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Honduras Chickens Come Home to Roost By: Lorenzo Dee Belveal _____________________________________________________________________________ Editorial Note: (The recent imposition of sanctions on some Honduras products that have heretofore enjoyed preferential treatment in the U. S. import market didn't just happen. It is economic punishment for the Honduras failure to honor its commitment to respect intellectual property-rights. It is long overdue punishment for intellectual "piracy". Nevertheless, the action has raised a chorus of protests, and charges that cancellation of the trade preferences is unfair, irrational and unjustified. This article will provide some perspective on the issues involved.) ____________________________________________________________________ The big push in Washington to consider most - or all - of the Hondurans presently in the United States, whether legally or not, as either refugees or war victims, and fix them up with quick and easy citizenship or permanent visas, isn't likely to go anywhere, even if it does get to Capitol Hill. More than this, informed consensus indicates that getting as far as a Congressional vote is not at all likely. This reporter finds it mind-boggling that the Honduras government seems to be completely oblivious to its unsavory image widely shared among the people who cast votes on things like immigration amnesty, foreign loans, grants-in-aid, import duties, etc. My friends in "Foggy Bottom" who know the political territory intimately, tell me that the next four years are not going to be good ones for Honduras, vis-a-vis the "Washington Connection", unless some prompt and significant changes begin taking place in Tegucigalpa. Honduran readers may beneficially view what follows as a serious letter from an interested and well-intentioned uncle. Nobody that I talk to is much impressed by the supplanting of Carlos Roberto Reina, by Carlos Roberto Flores, in the Palacio Presidencial. The read from the banks of the Potomac, to the locks in the Panama Canal, is that Reina was a pleasant, but extremely limited man, especially in the areas of political administration and economics. Perhaps "awkward" is the best word to sum up his performance, as seen by experienced. foreign observers. He sealed his own fate with the placement of the US$32,000 paid commercial advertisement, in Washington's "Moonie" newspaper. Reduced to its essentials, it was a 14-page puff-piece devoted to patting his own back. That bald attempt at self-aggrandizement was not just absurd, it was a major political gaffe. It turned Reina into an object of public ridicule. A politician can live with anything except being laughed at. In the absence of some solid reasons to think otherwise, Carlos Flores has to be viewed as just one more example of the same uninspiring sameness. Never before in the history of elective politics has a candidate remained so intellectually aloof and so functionally tongue-tied, while presumably hard at work trying to win votes and influence national attitudes. Benign platitudes and a permanently etched smile are not viable substitutes for innovative national program proposals and forthright correction of old, shameful, festering, wrongs. Indeed, to compare El Presidente’s travel schedule with his domestic activities in the first three months of his incumbency, one might conclude that Don Carlos views being President of Honduras as essentially a ministerial role. Somewhat comparable to that of being Queen of Great Britain: more relevant to luncheons, public appearances, high-profile travel and photo-sessions, than to the day-to-day governance of the country. Don Carlos Flores Facusse, barring some kind of political miracle, is in exactly the right spot, at precisely the right time, to preside over a cooling of Honduras / U. S. relationships unprecedented in the 20th century. A combination of neighborly inclinations, commercial symbiosis, and a very large dollop of noblesse oblige has kept Honduras well up front in the American financial handout line for at least six decades. In fact, regional favoritism has been so obvious and so unwavering that an idea has gained currency in Honduras, to the effect that the financial fallout from the rich neighbor to the north is automatic; that it needs no reciprocation to make it survive and flourish. The initial testing of this hypothesis is graphically demonstrating its fallacious presumption. Honduras has repeatedly shown itself to be a mendacious and faithless friend. Not just in shameless diversion of funds, loaned or given for specific purposes, intended to alleviate poverty, illiteracy and woefully outdated infrastructure. Diversion of dollars intended to fund "good works" has provided a recurrent and increasingly corrosive negative input. Such blatant "skimming" of what amounts to international charity, creates the unshakable impression that when Honduras cries "Poor!" -- "Poor!" the intended beneficiaries of the proceeds will be greedy, grasping, corrupt politicians, rather than their poverty-stricken countrymen, in whose names the collection-plate is constantly being passed. Even worse, although Honduras has long shown a fine disregard for law in its own sovereign territory, of late it has applied this same high disdain for legal respectability to the legal arrangements that have historically ordered relationships between amicably inclined sovereign neighbors. The commercial sanctions recently applied by the United States, because of failure of Honduras to honor its commitments in the area of intellectual property, is just the most recent evidence that Honduras is seriously taxing the patience and political indulgence of the United States of America. It is unthinkable that these punitive sanctions would have been applied ten - or even five years ago. But things have changed and nothing may be quite the same again because of it. Added to a long and disgraceful record of internal political corruption, Honduras officials have been repeatedly caught red-handed in big-money scams and bloody crimes of violence that range from political murders, to selling Honduras citizenships to facilitate Asian aliens' illegal entry into the United States of America.. Nor is this the end of it. No less auspicious a body than the Honduras Corte Suprema de Justicia issued an order a few months ago that quite literally snatched Lt. Col. Joseph Michel Francois, former Haitian Chief of Police in the Cedras dictatorship, out of the custody of U. S. police authorities, and into the sheltering arms of Honduras "safe haven". When the Honduras court order (passed by a 5-to-4 vote it was reported) was invoked, Francois was already on his way to the airport, under heavy escort, enroute to the United States, to answer for the alleged importation of no less than thirty-one (31) tons of cocaine into the U. S. This happened during the regime of Carlos Roberto Reina, but the ascension of Carlos Flores to the presidency has occasioned no judicial review of the international outrage. The Honduras Supreme Court must have felt that the United States was not entitled to inquire into the export activities of Haiti’s principal drug operator. The basic Flores policy seems to blandly call for viewing whatever happened before he donned the blue sash, as merely an historic prologue, and that he has no interest nor intention of delving into. Under the close collaboration of one Arnold Morris, a fugitive from U. S. justice, running from a 26-count Federal Indictment, and Judge Fernando Azcona Schrenzel, the Roatan Court of Letters wrote a record of illicit and corrupt land thievery that has rarely been duplicated - even in Honduras, where such occurrences are not considered unusual The Roatan criminal/judicial conspiracy operated with apparent impunity until, as one of the last acts of the retiring Reina administration, Azcona Schrenzel was fired for "corrupt activites", as reported in the Honduras press. The situation had been repeatedly called to the attention of the top political and judicial authorities in the Republica, both privately and by the Political Governor of the Bay Islands, Mr. Stavely J. Elwin. Even though Azcona was eventually fired for corruption several months ago, his firing has not occasioned any kind of judicial review of his corrupted decisions, while he was acting as the legal cats-paw to fugitive-from-justice Arnold Morris. And Morris continues to enjoy the hospitality and sovereign protection of the Republica, by virtue of Honduras citizenship, fraudulently arranged through the Callejas administration for US$25,000, and a Cadillac automobile - according to widely shared contemporary information. The United States of America is the world's only surviving super-power. It shows every intention of living up to both the obligations and the dignities of that global role. Doing this will entail many things, and occasion more than a few thorough-going changes in international relations. None of these will likely be more profound - nor predictably more painful - than the refinement of inter-governmental relationships in the western hemisphere. In terms of its impact on Honduras, the geopolitical sea-change clearly means that Honduras will no longer enjoy the luxury of flaunting law, logic, and the long-standing obligations of unflagging friendship, with economic impunity. The time-honored axiom declares, "To have a friend, you must be a friend". Perhaps this verity needs to be relearned from time to time. Sovereignty imposes an obligation for reasonable behavior; not a blank-check excuse for cavalier violation of the codicils of honor and conformity that exist to define relations between nations; and that must be meticulously respected if international order is to prevail. Noblesse oblige will no longer save Honduras from the fruits of its own follies. Its willful deviations from responsible behavior have already begun to carry a price-tag. That price can only be expected to escalate. In short, the evidence seems clear enough that gratuitous procedural insults are no longer to be indulged, purely on the basis of disparities in national size. The super-power has its unique obligations, to be sure, but those obligations are not going to be invokeable as vehicles for conferring inalienable rights on recipients, regardless of their reciprocal comportment. The super-power's eyes are turning away from the essentially local - western hemispheric - view, in favor of the global perspective, as befits a super-power. Just recently, South Africa was most forcefully brought to world attention, via American sponsorship. Honduras must, therefore, add South Africa to the expanding list of nations now competing for United States economic aid and commercial development attention. Geographical proximity alone will no longer suffice to tip the balance scales to a Central American advantage. There are qualification standards to be met, as well. Honduras must take these altered ground-rules into account, or begin picking up the demerits that non-conformity to acceptable international norms is already bringing. ____________ E N D ______________ Lorenzo Dee Belveal, Author
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