FROM HONDURAS: An Open Letter to Public Officials of the Government of the United States

Dec 12, 2017
5:13 PM

From Honduras

By Chaco de la Pitoreta
(Hector Efrén Flores Asiego)
Poet and Cultural Representative in Honduras

You are the ones responsible for our crisis in Honduras. You are the ones responsible for the bloodshed in Honduras. It is your democracy that limits our constitutional guarantees, and it is your weapons and your training of the military in Honduras that kills us because we defend our autonomous right to be an independent nation. Allow me to elaborate.

With the ludicrous pretext of fighting against drug trafficking, you have armed the Honduran military that violently tortures and kills people —there have been 12 deaths in the conflict against fraud since the election two weeks ago, in case you were not aware— in the name of the “democracy” you proclaim. The Honduran military is inhumane. You gave them a rifle and cut off their ability to think, you gave them bullets and trained their fingers to pull a trigger, you gave them a uniform and you made them feel superior to others, including their own families. The more they shoot their own people, the more weapons are bought from you and, now, as I understand it: you live well because of this business of death.

You keep silent about the atrocities committed by Juan Orlando Hernández against my people. For you, what is important is the money of transnational corporations, concessions for mining companies, the business of weapons, and the farce democracy that you claim is better than leftist democracies.  For you, all of this is more important than the human rights of Hondurans and their desire to be an autonomous nation. Your blindness and ambition will tolerate only something in your own democratic style, and in practice you actively condemn socialist proposals. It is clear to me that you are moved by only two things: 1) money and 2) your own sick ideology which —with your right-wing politics— makes you not see the evil that comes with it.

You know that my people are dying and your silence makes you complicit. You know that a single word of yours would solve this crisis and make the puppet in power here tremble. But instead of this, you only send an embassy spokesperson for capital and power, one in love with money and one who will never see my dead —those 12 of which I spoke above— or the clear electoral fraud, or the corruption of Juan Orlando Hernández, or the crimes against humanity of your army and military police. The embassy spokesperson is here —on your behalf— to protect your capital, your financial interests, and your geopolitical positions (by this I mean the US military bases in Honduras). The embassy spokesperson is not here to defend the people, the men and women that live here and dream of a free, sovereign, and independent Honduras.

In case you have forgotten, the money you give to Juan Orlando Hernández is used to treat us as hunted animals. To illustrate, many animals in your own territory in the USA are protected from killing on farms or in wildlife…  these animals are safer than my people who only dream of waking up with those protections. It is your money (or rather, the money that the worthy people of the people of the United States who pay taxes, but that you administer) that finances death, that buys the food, that gives the ammunition and that sustains the Honduran military that today is killing my people.

And you —yes, you with your silence— are guilty of the bloodshed here. During these long days since November 26, 2017 —and since many years ago in the 1980s— your money was our greatest misfortune. We have lived days of fatigue, pain, and uncertainty. What enormous shame we feel when we see such pain in the faces of our own people, faces which are tainted by strategies that you have transmitted to the Honduran military, and by the nefarious public administrators in Honduras who you protect because they are the guarantors of your ambitions. 

It is time to talk about real democracy, what can come about from a real democracy, and a respect for OUR democracy. Stop providing financial resources to this repressive Honduran government and to this murderous Honduran army, and let us live in peace. We Hondurans believe in Honduras and we dream with Hondurans. We will fight for Honduras from the beginning until the end, until we see Honduras as the free, dignified, and prosperous place we always imagine.

I appeal to your humanity—if you still have any. I appeal to your reasoning—if it has more depth than your U.S. embassy has indicated when it concerns itself only with money. I appeal to the commitment that you —public officials— have with the U.S. citizens who elected you and who never, I am absolutely sure, would allow their money to be used to massacre other people. On behalf of my people, this worthy Honduran people, I beg of you, I beg of you, I implore you: enough of this interference and manipulation in the destiny of my people!