OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: Honduras: The Ham in the Sandwich

That evening in an unscheduled activity, we climbed a dark staircase to enter a dimly-lit daycare center where three women waited to speak to us. It had all the elements of a clandestine meeting - which it was. The women were relatives of a young man who had been arrested and detained by the police. As a member of the United Federation of Students, he had been teaching peasants (small farmers) to read and write under an extracurricular program funded by the US Agency for International Development. Now they knew that he was one of the desaparacidos, the "disappeared," because they could not find him among the living or among the dead.

At the end, two of the women in tears, we realized how dangerous it was for them to meet with us and offered to destroy our tapes and notes, but they insisted that we not do so. "Please tell Reagan of our situation. You must get him to do something." We promised that we would try.

We knew that the CIA had built a huge listening post/ communications center in the country, had improved its seaport to accommodate larger vessels, and had constructed a 60-bed military hospital as well as new roads. It mattered not a whit that the new Constitution forbid foreign troops on Honduran soil.

There is little reason to believe that the plight of the people of Honduras has improved. Their chance to be in charge of their own destiny, to reap the benefits of their natural resources and of their own labor appears now to have been taken from them with yet another coup d'etat.

It seems pertinent to ask whether this ham-handed interference in Honduran affairs is a sign that the US is gearing up to roll back the progress made by the people of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, El Salvador (and perhaps even Peru and Chile) in throwing off the yoke of Yankee imperialism and becoming free and independent states?

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