Want to respond? Check out the Voxpop Discussion Group
Express your opinion

Roatan has always been an orphan
Too Many People
Water Shortage
Sewage Treatment Facilities
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Arnold Morris Discoveres Roatan
Entering the Real Estate Business
Morris Plugs into the Court of Letters
Adding it Up
Caveat emptor! BUYER BEWARE!

Roatan has always been an orphan.

It was almost discovered by Columbus on his fourth voyage to the New World. But instead, he made his landfall at Guanaja, a few miles to the east.

It was used as a refuge by two or three hundred black caribs who were fleeing their slavemasters in Hispaniola. It was "occupied" by pirates for a time, when stripping the central American isthmus of its treasure ^ and hijacking the loot from each other -- was the business of choice by the likes of Henry Morgan, Michel Barbarrosa, Teach, LaFitte, and some lesser lights who flew the skull-and-crossed bones from their foremasts.

The British pirates declared Roatan to be English but, tucked away in the corner of the caribbean as it was, nobody paid much attention. The Bay Islands were too small to be candidates for colonization, they contained no gold or silver artifacts to prompt serious looting, and they were too far off the sailing routes of the "plate fleet" to serve as useful way points for slow-moving galleons transporting stolen wealth and exotic spices back to Europe. While technically a possession of Great Britain, they were too remote and too inconsequential to be worth the trouble of defending so, in due course, the British crown ceded them to Honduras.

Not that Honduras especially wanted the Bay Islands. But it just happened that Honduras was the closest sovereign country to them. One can imagine that the Honduras government acknowledged the "gift" with the 19th century equivalent of "thanks for nothing!"

For openers, the island population was a rich mix of white-skinned English and scotch seafarers (on the south shore of the island), amply laced with the genetic stock of the black caribs (who lived on the north side of the island). The islanders, of whatever colors, wanted nothing to do with the hispanics on the mainland, some thirty miles away, and the feeling was mutual.

The islanders spoke English, not Spanish. They held to their protestant faiths, rather than catholicism. In short, these close neighbors and technical countrymen had absolutely nothing in common, except that Honduras "owned" the Bay Islands, of which Roatan was the largest piece.

So it went for more than a hundred years: The islanders and the mainland hispanics each went their separate ways and hardly noticed their alien, albeit national brethren, only thirty miles away!

I first laid eyes on Roatan in January, 1966. I had flown in a five-seat Cessna chartered aircraft from San Pedro Sula, to the island. We landed on a grass strip flanked by rows of coconut trees that looked uncomfortably close to our wingtips on either side, as we lit. Transportation into Coxens Hole was arranged with the driver of an ancient pickup truck. He delivered us to the town dock, where we got aboard a forty-five foot-long packet boat, the Norma Don, for the three- hour ride to Oak Ridge, where we obtained a room in "Merlee's Island Inn."

The slow trip east, where we stopped at every village along the south shore, gave me a wonderful opportunity to look the island over. Roatan reminded me very much of Tahiti, except that Tahiti is a larger land mass, its elevations are higher, and the angles on the hilltops are sharper and therefore more imposing. Roatan's profile is more rounded, smoother.

But Roatan's foliage, trees and natural ground-cover thirty years ago was as lush and thick as that on its look-alike island in the central Pacific. And the sea through which our packet-boat made its slow, sloshing, deliberate way was crystalline. Looking over the rail, I could see lots of fish and a panorama of yellowish-brown coral structures a hundred feet down in the clear blue water. Exquisite!

Flying into the island, I had seen a whipped-cream breaker line on the north side of the island. I knew it had to be a barrier reef. Nothing else would create that unique surface phenomenon. As soon as we got settled into our quarters in "Merlee's" place and began exploring the little village Oak Ridge, I started asking questions about the barrier reef I had seen from the air. Nobody seemed to know much about it. In fact nobody seemed to know much about the north side of the island! I was told there was a black carib village called Punta Gorda "on the other side" - but I spoke with nobody who had actually been there.

A Punta Gorda fisherman goes looking for supper. (1974) Fish, conchs, crabs, langoster and turtles used to abound both inside and outside the barrier reef. No more! Boats full of spear-gunners decimated the fish populations, and over-harvesting of conch, lobster and crabs (for resort dining tables) stripped the tidal flats of exo-skeletals.

Oak Ridge, is located at about the widest point of Roatan. The distance, via footpaths that meandered first through a swamp and then up over grass-covered hills and across the backbone of the island, came to about 2.5 miles, and took about three-quarters of an hour to hike. Yet, to my great surprise, few of the Oak Ridge residents had ever made the trip! The caribs, I discovered, hiked across the hill to Oak Ridge regularly - to work, buy supplies and socialize - but the Oak Ridge residents obviously felt no compulsion to make the trip in the other direction.

My first side-trip on the island was the hike across the island to Punta Gorda. I carried snorkeling gear consisting of face-mask, foot fins and a snorkel tube. My plan was to get out on top of that reef and see if it met my expectations.

A barrier reef is one of the most unique structures in all of nature. Actually there are very few of them. The largest barrier on our planet is the Great Barrier Reef that lies off Australia, in the south-central Pacific. The Roatan barrier reef is the second largest such structure on earth. A barrier reef is an incubator for sea creatures of every kind and description. It is the indispensable spawning ground for everything from fish, to the exo-skeletals like crabs, lobsters, and shells.

The live reef structure, itself, sits like frosting on a cake -- on top of a matrix that has been formed by incalculable thousands of generations of dead coral. Each generation just puts down another layer of new life - and the continuum of existence goes on. The entire marine food-chain, from tiny, almost microscopic planktonic specimens, to ocean giants are familiar sights along a barrier reef. In truth, there is nothing else in the underwater world that can be compared to a barrier reef. Diving a barrier reef is the epitome of underwater adventuring.

...and the water was so clear it was just like looking out the window!

Visibility? I contrived a red and white underwater "target" with which I occasionally measured line-of-sight vision at thirty feet of depth (one-atmosphere) with the sun at or near zenith. One-hundred-fifty feet was ordinary, and two-hundred-feet was not unusual! In spite of having dived in many of what are generally considered to be the best sites on our planet, I have never - before or since - encountered underwater visibility like that. It was just like looking out the window!

The shoreline profile on the north shore was comprised of an "inside" passage that extended from the shore out to the backbone of the reef; a distance of from one-quarter to one-half a mile. Water depth in this area varied from a few feet to several fathoms. And the surface was almost always smooth - protected from ocean wave action by the reef itself.

On the sea-side of the reef, massive underwater structures stepped off in three or four levels until finally dropping straight down into the abyss that is the Cayman Trench. I have taken my boats through channels in the reef on countless occasions, but I never ceased to be awestruck by the way, after passing over the "backbone" of the reef structure, a fathometer "steps" down to perhaps 80 feet, then 175, then 250 or three hundred - and then the marker just spins wildly. There is no bottom to be found down there with a "sound" blip. A quarter of a mile outside the top of the reef, the water under your keel is more than a mile deep!

When I first explored Roatan, natural springs trickled or gushed down the sides of the verdant hills, where people and animals could always find beautiful fresh, cool water. The usual household well was a 55-gallon steel drum with both ends cut out, and buried vertically in the soil at the spring site. A single modest installation of this kind regularly met all the water requirements of several families.

In the commercial developer's mentality an area like this would be a prime candidate for destruction by dredging. Dredges have already ruined the south shore of Roatan, and now they are being put to work on the north side.

I built a hand-dug well in 1970, that was concrete-cased, twelve feet square and twenty feet deep. This well provided all of the water requirements for my resort's kitchen activities, laundry facilities, and a fresh-water swimming pool that measured thirty feet wide, forty-five feet long, and nine and one-half feet deep under the diving board. When I left the island in 1981, that same well was still providing all the water needed in the project for a guest capacity of eighty-five..

The site I chose for the construction of Spyglass Hill Resort was a beautiful headland that towered up 150-feet right on the edge of the sea. Among its other spectacular features, it had a lot of big, old, white oak trees. I had seen some ancient maps that in their legends declared the island had "great oaks, that will make fine masts and spars." I didn't expect to use them for masts and spars, but I certainly intended to save them. We placed our buildings in locations where we could build without cutting down even one of the oaks.

My installations were almost all up on top of the hill. It would have been simple (and much less expensive!) to just run sewer lines down the hill and into the sea. But I didn't do it. Instead, we installed septic tanks, each with its own drain field to take care of human and liquid wastes. We incinerated everything else. I emphasize this to underscore the fact that it is not necessary to pollute the sea. For someone who is spending the heavy bucks it takes to build a commercial resort, it only costs a few dollars more to handle wastes responsibly, and save the environment. Like they say, there ought to be a law!

When I arrived on Roatan there were only two roads on the entire island. One road ran from Cozen's Hole to Sandy Bay. The other ran from Coxen's Hole to French Harbor. Both of them were almost impassable. Especially after a rain, only one of the several island four-wheel-drive "mud-buggies" could manage the trip.

Through the good offices of Osvaldo Lopez Arellano, I arranged to borrow two bulldozers and one road-grader from the Ministry of Public Works. We loaded the machinery on barges at Puerta Cortez, and towed them to the island. With the cooperation of island friends, some of whom worked on the road building, and others who provided fuel and lubricants, I first built the road across the island, connecting Punta Gorda and Oak Ridge. This done, I "borrowed" a government civil engineer, Jorge Bogran, and together, we laid out the track and built the road from French Harbor to Punta Gorda, and on up the island to Diamond Rock.

I emphasize this to underscore the fact that the Honduras government had no perceptible interest in Roatan until it started showing signs of being a source of income - for the government itself, and for government officials who are never slow to recognize a good thing when they see it. Official promises to "fix the roads next year" were perennial, but promises alone won't build a road.

Fourteen years, three hurricanes (Francillia, Fifi and Greta) and three golpes de estados (read: revolutions) after I got to Roatan, I left. Since 1981, I have gone back almost every year for a month or two. To see good friends. To dive. To enjoy!

But the things that can truly be enjoyed on Roatan are, I find, fewer and fewer. The beautiful, bountiful, pristine island that I discovered some thirty years ago doesn't exist any more. It has been exploited, savaged, disfigured[[Sigma]][[Sigma]][[Sigma]]destroyed.

Let me tell you about it, because in this account you will see an infallible blueprint for destroying an island. Any island! Perhaps if the lessons to be learned from the tragedy of Roatan are taken seriously, we won't have to lose any more beautiful islands to the unbridled ignorance, avarice and organized destruction that hides behind the siren-songs of "commercial development."

Too Many People Return to top

An island has much in common with a ship. Almost anyone can understand why a ship that handles 500 passengers comfortably, is going to turn into an unimaginable nightmare if loaded with three times that number. This is what has happened to Roatan. In 1980, the total permanent human population of Roatan was reliably estimated to be about 10,000 people. As 1996 comes to a close, the total permanent population of Roatan is conservatively estimated to be between twenty-five- and thirty-thousand people.

But the island land mass hasn't grown. Roatan is still the same size it was sixteen years ago. Only the number of people occupying the land has increased. The effect is everywhere to be seen. The island is vastly overpopulated. There is no way that Roatan can measure up to the demands being made on it. And the situation gets worse daily. Even if the present population of the island could be "frozen" at its current level, there is still no way so many people can find a reasonable level of existence in such a small land space. Still, they keep coming.

Water Shortage Return to top

It would have been unimaginable for someone to have declared even twenty years ago that, in 1996, people would have to buy their drinking water in plastic jugs. Such a thought would have been considered absurd - or worse. However, in 1996, Roatan residents are buying their drinking water in plastic containers, because the natural ground-water supplies are either not to be trusted, or they are gone. Wells that have functioned flawlessly for hundreds of years are being depleted rapidly, if they are not already dry.

What happened? Roatan has lost its aquifer. Instead of a water table within ten feet or less of the surface of the ground, if you want to find ground water on the island today, you will have to drill a hole down thirty, forty or fifty feet to reach it. And, depending on your location, you can drill as far as you like and still not get a fresh-water well. This, because when the fresh water aquifer is depleted, ground porosity and elevation of the bottom of your well with respect to sea-level, may allow salt water to infuse. The water in your deep well may turn "brackish."

How did Roatan lose its fresh water aquifer? Quite simple, really. The new people arrive on the island needing houses. They need firewood to cook meals. And, with more people, the island must have more roads to accommodate more traffic, and so on. Supporting all of these increased demands requires clearing land: cutting down trees; removing shrubs and grasses from the ground to clear homesites or to cut a new road; Burning off a pasture to plant a food crop. More people need more space. Nature must give way to the invaders!

But whatever the rationale, each one of these actions "scalps" another expanse of land - great or small - and the cumulative effect of all of these activities has left Roatan's hills uncovered - bald! Soil temperature rises. Water-table levels recede. Wells run dry. Surface or sub-surface infusions occur, contaminating the fresh water, turning it brackish, or infesting it with microorganisms that are the root cause of debilitating - and deadly - infections.

There is nothing more crucial to public health than a reliable water supply. Roatan no longer has safe water. Each day this condition persists, the closer we come to a major, epidemic-type, water-borne disaster. What might it be? Who knows? Diphtheria, typhoid, meningitis, polio. The list of water-borne diseases is a long one, and once begun a water-borne epidemic is hard to stop. This is especially true of an outbreak on a small island, where almost everyone ^ of necessity ^ is using the same water sources.

Sewage Treatment Facilities Return to top

The custom of disposing of human wastes and kitchen garbage - everything, in fact - by just throwing it into the sea, is as old as the oldest seaside aboriginal village. And as long as there are only a few people doing it, the offending societies tend to get away with it. But with the addition of each new member to the group, the contaminative level edges one notch closer to the critical point.

Roatan has far too many people adding excrement and other waste materials to the island biosphere, to continue depending on rustic, so-called "natural" disposal systems. We can no longer rely on volumetric dilution in the sea, and/or the ancient method of deposit and collection of fecal wastes in holes in the ground (privies), to keep infectious organisms away from people.

Roatan only has a variation of 18- to 22-inches between high and lowtide marks, and the drift rate along the shores is less than one knot per hour. (These data are provided by the United States Hydrographic Service.) This rate of water-change movement is far less than required to "flush" waste materials and other contaminants away from the island's shores and beaches. And it's especially inadequate when it comes to "flushing" contaminants from enclosed bays like those found in Coxen's Hole, French Harbor , Jonesville and Oak Ridge. These bodies of "quiet water" serve as the central sewers and "settling tanks" for most of the island villages. With the dramatic growth in island population, and the proportionate increase in solid wastes being deposited in them, including offal from the shrimp plants, these bays and harbors are constantly becoming more contaminated and infinitely more dangerous.

Tourist installations in particular have a unique responsibility to really dispose of human wastes and garbage in a safe and non-contaminative fashion. It is not enough to merely get the discharge end of the resort sewer line far enough away from the visitors' beach, or deep enough in the ocean as to keep it out of sight of the paying guests. Hiding this problem is not the same as dealing with it.

People don't need to see the source of environmental contamination to be threatened by it.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind Return to top

Nothing is as destructive of judicial reliability as distance. In order for courts to function consistently, responsibly and honestly, there must be close supervision from the superior levels of the judicial hierarchy. Unless the procedures and rulings of the judges in the lower courts are given this kind of continuing scrutiny, a judge - by reason of independent inclinations, ignorance of the law, or corruptive influences - may operate as a "law unto himself." The longer a wayward judge is allowed to function without his superiors oversight scrutiny, the more judicially arrogant and/or corrupted he will become.

The function of the Court of Letters on Roatan, for a specific example, is much too important to left to the discretion of a single individual. Yet, this is the way it is, and the way "the old-timers" say it has always been.

The Honduras Corte Suprema de Justicia is seated in Tegucigalpa. Subordinate Courts are situated in major population centers throughout the country, which essentially means on the mainland of Honduras. The Bay Islands, as explained earlier, have never rated much attention from either the political or judicial hierarchy. Except for posting a few soldiers there, who are supposed to maintain public order, an Administrador de Aduana who is supposed to collect duties on specified imported materials, and a Judge of Letters who is supposed to maintain a legal presence, the Bay Islands has had little commercial, political or legal connection with the national structures of government.

The physical distance from Roatan to Tegucigalpa, is about 150 miles, but as measured in interconnectedness, it might as well be ten times that far. Thus it is that when someone is appointed Director of Aduana, Port Captain, Chief of police forces, or Judge of Letters on Roatan, he can expect, barring major foul-ups, to handle his official functions with little if any supervisory interference. It takes a great public uproar to generate any administrative interest in Tegucigalpa, about anything that may be happening on Roatan. Stated another way, the members of the Corte Suprema de Justicia are really not very interested in what goes on in Roatan's Court of Letters. They are much too involved in the legal/social/political wheeling and dealing that constitutes the meat and potatoes of high-level political life in the capital city of Honduras. They just don't want to be bothered with Island matters. This attitude on the part of the High Court, coupled with the distance factor, produces some very serious judicial lapses.

Begin with the internationally acknowledged fact that Honduras is one of the most politically corrupt small countries in the entire western hemisphere. Then factor in the geographic and administrative distance that separates the islands from the nation's capital city, and the system begins to come into perspective: From a qualitative point of view, the Bay Islands generally, and Roatan in particular, is territory without law. This is not an overstatement. "The law," in a remote enclave like Roatan, is whatever the sitting Judge of Letters says it is. And, depending on the incentives involved, "the law" can take some startling digressions from reason, logic, and the written law itself! This is especially true when there is the right kind of monetary incentives to urge it.

With this as a background, no one should be surprised to learn that official corruption is not an aberration, but the settled way business is done on Roatan. This sorry fact is common knowledge throughout Honduras!

Arnold Morris Discoveres Roatan Return to top

When Arnold Morris got nailed for commercial fraud and money-laundering in Florida, and a Federal Grand Jury in Tampa (Pinellas County) returned a 26-count indictment against him, he decided to run, rather than face trial. FBI Agent Mike Shea, who investigated the case, and United States Attorney Dennis Moore, who prosecuted it, figured Morris was eligible for twenty years in prison. This was more than sufficient incentive for Morris to flee. First to Belize, and when Belize proved inhospitable, to Roatan.

Scott Morris, Arnold's son, who was in the crooked business with his father, was unable to get out of reach of the U. S. lawmen. He is currently doing time in the Florida State Penitentiary for the crimes of commercial fraud and money-laundering, as the Grand Jury decreed in August, 1994, and the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court confirmed in Case #94-168-Cr-T-23a.

When Morris arrived on Roatan he was being energetically sought on a fugitive warrant issued by the Sixth Circuit Court that ordered him to be captured, held on $50,000.00 bond, and returned to the U. S. Federal jurisdiction to stand trial. This is the point at which it appears his luck changed. On Roatan he chose to stay at the Buccaneer Inn, in French Harbor. This small seaside hotel had been left to the ownership of Rita Thompson Silvestre, when her husband, Dino, died.

Following Dino's death, Rita had borrowed heavily against the place to enlarge it and make improvements. But her ambitious plans had not been realized. The customers didn't come in the numbers required. She was in default on her bank loan, and in imminent danger of foreclosure. It was at this point that Arnold Morris arrived on the scene.

If there ever was "a marriage made in heaven," this was one. Morris was in desperate need of a "safe-house." Rita needed somebody to bail her out of the problem with the bank. It didn't take long for such deep mutual needs to lead to a marriage ceremony.

But getting married didn't solve the basic problem Morris had with the FBI and the U. S. Department of Justice. Those folks really wanted him! And when they caught him up, they intended to put him away for a long, long time. As pointed out earlier, FBI Agent Mike Shea spoke confidently about twenty years. That is a very long time to do in the stony lonesome! So Rita and Arnold hatched a different plan.

Then-President of Honduras, Rafael Callejas insists that he was no particularly close friend of Rita Silvestre, but they knew each other. With this acquaintance for openers, she arranged the purchase of Honduras citizenship for her fugitive husband. That his Honduras citizenship was bought is not in question. The total price is subject to some debate. Twenty-five thousand U. S. dollars in cash was part of it. People who should know what they're talking about staunchly insist that, in addition to the money, Morris also bought a silver-and-gray Cadillac in Florida and shipped it to Honduras as deck-cargo as a "gift" for Callejas. This version seems creditable since Callejas drives a car that fits the description of the "gift" automobile. In 1994, Arnold Morris renounced his American citizenship, in favor of becoming a Honduran. At least temporarily, he could stop worrying about extradition.

Even to obtain a Honduras Residency (which your author has done) the applicant must fill out an extensive questionnaire, backed up with letters of recommendation attesting to his respectability, commercial reliability, etc. One of these letters must be from the Chief of Police in one's home town. Any kind of police record is reason for denial of the application, as is lying about the answers to any of the long list of questions.

In view of this, the Honduras citizenship that Arnold Morris bought has to be subject to cancellation, because it was obviously obtained through fraud and misrepresentation of material facts. The irregularities surrounding this citizenship purchase have been repeatedly and most forcefully brought to the attention of the Honduras government, including the top officials in the Ministry of Gobernacion, who issued it. But those high government officials are not inclined to act. Written presentations urging cancellation of the Morris citizenship have been made by private citizens, as well as by the political Governor of the Bay Islands, Mr. Stavely J. Elwin, but these entreaties continue to be ignored by the only people in the Honduras government who are constitutionally authorized to take the necessary action to disenfranchise Morris and get him out of Honduras.

There can be no doubt about the basic fact: The administration of El Presidente Carlos Roberto Reina knows all about Arnold Morris. Their decision to protect this notorious commercial criminal, who is "wanted" by the United States government and sought by people whom he defrauded of millions of dollars, is a calculated one.

When a sovereign government descends to the level of offering its national protection to a fleeing criminal, that government. surrenders whatever claim it ever had to international respect. When the officials of a sovereign nation stoop to the level of selling citizenship protection to an international thief, those officials, themselves, become de facto accessories to his crimes.

Entering the Real Estate Business Return to top

Insulated from extradition by his Honduras citizenship, Morris activated Southwind Properties, S. A. that had been chartered by Emilio Silvestre (and some of his family members) three or four years before the arrival of Morris on the island. Morris is careful to insist at every opportunity that he has "no personal involvement" in either Southwind Propeties, nor in Alpha Trust, S. A., another Morris family company in which Rita Thompson Silvestre de Morris appears as "principal" and/or "administrator." All the evidence, however, argues eloquently to the contrary.

In the approximately four years Morris has been on Roatan, these two companion companies have emerged as the major real-estate activities in the Bay Islands. Southwind Properties roadside signs dot the landscape in numbers that all of the other real-estate operators on the island combined can not equal. Advertising materials are careful to identify Emilio Silvestre as the head man in the land activities. Handbills deliberately left around in the Roatan airport for visitors to pick up declare: "Emilio Sillvestre, owner of Southwind Properties and a practicing attorney on Roatan, has been in the real estate business for over ten years and offers properties on all the Bay Islands and Mainland Honduras."

Among services proudly offered, according to the Southwind Properties handbill are:

Joint Ventures
Property Management
Design through Construction
Commercial Development
Legal Documents
Residency
Title research

"Let our Legal Staff Assist you."

It is pertinent to emphasize that the name of Arnold Morris is conspicuous by its absence in their real estate advertising, as well as in document preparation and related paperwork. This is the same operating method Morris employed in Tampa. It resulted in his son, Scott, going to prison for crimes that, according to people who are quite familiar with the case, Arnold Morris was himself the responsible party.

Scott Morris, belatedly, saw his situation for what it was. He told the Court at the time of his sentencing, "I know now that I am here because of a misplaced sense of duty to my father."

It appears obvious that should something go amiss in his Roatan real-estate venture, Morris doesn't want his name on any of the paperwork. The only exception to his studied reticence to admit to a functional connection with Southwind Properties and/or Alpha Trust, S. A., is that he signs Southwind Properties checks.

Morris Plugs into the Court of Letters Return to top

The evidence has been and is clear for any reasonable person to observe that Arnold Morris is immune to any kind of an adverse ruling on the part of the Roatan Court of Letters. Considering his established criminal background, his ongoing status as a fugitive from justice in the United States, and his arranged purchase of a Honduras passport for the totally transparent purpose of hiding from extradition, it might seem that this man merits more surveillance, rather than less.

This, however, is not the way it works.

The Judge of Letters on Roatan is Fernando Azcona Schrenzel, a young man whose family ties link him to a former President of Honduras. His political connections must be considered impeccable. Had they not been, it's unthinkable that he would have been appointed to the "federal" bench, at the tender judicial age of less than thirty.

A variety of perquisites came along with Azcona's judgeship, not the least of which was a protocolo allowing him to function as a Notary Public. A Notary Public in the United States is a petty functionary who is authorized to certify signatures, and little else. A Notary Public in Honduras is a big man in the legal arena. Not only can he certify signatures, he can certify and put documents into the Public Record. He can draw up documents, then certify them as TRUE, and THEN enter them into the Public Record! Understandably, a man who wields this kind of legal clout is going to be able to collect handsomely for his functions. Azcona's judgeship carried a salary equivalent to a few hundred American dollars a month, which is not a princely sum, in Honduras or anywhere else. But with the judge's salary plus his Notary Public fees, Judge Azcona did very well, indeed!

Especially when Arnold Morris gave him the task of preparing and authenticating all Southshore Properties and Alpha Trust land documents; and then entering those documents into the Public Land Registry. The Land Registry is an adjunctive function of the Court of Letters, it should be noted, and the Judge of Letters (Fernando Azcona, in this situation), is the Registrar of all land in the Bay Islands.

The visible association between the two men bloomed and blossomed. Judge Azcona was often seen flying with Morris in his private Grumman "Tiger" aircraft. Their functional relationship was also clearly beneficial for both of them: Morris was getting his documents drawn up the way HE wanted them. This because the Judge was doing the work, and the Judge was the law! From Judge Azcona's point of view, he was surely feeling the warm glow of professional prosperity for the first time in his young life.

Affluence prompted Azcona to undertake the development of a piece of land he owned in LaCeiba, Honduras, into a colonia (read: subdivision.) This relatively ambitious undertaking far outstripped the in-pocket resources of the judge, so he began shopping around for a loan. The magic number that he settled on was one-hundred thousand American dollars. This kind of money isn't easy to find in Honduras, but Azcona had a "connection."

The story is told in two versions: One version is favored by the Judge and his friends. The other rendition is put forth by the Judge's enemies and detractors. In the first version, Eldon Hyde, a French Harbor merchant and Shell Service Station operator, contacted Azcona, telling him that he had heard Hizzoner was looking to make a loan. His information must have been promptly confirmed, because shortly thereafter Hyde became the broker in the deal. As the "friendly" version of the story is told, Azcona didn't know the loan was coming from Arnold Morris until he saw the signature on the check.

In the unfriendly version, Azcona is said to have known all along that Arnold Morris was the money source; but for a hundred-thousand American dollars, it seemed like too good a deal to pass up.

Whichever version is true, the hundred-thousand-dollar loan is a fact. Arnold Morris was the lender. Fernando Azcona Schrenzel was the borrower. And, as anybody with half a brain will certainly understand, business in the Court of Letters has never been the same since.

But a fly in the judicial ointment soon developed.

Situated as he was, in the Judicial chair and operating as a Notary Public solely by virtue of a Protocolo that came along as a perk for the sitting judge, the other Notaries found they had a problem. They had studied hard and passed a tough examination for their credentials and they didn't like putting up with politically appointed competition. They liked it even less when Azcona proved to be a really aggressive competitor. He really went after the business, and his success was cutting deeply into the best-paying part of their practices.

Seeking to get this stopped, the Roatan lawyers, and some of their associates in LaCeiba and elsewhere along the north coast, put a delegation together and paid a visit to the Corte Suprema de Justicia. They complained bitterly in Tegucigalpa, about the inroads Azcona was making into their professional livelihoods, and asked that his "honorary" Notary Public credentials be revoked. For reasons nobody on the island quite understands up to now, this was done!

Deprived of his Notary income, Azcona was left with the niggardly salary that Honduras pays its law-givers, and which is not really enough to live on. It's general knowledge that, among judges as elsewhere, the major spur to official corruption is dire necessity. Unless an official is "on the take," he must be content to live like a peon. In my personal experience, growing out of almost thirty years of close observation, all Honduras officials understand the mordida (bite) as they know their national anthem. There may be some strictly honest, absolutely incorruptible public servants in Honduras. I would like to think this is possible. However, I have never yet met one who measures up to this standard of functional rectitude.

So now Judge Azcona found himself seriously in debt to Arnold Morris, but without the Notary Public credential that had previously made him so valuable to Roatan's biggest real-estate operator. Needless to say, his was not a comfortable position to occupy. Without the Notary income, how to handle the loan turned into a nightmare. Azcona tried to solve the problem in the only way he knew how.

He took a one-month leave-of-absence from his judicial duties from about mid-September, to mid-October, 1996, for the express purpose of studying for, and then taking the Notary Public Examination. He left the island during this time, and was replaced by Felipe Speer Lainez, as Roatan Judge of Letters, during the period.

As sometimes happens, however, when everything already looks bad enough, it suddenly gets worse!

Judge Azcona wrote the Notary Public examination ^ and he failed it!

This single event was probably the worst thing that could have happened to Azcona, but it was certainly the best thing that could have happened for Arnold Morris; at least temporarily.

Limited to his judge's salary, Azcona is now more reliant on money from Morris than ever before. The Judge has to perform for Morris, in order to keep this money spigot open and avoid foreclosure. Since he is no longer a Notary Public - with the income that function provided him - the only "favors" he can do for his patron are those involving the tailoring of judicial rulings to favor his benefactor.

As the saying goes in Honduras, Arnold Morris has Fernando Azcona's cojones in his pocket! Depending on how long they can keep the illusion of an honest Court alive, one-hundred-thousand dollars might not be too much for Morris to pay for a set of keys to the Court of Letters. As a practical matter, however, NOBODY is ever going to win a case against Arnold Morris in Judge Fernando Azcona's court.

Knowledge of the Morris loan to the Judge of Letters is not generally known on the island. It is no State secret, however. Enough people know about it to constitute a matter of great concern, it would seem; especially for the principals. So much for any lingering hopes for an even-handed Court of Letters on Roatan.

Adding it Up Return to top

This piece ends as it started: Roatan is an orphan. It has always been an orphan.

The fact of being orphaned has little to do with the presence or absence of parents. Being orphaned as Roatan is orphaned means that nobody cares a damn about it! Government functionaries have a general awareness of what's going on in the Islands. They just simply do not choose to involve themselves in it. Some of the high politicos like to take weekend vacations on Roatan. But unless there's a citizenship to be sold, or a coupon to be clipped on some kind of land-exploitation scheme, a dollar to be made, they enjoy their respite and go back to Tegucigalpa, apparently without having seen or heard a thing! Obviously, no practicing Tegucigalpa politician is interested in taking a role in helping to save Roatan.

Coming to the bottom line, if Roatan is to be saved, it will have to be saved by a coalition of the locals, themselves, ecological crusaders and itinerant social workers. It's not an assignment that will be undertaken by Honduras politicians, and for one very obvious reason: There isn't any money in it.

Caveat emptor! BUYER BEWARE! Return to top

Roatan has had one of the shortest lives of any of the caribbean "tourist" islands. It really wasn't discovered by the SCUBA crowd until about 1980. So we might say that it only took fifteen years for it to complete the circuit from "new and exciting" to "ruined and showing it." Roatan might have a future as a residential island, depending on what Honduras and the islanders themselves are willing to invest in solving the island-wide water problem. Doing this will cost a bunch of money. Even more pressing than this, in terms of public health, is the need for a reliable island sewage treatment system.

There are too many people on Roatan to continue to ignore the volume of human excrement and garbage that is being dumped into the sea and accumulated in privies day by day. The question is no longer "if" the day of reckoning will come, but "when" it will arrive.

If the kind of Public Health Regulations in force in the Bahamas, St. Croix, Grenada and Aruba, existed - and were enforced on Roatan - Roatan would closed as unfit for human habitation. All it will take is one outbreak of a serious water-borne disease, for Roatan to either be "red-lined" by international health authorities, or a travel requirement imposed that visitors must be vaccinated against resident infections. Either way, Roatan's fledgling tourist business will be finished.

This impending prospect doesn't seem to register on the minds of either Honduras government officials, or Roatan's tourism operators. Since this kind of thing has never happened in the past, they live each day with the wispy hope that it won't happen in the future. But it will. Ask any epidemiologist. There is a point beyond which a small land mass can not "absorb" any more wastes. Roatan gets inexorably closer to that crucial point each day its present barnyard sanitation practices are allowed to continue.

It's probably too late to save Roatan. The locals must be deemed either unwilling or unable to come up with the amount of money it would take to transform it into a safe place to either visit or live. The Honduras government will never do it. The politicians will cry "poor" and insist they don't have the money to do now, what they should have been doing for the last three decades. Oddly, it seems, there is always money available for those same politicians to steal, but there is never the requisite funds to fix a bridge, repair a road, or save an island.

It won't cost a dime to let Roatan finish its trip "down the tubes." All of the processes are currently in motion that are rapidly turning this once-beautiful island into an ugly tropical slum; even without an epidemic to hasten result. So perhaps the only sensible course is to accept the inevitable, and write Roatan off as victim of too much "development" and not enough "conservation" of its fragile natural treasures.

Let the development exploiters, the money-hungry politicians and land thieves continue to wring the last dollar out of the scarred land and the increasingly contaminated sea that surrounds it. But at the very least, Roatan should teach us a lesson to be remembered forever.

As soon as one island is ruined, the folks who ruined it pick up and go looking for their next victim. Someone has said that a "real island developer" doesn't consider his work done until all of the land is covered with concrete and asphalt. And the population has to import water in barges, just as they import fuel. Only then is the island fully developed!

Maybe there should be an international commission to protect "orphaned" islands and similarly endangered natural resources. Just as there are commissions to protect abused children. Places like Roatan are written down on paper as being owned by Honduras, or some other sovereign nation. In a larger sense, however, Roatan belongs to all of us! Just as children belong to all of us. Once a country has amply demonstrated its inability or unwillingness to fulfill its reasonable obligations of ownership toward a piece of unique real-estate ^ like an island, but not limited to islands-- why not remove it from the custody of its non-functioning "owners." Why not put it into a kind of international "protective custody?"

Each time an island like Roatan is removed from our global inventory of "special places," we are all poorer for the loss. Not just Honduras, and not just the folks who live there. ALL OF US!

By what misguided "right" of ownership does some developer put a dredge into a virginal seaside lagoon and, in a totally egocentric effort to enhance his own real estate values, he destroys miles of shoreline and tidal plains that are legally defined as in the public domain? Where is the equity in this? Or where even is the legal logic, for that matter? These crimes of greed and ignorance must be stopped. We are fast running out of these kinds of natural, GLOBAL TREASURES. Nature isn't making any more of them. We owe it to our planet and the generations that will follow us, to jealously guard those few that remain.

Light a candle for Roatan. It used to be a beautiful place. You should have been with me when I saw it for the first time.

Return to top

Want to respond? Check out the Voxpop Discussion Group
Express your opinion