Honduras: Business and blood
- “Open for business” — El Heraldo photo
[Translation of an article from the website Nicaragua y Más for May 7. See original here.]
by Giorgio Trucchi
Yesterday, May 6, marked the end of the business event “Honduras Is Open for Business,” in which some 1,500 businessmen from 55 countries met in the northern city of San Pedro Sula to examine 147 projects proposed by the Honduan regime. An investment surpassing 14 billion dollars is foreseen, too appetizing a dish to be distracted by the blood running in the streets and the plantations of the country.
During the two days of the entrepeneurial mega-event, which returned Honduras to the eyes of the world, the country experienced schizophrenia.
On one side, thousands of domestic and international entrepeneurs enclosed in an invisible bubble, working eagerly to divide up the country, listening attentively to the discourses of skilled communicators, and on the other, the people in resistance.
Thousands of people demanding a halt to these projects that, according to them, will bring more poverty, deregulation, making jobs precarious and unpredictable, the plunder of natural resources, the loss of territory and the violation of human rights.
“Here we are, come, invest and you will help us to move forward in this heroic struggle to invest. We will both win, our people with the opportunity of income for their families and you will grow ever more with your businesses,” Porfirio Lobo pontificated in his speech ending the event, while in the streets of San Pedro Sula the riot police were savagely represssing a peaceful demonstration by the Resistance.
While the regime announced the decision to fulfill two public requests for continuity of commercial relations initiated within the framework of the activities, and met with international businessmen to show the benefits of the new legal framework that deregulates the labor market, grants fiscal benefits and liberalizes foreign investment, outside the site of the event dozens of people were being beaten and arrested.
According to accounts by the Red Morazánica de Información, several student organizations and members of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP) gathered to protest in the vecinity of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de San Pedro Sula.
“Around 10:30 in the morning, the police, the military, tanks and anti-riot squads were deployed to the location, where minutes later a brutal repression began, with a large number of tear-gas grenades fired, streams of stinging liquid, rocks and even live ammunition,” reported the Red Morazánica de Información.
The repressive forces of the state lashed out with their usual violence against even a cameraman for Globo TV, who suffered serious injuries to the head and blows to his entire body and had to be hospitalized.
Uriel Gudiel Rodríguez, who in the past has received threats and aggression from the police because of his coverage of repressive actions against the people, was brutally assaulted while doing his job as a journalist. “The cameraman’s fate could have been worse had it not been for the intervention of several people who pulled him from the hands of the police,” related Tomy Morales, a journalist with Defensores en Línea.
According to Bertha Oliva, coordinator of the Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH), what happened is monstrous, “because their aggressors knew who they were attacking and that shows that there is clealy persecution against the journalists who choose to tell the truth.
“To try to silence the people, to generate terror. Let us raise our fists not to attack but to show to those guilty of these atrocious acts,” Oliva asserted to Defensores en Línea.
Since the coup d’état, Honduras has become one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. Ten communicators have been assassinated and attacks against the trade are the order of the day.
Repression against campesinos
Similar experiences were faced by campesinos of the La Trinidad cooperative in the Bajo Aguán, an area where the businessmen gathered in San Pedro Sula intend to develop six of the 147 projects.
While the future investors listened attentively to the words of the panelists, among them the Mexican magnate Carlos Slim and former president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe, some 300 campesinos from the Movimiento Auténtico Reivindicador Campesino del Aguán (MARCA) were attacked and penned in by the military, the police and security guards of landowner and palm-oil producer René Morales.
Two campesinos were shot with large-calibre weapons and their companions charge that they were trapped by the army and the police and that they have been without water or food. They resist nevertheless and say they are prepared to die. “It is better that they kill us defending out lands than for us to continue suffering hunger and poverty.”
Look how naïve are these students, workers, campesinos, people in resistance! Don’t they know that in San Pedro Sula the business élite of the world are preparing their future? Because as Mister Porfirio Lobo says, “We will all win”: business for us and work, teargas and clubs for the rest.
Tags: Bajo Aguan, Comite de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos, Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, Honduras, journalists, Open for Business, Porfirio Lobo