Honduras Weekly
Ambassador Oliver P. Garza arrived yesterday in Honduras to assist the government in the development and implementation of a national security strategy aimed at helping contain and reduce the high levels of violence and impunity in the country. Mr. Garza, who served as United States Ambassador to Nicaragua during 1999-2002, will serve as a high level technical adviser to the Lobo administration on matters related to ensuring better security for citizens, proper application of the law, and combating narcotrafficking. He will work closely with President Porfirio Lobo and his Cabinet to identify specific ways in which the US government can provide appropriate material and training support.

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I would only try to ensure that the example of Villeda Morales be followed. Nothing different. Simply continue with his social reforms. The Liberal Party is a party based on social liberalism. The reforms of Villeda Morales are precisely that social liberalism. And I think that we should continue to emphasize this... education, health, security, jobs are extremely important for any government.

-Mauricio Villeda

Honduras Weekly
On January 28, 2012, Honduran novelist and journalist César Indiano conducted an interview for Maya TV in Tegucigalpa with Liberal presidential candidate Mauricio Villeda. The interview on the program Izquierda Derecha (Left Right) focused on the history of Ramón Villeda Morales, who served as President of Honduras from 1957-1963. Mauricio Villeda is the fourth of six sons of Ramón Villeda Morales and Alejandrina de Villeda Morales. He recently launched his campaign to win the Liberal Party's nomination to run for the Presidency of Honduras in 2014. César Indiano writes a weekly editorial column for La Prensa. With his permission, Honduras Weekly occasionally translates and publishes his columns. The following is the transcript of an excerpt from the interview, beginning at the 53:26 mark on the video, in which Mr. Villeda is asked what he would do differently from his father were he to become President.

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Honduras Weekly
Liberal presidential candidate Mauricio Villeda on Saturday characterized last week's official resignation of Manuel Zelaya from the Liberal Party of Honduras as an "ideological cleansing" of the party. "The party is unifying a little more each day. What the exit of former President Zelaya has done is initiate a cleansing within the Liberal Party. It has shown that we have two clearly different ideologies: the ideology that continues to be liberal and that of Zelaya's, which is the socialism of the 21st century," said Mr. Villeda. According to him, "When leftist liberals leave, it is like trimming a tree. When you trim a tree, new branches sprout. That is what's happening in the Liberal Party."

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Separating fact from fiction, Hugo Chávez has done little in his past 13 years to further Venezuelan's expectations of much needed prosperity and at least a decent quality of life.

By Jerry Brewer
As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez approaches his latest reelection possibility, his dominated official government press cadre has risen yet again to purport, "With a socialist-oriented program for the country, the president continues to maintain popular support with an approval rating of over 60 percent, according to recent polls." Moreover, "The survey showed that 59 percent of Venezuelans believe the Bolivarian Revolution has improved the country's economic and social situation." The obvious question is, what are the true poll "sources" and exactly what is the content validity?

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Editor's Note: The following piece was originally published as a Letter to the Editor in yesterday's edition of The New York Times. It was written in response to an Op-Ed article written by Dana Frank titled "In Honduras, A Mess Made in the US".

By Jorge Hernández Alcerro
Ms. Frank’s insinuations about the Honduran government’s illegitimacy are offensive to the 56.6 percent of Hondurans who voted for President Porfirio Lobo in the last election. More than 4,600 international and domestic observers closely supervised the electoral process. The other four Honduran political parties recognized President Lobo’s election, have been integrated into the sitting national reconciliation and unity government, and are represented in Congress. Ms. Frank’s article points to the effects and not the underlying causes of violence in Honduras. It confuses common and organized criminality with human rights offenses. Honduras is a victim of what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described as America’s “insatiable demand for illegal drugs.” Without it, murder rates would drop dramatically.

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By Jorge Agurcia Fasquelle
In his doctoral dissertation, The People of French Harbour (University Microfilms, 1966), anthropologist David K. Evans dedicates an entire chapter to Island folklore. My particular favorite is the part dealing with the “duppy”. What follows has been excerpted from Dr. Evans’ work, based on his research and interviews in the Bay Islands. Islanders, particularly the older ones, believe their world to be densely populated by spirits of the dead. These are known as duppies. It seems to the villagers “more natural that the duppy should be there than that he shouldn’t” (Beckwith, 1929).

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Bueno, I was able to obtain generous international aid to build a bridge for our little pueblo. But instead of building a big expensive two-lane bridge, I built a one-lane bridge and with the excess funds, I am able to have all of this," explained Don Carlos, throwing his arms wide to encompass his luxurious surroundings.

By La Gringa
A Honduran mayor went to visit the mayor of his "sister city" in Spain. The Spanish mayor invited him home for dinner the first night of his trip. Before the dinner, which was fit for a king, he showed the Honduran mayor around his palatial estate. The house was a mansion with finely carved furnishings, thick oriental carpets, golden faucets, and servants galore, waiting to attend to their every need. The mansion was situated on several acres of an immaculately landscaped hill overlooking a river. The Honduran mayor, who we'll call Don Tomás, was suitably impressed and said, "I'm just a humble mayor from a poor pueblo in Honduras. I can only wonder how you can live in splendor like this. Spain must pay its mayors much better than Honduras does."

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There was this little boy, probably six years old. His mom said he was deaf. I was checking his prescription and it was really high. He had no verbal skills, so they didn’t even know he wasn’t seeing.

By Patty Wetli
On February 8, optometrist Stephanie Lyons, husband John, and the entire staff Lyons Family Eye Care will board a plane to Tela, Honduras, as part of a mission by VOSH International of Ipswich, Massachusetts, to deliver vision services to people who otherwise lack access to eye care. With Stephanie having participated in previous missions to Honduras in 2008 and El Salvador in 2010, she and John were looking for a volunteer opportunity as a way to give back after the successful opening of LFEC in 2011. “For us, it’s been an incredible year,” says John. “People have been so supportive of what we’re doing.”

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So, here we are as a nation, caught between two American Dreams: Beloved Community and Beloved Economy. Here we are, torn between two pursuits -- a spiritual quality of life and a materialistic style of life.

By Brian McLaren
You know how synchronicities happen. It's not just the song you're listening to or the book you're reading, but what you're eating or who you're with or where you are when you do so. So I was re-reading Adam Hamilton's Enough: Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity recently, "synchronicitously" with a mistake and a holiday. The mistake had to do with some yearend giving back in December. We make it our practice to give away a minimum of a certain percent of our annual gross income each year, and so before December 31 we made sure to write several checks to some charitable organizations we care about, proportional to our estimated annual income. Last Friday, my wife realized she had overestimated my income by quite a bit, which meant we had given away "too much" money.

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Many of these transnational criminal organizations (TCO) appear to own the police, the judiciary and the prison system. They have viciously murdered and tortured government officials, police officers, journalists and citizens. With their virtually limitless funds and unlimited access to weaponry, they clearly have the ability to destabilize an entire hemisphere.

By Jerry Brewer
The fact is that in recent times we have heard the terms "drug war, war on crime" and "war against terror" ad nauseam. A vernacular that often seems to move us into complacency and formulates naive opinions that this is simply political rhetoric or a tool for aspirants to political office. However, a prolonged law enforcement campaign as we are seeing throughout the Americas doesn't appear to measure up in factual detail to anything short of ongoing and imminent conflict. The enemy is a transnational and systematic killing machine. The enemy's focus is a superior armed and capable strategy that is based on violence and territorial acquisition. Too, it is a fluid epidemic that filters through much of Latin America. This corridor is a gateway for illegal migration, drugs and other contraband, with financing efforts and other brazen sources of revenue that include kidnapping and extortion, cargo threat, human trafficking for a myriad of reasons, robbery, and related violent acts against local societies and governments.

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As the old and young and everyone in between were guided through the long lines in triage and then to the various clinics for treatment, my life began to transform. I began to see how the challenges of relocating from Wisconsin to Florida, going to school in order to build a new career at age 51, working a part-time job, my recent divorce and living alone away from my family and friends began to pale in comparison to the fact that I was with people in Honduras who do not receive basic medical care...

By Gail Bernhoft
I finally did it. Or, better said, it finally happened for me. I knew that taking a trip to Honduras was the right thing to do, because when all things came together, seemingly on their own, as if the universe itself had personal interest in seeing to it that I was provided with a first time experience that would not only leave me feeling like I can make a difference in the world, but also to become bonded with an amazing group, through MEDICO of Georgetown, Texas. My role with this organization was as an interpreter for the medical teams. I admit I wasn’t sure if my level of Spanish -- which at the time was only a little bit better than conversational -- would be good enough to be able to be of any use.

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Economic growth is not necessarily synonymous with national development. If economic growth only succeeds in adding to severe income inequality, which Honduras has in spades, then there is no development... and the country is all the worse for it.

By Marco Cáceres
Back in the 1960s, the World Bank sought to encourage economic growth and development in Honduras by expanding beef exports. This was seen as a good strategy for creating badly needed foreign capital for investment in the country. There was a growing demand for cheap beef around the world, as fast food restaurants like McDonald's continued to spread throughout the United States and Canada, and began establishing franchises in Asia, Europe, and Latin America in the early-1970s. The World Bank provided low-interest loans to Honduran cattle ranchers, who used the money to enlarge and fatten their herds. One of the ways the ranchers did this was to obtain more pasture land for grazing. In numerous cases, the land was simply taken from small farmers engaged in subsistence agriculture.

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