The next morning Betty got in her pickup truck and scouted ahead, finding that there were five checkpoints on the way to the capital. People filled three buses and set out. They would drive until they were a little short of a checkpoint, get out, and walk up through the mountains, coming back to the road where they were out of sight of the soldiers. Meanwhile, Betty and people in a few other cars would go to the checkpoint and distract the soldiers, telling them various stories about why they were going into the city, keeping them busy so they wouldn't go looking around.
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.
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