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Arabica Robusta

Adrienne Pine and David Vivar: Saving Honduras? - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/pine10152010.html

honduras us intervention coup neoliberalism caceres

shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • They say that following the coup, Cáceres, working with the pro-coup Marrder family that controlled the HTW website, deceitfully wrested control from the Gutierrez family which had founded the paper and until then had maintained editorial control.
  • The Marrders eventually decided to found Honduras weekly as a competing newspaper, with Cáceres as editor. Stanley Marrder, listed on its website as "Owner and publisher of Honduras Weekly," is a Texan businessman and large Republican donor who grew up in Honduras. As they watched their own paper go under, the staff and owners of HTW darkly joked that they too had been victims of a coup.
  • HTW had been a printed and online English-language newspaper aimed at tourists and investors, employing journalists. Honduras Weekly, by contrast, is a blog that does not employ any trained journalists or paid staff, although you would not know that from its "about" page. In a tally last week, of forty-one "guest contributors," fourteen were evangelical missionaries who had each written one travelogue in classic "Heart of Darkness" style. Here is an example: After months of prayerful, "Jonah and the whale" thoughts, I booked my ticket to La Ceiba, Honduras this past weekend and no longer retain a wussy status. This gives my 'I don't leave home well' feelings a whole new slant. I'm flying out with the Vision Honduras team from Dassel, Minnesota on March 3 for a volunteer eye care mission that will last 19 days, carrying only what I can fit into a backpack.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Cáceres uses deceptive tactics like these specifically to prop up an illusion of balance in a blog masquerading as a newspaper, but which is really Cáceres' personal soapbox. In a similar vein, Cáceres recently quoted me out of context in a way that made the quote appear to support his work in a press release promoting his book, written for the 700 club.
  • One of the articles recently republished to appear to look like it was written for HW was titled "US, Honduran Soldiers Partner on Medical Mission to Colón," describing a "humanitarian" mission to the community Guadalupe Carney, written by Alex Licea .Two important facts are left out in the article: first, that SOUTHCOM specifically targets communities like Guadalupe Carney, named for the revolutionary priest and martyr, that are united in their resistance to the coup and U.S. imperialist policy for its "aid" efforts, and secondly, the full attribution of the article, reprinted from SOUTHCOM's website and written by Sgt. 1st Class Alex Licea, SOCSOUTH PAO [Public Affairs Officer].
  • Cáceres has been an enthusiastic supporter of SOUTHCOM's operations in Honduras, and Joint Task Force Bravo, and Bravo has returned that enthusiasm, even sponsoring his annual conference in 2008, themed "Building Global Partnerships: Implementing MDG 8 in Honduras." According to a participant at the conference, Cáceres proudly described to his audience the process that led up to the partnership, explaining that a director at DARPA who had been on a mission trip to Honduras with his church and "fell in love" with the country arranged for SOUTHCOM to allocate a substantial sum of money for the conference.
  • a woman from Task Force Bravo spoke. She proceeded to describe what they did as well as how they help humanitarian efforts. But she also gave a short history of the base. She stated that the base was there in the 1980s to combat aggression. That deeply affected me because I know the role of the US government at that time and have seen the effects of US support of Central American regimes like Honduras and El Salvador in that time.
  • As described on an earlier version of its website, the goal of Cáceres's conference is "to inform, inspire and to generate creative thinking about ways to help Honduras through grassroots projects aimed at providing the Honduran people with some basic abilities to live, learn, and grow... so that eventually they are in a better position to solve the problems of their society." The Social Darwinist assumption implicit in this description (as in the missionary travelogues posted on Honduras Weekly) is that Hondurans have not been able to solve the positions of their society for cultural and developmental reasons-rather than military and economic imperialism. Cáceres insists in his writings and in official conference propaganda that the work is apolitical, but this is of course an impossibility in today's Honduras.
  • While these and other individuals representing the U.S. State will be presenting, the vast majority of individuals attending come from reactionary evangelical groups, promoting charity work based on a premise of "apolitical" salvation that stand in direct opposition to the vibrant Honduran resistant movement's goals of justice and self-determination.
  • Why is USAID ("From the American People") officially sponsoring the Conference on Honduras this year? It's not because the NGOs involved are doing any good; they aren't. In their acceptance of a Social Darwinist model that identifies poverty as the result of a lack of "empowerment" and human capital, they can't.
  • In ignoring those voices, they refuse to address the roots of the problem. Instead, they provide ideological cover for a neoliberal agenda, promoting a Protestant ethic of individual responsibility that eschews notions of social justice, participatory democracy and the public good.
  • why, then, does the U.S. State support Cáceres? It is because he, like the NGOs he promotes, has been a truly effective tool in whitewashing the neoliberal undermining of democracy in Honduras, and the role of U.S. policy and military in it. Cáceres' advocacy is Clinton's Smart Power, combining institutions of military force and media and Non-Profit Industrial Complex coercion to undermine democratic processes in the interest of supporting the corporations that funded and have benefited from the coup. And indeed, as long as we don't focus on the pro-corporate, anti-democratic golpista praxis in our own government, as the State Department employee I met on the train said, our fingerprints are all over that.
SamanthaAndreacchi

Latin American Herald Tribune - Cop Accused of Extortion Lynched in Guatemala - 0 views

www.laht.com/article.asp

violence social violence murder Guatemala war

shared by SamanthaAndreacchi on 17 Nov 09 - Cached
  • SamanthaAndreacchi on 17 Nov 09
     
    This article shows that both sides initiate violence in Guatemala. Locals intercepted the policeman, who was accused of extortion, and brutally murdered him. Lynchings, however, are common and are seen as forms of vigilante justice.
Maya Ambroise

Violent and Violated Women: Justice and Gender in Rural Guatemala, 1936-1956 - 0 views

www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst

machismo poverty gender urban guatemala

shared by Maya Ambroise on 18 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Maya Ambroise on 18 Nov 09
     
    This article is a historical look at violent and violated women in Guatemala. It explores the social meanings of "gendered crimes" in rural Guatemala between 1936 and 1956. These gendered crimes include b=not only sexual violence, but also infanticide and abortion, which are defined as female. Many times harmful acts to women fail to generate criminal proceedings.
Elizabeth Hughes

Toolkit for Working with Men and Boys - The Association of Men Against Violence: - 0 views

toolkit.endabuse.org/...TheAssociation.html

Nicaragua social conditions violence social justice activism.

shared by Elizabeth Hughes on 15 Nov 09 - Cached
    • Elizabeth Hughes
      Elizabeth Hughes on 15 Nov 09
       
      This article discusses about the influence of machismo culture on men becoming aggressive and violent in Nicaragua. The machismo culture is not the only factor; tradegies within the country have pushed men to become violent as well. Nicaragua has faced many natural disasters, such as Hurricane Mitch in 1998, and the tensions from the disasters result in more violence. In this case, the violent behaviors can also be seen as a way for men to make sense out of the natural disasters that cause so much pain.
janegelb

Abortion rights gain ground in Latin America | csmonitor.com - 0 views

www.csmonitor.com/...p01s03-woam.html

Mexico abortion Catholic Church women's rights social justice

shared by janegelb on 09 Sep 09 - Cached
  • janegelb on 09 Sep 09
     
    Legalizing abortion has been a slow process in Latin America. Only a handful of countries, including Cuba and Guyana, have legalized abortions in the first trimester. In 2007, when this article was written, there was a legal debate deciding whether or not to legalize abortion in Mexico. The Roman Catholic Church is adamantly opposed to legalizing abortion, and studies found that people in rural areas were antiabortion. Thousands of women die in Latin America from unsafe and illegal abortions, and it is apparent that the illegality of abortion does not reduce the number of women getting them.
Courtney Connors

To Fight Femicide in Guatemala, New Law, But Same Culture (SB#4) - 0 views

www.rhrealitycheck.org/...emala-new-law-but-same-culture

Femicide Feminism Machismo Violence War Corruption

shared by Courtney Connors on 18 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Women are being tortured, raped and murdered on a regular basis, with total or almost total impunity, regardless of numerous and unanimous claims for justice from the civil society and even from the international community
    • Courtney Connors
      Courtney Connors on 18 Nov 09
       
      It is going to take more than "urging the Guatemalan Government" to make effective changes for them to actually occur. International sanctions for war crimes against human rights must take place.
  • gone unpunished mainly because of negligence and the lack of effective investigation and prevention strategies of the Guatemalan authorities.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Guatemalan
  • The CEDAW Committee and the European Parliament have both urged the Guatemalan government to take all necessary steps to effectively combat violence against women, ensuring full respect for human rights
  • April 9, 2008 the Guatemalan Congress passed the Law against Femicide and other Forms of Violence against Women (Decree 22-2008), that aims to severely punish any kind of gender-based violence, guaranteeing the life, freedom, integrity, dignity and equality of all women, in the private or public sphere, promoting and implementing strategies to prevent and eradicate femicide and any kind of physical, psychological, sexual or economic violence against women.   
  • Decree literally recognizes that the violence and discrimination against women in the country has flourished because of the "power inequality between men and women in the social, economic, legal, political, cultural and family spheres." 
  • The Law typifies femicide as a crime and defines it as the murder of a woman committed because of her gender within a context of unequal exercise of power; it imposes punishments that range from 25 to 50 years imprisonment.
  • "forced prostitution and denying [a woman] the right to use contraceptive methods, whether natural or hormonal, or taking measures to prevent sexually transmitted infections" are considered sexual violence crimes. 
  • 25% of women consider their partner's disapproval as a reason for not using a family planning method. 
  • the dominant 'macho culture' in Guatemala will make it difficult to implement the law."
  • Courtney Connors on 18 Nov 09
     
    Although the previously bookmarked article seeks to establish an outline of the human or women rights violations that occur within Guatemala, here, author Karim Velasco, sheds light upon newly distinguished laws and explains despite their hopeful goals, why they have ceased to work effectively. She argues that because of the "lack of effective investigation and prevention strategies of the Guatemalan authorities", women continue to be raped, tortured, and murdered at an increasing rate. Because of pressures from the European Parliament to abide by human rights laws, "on April 9, 2008, Guatemalan Congressed passed the 'Law Against Femicide and other Forms of Violence against Women Act' to severely punish any kind of gender-based violence..." However, because the violence stems from the power inequality between men and women in the first place, there is little belief or evidence that this Act will be implemented or strongly enforced by the men in power who seek to represent masculinity or display a constant idea of machismo.
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