human-caused. How do people who commit such violence to their Brothers and Sisters go home at night and face their children?
August 17, 2009 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Those are provocative questions, Wendy. I don't know what's happening in the Honduran police/armed forces, but in the 80s in Guatemala the army would conscript young men from the Indian communities and "train" them with drugs, torture and humiliation until they just snapped and became killing machines. But on a less gruesome scale, the writings of Jose Comblin map out the structure and ideology of the "national security state" and how that strange form of consciousness plays out in political reality. One important axion of the NSS is "the ends justify the means" which allows the human to transcend the cultural limits of acceptable social behavior. Since the Coup d'Etat in Honduras is ultimately framed as national security, socially transgressive behavior is justified as unfortunate necessity in the work of saving the state from the threats, real and imagined, to its security.
August 17, 2009 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, I know you have been watching this situation closely. What exactly can we do to help them?
August 17, 2009 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
My guess would be usual - tell your congressman to support the Honduran people rather than the coup. It wouldn't hurt for people to start complaining to the media for their atrocious coverage of Honduras either. I mean, Iran got covered every day with movie clips from the protestors. Why nothing about the Honduran protestors?
August 17, 2009 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
That I can do. Thanks:)
August 17, 2009 11:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why are the Hondurans asking us, or really anybody else for help?
Their reporter was arrested and sprung from jail in one day.
Meanwhile Tayseer Alouni was in and out of jail in Spain year after year, Sami al-Hajj won an all-expense-paid multi-year vacation to sunny Cuba (Guantanamo), Awad Rajoub spent six months in an Israeli jail, Roxana Saberi got an eight-year sentence in Iran, and even mighty ABC can't get reporters like Asa Eslocker out of jail any faster than the Hondurans released their man in Choloma.
Reporters are arrested all over the world every day, and anywhere they get out of jail the same day is an exceptionally easy place to be a reporter.
Comparing what's happening in Honduras to what happened in Guatemala in the Eighties is ridiculously offensive. During that era in Guatemala, bodies with their faces burned off by blowtorches were dumped on the street in Guatemala City or body-dumps in the boonies by extreme right-wing death-squads almost every night.
You can't understand Latin America by applying a couple of obsolete clichés to everything that happens south of our border, and defending the assassin and right-wing demagogue Zelaya is an exceptionally silly way to divert attention from real problems, which don't magically disappear every time some caudillo makes a few rosy promises to the campesinos.
August 18, 2009 12:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
WTF? So because they don't equate to the ugliest of tragedies they should not ask for help or for any attention to their situation? Give me a break. I would ask for help and international attention.
I mean okay 'if' what you are suggesting is true and the situation is in no way as serious as many others, does that mean that it is meaningless and unworthy of any assistance or attention. I am afraid you just made an odd argument by suggesting that only your perception of extremes measured by some aggregate of nations and tragedies qualifies people to ask for help.
It's like saying call us when people start blow torching people's faces off, then will give a damn.
August 18, 2009 1:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Comrade Rutabaga, how is it that you can offend yourself? Check it out - I was answering Wendy's rather generic question about the human condition. Using Guatemala as an example was not comparing it with Honduras. Come on, you know that.
That's all I can add to synchronicity's excellent response.
My friend, let go of Zelaya. If you hate his guts, fine, but he's not that great a player in this unfolding political drama. It's the plutocrats v. the people, and the people will have a new constitution, come hell or highwater.
Another great editorial in Tiempo:
http://hondurascoup2009.blogspot.com/2009/08/honduras-is-not-alone-resistance.html
August 18, 2009 2:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
wendy davis says
Which order was she talking about? Could it be a peewee-league episode in Honduras?
And you respond with some sci-fi fantasy about drug-addled Indian torture-draftees in Guatemala in the Eighties, as if torture weren't the inevitable outcome of extra-legal confinement at all times in all places.
And of course it would be okay for Honduras to be ruled by a dictator who recognizes no law or authority except himself, as long as he makes a few rosy promises to the campesinos.
We do not have a dog in that fight, and it's a just another aspect of the inanity of Obama's fans that they don't even notice when he tries to do exactly the right thing, by leaving this mess for Honduras to sort out for itself.
August 18, 2009 9:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good material for Strawman of the year, Ruta. You got my vote.
August 18, 2009 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
We're actually on the same page about Latin America, neoboho, but it's also important that we get it exactly right, because every time we don't, a little more credibility drains out of the progressive blogosphere, and there wasn't much there to begin with.
August 18, 2009 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Same page? Maybe, but you seem to want to trivialize Honduras, while I'm seeing more and more a very profound meaning attached to the events. There's stuff going on there that is historically unprecedented. I'm talking about the rise of the popular movement and the unequivocal rejection of the coup by the international community. This stuff hasn't happened before - it's a "Brave New World" sort of thing.
By golly, it's post-modern. As the great clairvoyant Marx wrote, "All that is solid melts into air."
August 18, 2009 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too bad the "golpistas" are acting legally and Zelaya was the one who actually tried to usurp the constitution. It kind of throws any positive aspects of our reaction right out the window - and calls into question a view holding that the international community makes decisions on the basis of law vs. political affinity. A failure to assess and address the actual case brought against Zelaya before moving to immediate condemnation is frankly, pathetic.
The only defense the Chavistas can muster to the real legal cause of action is "well, of course if you don't like the constitution ... it is totally legal and valid to announce you don't have to follow court rulings you disagree with.". Not exactly a solid legal footing to justify plunging one's nation into chaos. Zelaya is acting as a foreign agent - just like the CIA-backed rulers of the 80's but with a different patron. IMO, it seems we still haven't quite gotten the balance right. We're still supporting despots and criminals, this one is just a lip-service-leftist.
August 18, 2009 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kgb, I already know what you think of the situation, and I don't think your argument is credible. We've already hashed it out, so to restate it is just redundant. So I'm not going to waste my time with arguments that I've already made to you. OK?
August 18, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, I forgot my blurb on Carlos Fuentes: His take on Don Quixote was that Cervantes was addressing the old medieval forms that crossed, as dragons, the frontier between the middle ages and the early modern era. Fast forward to Honduras, and the dragons are the golpistas who are attempting to drag the old forms of the cold war across the frontier between modernism and post-modernism.
Just a thought...
August 18, 2009 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fuentes wasn't exactly the first or even the fiftieth writer to locate Don Quixote at the foggy intersection of the Middle Ages and modernity, and considering that the "ingenious gentleman" is playing out medieval romances and chivalric epics in his imagination throughout the novel, this sort of interpretation isn't much of a leap.
BTW reading Don Quixote in Spanish was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and it really removed me just about as far from ordinary reality as the "Knight of the Woeful Countenance" himself. I had a multi-volume edition from Madrid 1910 with more annotations than text on every page, and coming to the end of it felt like emerging from a pilgrimage with Amadis of Gaul.
I can't agree with your take on Zelaya, neoboho, but I enjoyed this extended discussion, and don't intend any disrespect to you, even though in this instance I deployed my creaking chivalric arsenal on the opposite side of the question.
August 18, 2009 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
So you also trivialize my comment on Fuentes - is that what you mean by "I meant no disrespect to you"? And what "take on Zelaya." I wasn't even talking about him. Do you mean you don't agree that this is a new thing - never happened before? That is after all, what I was saying. Whether Fuentes made an original contribution to the study of Cervantes or not isn't even germane to that claim. Who's chasing windmills here?
August 18, 2009 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry to hear about the guy's ordeal. But at the same time, I think this lone snapshot certainly gives a bit of a (intentionally) skewed perception of where the majority of threats to Honduran journalists originate.
Nobody ever mentions the campaign of attacks by Zelaya supporters against media outlets they don't agree with. There is a series of Molotov and grenade attacks against offices and the mobs attack any journalist who is not one of "their" reporters who gets caught in the crowd. Pro-Zelaya agitators are even firebombing the trucks of delivery drivers.
It is laughable to say that the paid Zelaya organizers are supporting freedom of the press. As with most everything in this conflict, there are two sets of rules applied in leftist media coverage: one that applies to Zelaya followers where violations of the law don't count and go unreported (Molotov-throwing thugs are whitewashed into peaceful protesters for example) and one that applies to the government where any violation of law is highlighted as proof of illegitimacy.
Check out this article from La Tribuna that seems to give a slightly more nuanced view of the attacks journalists are experiencing at the hands of BOTH sides.
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.latribuna.hn%2Fweb2.0%2F&sl=es&tl=en&history_state0=
On an interesting side note, all and all there seems a far greater degree of media freedom in Honduras under the "coup government" than is experienced in Venezuela these days.
August 18, 2009 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
On the "media freedom" front, I was just reading this--recent developments are interesting:
CNN Aug. 18: U.S. report: Chavez moving to silence media critics
Check out the first photo, of A group of pro-Hugo Chavez rioters beats Venezuelan journalists in downtown Caracas on August 13.
First, what I was thinking that this mini-trend in Latin America makes my whining about verbal abuse in the blogosphere on that "The War with Words" thread yesterday look kind of silly. But then, on the other hand, Venezuelans had a pretty vitriolic blogosphere back when Chavez was gaining power. Could it be that it's much easier to get to the stage of real mobs practicing physical abuse from virtual mobs practicing verbal abuse? Especially with a political power encouraging the next step? Makes twoviragos' feeling that internet vitriol is related somehow to angry nuts at townhall meetings seem more profound and real.
Don't get me wrong, I am a real strong believer in the ACLU type interpretation of freedom of speech where hate speech is an important safety valve, among other things. Still....
August 18, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
AA, I've said it before, but I think conflating Honduras and Venezuela just isn't right. Why? Well let me put it this way. When Andy took a soup can off the grocery store shelf and put it in Leo Casteli's gallery, the meaning of the soup can changed completely. Detournement. So when you take Honduras out of Central America and plop it down in Caracas, viola, detournement. It's an impediment to clear thinking about Honduras. Then you are endorsing the Honduran General's claim that the coup d'etate was necessary to protect the USA from socialism.
But I realize you weren't really comparing H to V in you comment about press repression. It's a proximity thing - guilt by association. Propaganda is infectious.
August 18, 2009 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
But I realize you weren't really comparing H to V in you comment about press repression.
I was trying to say it seems to curently have gone extremely "viral" in Latin America. And yes, I think that virus started in Venezuela.
Yes, I know, it's a classic tactic of dictators and demagogues and coup leaders and even militaries engaged in war everywhere--but this time, it seems, crowds of people are happy to participate as well. Along the lines of, people there are starting to literally bash the MSM's of their own culture that they don't disagree with? And more than a few probably supporting government closings of outlets they see as propagandistic?
August 18, 2009 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jean-François Lyotard, in The Postmodern Condition, wrote that the wars of the future will be fought over access to information. Perhaps that is what we are now witnessing.
August 18, 2009 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kgb, your first graf is groundless. The appeal that I posted is nothing more that what it is, an appeal published by one news organization about the repression it has experienced. It says nothing about the magnitude of the repression in Honduras generally, nor does it say anything about "sides". The inferences you draw are groundless, except by virtue of your political imagination. It "skews" nothing because it doesn't even speak to the issue you are raising.
Your second graf is virtually unsupported. The Molotov cocktails thrown at the front door of el Heraldo by unknown persons. How do you know they were Zelaya supporters? You don't...no one does. They could have been kids on a spree, a false-flag operation by Billy Joya, or what ever. What we do know is that the protesters are very well organized and committed to the principle of non-violence. Grenades??? I've seen only one report, that of a single frag grenade exploding in the bathroom of the Beverage Industry Workers Union just after a Resistance to the Coup meeting in that building was ended. Come on, my friend, you're not claiming that the protesters are blowing up their own assets are you? Who has grenades in Honduras?
Your la tribuna link goes to the front page - I couldn't find the article you've referenced.
August 18, 2009 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink