Custom Search

CSM on Honduras, Latin America

Submitted by fyl on Fri, 2009/07/03 - 08:29.
0
The Christian Science Monitor has an article on Honduras and Latin America titled Honduras coup spotlights Latin America's growing instability. While I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion nor all the content (it reads as if written from a far) I think it is important to see what a quasi-neutral external perspective looks like.

From my own experience the following, while true, isn't really off the long-term norm for this region. That is, people in Latin America tend to be a lot more politically active than what you could call "the U.S. standard". All the road blockades in Costa Rica to protest mandatory auto inspections about six years ago is a good example.

And in Nicaragua, protests erupted in November when President Daniel Ortega was widely condemned for fixing municipal elections in favor of his Sandinista party. His detractors say he is installing an authoritarian regime.
If anything, the article's comments on illegal drugs/organized crime seems to be on target. What is missing is that the poor countries between production countries such as Colombia and big-time consumption in the U.S. are really victims of this very profitable business rather than being the participants.
‹ It Was a Crime but We Had to Do It Honduras Analysis from Mexico ›

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

the vulnerability of democracy

Submitted by Daddy-YO on Fri, 2009/07/03 - 18:08.

Thanks. As much as Christian Science seems a mixed bag to me, I've always enjoyed their Journal with its world-view. I found one quote especially revealing, from Casas-Zamora, at the Brookings Institute, "Central America is showing the vulnerabilities of democracy." And his comment, "The situation in Honduras is bad all around. No one seems to [care] about the law." That coincides with my perception of most of Central America.

Civilization, at times, seems to be little more than a thin veneer along the continental isthmus.

Your comment about poor countries between producers & consumers of illegal drugs being "really victims" is a sympathetic oversimplification. Money is power and power corrupts. Few are immune. Read the article on Canada's drug war in the L.A.Times.