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.

Caminamos a Chile de Argentina

Over two weeks ago we left El Chaltén, Argentina for Villa O'Higgins, Chile, not completely sure what we were getting into. This was our first trek where we had to carry everything, so we purged anything not of the essence. The first leg involved walking and hitchhiking to Lago del Desierto along a dirt road. We walked for a couple hours before we got our first ride from a friendly Australian couple named Brad and Heather, but soon we were walking again when they reached their hostería. We walked for three or four hours before we got our next ride which took us a couple hundred feet before leaving us because the road was blocked by several dozen trees that had been downed in the Patagonian winds that apparently have no name. We continued to walk for several hours until the road was cleared and a wonderful bus driver named Raúl took pity on us and brought us to the end of the road, refusing even a modest tip.





That evening we camped at the southern tip of Lago del Desierto and met a man from Buenos Aires named Miguel, mi tocayo (we have the same name), traveling with his son and some of his son's friends. He gave us great tips on places to visit in Argentina and shared a maté with us in the morning, inauguration day. We felt a little homesickness, wishing we could join Hilary's family and friends in Washington and be at the Kellys' for red beans and rice. The day was wonderful, however. The wind died and the sun shone on the lake and Mount Fitz Roy and we had the trail almost to ourselves. That evening we camped at the north end of the lake near the Argentinian border outpost with a great view aross the length of the lake to Fitz Roy. Despite the lack of roads, the border guards had satellite television and the one who stamped our passports said the inauguration had been very good, though he admitted to not having understood the speeches.





The following day we hiked another ten miles or so. After a few hours we came to the border. Though the trail was fairly easy to follow there were no signs, but at the border there were two large welcome signs more worthy of a major highway than a modest footpath. There was also a pleasant old fashioned marker and we were careful to consume the remainder of our cheese before passing it.


We also had a little moment of excitement when we reached a bridge that had been washed out. We took off our boots and forded it, but not before Hilary got pushed over by the strong current and I fished her bag out. Luckily neither of us were hurt and nothing got too wet. The kicker, however, was ten minutes later when we crossed the same river on a bridge and realized that our fording had been entirely unnecessary. We felt like the butt of a sight gag in a silent movie.



The final leg of the journey was a boat ride across the large and many fingered Lago O´Higgins. It started off a little choppy and then turned sunny and wonderful for half an hour or so as we sailed between steep hills with long waterfalls, talking politics with a South African named Christopher, and smiling at the toddlers playing on the deck. But suddenly when we turned a corner and started heading westward, the wind started blowing, the front of the boat started doing a rollercoaster imitation, and the toddlers had to be carried screaming off the deck by a heroic boatswain. Hilary went below, but due to the sickening diesel smell in the cabin, I stayed up on deck getting progressively wetter and greener with a couple of wool ensconced Chilean soldiers who whooped with joy everytime another sheet of water arced over us and continued to chuckle as they wrung out the sleeves of their uniforms. When I finally got too wet and cold to keep my eyes on the horizon I went down below where I met Fay (who will feature prominently in the next episode), feeling similarly. Finally we docked, jumped in a truck, and were driven to La Cascada, our friendly hospedaje run by Odina and Omar, in the primitive town of Villa O´Higgins.

Sí, Podemos Cambiar

Hola, chicos. Hilary has kindly allowed me to post a spot today.

We spent last night watching the election streaming over the internet in the comfortable apartment of our new friends Pol and Rut, to whom we were introduced by Annie and Michel (thank you!). We didn't get back to our apartment until 4 am. This morning I wrote this:

"I am a little homesick for the first time. Not because I am unhappy here. We are having a wonderful time. But because I would love to be able to walk down the street today and see the faces of other estadounidenses.

"I am as proud as I have ever been of my country today. Not just because we elected my favorite candidate, the most interesting and exciting candidate of my lifetime. And not just because less than 50 years after the civil rights movement we have elected our first black president, as important as that is. My pride today is based on something deeper and harder to describe. I have always been interested in politics but it often seemed like a game and one disconnected from real life. We always seemed to be offered poor choices and we made poor choices. Enormous energy was spent fighting over trivialities while truly important decisions were left unmade or made without real public input.

"It seemed that most people felt estranged from the whole thing and preferred to ignore it. Five years ago, when we starting dropping bombs in Baghdad, the hot topics of discussion in my teachers' lounge were American Idol and Survivor.

"The country has changed. People are paying attention. I saw it when I visited my colleagues before leaving the States. Hilary and I saw it in almost everyone we met going door-to-door in Nevada. We saw it yesterday on the computers at El Zoom, in the pictures of people lined up for hours and reading quotes like, 'If our soldiers can spend a year in Iraq or Afghanistan, surely I can wait all day to vote.' We saw it last night streaming over the internet, video of people in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Washington D.C. and so many other places, crying and jumping up and down. Hilary and I had the special opportunity to see it thousands of miles away in the faces of our wonderful hosts Pol and Rut who seemed to actually enjoy staying up with us well past three and listening to me babble about the vagaries of the Electoral College.

"So I am proud today because while I have always believed in the American system of government, I think it is only truly effective when the people are paying attention. People are paying attention and Barack Obama will be our next president because he made that attention the centerpiece of his campaign."

It is a special day. We are thinking of all of you. We would love you to post comments about your experiences on election day so we can feel a part of it down here in Uruguay.

Election Day!

Mike and I have been at Zoom, our local cyber cafe, for about 3 hours now, vicariously standing in snaking lines at the polls and enjoying the buzz. We're going to pack it in for a couple hours and then meet Annie and Michel's friends Pol and Rut downtown.

Since we got to Montevideo we've been searching for a festive place to watch election returns, naively believing that in all the towns in all the world there would always be American gin joints bursting with election day fervor. Not so much. Neither the Artigas-Washington Library's binational center nor the Sheraton is observing the occasion. The U.S. Embassy froze us out with repeated no's to queries sent to a multiplicity of officers and offices.

But we didn't reckon with the kindess of our friends of friends nor with the perseverance of our Spanish teacher. Pol and Rut offered to search out a cable station airing coverage at Rut's mother's house. Then Eddy came up with a cyber cafe that stays open until 5am. We can have a convivial bilingual TV session and then go hit the computers in the wee hours.

Looking forward to this evening!

el Palacio Legislativo

Although democratically elected, our profesora feels strongly that the alliance currently in power has strangled the middle class with taxes and now wants money for everything. Unbeknowst to her this includes guided tours of the legislature.

We had gone with Eddy to see el Palacio Legislativo and were sitting on the front steps, filling out worksheets to learn how to say "It's cloudy" while being gaped at by schoolchildren and waiting for our tour guide. The tour guide appeared and then made it known that our tour would cost US$3 each. With being told that she would have to pay to enter the seat of her own government umbrage of the highest order was taken and we were whisked back down the stairs without a backward glance. We don´t have a lot of say when Eddy decides something is correct, is not correct, will happen or won't happen. That we were more than willing to accomodate the entry fee was entirely beside the point.

We wandered around the outside and got an eyeful of an elaborately decorated but rather neglected building. A lot of eroded bas-reliefs and collected city grit. The medical college is nearby in a beautiful Beaux Arts building with broken windows. Graffiti is ubiquitous in Montevideo and covers the building and its bronze statues. Lots of students were sitting on the steps along with lots of trash and unchecked weeds. Much of the city shares this flavor of deterioration -- sidewalk tiles on possibly every street we have been on are torn up, leaving pits of sand to walk through.

We did better with Eddy´s husband the next day: At some point David was the second alternate for a member of parliament and still has the identity card to prove it to inquisitive policemen. At the Palace of Legislation he was accomodated for free with an excellent guide, Fernanda, who led us on a tour of the very beautiful building; it was finished in 1922. The main atrium is inlaid with many different marbles, all from Uruguay. There are Ventian mosaics portraying the Arts and the Sciences, and Milanese stained-glass windows. Also the Declaration of Independence and the first Constitution, both presided over by elaborately outfitted soldiers. (The Uruguayan constitution is not amended but changed entirely. At the moment they are on number 7.) The library was the best part, being entirely inlaid wood and angry brass birds. It's open to the public every morning.

Interestingly, there was a metal detecting gate at the front door, presided over by a security detail. No attempt was made either to look through the bags of those entering or to detain anyone for whom the gate buzzed. Possibly this imposition is reserved for members of congress who are not currently in the majority. We learned that in the building that contains members' offices the legislators retaining the greatest power have offices located on the higher floors of the building. When there is a power shift after an election, the offices are shuffled and the newly elect move to the upper levels.