Honduran Protest against FTA

[Robbien]

Tegucigalpa, Mar 7 (Prensa Latina) Honduran social sectors are organizing a protest against ratification of the free trade agreement between Central America and the US, the coordinator of the Popular Bloc, Carlos Reyes, confirmed Monday.

The leader said the protest, to be held Tuesday, will be the first of a series of demonstrations planned nationwide by political organizations and trade unions rejecting the agreement.

"The approval of a commercial agreement between the region and Washington last Thursday will mean more poverty for regional countries," Reyes assured, adding that teachers, students, trade unions, and members of the Popular Bloc will take part in the action.

According to analysts, politicians and social groups, the pact will overflow local markets with foreign products, increase foreign debt, and "swallow" small regional economies.

"Honduran legislators have betrayed the country by approving the trade agreement," Reyes stated.

Honduras is the second country in the region, after El Salvador, which has supported the agreement with the US, signed in May 2004

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={36BB4A32-9F4F-457D-8412-1AD5717E4CD0}&language=EN

[Judi Lynn]

1. I hope their protests will work.

I see they've got more planned. Too bad their legislators thought of themselves, rather than the interests of the country first. Maybe it won't be too late.

They need some real time healing, getting their country back after what Ronald Reagan and our right-wing did to them, working with the right-wing scum in their government:

From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure, he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. At the time, Honduras was ruled by an elected but heavily militarily-influenced government. According to The New York Times, Negroponte was allegedly involved in "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua." Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.

Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the U.S., and which some critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.

Records also show that a special intelligence unit (commonly referred to as a "death squad") of the Honduran armed forces, Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA and the Argentine military, kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people, including U.S. missionaries. Critics charge that Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with the Honduran military while lying to Congress.

In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had worked for ten years in El Salvador, went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns and women of faith who fled to Honduras in 1981 after Archbishop Óscar Romero's assassination. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. However, in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Negroponte's predecessor, Jack Binns, said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women Bordes had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters alive.
(snip/...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte

[arcos]

2. CAFTA must be defeated in the US...

it will be no good if it is only defeated in some Central American countries...

[Quakerfriend]

3. Good point, arcos!

The poor people of Honduras have been thru so much in the past couple of years. And, the violence there is worse than ever.
Much more dangerous in Honduras right now than in Colombia, for example.

[struggle4progress]

4. kick