Las Elecciones de Honduras

We remained in Copán Ruinas for the elections last Sunday because we heard there were no buses running and then stayed the following day because I got a touch of Lempira's Revenge. The day of the election was calm but busy. Near the polling place there were many well dressed people in the streets, most of the men in gleaming white cowboy hats. The supporters of the more conservative National Party and presidential candidate, Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo were dressed in blue and waved blue flags with a white star. Supporters of the Liberal Party, and their candidate, Elvin Santos, wore red with flags of two red and one white stripe. The two sides didn't seem to mingle much but there was little evidence of tension. A few young men hanging around laughed at us when we almost accidentally walked into the voting area.


That night we watched the returns at our hotel with the owners who were supporters of the Liberal Party, the party of the former president, Manuel Zelaya, who had been removed by the Army. Mr. Santos had been Mr. Zelaya's vice-president before quitting to run for the presidency. The election seems to have been an absolute rout by the National Party. The only Liberal who did very well was running for mayor of San Pedro Sula (the second largest city in Honduras). Our hosts were disappointed but took it in stride. As one of them, Telma, said "The winners will be happy and the losers will cry, but it's democracy." She even baked a blue and white cake decorated like the Honduran flag. A little boy had requested it for his birthday saying it was also Honduras' birthday.


Most everyone we met was interested in talking about the election and whether they were happy with the results or not, none questioned its legitimacy. Many people from both sides assured us that Honduras is a democratic country. With limited time, limited contacts, and limited Spanish, it is hard to know the precise truth, but I would guess that they are right. I also think what happened is best for Honduras in the long run and best for the U.S. as well.

Almost everyone agrees that Zelaya was trying to follow in the footsteps of Chavez in Venezuela, Correa in Ecuador, Morales in Bolivia, and his neighbor Ortega in Nicaragua. He wanted to change the constitution so that he could run for president again. That might not seem like a big deal to people in the U.S. but we have had more than 200 years of peaceful transfer of power. The democracy of Honduras is less than 30 years old. Eight years is a long time to consolidate power. We were told in Nicaragua that Daniel Ortega will win the next election despite his unpopularity because he controls the Sandinista Party and they control the voting apparatus.

An American we met said Zelaya also planned to change the constitution to strip power from the legislature as my teacher in Otavalo told me Correa had done in Ecuador. Even our mototaxi driver in Gracias, who was a Liberal and said Zelaya was a good president, when I asked him why the Army had ousted him said it was because he wanted to change the constitution "como Venezuela." Telma had told me the laws in the constitution needed to be changed, that they were bad. When I asked her for examples she just said, "Muchas."

The Army is quite strong in Honduras and always has been. Despite all the talk of a "coup" (Hondurans call it "el Golpe"--the strike or blow) I have read that what Zelaya was trying to do was illegal under the constitution and that the Supreme Court had ordered his arrest. The Army did not take control of the government and democratic elections were held as scheduled. There appear to have been very few problems during the election and according to the Tribunal Supremo Electoral a record 61.85% of registered voters participated.

While we were watching the results, a lady at our hotel said that the Army and the businesses had wanted to make sure a conservative was in power. Another of our hosts said that Santos was very unpopular with many Liberals because instead of boycotting the vote to support Zelaya he had continued his campaign. He said in one pro-Zelaya district his car had been egged and that many would not vote, effectively handing the election to Lobo. These things were said when the bad (for them) results were first coming in so I don't know how serious they were. They don't seem to fit with the record number of people voting and the interest and trust that so many people we met placed in the election. But as I've said, we only saw a small portion of the country and we watched the election in a place that has been hit hard by the drop in tourism when the problems started.

The results seemed pretty clear to me around 9:00 pm when I went out for a walk but everything was quiet. Around midnight we woke to the sounds of fireworks and honking horns starting a parade of trucks and mototaxis with waving blue flags that continued the following afternoon and included the chant, "¡Si, se pudo!" That night there was a loud dance party in the central square. The headline in one newspaper suggested that many people in Venezuela and Cuba are jealous of Honduras.

The moment I remember best, however, was several days later when we were camping in the mountains near Gracias. We were sitting around the fire with two brothers who were building a shelter and a latrine. They were the kind of tough but friendly guys you meet a lot in Honduras. Guys that work really hard and walk around with machetes in their hands. They had a radio and all of a sudden they shushed us so they could listen with intense interest to the diputados (the legislators) debate the reinstatement of Zelaya for the last two months of his term. It sure looked like democracy to me.