16 inmates killed in latest prison outburst in Honduras

December 23, 2019

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — At least 16 prisoners died during fighting inside a juvenile detention center in Honduras on Sunday, two days after rioting at another prison killed 18 inmates, authorities said.

The latest bloody violence occurred at a maximum security prison in the municipality of El Porvenir, 116 kilometers (72 miles) from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. The rioting was confirmed to The Associated Press by José Coello, spokesman for the National Interagency Security Force, an entity formed from the military and the National Police to deal with the recent unrest in Honduras’ prisons. He gave no further details.

The task force was put in charge of managing the country’s 29 prisons and juvenile detention centers Tuesday when the federal government declared a state of emergency throughout the National Prison System. Civilian officials in the system were suspended, and the special commission will seek to root out corruption and violence in prisons.

Digna Aguilar, communications director for the prison system, said she could not comment on what happened Sunday. “We are counting the deceased and it would be irresponsible to give an exact number,” she told AP.

Prisoners at the detention center were reportedly having a meal when several inmates armed with knives attacked fellow detainees. The attack also wounded a dozen inmates, one of whom died later. The outburst came after inmates, including some armed with guns, battled each other Friday at a prison in the city of Tela, leaving 18 dead and 16 wounded.

Before Sunday’s bloodshed, the Observatory of Violence of the National Autonomous University of Honduras had counted a total of 27 killings in three separate incidents of multiple deaths inside prisons so far in 2019.

Protesters, police clash at roadblocks in Honduras

January 21, 2018

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Clashes have broken out in Honduras as demonstrators protesting President Juan Orlando Hernandez’s re-election blocked roads in several locations and police moved into to break up the barricades.

Police say four officers were injured Saturday, one seriously. At least seven demonstrators were detained. Former President Manuel Zelaya has supported protests on behalf of presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla, who claims there was fraud in counts of the November vote.

Hernandez was awarded the electoral win last month despite the disputed vote tally. The opposition plans to continue protesting through his swearing-in Jan. 27.

US recognizes disputed Honduras election results

December 23, 2017

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Friday recognized the results of Honduras’ disputed presidential election despite opposition complaints, irregularities found by poll observers and calls from Congress to back a new vote.

The State Department congratulated Juan Orlando Hernandez on his victory in last month’s election but urged the country’s electoral commission to fully review any challenges to the results. In a statement, spokeswoman Heather Nauert also urged all sides to refrain from violence amid unrest that has claimed at least 17 lives. She also called on security forces to respect the rights of peaceful protesters.

Hernandez was declared the winner but opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla claimed fraud and came to Washington earlier this week to seek backing from the U.S. and the Organization of American States. Election observers from the OAS and European Union had found irregularities that called the result into question.

“The close election results, irregularities identified by the OAS and the EU election observation missions, and strong reactions from Hondurans across the political spectrum underscore the need for a robust national dialogue,” Nauert said. “A significant long-term effort to heal the political divide in the country and enact much-needed electoral reforms should be undertaken.”

“We call upon the (election tribunal) to transparently and fully review any challenges filed by political parties,” she said. “We urge Honduran citizens or political parties challenging the result to use the avenues provided by Honduran law. We reiterate the call for all Hondurans to refrain from violence. The government must ensure Honduran security services respect the rights of peaceful protesters, including by ensuring accountability for any violations of those rights.”

The first results reported by the electoral court after the Nov. 26 election showed Nasralla with a significant lead over Hernandez with nearly 60 percent of the vote counted. Public updates of the count mysteriously stopped for more than a day, and when they resumed, that lead steadily eroded and ultimately reversed in Hernandez’s favor.

On Thursday, a group of 20 Democratic legislators had asked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to support a repetition of the election, citing the irregularities found by observers. They also asked Tillerson to denounce what they consider “excessive use of force” by Honduran security forces handling the street protests that have taken place since.

Honduran police have confirmed 17 deaths, but the opposition and the Committee of Detained and Disappeared, a non-governmental organization, said at least 24 people have been killed in the three weeks of unrest. Demonstrations continued Friday, with rock-throwing protesters clashing with police armed using tear gas.

Nasralla said in a news conference in Honduras’ capital that he would continue the fight by filing new demands with Honduras’ electoral court to annul the vote and hold new elections. “It’s clear that Hernandez is imposed by the United States because leftist governments terrify them,” Nasralla said. “With its weight in international relations, the United States opts for legitimizing a regime rejected by its people.”

He added that while he ran as the candidate of a leftist opposition alliance, he is a man without a party and will stand by all Hondurans. Washington’s recognition of the election results followed congratulations sent by Mexico’s foreign ministry to Hernandez on Tuesday. Canada and Panama also recognized Hernandez as president Friday.

But countries such as El Salvador and Brazil have held back. Brazil’s Foreign Ministry said Friday that since the election vote has been questioned by opposition parties it would not decide whether to recognize the results until after the Supreme Electoral Court rules on those challenges.

Two of the region’s leftist leaders, Presidents Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, meanwhile, have railed against the alleged electoral fraud. The OAS said Friday that its team of election observers had reported “a series of irregularities and serious deficiencies that surely affected the election results.” While the OAS secretary general’s office said it would not comment on individual government decisions to recognize Hernandez’s victory, it noted that ignoring the observers’ reports “sets a dangerous precedent in the face of the many elections to be held in 2018.”

Associated Press writers Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Christopher Sherman in Mexico City, Marcos Aleman in San Salvador, El Salvador, Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Fabiola Sanchez in Caracas, Venezuela and Carlos Valdez in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.

Honduras’ electoral court declares president election winner

December 18, 2017

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — President Juan Orlando Hernandez was declared the winner Sunday of Honduras’ disputed election after three weeks of uncertainty and unrest in which at least 17 people died in protests amid the opposition’s allegations of vote fraud.

Electoral court president David Matamoros made the announcement, saying, “We have fulfilled our obligation (and) we wish for there to be peace in our country.” According to the court’s official count, Hernandez won with 42.95 percent to 41.42 for runner-up Salvador Nasralla, who well before the announcement had challenged the result and said he would not recognize it.

There were reports of nighttime demonstrations on main boulevards in Tegucigalpa, the capital, and other cities, and Nasralla’s party called for more protests Monday. There was no immediate public comment by Hernandez, whose sister Hilda Hernandez, a Cabinet minister, died Saturday in a helicopter crash.

Earlier in the day Nasralla traveled to Washington to present what he called “numerous” examples of evidence of alleged fraud. He said he planned to meet with officials from the Organization of American States, the U.S. State Department and human rights groups.

Interviewed by UneTV during a layover at the Miami airport, Nasralla called Hernandez’s re-election illegitimate and said he would ask the OAS to invoke its democratic charter against Honduras. “The declaration by the court is a mockery because it tramples the will of the people,” Nasralla said. He added that he was “very optimistic” because “the people do not endorse fraud.”

Former President Manuel Zelaya, a Nasralla ally, called for civil disobedience from the population and for the armed forces to recognize Nasralla. “May God take us having made our confessions because today the people will defend in the streets the victory that it obtained at the ballot box,” Zelaya said.

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro said via Twitter shortly before the announcement that election observers concluded “serious doubts persist about the results.” He asked that no “irresponsible pronouncements” be made before observers could make definitive reports.

The first results reported by the electoral court before dawn the day after the Nov. 26 election showed Nasralla with a significant lead over Hernandez with nearly 60 percent of the vote counted. Then public updates of the count mysteriously stopped for more than a day, and when they resumed, that lead steadily eroded and ultimately reversed in Hernandez’s favor.

The electoral court recently conducted a recount of ballot boxes that presented irregularities and said there was virtually no change to its count. Since then it had been considering challenges filed by candidates.

Despite widespread suspicions of electoral malfeasance, especially among Nasralla’s supporters, Matamoros defended the court’s performance. He said it had presided over “the most transparent electoral process ever seen in Honduras.”

Hernandez, a 49-year-old businessman and former lawmaker, took office in January 2014 and built support largely on a drop in violence in this impoverished Central American country. According to Honduras’ National Autonomous University, the nation’s homicide rate has plummeted from a dizzying high of 91.6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011 to 59 per 100,000 — though Honduras remains among the deadliest places in the world.

But corruption and drug trafficking allegations cast a shadow over Hernandez’s government, and his re-election bid fueled charges that his National Party was seeking to entrench itself in power by getting a court ruling allowing him to seek a second term.

Re-election has long been outlawed in the country, and Zelaya was ousted as president in a 2009 coup ostensibly because he wanted to run again himself. He later founded the party that ran Nasralla as its candidate.

“The people say: ‘JOH you are not our President,'” Zelaya tweeted, referring to Hernandez’s initials. “We must mobilize immediately to all public places. They are violating the will of the PEOPLE.” Hernandez’s government recently accused Zelaya and Nasralla of ordering “gangs” to block streets and commit violent acts amid the protests, which have seen burning barricades and clashes between rock-throwing demonstrators and police and soldiers responding with tear gas.

“The generalized crisis that Honduras is experiencing is primarily due to the disagreement there has been between the political parties which, in a democracy, must respect the majority will of the people expressed at the ballot box,” National Human Rights Commissioner Roberto Herrera said in a statement.

Associated Press writer Peter Orsi in Mexico City contributed to this report.

A Honduran Paradise that Doesn’t Want to Anger the Sea Again

By Thelma Mejía

SANTA ROSA DE AGUÁN, Honduras , Mar 26 2014 (IPS) – At the mouth of the Aguán river on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, a Garífuna community living in a natural paradise that was devastated 15 years ago by Hurricane Mitch has set an example of adaptation to climate change.

“We don’t want to make the sea angry again, we don’t want a repeat of what happened with Mitch, which destroyed so many houses in the town – nearly all of the ones along the seashore,” community leader Claudina Gamboa, 35, told IPS.

Around the coastal town of Santa Rosa de Aguán, the stunning landscape is almost as pristine as when the first Garífunas came to Honduras in the 18th century.

To reach Santa Rosa de Aguán, founded in 1886 and home to just over 3,000 people, IPS drove by car for 12 hours from Tegucigalpa through five of this Central American country’s 18 departments or provinces, until reaching the village of Dos Bocas, 567 km northeast of the capital.

From this village on the mainland, a small boat runs to Santa Rosa de Aguán, located on the sand in the delta of the Aguán river, whose name in the Garífuna language means “abundant waters.”

Half of the trip is on roads in terrible conditions, which become unnerving when it gets dark. But after crossing the river late at night, under a starry sky with a sea breeze caressing the skin, the journey finally comes to a peaceful end.

A three-year project to help the sand dunes recover, which was completed in 2013, was carried out by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) through the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) Small Grants Program, with additional support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

The project sought to generate conditions that would enable the local community to adapt to the risks of climate change and protect the natural ecosystem of the dunes.

The initiative enlisted 40 local volunteers, almost all of them women, who went door to door to raise awareness on the importance of protecting the environment and to educate people about the risks posed by climate change.

“They called them crazy, and thought the people working on that were stupid, but I asked them ‘don’t stop, just keep doing it.’ Now there is greater awareness and people have seen the winds aren’t hitting so hard,” Atanasia Ruíz, a former deputy mayor of the town (2008-2014) and a survivor of Hurricane Mitch, told IPS.

She and Gamboa said the women played an essential role in raising awareness on climate change, and added that thanks to their efforts, the project left an imprint on the white sand and the local inhabitants.

People in the community now understand the importance of protecting the coastal system and preserving the dunes, and have learned to organize behind that goal, Gamboa said. “It’s really touching to see the old women from our town picking up garbage for recycling,” she said.

The sand dunes act as natural protective barriers that keep the wind or waves from smashing into the town during storms.

“When the sea got mad, it made us pay. When Mitch hit, everything here was flattened, it was just horrible,” Gamboa said.

Some people left town, she said, “because we were told that we couldn’t live here, that it was too vulnerable and that the sea would always flood us because there was no way to keep it out.

“But many of us stayed, and with the knowledge they gave us, we know how to protect ourselves and our town,” she said, proudly pointing out how the vegetation has begun to grow in the dunes.

In late October 1998, Hurricane Mitch left 11,000 dead and 8,000 missing in Honduras, while causing enormous economic losses and damage to infrastructure.

Santa Rosa de Aguán was hit especially hard, with storm surges up to five meters high. The bodies of more than 40 people from the town were found, while others went missing.

The effort to recover the sand dunes along the coast included the construction of wide wooden walkways to protect the sand.

In addition, the remains of cinder block houses destroyed by Mitch were finally removed, to prevent them from inhibiting the natural formation of dunes.

The project also introduced recycling, to clear garbage from the beach and the sandy unpaved streets of this town, where visitors are greeted with “buiti achuluruni”, which means “welcome” in the Garífuna language.

Lícida Nicolasa Gómez is an 18-year-old member of the Garífuna community who prefers to be called “Alondra”, her nickname since childhood.

“I loved it when they invited me to the dunes and recycling project, because we were deforesting the dunes, hurting them, destroying the vegetation, but we’re not doing that anymore,” she said.

“We even made a mural on one of the walls of the community centre, to remember what kind of town we wanted,” she added, with a broad smile.

The mural includes scraps of plastic, metal, tiles and bottle tops. It reflects the beauty of the Garífunas, showing people fishing, crops of mandioc and plantain, and the sea and bright sun, while reflecting the desire to live in harmony with the environment.

The sand dunes are up to five meters high in this small town at the mouth of a river that runs through the country’s tropical rainforest.

Hugo Galeano, from GEF’s Small Grants Program, told IPS that Santa Rosa de Aguán became even more vulnerable after Hurricane Mitch, which affected the local livelihoods based on fishing, farming and livestock.

For this community built between the river and the sea, flooding is one of the main threats to survival, said the representative of the GEF program.

Ricardo Norales, 80, told IPS that, although the sand dunes and vegetation are growing, “the location of our community means we are still exposed to inclement weather.

“With the project, we saw how the wind and the sea don’t penetrate our homes as much anymore. But we need this kind of aid to be more sustainable,” he said.

The history of Santa Rosa de Aguán is marked by the impact of tropical storms and hurricanes, which have hit the town directly or indirectly many times since it was founded.

But the sand dunes are once again taking shape along the shoreline, where the community has built walkways to the sea.

Local inhabitants want their town to be seen as an example of adaptation to climate change and the construction of alternatives making survival possible. Several of them said they did not want an “ayó” – good-bye in Garífuna – for their community.

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).

Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/honduran-paradise-doesnt-want-anger-sea/.

Honduran candidate calls for protest, vote recount

November 30, 2013

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Opposition candidate Xiomara Castro announced Friday that she won’t recognize the result of Honduras’ presidential election because of alleged voter fraud and called on her supporters to protest the win by the ruling party candidate.

Castro, whose husband Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a 2009 coup, told a news conference that she would demand a vote-by-vote recount of Sunday’s balloting, which she described as “a disgusting monstrosity that has robbed me of the presidency.”

Honduras’ electoral court declared conservative Juan Orlando Hernandez the winner. The court says he received 36.5 percent of the votes compared to 28.8 percent for Castro, with 93 percent of the votes counted. Six other candidates shared the remaining votes.

Claiming her campaign had “innumerable examples” of voting irregularities, Castro said “we are not going to accept the results released by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and we will not recognize the legitimacy of the government that is the product of this shameful assault.”

Castro, 54, presented what she described as evidence of fraud and provided a document detailing alleged irregularities. She called on her supporters to hold massive and peaceful street protests against the result.

Castro led for months in the polls until Hernandez, 45, erased her lead by presenting himself as the law and order candidate in an impoverished country with the world’s highest homicide rate and much of the cocaine traveling from South America to the U.S.

The European Union and the Organization of American States observer missions have released reports calling Honduras’ election process transparent despite some irregularities. The electoral court has acknowledged that there were delays in the vote count because 20 percent of the vote tallies from the polling stations couldn’t be fed into the scanner and needed to be counted by hand. Former President Zelaya said Wednesday that the fraud occurred in that 20 percent.

But Jose Antonio de Gabriel, deputy head of the European Union’s team of election observers, said the irregular votes came from all over the country and not from areas that heavily favored Castro. The U.S. State Department issued a statement after the election congratulating “the people of Honduras for their strong participation” in the vote.

“We note that Organization of American States and European Union electoral observation mission reports reflect a transparent process,” it said earlier in the week. Castro’s campaign was considered an attempt at a political comeback by Zelaya, whose ouster left Honduras politically unstable. Poverty and violence have worsened over the last four years under outgoing President Porfirio Lobo.

Ruling party candidate leads in Honduras pres vote

November 25, 2013

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — The ruling party candidate held the lead in early vote counting to become Honduras’ next president, while two of his four main opponents began crying foul early Monday over the results in the violent and impoverished Central American nation.

With just over half the ballots tallied by late Sunday, Juan Orlando Hernandez of the governing National Party had a comfortable edge over Xiomara Castro, whose husband Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a 2009 coup that has left the country politically unstable.

Hernandez and Castro went into Sunday’s election neck-and-neck in opinion polls, and expectations of a close finish raised fears that a disputed result would produce more instability and protests. Voting went off peacefully amid a heavy turnout, however, and the uncertainty of the final results plus a cold, rainy night kept the streets quiet.

The winner will likely have no more than a third of the vote and face a divided congress, whose 128 members were also up for election. As a result, the political situation is unlikely to change in the failing state of 8.5 million people, which is home to the world’s highest homicide rate and a transit point for much of the South American cocaine heading to the U.S.

Both candidates claimed victory, with Hernandez saying he would start Monday with the job of leading Hondurans out of the misery they’ve endured. Poverty and violence have climbed in the last four years under President Porfirio Lobo, also of the National Party.

Castro said her campaign’s numbers gave her a victory by 3 points, then left her election-night party at a hotel and was not heard from the rest of the night. Zelaya urged her supporters to stay at the polls and keep monitoring the count.

“We don’t accept the results,” Zelaya said early Monday. “There are more than 1 million votes that have yet to be counted.” Salvador Nasrallah, a popular sportscaster and candidate of the Anticorruption Party who was in fourth place, also questioned the official returns.

“Our data do not match the official data that the system is transmitting,” Nasrallah said. David Matamoros, president of Honduras’ electoral court, said final results were not expected until Monday morning.

“The preliminary results we have given so far do not show any tendency or declare any winner,” he said Sunday night. Both U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kubiske and Ulrike Lunacek, head of the European Union observer mission, said reports from the polls indicated the vote and subsequent count so far were regular.

“We had 110 observers in almost all Honduras states, and we have seen a transparent process with all parties represented at the table,” Kubiske said, noting that there is a system in place for people to peacefully file complaints or contest the results.

Castro, 54, had led the race for months portraying herself as the candidate for change, promising relief from violence and poverty and constitutional reform that would make the country more equitable.

“From the data from our surveys and vote counts, I am the president of Honduras,” she said early in the night. “The victory is overwhelming and irreversible.” Hernandez, 45, erased Castro’s early lead in a field of eight candidates as he focused his campaign on a promise to bring law and order. As president of Congress, Hernandez pushed through legislation creating a military police force to patrol the streets in place of the National Police, which are penetrated by corruption and often accused of extrajudicial killings.

“Today the people voted to leave behind the political crisis of 2009 that left thousands in Honduras jobless, migrating and divided, that left us alone and isolated,” Hernandez said. The number of people working for less than minimum wage of $350 a month in Honduras has grown from 28 percent in 2008 to 43 percent today.

“There is insecurity, fear, violence, hunger and unemployment. There are problems that are so deep that I doubt anyone can really solve them,” said Jose Barreiro, a voter.

Associated Press writer Freddy Cuevas contributed to this report.

Deposed Honduran leader’s wife leads in polls

June 23, 2013

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Manuel Zelaya was unceremoniously booted from power four years ago when Honduras’ army hustled him out of the country in his pajamas, a coup prompted by fears among Honduras’ business and political elite that he was getting too hungry for power.

Now he’s back with a new shot at the presidential palace, this time as the husband of the leading presidential candidate, Xiomara Castro. Polls show Castro, 53, leading seven other candidates ahead of the Nov. 24 election, including the military general who conducted the coup. The country’s two traditional parties, which backed the coup, are struggling in third and fourth place, behind Castro and a popular sports TV personality.

The election of a self-proclaimed socialist could be considered a stunning change in a country where oligarchs have maintained political power over a poor, uneducated majority for at least a century. But Zelaya, too, is a wealthy landowner from the old guard, and most people see his wife as his cover in a country that bans presidential re-election. He is running for a congressional seat from his own state.

Even one of her former speechwriters says Castro lacks the political heft of other female leaders in Latin America, such as Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez or Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, who came to power with extensive records of their own. “She is an invented banner to fill the political needs of Manuel Zelaya,” said Sergio Suazo, a Honduras National University political science professor.

Zelaya says he is merely her driver and guardian, present in the campaign “to ensure the safety of Xiomara and to be as close to her as possible.” But when they arrive at political events, it is he who is mobbed by cameras and supporters. She stays in the background until he decides to hand her the spotlight.

Even Castro says her election would be a Bill and Hillary Clinton-style “Buy one, get one free.” “The decisions are going to be made by me, now it’s my turn,” she told The Associated Press in a campaign swing. “But I will consult with him on every occasion, as he consulted with me in the past.”

It was the suspicion that Zelaya wanted to reform the constitution and seek re-election that helped get him kicked out in the first place. He was whisked out of the country at gunpoint in June 2009 after he defied a Supreme Court order to drop plans to hold a referendum asking Hondurans whether the constitution should be revised.

Zelaya was elected from the traditional, centrist Liberal Party, but began aligning himself more and more with the late leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, adopting his populist platforms and rhetoric. His ouster was backed by members of his own party, who thought that Zelaya, like Chavez, would seek to stay in power indefinitely. Chavez served 14 years and had just been re-elected to six more years when he died of cancer in March.

Zelaya has denied that was his intention, saying he just wanted to open up government to the people. Honduras received widespread criticism and international sanctions for the coup, including its suspension from the Organization of American States.

Zelaya ended his long exile and returned to Honduras in May 2011 under a deal brokered by Colombia and Venezuela and that paved the way for the poor Central American country’s reintegration into the world community. He had already laid the foundations for a new Liberty and Refoundation Party, known as Libre — Spanish for Free.

Now Castro is running with the same goal, calling for an assembly to change the constitution. She and Zelaya vow to combat “savage capitalism.” “We will help get the oligarchy out of power through democratic socialism,” Castro said, and she vowed to rejoin the leftist alliance founded and led by Chavez until his death, the Boliviarian Alliance for the Americas.

It’s far from clear she would be able to achieve those goals even if elected. While she has been rising in the polls, a Gallup survey last month showed her favored by 28 percent of voters. That could be enough to give her the presidency under the country’s no-runoff election system. But it also could leave congress firmly in the hands of far more conservative parties.

Salvador Nasralla, a sportscaster running with the recently created Anti-corruption Party had 21 percent in May. Congressional President Juan Orlando Hernandez of the ruling National Party, was third place with 18 percent.

The survey was conducted between May 2-8 and had a margin of error of 5 percentage points. The poll numbers reflect the collapse of confidence in the National and the Liberal Parties that have shared power in the Central American country for more than a century. Poverty is high and violence has become so common that Honduras considered the most dangerous country in the world.

Experts say the fall of the main two parties also reflects discontent over the coup. According to a poll by Vanderbuilt University’s AmericasBarometer program, 58 percent of Hondurans opposed the coup and 72 percent were against the expulsion of Zelaya.

Though voters went on in 2009 to elect Lobo of the conservative National Party, the turnout was only about 50 percent, compared to 56 percent when Zelaya was elected in 2005. Castro is popular in her own right, a woman who earned credibility as the face of resistance to the coup. She married Zelaya at age 17 and has worked by his side in his 30-year political career. They have four children. As first lady, she was in charge of social development programs and worked in a coalition of first ladies working on problems of women with HIV for the United Nations.

“Xiomara is a woman who demonstrated leadership during the coup. She was the head of the resistance while her husband was in exile,” said Libre Party member Gerardo Torres. “She never hid, and she urged the people to continue their struggle peacefully.”

But she seems timid in the face of the outsized personality of her husband, and former insiders say she wasn’t part of his inner circle during the coup. “When we were inside the building of the Brazilian Embassy, she was never part of the political committee, the writing of manifestos, the making of decision, she was always left out,” said Milton Benitez, who was with the couple when they were confined to the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa for nearly three months after trying to return.

Suazo said the coup was a great political miscalculation on the part of Zelaya’s political foes. “The images of the army repressing, beating people in the streets, the forced exile of a president, not allowing him to return to the country, all this created a mysticism, a mythification of a leader that didn’t exist before. He became the champion of victims because he too was a victim,” Suazo said. If not for the coup, he added, Zelaya would be “on his farm in Olancho as a former president with little relevance.”

Ruins of Lost City May Lurk Deep in Honduras Rain Forest

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

LiveScience.com – Wed, May 15, 2013

New images of a possible lost city hidden by Honduran rain forests show what might be the building foundations and mounds of Ciudad Blanca, a never-confirmed legendary metropolis.

Archaeologists and filmmakers Steven Elkins and Bill Benenson announced last year that they had discovered possible ruins in Honduras’ Mosquitia region using lidar, or light detection and ranging. Essentially, slow-flying planes send constant laser pulses groundward as they pass over the rain forest, imaging the topography below the thick forest canopy.

What the archaeologists found — and what the new images reveal — are features that could be ancient ruins, including canals, roads, building foundations and terraced agricultural land. The University of Houston archaeologists who led the expedition will reveal their new images and discuss them today (May 15) at the American Geophysical Union Meeting of the Americas in Cancun.

Ciudad Blanca, or “The White City,” has been a legend since the days of the conquistadors, who believed the Mosquitia rain forests hid a metropolis full of gold and searched for it in the 1500s. Throughout the 1900s, archaeologists documented mounds and other signs of ancient civilization in the Mosquitias region, but the shining golden city of legend has yet to make an appearance.

Whether or not the lidar-wielding archaeologists have discovered the same city the conquistadors were looking for is up for debate, but the images suggest some signs of an ancient lost civilization.

“We use lidar to pinpoint where human structures are by looking for linear shapes and rectangles,” Colorado State University research Stephen Leisz, who uses lidar in Mexico, said in a statement. “Nature doesn’t work in straight lines.”

The archaeologists plan to get their feet on the ground this year to investigate the mysterious features seen in the new images.

Honduras solar energy plans get a boost

Oct. 5, 2011

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, Oct. 5 (UPI) — Financially troubled and diplomatically isolated since a controversial 2009 coup, Honduras has taken a tentative step toward shedding some of its energy burden and opting for a switch from diesel to solar energy.

An $84 million project, surprisingly large for a country struggling with debt, devastating effects of political turmoil and international isolation, is intended to be a win-win situation for Honduras and Onyx Contract and Solutions, Inc., the company contracted to deliver the project within nine months.

Funding for the project comes from Villela and Villela law and lobby firm, which has its office in Roatan, Onyx said. News of the contract on the Onyx Web site makes clear the project is part of a wider plan to build support for countries seen as friends of the United States or seen to be under pressure from left-wing populist forces in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Onyx pulls no punches. Those three states appear in deep red in a sea of blue in an online graphic bearing the caption, “The high stakes struggle for power effecting (sic) neighboring U.S. allies.”

Onyx reasons a better electrified and energy self-sufficient populace is less likely to revolt against the government in power or align itself with forces challenging U.S. interests in the area. It cited Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Panama as “current allies” that deserved help with energy independence.

Onyx Service and Solutions will build the solar power project at Roatan, Honduras.

The project will assist Honduras in becoming more self-reliant for electrical power as opposed to using imported diesel for power generation, “which comes at a very high cost,” including dependence on Venezuela.

The project aims to generate 18.5 megawatts of power from 65,000 280-watt solar panels. Onyx is also in talks to increase the size of the solar power capacity up to 58 total megawatts, once the original 18.5 megawatt facility comes online.

Onyx said it has “identified a lucrative market for solar power projects in areas that use diesel produced electricity” throughout Central and Latin America and the Caribbean. The company is hopeful of new projects in Colombia, Mexico and Panama.

“Beyond the company’s excitement over supplying and installing their newest products, this project also represents a move to assist a strong U.S. ally to become more self-reliant for electrical power,” Onyx said.

“Currently, many nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean find themselves being squeezed by the need for power coupled with the temptation to use Venezuelan diesel for electrical generation,” Onyx said.

Honduras has struggled to restore international links after a 2009 coup against President Jose Manuel Zelaya triggered a political crisis that only eased after Porfirio Lobo was elected president under the military’s supervision. Despite U.S. and EU recognition, many Latin American states still don’t acknowledge Lobo’s presidency.

Source: United Press International (UPI).

Link: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/10/05/Honduras-solar-energy-plans-get-a-boost/UPI-86681317811210/.