Politics

I’m on political lockdown, and if you’ve never experienced being forced by a government to stay in your house…well, it’s awesome. Just kidding. “Mel,” as the Hondurans call their ousted president, snuck back into the country last night. He has been hiding at the border since the military coup over the summer, and last night he managed to return. He is now camping out in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. As soon as that happened, the government ordered a “curfew” on the entire country. It originally was supposed to begin at 4pm last night and end at 7am this morning, but then they extended it until 6pm tonight. So, our classes were cancelled (I’m thinking of it as a political snow day) and I am on house lockdown. I actually don’t have internet in my house, and I was getting really frustrated with the lack of news and overabundance of governmental control...so I walked into town to get internet. Yeah, I'm sticking it to the man right now.

Actually, there are quite a lot of people outside in Gracias, and that adds to the frustration of everything. Here, everything seems normal. Furthermore, the news isn’t showing anything at all about what’s happening in the capital. I am such a political junkie, and the United States is such a news-happy culture that I am not thrilled about being in a place where the news is censored. The lady I live with told me that there are no news stories because the government doesn’t want to alarm Hondurans or attract international attention. That is an incredibly frustrating and dangerous idea—keeping the citizens in the dark to prevent alarm, when their lives might be in danger? Several people have already died in Tegucigalpa because of the political protests, and the citizens should know what’s going on. By the way, we do have CNN in Español here, and when I turned it on, they were doing a story about how to can food. Thanks, CNN. As always, you’re on your game and reporting on what’s important.

Currently, the Honduran government is asking the Brazilian embassy to either give Zelaya political asylum, or turn him into the authorities. Now let me just say… I don’t really have an opinion about Zelaya. Most of the people I’ve talked to around here do not like him; they think he’s dangerous because he’s allies with Hugo Chavez, and they think he wants to run Honduras the way Chavez runs Venezuela. However, the country is divided; he also has many, many supporters and I am far too ignorant and unable to understand Spanish to be able to make my own informed opinion about this situation. All I know is that I do not like any government that 1) makes me stay in my house, or 2) censors the news. Smells like a dictatorship to me.