Honduras and out

    Honduras was quite a different experience from the two countries visited earlier. (See the previous posts.) For one thing, in economic terms, it is the poorest country in Central America--and it shows! It is also the country that showed the biggest sellout to U.S. style enterprise with major American transnational logos, offices, and outlets staring one in the face just about everywhere in the capital. We visited another Goldcorp mine, the San Martin Mine about two hours north-west of Tegucigalpa. It is a mine that ceased operations a couple of years ago and has been going through the process of shutting down. Goldcorps presents this as a model case for how a responsible mining operation should be closed out. Unfortunately there are a lot of unanswered questions about what went on and is still going on. People from other parts of Latin America who are threatened with mining projects have come to the San Martin mine to learn about the impact of a mine of a community: division and violence in the community, breakdown of cultural ties, contamination of the water sources and indeed possibly of the water table, a distinct possibility of long-term acid drainage. In the history of the mine, children became sick, broke out in rashes and lost clumps of hair. Livestock died, in fact 70 in one instance. The mine has erected an enormous poster at the entrance to their "Ecological Park" announcing the presence of a navigable lake, the presence of many species of animals and plants etc. In the area where the mine deposited its tailings (a very long and high ridge in place of the large hill that was there before), they have planted plants for fodder rather than the trees that were there on the hill before. There are many questions.
   At the same time we tried to discover the situation in the country following the coup that removed President Zelaya from office a year ago. It was followed by months of massive protest and it is clear that the movement to restore a democratic government has not abated in spite of the so-called elections that took place a few months ago.  While little of the opposition appears in the national or international press, the repression of the leaders continues unabated. Almost every day we heard of killing and disappearances. Many of them were officially attributed to gangs but it is remarkable how consistently the  victims turn out to be leaders in the resistance. As one person told us, the situation is very serious and dangerous !