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Sat 11 Feb, 2012 12:05 pm
In Honduras, Police Accused Of Corruption, Killings
by Annie Murphy - NPR Weekend Edition Saturday
February 11, 2012
This is the first of a two-part series about the roots of violence in Honduras.
Honduras is hot, mountainous and about the size of the state of Louisiana. According to the United Nations, the Central American nation is also the world's most violent country.
A mix of drug trafficking, political instability and history has contributed to a murder rate that is now four times that of Mexico. The Peace Corps has withdrawn its volunteers.
Contributing to the volatility are the police themselves.
'They Don't Respect The Law'
The National Autonomous University is the largest university in Honduras. It's a sprawling campus of concrete buildings and tropical plants, filled with students on break between classes. They sit on benches, drink bottles of soda and chat.
Tucked in between the palm trees, some are gathered around a homemade memorial to two murdered students, Alejandro Vargas — the son of the rector of the university — and his friend Carlos Pineda, who were killed in October. They weren't killed by Honduras' notorious gangs or drug traffickers, but by the police. The memorial is a long roll of white paper taped to a wall, where friends leave photos and write messages in colored marker.
Isaac Trejo is skinny and tall, and he lingers with his hands in his pockets. Despite the heat, he wears black jeans and high-tops. He says violent run-ins with police have become commonplace.
"It's normal, and everybody knows it. They don't respect the law," Trejo says in Spanish. "They can go and attack anyone they want. For them, the rules don't exist."
A Mother Investigates
While police violence is frequent, this case is high-profile. It has galvanized Honduras, largely because of who Vargas' mother is.
Within site of the memorial, his mother, Julieta Castellano, sits in her office. In addition to working as the rector of the university, she's a widely respected expert on violence. She became part of the commission that took on the case of her own son's murder. She says it met strong resistance.
"The police obstructed the investigation; the head of homicides threatened the prosecutors on the case," she says. "He's the person who is in charge of investigating murders, and he told the prosecutors that they had to stop investigating — that they didn't know what sort of trouble they were getting into."
Eight officers were arrested, yet despite striking evidence, the police released four. The investigation found Vargas' blood and hair in patrol cars. Tape on security cameras showed the boys being followed by police shortly before they were killed. Also, area guards testified that they heard gunshots — right after they heard Vargas' friend begging the police for mercy.
"Their response was to take Carlos, still alive, along with the body of my son," Castellanos says, "because reports show he was dead by that point — 13 kilometers to the south of the city, where he was killed, too."
'Corruption Is A Reality'
For 25 years, Maria Luisa Borjas was a high-ranking police official and was eventually put in charge of investigations within the force. She says she was pushed out of her job, her sons thrown in jail and an attempt made on her husband's life when she began to uncover just how serious police corruption had become.
"Everyone here knows that each day young men turn up dead, with their hands bound, and the famous execution shot to the base of the skull," she says, "and the majority of people that come forward, they say that it was the police that had taken those young men away."
The government says it's doing everything it can. Following the murders, high-level officials were fired, and the military was sent into the streets in a move called Operation Lightning.
"Not all the police are bad," Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla says, "but unfortunately, we do have to accept that corruption is a reality, because in the last three years Honduras has become a major stop for drug trafficking."
How History Influences The Present
However, according to Berta Oliva, the head of the Honduras human-rights commission, it's about more than just drugs.
She says today's problems go back to the 1980s, when the United States was using Honduras as a base for training and arming groups to fight leftists in the region. Disappearing people became part of the security culture, she says. They were supposed to have been living in democracy, so that's what their "democracy" became, she says: one that kills and tortures its citizens.
Officials who were trained during that era still influence how the police and military are run today, say both Oliva and Borjas. Also, the U.S. still gives aid for law enforcement, with at least $50 million going to Honduras since 2008.
"We've asked the U.S. to stop giving aid to security forces here, and we're going to keep asking them to stop," Oliva says.
The Role Of U.S. Aid
In an interview, U.S. officials declined to comment on tape. They pointed out, though, that times have changed. Officials stressed that today the relationship with Honduran security forces is totally different because all aid is tightly controlled and legal — things like training and materials.
Yet even the Honduran security minister says that the Honduran government is in over its head.
"There's been a lot of aid, but it hasn't been well-coordinated," Bonilla says. "We haven't established clear and precise guidelines for ourselves. We don't have a security policy in this country."
That's why many here, including Trejo, the classmate of the murdered students, believe Honduras is on its way to being a failed state.
At some point, the police will totally lose legitimacy, he says, and there will be even more lawlessness — that's when a society breaks down. Once that happens, he says, the state itself loses legitimacy, which is what is happening here.
Annie Murphy is a fellow in the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
@BumbleBeeBoogie,
'Who Rules In Honduras?' Coup's Legacy Of Violence
by Annie Murphy
February 12, 2012
The second of a two-part series about the roots of violence in Honduras./b]
Honduras is a major stop for drug traffickers; corruption is rampant. Many experts say things got markedly worse after the 2009 coup that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. The fallout of that coup continues today.
'The Shooting Started Around 5:20 a.m.'
When it comes to coups and dictators, Latin America has a difficult past. Today the region is largely democratic. Dictators and coups are supposed to be a thing of the past.
Honduras' last dictatorship ended in 1982. The June 2009 coup that ousted Zelaya was a shock to the region and a surprise to world leaders, including Zelaya himself.
University students take part in a wake against violence held in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in October. According to the United Nations, Honduras is the most violent country in the world.
Police Accused Of Corruption, Killings In Honduras
"The shooting started around 5:20 a.m. I went downstairs, and there were about 250 masked soldiers around my house," he says from his home in Honduras' capital, Tegucigalpa. "All you could see were their eyes. I said, 'My God, what is this?' "
The military whisked Zelaya out of the country on a tiny plane and left him in Costa Rica.
"They took off, and there I was. The democratically elected president of Honduras, standing in my pajamas in the middle of a runway in Costa Rica," Zelaya says. "I said to myself, 'So this is that great new future everyone is talking about for Latin America?' "
After two years spent in forced exile, he returned home last year as part of negotiations for Honduras' re-entry into the Organization of American States, which it had been kicked out of after the coup.
The military coup that ousted Zelaya was ordered by members of Honduras' supreme court and carried out by the military. Zelaya had been pushing for a poll to gauge public interest in rewriting the constitution, and the court ruled it illegal.
Police Brutality
After ousting Zelaya, the coup government sent the army and police into the streets. They began arresting, beating and even killing anyone who protested against the new government. According to an official truth commission, they were responsible for at least 20 deaths in the immediate aftermath.
Edgardo Valeriano, a medical doctor and researcher, had never been political. But after the coup, he joined protests demanding democracy and Zelaya's return. Like many protesters, he was beaten. His skull was split open by batons and police lashed him with chains. Valeriano says he feels like Honduras went back to the 1980s.
"I remember those years well. I was a student in medical school back then, and I remember how some students would show up tortured by the police," he says. "Stories on the news about other young people that had been brutally tortured, whose bodies would turn up at different spots in the capital. There was an atmosphere of strong repression."
The election of Rafael Callejas, who was Honduras' president between 1990 and 1994, marked the first time in 60 years that power was transferred peacefully between two major parties. Callejas says he believes Zelaya is too brash, but says illegally ousting him has had huge repercussions.
"We're in a crisis. We went back 20 years. We lost again the issue of democracy," Callejas says. "Who rules in Honduras now? Really? Who rules? The people? The system? Or strength? I mean, that's the question that has to be solved."
Zelaya's supporters rallied after the coup that ousted him in June 2009.
U.S. Reaction To The Coup
For more than a century, the U.S. government has had significant influence in Honduras, from the era of U.S.-owned banana plantations, to military and economic ties that endure today. Because of that history, the U.S. response to the 2009 coup carried a lot of weight.
"After the coup, a lot of the line taken here by pro-coup people was that the coup was the restoration of democracy, and they sold that in Washington," says Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst who worked as a senior staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the coup. He watched the U.S. response unfold.
"But when you look at what was actually happening in Honduras, [Zelaya] really was a continuation of a halting but definitely forward-moving consolidation of democracy," he says.
Despite the call for Zelaya's return by nearly every other country in the hemisphere, Washington chose to back new elections, which were condemned internationally because of widespread violence and repression. Polls were held, and five months after Zelaya's ouster, Porfirio Lobo was elected president. Eventually, the crisis was declared over, but violence has only increased.
Cresencio Arcos, who was ambassador to Honduras in the early '90s, has been involved in the country for decades. He says the Obama administration failed to take a firm position regarding the coup.
"I think this stems from the following: that Latin America is an orphan in our foreign policy. I don't think we have a defined policy," Arcos says. "We had one during the Cold War: They were our allies. After the Cold War ended, we never redefined; we never retooled."
Defining The State Of Affairs
Many here say the outcome of the coup is what pushed Honduras to where it is today: the world's most violent nation, according to the U.N.
Valeriano says it was shocking that in the 21st century, they could pull off a coup. If the president can be taken out of a country and have his rights taken away, the doctor says, without a trial or anything, then what becomes of your average citizen?
Annie Murphy is a fellow in the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
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