2
2
1
The trip from Marcala to Tegucigalpa normally takes about three or four hours, but under these conditions it took all day. Some people got stopped, some just couldn't keep trekking, two of the buses were stopped before they got all the way. About fifty of Betty's group got through to a union hall in Tegucigalpa where people were streaming in from all over. The next day they joined a huge demonstration.
As the summer went on, protests continued. San Pedro Sula is a commercial and manufacturing center about 180 miles north of Tegucigalpa. The road between the two cities is a major artery; given the mountainous terrain and the deplorable condition of all but the most important roads, there is no practical alternative route. The teachers planned a roadblock, and many women went around with trumpets, singing the national anthem, recruiting people for the action. Betty went with her truck to get a load of tires to burn, and some young men showed her a back road route to get around a police checkpoint.
The roadblock went from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon. When there are road blocks like this, people get out of their bus and walk around, then get on a bus on the other side which turns around and takes them on their way. As they were walking past they would say, "I'm with you, but I'm on a trip and have to keep going!" There was no repression this time, they made their point and called it a day.
The next time was different. About 8 people came from Marcala to this one, joining teachers, campesinos, women, and people from other towns; about two hundred people. This roadblock was in August, near Palmerola, the big air base. When they arrived, Betty suspected that this would be different, because there was a small airplane circling over them. There were a lot of police this time, and they said, "We'll give you until one o'clock." But people said, "We plan to stay until two." Then the police charged, shooting guns and tear gas grenades.
Betty has asthma, so tear gas would be especially serious for her, maybe even fatal. She ran for her truck, changed her appearance as well as she could, and pretended that she was just someone waiting out the roadblock. Others were not so lucky. Some took refuge in houses along the road; the police dragged them out. The women that they caught they took by the hair and dragged them on their faces along the road. They knocked the men down and stood over them, beating them severely. Then they put them all in a closed truck and threw in a tear gas grenade. When people stuck their heads out to get air, they beat them on the head with their clubs.
Betty started calling everyone they could--human rights organizations, the Red Cross, people back in Marcala--to try to get people freed and to see that their wounds were treated. She was going to go to the jail to help, but someone told her to stay away; those who were captured were afraid that the police had caught her and were going to "disappear" her, so they gave the police her name and demanded to know what they had done with her. Finally, at one in the morning, they were released. The person injured the worst was a man who had multiple fractures in both arms. After extensive surgery to put in steel pins he is finally regaining the use of his arms.
In September, when President Zelaya snuck back into the country and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy, people knew they had to act fast. They filled three buses and raced into Tegucigalpa to join the massive demonstrations of support. The next day an empty bus went ahead and Betty went with one of three groups of people who set out through the mountains to meet the bus down the road. This time the police and the army were looking for them. There was an around-the-clock curfew, with all travel banned.
The police caught Betty's brother and a doctor, and then called the people in the mountains on their cell phones. They said the only way they would let their two captives go was if the whole group turned themselves in. By then it was very late, and it was clear that they were not going to make it all the way, so they agreed, but not before they spray painted resistance slogans on the way to where the police were waiting. The police took their pictures before they got on the bus. After they passed the last checkpoint back to Marcala they started chanting slogans to raise their spirits--and the bus ran out of gas. They walked home in the rain, exhausted but satisfied that they had done what they could.
I commented that even with the round-the-clock curfew and roadblocks, the demonstrations around the Brazilian embassy were massive. Betty replied that if people had been allowed to gather freely there would have been millions; they would have gone to the presidential palace and driven out the dictator Micheletti.
I asked Betty if I could use her name, and she said to go ahead. The police know all about her, there would not be much that I could add. She is well aware that they could come for her at any time, and that she might either just disappear or be the victim of another "unsolved" murder.
A visit to the office of COFADEH, the Committee of Families of the Disappeared, can be a sobering experience. Their walls are covered with pictures of people who have been murdered or disappeared by the regime, and one has the sense that more will be added as time goes on. At the time of my visit, the COFADEH had about 36ironclad cases of people who have been murdered because of their
politics, cases that would stand up in any international court. The catch is that international human rights institutions demand that before they will take up a case, the national processes must be exhausted. But in a country like Honduras, where impunity reigns, turning to the "authorities" in place would not only be an exercise in futility, it would also imply recognition of their legitimacy.
But beyond those cases that are beyond dispute, there are countless other deaths of activists, organizers, and leaders that are widely assumed to be "lessons" for those who might consider taking up their work. Beyond the murders and disappearances there are the rapes, the torture, and the beatings of activists, and the relatively random killing and wounding of people who are involved in or even just nearby a demonstration. And even more, there are many people who are abused but don't dare say anything about it to anyone, for fear of more harm to themselves or their families.
Berta Oliva of COFADEH is a survivor of the barbarities of the eighties, when death squads enforced "order" on what was seen then as the USS Honduras. She now senses the same kind of fear. Of the 20 people who work with COFADEH, half have been individually persecuted or intimidated since the coup.
False charges are used to discredit and imprison activists. While President Zelaya was in the Brazilian embassy, Channel 8 news said that Berta Oliva was his "mule"--that she was smuggling drugs in to him. In fact, she says, she has never met Zelaya. She did try to get some food to him, but the guards around the embassy took it from her. Then for weeks the libelous stories were in the news.
Our delegation learned of another case of libel being used to punish when we interviewed Maritza Arita. She was a supreme court judge for eleven years, in the section of the court that hears criminal cases. The police charged three people who had been in a demonstration with arson--there had been a fire in a business along the way. After reviewing the evidence, she ruled that they should be granted bail. This displeased the Micheletti dictatorship, so she was summarily (and illegally) removedfrom the criminal section of the court and given only civil cases.This was followed by thirteen days of scurrilous attacks inthe right wing media, to the point that she felt physically threatened. Judgeswho are threatened have a right to security protection, but when sheasked for it, the government did not provide it. (Later, another judge dismissed the charges against the three demonstrators.)
