Living in coronavirus world 204: a brief word from Central America

11/8

...bright, bright sun shiny day.....

Shortly following the official announcement of Biden’s victory, our Central America Task Force gathers for its meeting. The joy here is a bit more restrained. All wondering how the countries these people come from or work in and all care about will fare in a new administration. The major fact impact al the countries is of course the hurricane. In Nicaragua, Puerta Cabezas is all but destroyed. Aid to tjhe regional’s forbidden and the Ortega government diverting the aid like Somoza after the earthquake. In the resistance, La Alianza and the Coalicion seem to have split on economic and class bases. The Alianzacistas feeling they would do better with Trump. Efforts are underway to try and restore the working agreement. Tens of thousands have died of covid while only 1300 are recognized, the government continues it be in denial and testing (around $200) beyond the average person’s capacity. ‘Foreign agency” and “cyber security” acts have clamped down on civil liberty. Election reform is taking place in advance of the 2021 election but not at the executive level. The second harvest has now been lost and a food crisis looms. Increased land demands for beef are eating into the rain forest.

Guatemala is experiencing landslides. Villages are cut off from communication. Government corruption hinders aid. The effort to control covid disintegrating with no access to testing in the villages. The whole situation  will continue forcing people north. And covid makes accompaniment impossible. And the Covid crisis has increased stress for activists.

In Honduras, there is flooding in the San Pedro Sula area.There too crops wiped out. Efforts to build for tourism on the Atlantic Coast are impacting the Garifona Community.

In El Salvador, there has been a showdown between the government and the independent digital journal El Faro over its investigative journalism resulting  in a crack down., Covid has hit hard. After a late summer dip, new cases are now spiking to nearly 600 a day. 

There is of course hope for a more humane approach to the region. We need or start with the tens of thousands of Central Americans stuck in covid infested encampments on the Mexican side of the border unable to exercise their internationally recognized right to an asylum hearing. And every factor we’ve heard about will just keep pushing them north.

11/9

and vote they did....

along my trek

Sunday morning I sleep later than I wanted to.  I go out to buy my Sunday Times for my ritual of coffee and pastry and news but the papers are gone. I begin a determined search, not wanting to give up. And between Harlem at 135th Street and the Upper West Side at 71st, covering nearly six miles back and forth, not a single Times. All gone. The ironic thing is, I was not looking for a souvenir. I want the magazine for the crossword puzzle. 

Family medical crises are complexly complicated by covid making decisions about travel and chlldren and quarantines 

Get your Biden Harris t-shirts here

Last night’s celebrations have left Bar 9 completely out of chicken wings for my Sunday night gig. Even though the cub bans “political music,” I dedicate Johnny Nash’s “I can see clearly now the rain is gone” to yesterday’s victory.

I notice that the one thing the election crisis did was to delay the annual day after Halloween appearance of Christmas decorations. I saw the  first ones going up yesterday.  

It still feels good.

Central America: Random Notes

7/10

Guatemala Highlands

Central America random notes:

. The ubiquitous tuk- tuks, scrambling around the border control area in El Salvador, where are they  ferrying people from and to?

. There are armed guards in every public space in Honduras. And El Salvador. And Guatemala. With automatic weapons.

. Men don’t wear shorts. Women don’t either.

. Camionetas individually painted like works of folk art. Bearing the name of wife. Or girlfriend. Saint or Pentecostal exhortation.

. Tiendas, bodegas, barberias, casas de belleza, ferreterias with names like Rey del Mundo, Corazon de Caridad, Reina del Cielo....


. Futbol Copa de Oro on every tv.

. During the civil wars and deaths quad days I ran 5 miles a day every day. A bit crazy but...Today we are confined to patrolled bounds of our hotels, dorms....todays lawless chaos more dangerous than yesterday’s wars.

. Honduras accepts dollars as well as its own currency. Guatemala only Quetzaltes. El Salvador has just given in and made the US dollar its official  currency. Pocketsful of Sacajaweas and Susan B’s ...so that’s where they all went....

US dollar coins in El Salvador

. US fast food triumphant everywhere...Mc Donald’s. Burger King. Dunkin’ Donuts. Pizza Hut. Honduras’ homegrown Pizza House has a pretty good knock off of Pizza Hut logo. Oh, and donuts are donas.

. Honduran food has the baleada with convoluted story of a woman tortilla seller who got shot, as in, I'll buy from the shot one. And rice and beans, gallos pintos in Nicaragua, painted roosters, are casimientos, or married ones,  in Honduras.

. Morning juices are high fructose concoctions. The real stuff is all exported.

. Leaving Tegucigalpa....miles and miles of bananas....they called them banana republics for a reason....then the miles of sugar cane...,in Guatemala cornfields crawl up hill sides and hold on for dear life...,

. “Auto hotels” are everywhere along the highways . A place for that illicit triste. Or maybe there’s just no privacy and everyone deserves a little romance...

. In the highlands, Guatemalan men and women in traditional dress. Including skirts for men. 

Guatemalan women

Man in traditional dress

. The two monuments we see in Guatemala we see are a warrior chief who resisted the colonizers and the statue migrant. A story without words dances between these statues.

. At an overlook high in the mountains, in a market filled with folk crafts, a New York Yankee hat for sale. 

2nd row up, Yankee hat for sale

. Many of the people I have spoken to were not even alive the last time I was here.

. Stunning how in the midst of poverty one can always see the breathtaking beauty of Gods creation. Despite our efforts to destroy it, it is

in the highlands of Guatemala

still there......

Central America 2: suffering leads to?

6/13

A touch of beauty in Tegucigalpa

B

I asked to lead worship this morning, because my Nicaraguan friend asked that we join them - the Nicaraguan diaspora-in worship and prayers of solidarity on Thursday or Friday. With of course Thanksgiving for the release of political prisoners and the promise to release the rest. I would like to believe that all our actions of solidarity helped to bring this about but I suspect the threat of the Trump administration for more sanctions had something do with it.

And it’s all in the context of an “amnesty” act that frees those responsible for the murders of protestors  from any accountability and criminalizes further protests. Sigh.

The words of this passage certainly came to  my my mind earlier this year as I watched los Hermanos Mejia in concert and heard the familiar chants “un Pueblo unidos jamas sera vencidos” and “viva Nicaragua Libre” now joined with “ Ortega y Somoza esta la misma cosa”....With the waving of flags and dancing and .....stories from students and people from revolutionary families like Katia Cardenal driven into exile and I think, “ How long go lord, how long does this suffering people have to go through this? Live through this again? "And I look out at a 98 % Nica crowd and realize that before, the audience would be augmented by myriad gringos internacionalistas singing loudly “adelante, el frente Sandinista”.....Overthrowing a right wing dictator is sexy. Forcing out a one time revolutionary turned repressive autocrat, well, you’re on your own.

And then I live through a day like yesterday and realize that Honduras has never had an explosion of hope like the revolution of 1979. When Sandinistas sang Si Nicaragua vencio, El Salvador vencera, y Guatemala prepara ya con fusiles de libertad, nary a word about Honduras. Honduras was never sexy. Honduras is without a doubt a text book testimony to the reality of global predatory capitalism ringing every last ounce of life out of a country....and a people...

You hear stories like I heard last night from everyday Honduran Presbyterians and join in the question “Where is God?” The obvious answer is there...God is there en camino..in the midst of the people...On the journey...by their side. But then, so what? .What does hope even look like here? In the darkest days of apartheid, Archbishop Tutu would smile that all conquering smile of his and say, “ We have already won. The other side just doesn’t realize it yet.” What would that even mean in Honduras?

I hear Paul’s words again:
1Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

And I wonder if I can believe these words. Does suffering always produce persevere despite everything? Doesn’t it also produce desperation, resignation? Does character really grow out of suffering and does hope necessarily follow?


What faith I have says that with the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit, yes. But humility bids me to be silent and listen. And let those with ears to hear, hear.

Central America 1: Bienvenidos a Honduras!

6/11

Presbyterian Church Central America Study Team

Honduras. San Pedro Sula.  My first time back in Honduras in  36 years.  And my first time ever in this city. Honduras. The awkward kid in the back of the classroom . The one who gets picked last for teams. The poor cousin. Back in the '80's, the  Sandinistas sang:

Si Nicaragua vencio
El Salvador vencera
Y Guatemala prepara ya con fusiles de libertad
Somos el Central America, la esperanza de la humanidad.

(If Nicaragua won, then El Salvador can win. And Guatemala is now preparing with bullets of liberty. We are Central America, the hope of humanity.)

Yep. Not one word about Honduras. Nicaragua had the victorious Sandinistas. El Salvador the valiant FMLN in the face of daily death squads. Even Guatemala had a genocidal born-again Christian madman to contend with. There was just nothing sexy about Honduras.

The wet tropic middy heat hits my lungs and I remember. Honduras trying  to contend with refugees from Salvador and Nicaragua. I remember the massive US airbase at Comeagua. The people joked that the US had turned Honduras into an aircraft  carrier. And that the brothels near the base were a metaphor for the country. 

A random connection with an old classmate on our taskforce led to an invitation to Rafael Leonardo Callejas' birthday party. As a what you might call an agrotechnocrat phd from Mississipi State, in 1990  he would be elected President in the first peaceful transfer of power in Honduras since 1932. 

My photo of a Tegucigalpa barrio graced the Presbyterian AD magazine cover in a feature article on the region. I wrote an extended article for a Synod of the Covenant newspaper series on the five countries of Central America pretty much by default. Someone had to do it.  It was called "On the space of a tear." Even then, it was a story of unremitting sadness.

Historically one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere, last year it was the murder capital of the world. 

The hotel, like most local businesses, has a security gate with a red "ALTO"sign and an  armed guard. We are instructed if we go out, not to leave the perimeter of the hotel. 
 Our hosts are against going to  see la plaza in city center or where the caravans gather. The local papers are filled with stories and pictures of the latest murders. Four teenagers. A kidnapping. Traffic disruted by burning tires and striking teachers and doctors.  A pile of tires was ignited on the door of the US embassy leaving it scorched. A few pages later feature the smiling faces and classy celebrations of a lighter class's 2019 graduates. Caravans...why are the people leaving? What would it take to make it livable enough for people to want to stay?

That's what we're here to explore....

Bienvenidos a Honduras.....