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Honduras Coffee Boom Feels Growing Pains

Honduras will export nearly 5.4 million 60-kg bags of arabica coffee next season, well over double the volume in the 2004/5 cycle, cementing the country's position as the region's biggest coffee producer.

By Gustavo Palencia
In the small town of Marcala in the western mountains of Honduras, farmers are harvesting more coffee than ever before, part of a nationwide push to capitalize on higher prices that has doubled production in less than 10 years. But the boom comes with a cost. The coffee is coming in faster than growers can handle it and they are running out of space to dry all the beans, which need time in the sun or in drying machines to stop fermenting. Improper drying can ruin coffee for export. A drastic reduction in quality will slash the price the coffee can fetch. Local coffee company Cafe Organico Marcala (COMSA) was forced to rent out a nearby soccer field this year and cover it with plastic sheets to air out coffee cherries after their cement-drying patios overflowed.

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Tela Holds First Latin American and Caribbean Dialogue on Climate Change

By Ibis Liulla
After two days of presentations, speeches, debates and thematic meetings, those attending the First Latin American and Caribbean Dialogue on Climate Change Finance and Development Effectiveness in Tela, Honduras, agreed that improving the capacity of governments to make effective use of the resources allocated for this matter is crucial. This would affect the management of funds from bilateral and multilateral agencies as well as the sound management of national budgets for facing the challenges of climate change. Ministers Julio Raudales of the Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation (SEPLAN) and Rigoberto Cuéllar of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (SERNA), and Peter Versteeg, Charge d´Affaires of the European Delegation in Honduras were among the speakers who inaugurated the event.

Former Army Colonel Named New Drug Czar

As a career military official, Santos may be hesitant to reign in military abuses.

By Geoffrey Ramsey
Colonel Isaac Ramón Santos Aguilar on Monday was sworn in as the new director of Honduras' Anti-Narcotics Directorate (DLCN). Santos has previously served as an army spokesperson, head of a military academy, and chief of the counter-narcotics division of the armed forces. The DLCN has not had a permanent head since December 2009, when then-director, retired General Julian Aristides Gonzalez, was assassinated by gunmen while driving in Tegucigalpa. Another official reportedly being considered for the position, former DLCN deputy director Jose Alfredo Landaverde, was gunned down in December.

Ham Blames FNRP for Illegal Land Invasions

Honduras Weekly
The director of the National Agrarian Institute (INA), César Ham, yesterday accused leaders of the National Front for Popular Resistance (FNRP) of inciting some 3,000 peasant farmers throughout Honduras to invade and occupy more than 30,000 acres of private land in the northern, central, and eastern regions of the country. He claimed that the Sub-Coordinator of the FNRP, Juan Barahona, along with Rafael Alegría, were behind a series of illegal invasions by at least 13 groups in the departments Olancho, Francisco Morazán, El Paraíso, Yoro, and Cortés. It is believed that the actions may have been timed to coincide with Tuesday's International Day of the Peasant commemoration, and Mr. Ham speculated that they are part of a coordinated FNRP strategy to destabilize the government and gain support for that organization's newly-established political party, Libre, headed by former President Manuel Zelaya. In a communiqué issued by the FNRP, the invasions were undertaken in response to the "constant attacks and violence by large landowners and the oligarchy which control the police, the army, and the government".

The Gradual Loss of Forests

When a truck carrying illegally cut timber is stopped, the owner needs only call a military officer he knows to get the order to allow [the truck] to pass...

By Alejandro Ludeña
Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, loses millions of dollars annually as a result of illegal logging. According to the European Commission’s Country Strategy Paper for Honduras 2007-2013, the market value for illegally chopped timber is between US$55 and US$70 million a year, in addition to undeclared taxes and wasted public investment, which amounts to US$18 million more. This is just one of the ruinous effects of the inefficiency with which the Forestry Law is applied in Honduras, where weak democratic institutions reached a nadir in June 2009 with a coup d’etat. But perhaps it isn’t even the worst consequence.

Honduras May Opt to Shoot Down Drug Planes

Many Hondurans say that we have the right to defend ourselves, and if [a pilot] does not respond to a request for identification then he shoot be shot down... and if one of those planes is shot down it would send an excellent dissuasive message.
-Juan Orlando Hernández, president of the National Congress

Honduras Weekly
The president of Honduras' National Congress, Juan Orlando Hernández said this week that a proposal by Guatemala's President Otto Pérez Molina to legalize drugs remains under discussion by the leaders of Central America, despite opposition to the idea by the United States government. Speaking at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, DC, the Congressman emphasized that the presidents of the region are "very very frustrated" with the "catastrophic" impact of organized crime on their countries and the slow response of the international community in helping combat the threat. "Because of so much frustration, some public agency officials and legislators in Central America have started to consider ideas that for some of you may seem as if we're pulling our hair out," said Mr. Hernández, who is favored to be nominated by the Nationalist Party to run for the Presidency of Honduras next year.

Resistance Would Show Up for Xiomara Zelaya

... even among those within the National Front for Popular Resistance (FNRP) who preferred remaining a social refoundational movement rather than forming Libre and trying to win power through the electoral process, Mrs. Zelaya has "won their heart".

Honduras Weekly
In an article in Otramérica on Sunday, the vice-president of the Fraternal Organization of Black Hondurans (Ofraneh) in La Ceiba, Honduras, is quoted as saying he does not believe the new Liberty and Refoundation (Libre) Party has a chance to win the presidential election next year. According to Alfredo López, "There is no possibility of winning. Even with a majority of the votes, Mel [Zelaya] would not win, because the results would be fixed. If the Supreme [Electoral] Tribunal and the Office of the Attorney General are made up of golpistas, then there is no hope for victory. No one thinks that, after 200 years of domination by the two [major] parties and the military, they would give up power."

Xatruch II Army Convoy Ambushed in Bajo Aguán

One possibility is that the ambush was carried out by local "transportistas"; individuals who move contraband, particularly narcotics, through the country. Two of the more well-known transportistas in the country are Nelson and Javier Rivera, former car thieves and cattle rustlers who moved into the drug trade.

By Edward Fox
An armed group ambushed a Honduran military convoy yesterday, wounding five soldiers, in the northern department of Colón. The attack occurred in a rural area of the Bajo Aguán Valley. Eleven military personnel from the 15th and 16th Infantry Battalions were going to investigate reports of looting in a nearby village. The reports turned out to be false, and the units were ambushed by approximately 30 heavily armed gunmen, reports Proceso Digital. Five of the 11 soldiers were injured in the assault, two seriously. Colonel David Paz Hernández, head of Operation Xatruch II which sent 600 soldiers to secure the area in August of last year, could not confirm reports of the number of gunmen, but said the attack pointed to the presence of combatants in the area, rather than armed peasants, reports El Heraldo.

Lobo Denies Farmers Behind Army Convoy Ambush

Honduras Weekly
The attack on a Honduran Army convoy on Monday afternoon along the highway near the village of Tascosa, between the villages of Toscana and Sonaguera in Honduras' northern department of Colón, left five soldiers critically wounded. The names of the victims are Domingo Ávila Chirinos, Rony Abel Briceño Pérez, Carlos Orlando Campos, Roberto Nahún Mancía, and Luis Alfredo Padilla. The men were part of a group of 11 soldiers traveling in a troop transport vehicle returning from Tascosa, where they had responded to reports of criminal assaults against residents of the community. The soldiers had been mobilized to try and control the violence. According to Undersecretary of Defense Juan Carlos Fúnez, the convoy was ambushed by a band of approximately 30 armed individuals who are believed to be behind the assaults in Tascosa.

The Disintegration of the Honduran Family

The consequences of the lack of family structure in Honduras include child abuse. This abuse, especially sexual abuse, is the most common problem...

By Marco Cáceres
In Honduras, more than 50 percent of the population is 15 years old and younger. The average woman is only 15 years old when she gives birth to her first child. In recent years, more than 80 percent of all birth certificates issued in the country do not name a father. According to Ana Alleman of Hogar Suyapa in El Progreso, the reasons for this lack of family structure in Honduras include: large number of men (and increasingly women) leaving for the United States and Spain; high unemployment and underemployment; overall failing of the moral structure of the society in that there is no longer any stigma to having a child outside of marriage; lack of education; lack of a loving, supportive environment within the family which leads to young women having babies in order to have someone to love; macho attitude of wanting to have as many children as possible by as many women as possible.