Fire the Learned - Honduras - an Interview with Darío Euraque

On October 19^th 2009, the University of Texas at Austin held a forum regarding the coup d'état in Honduras entitled: “Military Coup or Constitutional Succession.” With the help of the UT staff, I was able to interview – in an unrehearsed, amature manner I have to admit – one of the keynote speakers of the event, Darío Euraque.

Prior to the forceful removal of President Zelaya on June 28^th, Doctor Euraque served as the Director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History. When holding the position, he pursued a more egalitarian view of what defined Honduran culture. Elitist regimes seek to consolidate, not diversify power, and any exaltations of equality are viewed as threatening, and thus Euraque was removed from the IHAH.

Costa Rican historian, Victor Hugo Acuña Ortega has labeled the firing as “a deed with dire consequences for the culture, historic patrimony, and scientific research in Honduras.“

I sat down with Doctor Euraque to discuss the state of affairs in Honduras today, the historical struggle for a fair constitution, and why Americans would be unwise to remain apathetic to the coup d'état:

Podcast found here:

http://www.divshare.com/download/8960004-62a

Calvin Sloan: You were the former director of IHAH – can you explain what that is?

Darío Euraque: The IHAH stands for the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History. And in fact I'm still the director, by most governments in the world. But I was deposed by the government installed after June 28^th in the coup.

The institute of anthropology and history of Honduras is a state agency, part of the government, in fact it works closely with the ministry of culture. It's charged with researching, restoring, conserving, protecting, promoting the cultural heritage of the country, that's by law.

And the cultural heritage of the country consists of everything from the archaeological remains of the indigenous people, what here would be called Native Americans, to historic buildings, we run nine museums, the documents for example, lots of the archives are under our authority.

So I was a director of that institute, charged with doing all that, we had about 150 employees, we have different diplomatic relations with countries all around the world, including the United States, that provide assistance in various ways. And so it's a very important institution for the national identity of the country.

CS: Do you feel that that national identity is in jeopardy?

DE: Well yes, because we were promoting, and by we I mean myself as director of the institute, as well as the minister of culture who was deposed after the coup, we were promoting a, what we consider, a more inclusive sense of national identity.

Up until our government, the national identity was often viewed in narrow terms, specifically what I mean by that is that instead of promoting and conserving and researching a broad view of cultural heritage, documents, historic buildings, food, music, the focus was on archaeology, and not only was the focus on archaeology, the focus was primarily on Mayan archaeology, because it's beautiful.

The problem we have is that the vast majority of Honduran people are not of Mayan decent, and so it's as if you would promote Chinese identity in the United States as if it's the national identity when, obviously while the Chinese have a very important presence here, it's a small part of the population when compared to another group. So, it's very strange in that way. Not only that, the Mayan archaeological remains occupy a tiny part of the territory.

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