They occupied the church, and why that's a good thing

I went down to check out the church occupation in the main square today, as it entered its fifth day.

The Catholic church is the dominant building in Copan Ruinas, as in most Honduran towns. It’s nice - two bell towers, a centre tower with a clock that usually shows the right time. 

Right now, the facade is spotted with hand-lettered signs protesting - politely - the transfer of the local priest.

It’s only the second local protest I’ve been aware of since we’ve been here. The first was a road blockade on the highway to Guatemala when people got fed up with a couple of months of frequent power outages.

I like protests, even if I disagree with the cause. (Hate groups and their ilk excepted.) It seems good if people take a stand for what they believe in. 

This one is especially interesting because it involves the church’s role in society.

Some parishioners are angry because the bishop, based in Santa Rosa de Copan, about three hours away, has transferred 14 priests in the diocese, including Father Daniel Humberto Corea of the Church of St. Joseph the Worker in Copan. He’s been here for 13 years and has many supporters.

The decision was at least partly political. The bishop thought the priests were getting too active in joining with some parishioners’ push for social and economic change. 

The bishop says the rotation is normal, but critics say, convincingly, that’s simply not true based on past practice and canon law.

And the bishop undermined his own position when he complained the protests are being led by supporters of Libre, a new leftish party that could do well in November’s presidential elections.

The Roman Catholic church is still important here. Newspapers regularly cover statements by the church on public issues. A Honduran cardinal is a longshot candidate for the next pope.

And it has a political past. In the 1960s, the doctrine of liberation theology began to gain ground among Catholic clergy in Latin America. Priests and parishioners saw a religious duty to champion the poor and oppressed and, logically, denounce the rich and oppressive.

That made many people nervous. The U.S.government saw Latin America as another front in the Cold War. It didn’t want the Catholic church even indirectly threatening governments the U.S. saw as allies. Powerful people in Central American countries didn’t want the church pushing for changes in the status quo.

And of course, many people in the church hierarchy - including the outgoing pope - were unhappy with the movement.

It wasn’t just a philosophical debate. Groups in the U.S. - including, famously, Oliver North of the Iran-Contra scandal in the Reagan years - encouraged and funded evangelical missions to Latin America as a counterbalance.

They worked. 

In the 1960s, Honduras was virtually a Catholic country. 

Reliable numbers are hard to come by, but a 2007 national survey found 47 percent of respondents identified themselves as Roman Catholics, and 36 percent as evangelical Protestants, a huge change.

Unlike Canada, almost everyone counts themselves as Christian, and a member of some church. Hondurans are genuinely baffled when I try to explain Canadians’ lack of religious affiliation.

And, unlike in Canada, churches don’t seem to be much interested in helping others or building a stronger community. The things Canadian churches do - providing shelters, running meal programs - just aren’t considered.

Partly, that’s a result of the way evangelical churches have developed. In Copan Ruinas, there are a huge number of tiny, informal churches, often meeting in homes. Congregations are too small to consider launching any collective efforts to make the community better. (That concept might not exist anyway; charity appears to extend, at most, to immediate family. There is no real equivalent to a United Way campaign or tradition of philanthropy here, even among the very rich.)

It’s also, I expect, a legacy of the Roman Catholic church’s decision to step back from an activist theology and focus on the next world, not this one.

Whatever the reasons, Honduran churches are failing. They could be champions of an effort to work with others to make a better life for Hondurans. They aren’t, at least as far as I can tell.

If the people occupying the church on our square can change that a little, more power to them.

Footnote: Hundreds of faith-based groups from North America come to Honduras every year to help people, building schools and water systems and providing health care. 

I recall discussions about whether people without religious faith had a reason to help others. Of course they do, I would say.

But it’s interesting that the people who actually show up to do the work almost all share a religious conviction of some kind.

On the road to Tomalá, and the miracle spring

So there I was in Tomalá, having coffee with the mayor, perched on a couch in a dark living room, bags of newly harvested coffee stacked along the wall.

I had been minding my own business, sitting outside on the hotel’s plastic chairs, working on case studies on a couple of interesting women’s projects being done by OCDIH, the NGO I’m helping. (We love acronyms in development land.)

Then the mom of the family who owned the hotel brought her son, Edgar, and pushed him to talk to me. Last year, they sent him and his younger sister to an English-language collegio - high school - in a town a couple of hours away. She wanted to make sure the kids were learning.

They were. We talked, and their English was great. The parents stood watching critically.

Then the mayor came by, with a TV journalist from Globo, doing a piece on Tomalá and its big fair. 

The mayor wanted me to come to see a sacred spring, water with healing properties thanks to a sighting of the Virgin Mary there.

How could you say no? Simply by being a gringo, I had a vague celebrity status.

So we walked - the mayor, his wife, the hotel owner (an ex-mayor) and his wife and brother, the kids and the TV guy - up the cobblestone street a block and down a lovely path to El Posito de la Virgen. 

It’s a little pool, very clear, where water apparently trickles out at the base of a 15-metre rock face. It’s credited with healing powers, though I never really got the back story.

Some people were there, washing up. The TV reporter filmed the mayor talking about the spring with his little handicam. The mayor and his wife downed glasses of water from the pool. (I passed.) 

I noticed the TV guy kept framing his shots to get me in the background - I supposed it made it look like there were gringo tourists in town. He even did a brief interview, in which I uttered flattering generalities about Tomalá and Honduras in bad Spanish.

The mayor hopes publicity for the spring would attract devote Roman Catholics to the town, providing a badly needed economic boost.

That seems a long shot. Tomalá is pretty enough. But it’s almost in El Salvador. To get there from Copan de Ruinas - the nearest town with many visitors - we took four buses. The actual travel time was about seven or eight hours. Half the trip was jammed into rapiditos with too many people. 

And the last hour was up a dusty dirt road  in the mountains to get to Tomalá. The climate in the province of Lempira’s high country is extreme even by Honduran standards, with six months of drought followed by six months of torrential rain. The road would be frightening in the rainy season.

Tomalá, without the vendors

The mayor noted that the town is pushing to have the road paved. But Honduras has about 70 stalled construction projects now because the government hasn’t paid the contractors. Main highways are potholed and risky. Unless Tomalá’s spring does have miraculous powers, the chances aren’t good.

I liked the mayor’s optimism. And it’s surely necessary. There’s some subsistence farming and a little coffee. But it’s hard to see how anyone earns a living in Tomalá. (It’s not even on the drug transit routes.) 

The town - about 6,000 people including the settlements in the hills - hopes that it will get dividends if a talked-about hydro project goes ahead in the nearby mountains, but those tend to be developed by foreign companies with proceeds to the national government.

Judging by the number of people who tried out a “Hello, how are you” greeting, the town likely does benefit from remittances from residents who have made the long, dangerous to the U.S. (About 19 per cent of Honduras GDP is money sent home.)

There were visitors. We were there, because CASM, the organization my partner works with, has an office and she came to talk about communications and learn what they do. There were a half-dozen people from Minnesota, down on a project to hand out glasses in nearby, even-poorer villages. (Quite a good project - there’s a story here.)

And that weekend, the town was jammed with vendors for the saint’s day feria. Literally jammed. Makeshift stands were set up everywhere there was a three-metre square space, selling everything. Clothes, shoes, housewares, fruit, dried fish, vegetables, candy  - lots of candy - tools, and, of course, meals. 

Kitchens were cobbled together in a few hours. Hammer together a rickety wood surface - always, it seemed with reused wood and nails. Then top it with adobe, build a couple of rough cookstoves out of more adobe, start the wood fire and away you go. Vendors slept in the stalls at night.

It was festive. The fair saves Tomaláns, if that’s what they’re called, the two-hour bus ride to San Marcos to shop. (We changed buses in San Marcos; dustiest place I have ever been. If you are on the run someday, I’d suggest hiding out there.)

But not festive enough to attract tourists.

Which explains the mayor’s enthusiasm for the miraculous spring. It might seem a little desperate, but he’s trying. Better desperation than hopelessness. 

Passing the hat - or plastic bottle - to raise ransom money

I wrote this almost two weeks ago, but hesitated in posting.

I’m a visitor in Honduras, and reluctant to appear judgmental about my hosts. I don’t want to draw unwanted attention. And someone was in danger.

But the rumour mill says he was released, so I guess it’s OK now.

----------------

It was the day to take the hogar kids to the pool. So Sunday morning Jody went to buy mortadella - bologna - and bread and the various supplies needed for lunch. She bought a cake - $6.50 - because Carina’s 16th birthday was the next Tuesday, and Jody has a soft spot for teens.

On the street, she met a woman we sort of know, a teacher at the private bilingual school, staffed by a few Hondurans and semi-volunteer gringos. The woman had a five-gallon water bottle and was collecting donations.

A young Honduran man known at the school - I think a family member works there - had been kidnapped Saturday. Now there was a campaign to get donations to pay the ransom.

He must be well known. Jody got a lift in a mototaxi on the way back from Angelitos, the orphanage/foster home, and the driver said the soccer team he coached - uniformed with Real Madrid shirts through Jody and supporters in Victoria - had cancelled its game because of the kidnapping. 

And there were donation bottles in Bodega Gloria when I stopped to shop on the way back from the pool.

This is wrong on so many levels.

Practically, shouldn’t the kidnappers have done a little research before they grabbed this guy? It seems poor planning to snatch someone whose family has to do a fundraising drive to come up with ransom. (Though perhaps kidnapping someone from a richer family brings more police pressure.)

The gossip is that the kidnappers wanted five million lempiras - $250,000. I’d guess there was about $15 in the container at the store. (Jody gave $5.) The ransom demand did not seem well thought-out. 

But maybe it was just an asking price.

It’s hard to imagine a comparable situation in Canada. If someone is kidnapped, the police take over. There might be a ransom drop, but the family doesn’t hold a 50-50 draw at the Legion to try to come up with money to pay the kidnappers.

In Honduras, people don’t expect the police to ride to the rescue. They sort things out as best they can, without the state’s help.

Kidnappings aren’t common here. We heard a hotel owner was kidnapped by a bumbling gang just before we came down. Things went wrong and he was killed. A doctor was snatched last year in Santa Rita, the next town over, and ransomed after a week or so.

And, I hasten to add, gringos don’t seem to be targets. Even kidnappers must know how hard it is to transfer money from North America to Honduras. And police reaction would likely be more intense.

But it is odd to live in a country where you pass the hat - or, more accurately, the water bottle - to buy someone’s freedom.

The kids from the hogar had a good time at the pool. I’m hoping the fundraising drive is going well too.

When home is the most dangerous place for women

Honduras, like most of Latin America, has a problem with domestic violence.

I’ve been working through a research report, trying to do a Spanish summary of document only in available in English.

The report, Violence Against Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, is both grim and fascinating.

Grim because women are getting battered. The study compiled the results of massive surveys from 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

In Honduras, 9.9 per cent of women between 15 and 49 reported experiencing partner violence in the previous 12 months. That puts Honduras in the middle of the pack for the region. (The survey covered those who were or had been in a relationship.)

That’s five times the rate in Canada, where people rightly see domestic violence as a serious problem.

The Pan American Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed the survey responses, which covered not just prevalence, but risk factors and attitudes.

There were some important findings.

For example, Honduran woman whose first marriage or common-law relationship was formed when they were under 15 were more than twice as likely to experience partner violence as women who waited until they were 25. Even delaying a few years significantly reduced the rate of violence.

Likewise, Honduran woman who had their first child between 15 and 17 were 75 per cent more likely to experience partner violence than women whose first birth came after they were 21.

Convincing teens to wait - not easy - could make a large difference.

So could dealing with alcohol abuse. The research looked at triggers, and found 30 per cent to 50 per cent of women cited the man’s drunkenness or drug use as the “cause” of the violence. (Mostly drunkenness.)

Then there are the cultural issues. In Canada, the number of women who would say partner violence was sometimes justified simply wouldn’t register in a survey.

In Honduras, 15.6 per cent of Honduran women between 15 and 49 who had been in a relationship agreed wife-beating is sometimes justified. That rose to 20 per cent in rural Honduras, home to about half of the population.

Legitimate reasons, according to those women, included neglecting children or housework (12.1 per cent), going out without telling partner (6.2 per cent), arguing or disagreeing with partner (6.1 per cent), burning the food (5.6 per cent) and refusing sex (3.2 per cent).

The responses raise an underlying issue. The surveys didn’t ask men about violence, triggers or attitudes. If one in five rural women think wife-beating can be justified, what would men say?

It was also striking how few women sought any kind of help. In Honduras, almost two-thirds of women kept the violence a secret. Only 34 per cent told anyone they had been assaulted by their partners - even a family member or friend.

And only 19 per cent - fewer than one in five - sought institutional help. They didn’t go to police, or social services, or a doctor or women’s group. (About 11 per cent of Honduran women experiencing partner violence sought help from police or a protection agency; nine per cent from a church or religious institution; 4.5 per cent from a hospital or health centre; 0.1 per cent from a women’s organization or NGO.)

Why not? In Honduras, 36 per cent of those not seeking help considered it unnecessary - the violence not serious, or normal. About 27 per cent were afraid of retaliation or more violence; 17 per cent were ashamed; seven per cent didn’t know where to go; six per cent didn’t believe that anyone would help.

There are some obvious lessons. Give women somewhere to go to get help. Create women’s networks and shelters that provide support, especially in navigating the system. Work to shift the shame from them to the abusers. Fight a culture that normalizes and justifies wife-beating. Make partner violence a health issue.

And make men and boys take ownership of the issue.

This should be urgent. Not just because so many lives are being damaged. Or even because the costs are so enormous, as the report sets out.

But because of the future being created. The study found “the single consistent and significant risk factor across all surveys” was a history of ‘father beat mother.’ Women who grew up in violent homes were twice as likely to endure partner violence in their own lives. 

Inaction today means children are learning to be the next generation bringing fear, violence and sorrow to too many homes.

Maybe it's time to stop waiting for a miracle

It’s the festival of Our Lady of Suyapa in Honduras, a celebration of a tiny carved image of Mary, the mother of Jesus, that’s venerated here.

The carving - less than three inches tall - is credited with miraculous healing powers. Suyapa is seen as a benelovent force looking after Hondurans when times are hard, as they usually are.

Sunday is the main celebration of the 250-year-old icon. Thousands of people have been making the pilgrimage to the Tegucigalpa neighbourhood where the caarving, usually in a small church, is moved to a basilica built specially for its display.

I haven’t been yet, but would like to. We went to see the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City, and the devotion of the faithful - and the sprawling market of commemorative items for pilgrims - were impressive. You shuttled past the image on moving sidewalks inside the church, so people wouldn’t linger too long. (It was still a much warmer experience than joining the long lines visiting Ho Chi Minh’s tomb in Hanoi, where guards watch closely for any signs of disrespect - like having your hands behind your back - as you approach the bleached body.)

Marco Cáceres of Honduras Weekly, the leading English-language news and analysis source for the country, wrote an interesting piece headlined “No harm in a  little idol worship.”

Suyapa, he wrote, “represents one of the few things in Honduras today that can help bring people together and get them to put aside their differences, even if it's just temporary.”

“While it may seem silly placing so much credence in a tiny piece of carved cedar, there's no real harm in it, and if it can unite Hondurans in silence, stillness, and prayer... well, that's no small achievement,” Cáceres wrote.

Perhaps. 

Canada is a resolutely secular society today, to an extent that baffles most Hondurans I talk to, who assume everyone has some religious affiliation. So partly, this a question of perspective. And I genuinely respect faith in a higher power and the chances of a better world.

But I worry a bit about faith as a substitute for action.

In San Pedro Sula a few months ago, the taxi driver taking us from our hotel to the bus station was a chatty guy, talking about getting deported from the U.S. after 12 years and the perils of being a cabbie in the city. He had been robbed, a pistol held against his head, he said, an occupational hazard.

But now, Raul said, life was safer. He had arranged to be on call for the hotel, and had other regular customers, and no longer had to do street pickups.

“Gracias a dios,” he added. You hear that a tremendous amount here. 

I’m too polite to talk about religion, and too inarticulate to engage in philosophical discussions in Spanish.

But I often want to point out that while God might have been helpful, Raul was the one who made the difficult trip to the U.S., saved some money, got a decent car, made a sales pitch to the hotel and delivered reliable service so they would keep on using him.

At the least he should say thanks to God and and his own efforts. 

Partly, of course, it’s just an expression, a way of showing faith. 

But there is also a sense of real fatalism - that individual efforts and community efforts don’t really matter as much as divine forces. And fatalism and learned helplessness can be close relations.

Congress has just passed a law making Suyapa and the area around the basilica part of the country’s cultural heritage. La Prensa quoted Rigoberto Chang Castillo, the congress member who sponsored the bill. He said the decree acknowledges that Honduras is a secular state that respects religious freedom, but has deep Christian roots, “the values of which all build on the principles that underpin our society and strengthen the culture of peace and democracy.”

Except when you have the highest murder rate in the world, and a democracy that can be kindly described as troubled, maybe it’s time to rely less on faith, and more on changing things through action.

'In many ways, the state is no longer functioning'

I'm still trying to figure out how things work, or don't work, in Honduras by reading the newspapers.
It's baffling. (Maybe it would also be baffling for a Honduran trying to figure out Canada by reading the newspapers there.)
I've been struck lately by the sense that there are a lot of reports on things going wrong, but little analysis to pull them into some coherent framework, or show how they're related.
La Prensa reported that the public hospital in Tocoa, a city of about 45,000, is being evicted by the building owner because the health ministry hasn't paid the rent for 10 months. But it didn't say why the hospital is in a rented building or why the payments weren't made, or what would happen to patients. In the same vein, the meal suppliers are cutting off service to the main teaching hospital in Tegucigalpa, the capital, because they say they haven't been paid. The hospital administration was such a mess that the government transferred management to the University of Honduras last year. The new regime won't accept responsibility for bills predating its takeover.
Fortunately, Associated Press reporter Alberto Arce, based in Tegucigalpa for about a year, has done an excellent job of looking at the bigger picture.

"Street surveillance cameras in one of the world's most dangerous cities were turned off last week because Honduras' government hasn't paid millions of dollars it owes. The operator that runs them is now threatening to suspend police radio service as well.

"Teachers have been demonstrating almost every day because they haven't been paid in six months, while doctors complain about the shortage of essential medicines, gauze, needles and latex gloves.

"This Central American country has been on the brink of bankruptcy for months, as lawmakers put off passing a budget necessary to pay for basic government services. Honduras is also grappling with $5 billion in foreign debt, a figure equivalent to last year's entire government budget . . . ."

It's worth reading the entire piece here.

(Arce also took an interesting look at his own work life in a report here.)

MLAs' expense allowance lets almost one-in-four buy second homes in the capital

MLAs’ living expense benefits are likely too rich when 18 of them have been able to buy second homes in the capital.

It’s reasonable to cover living costs for MLAs from outside the capital region when they’re here on business.

But when almost 25 per cent of eligible MLAs use the expense allowance to help buy second homes in one of the province’s most expensive markets, the payments  deserve a tough look. (The information is from disclosure statements. A few have half-interests in the properties.)

MLAs’ decision to give themselves big pay raises and lavish pension plans in 2007 attracted much attention. (Rightly, of course. About 75 per cent of working British Columbians have no pension plan, but pay higher taxes so MLAs can have a gold-plated plan. The average pay for B.C. MLAs is now $118,000, more than the income of 96 per cent of tax filers in the province.)

But MLAs also voted for big changes in their benefits.

MLAs had been eligible for an allowance when they had to be in the capital on business. The amount - $150 per day - was judged enough to cover meals and a hotel room. Some members - mostly cabinet ministers - were in Victoria enough that the per diem allowed them to rent a place, or in a handful of cases buy a residence.

In 2007, MLAs decided they needed more. 

The new deal gives them $61 a day for meals, no receipts required. 

And it provides generous housing allowances. MLAs can rent, and claim up to $19,000 a year in expenses with receipts. Or they can claim $12,000 a year and not have to provide any receipts.

And they can also claim taxpayers’ funds to support the purchase of a second home in the capital, based on the same approach. With receipts, they can get up to $19,000 a year for “property taxes, strata fees, if any, insurance, basic telephone and Internet service, parking and furniture rental.” 

Or they can just claim $12,000 a year with no receipts. (It’s notable that MLAs believe they need up to $19,000 for a second home, but single parent with two children on disability assistances is allowed less than $8,000. Their children must not need housing up to MLA standards.)

The new rates are a good deal for MLAs from outside the capital region, or they wouldn’t be buying the condos and houses.

But is it a good deal for taxpayers, especially when the legislature sits so rarely? The legislature has been sitting about 47 days a year. Committee work and other meetings could bring an MLA to Victoria for another 30 days a year. Under the old system, he or she would get about $7,700 for accommodation. Enough for a nice hotel or long-term rental.

Under the new system, taxpayers pay at least $12,000, maybe more - a 56 per cent increase. (The extra costs might be less for MLAs or ministers who are here more often.)

Part of the problem in assessing the benefits is that MLAs continue to cloak their spending in secrecy, despite repeated promises to provide a proper breakdown. It’s impossible to tell what they’re doing with the housing allowance - or even whether the rules are being followed.

The whole plan was presented and approved without any rationale, justification or assessment of the increased costs to taxpayers. 

The government picked three panelists to examine pay, pension and benefits - two senior lawyers and a business professor. Their average income was well over $200,000. Their perspective on compensation would inevitably be skewed by their own experiences. Unlike past compensation committees, there was no one earning the average B.C. wage of abut $40,000. No one, as the BC Liberals used to proclaim in the old days, “Thinking like a taxpayer.”

There are better approaches. For more than two decades, Washington state has used a 16-person salary commission to deal with pay for elected officials. One member is selected at random from the voters' list in each of nine geographical areas. The politicians appoint five members - one each from universities, business, personnel management, the law and organized labour. The state's HR department and universities get to name one person each. 

I don’t know if the allowances are reasonable, or fair. But when so many MLAs are able to buy second homes, they deserve a close look.

Murder in the city, daily life and tourism

Honduras took another hit this week when a British tourist was shot and killed in San Pedro Sula, the biggest city. 

The headlines in the British media, naturally, weren’t good. Most stories noted Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, which seems to be the main thing people know about the country.

Honduras, for tourists, isn’t dangerous. My partner’s son and his family - including boys 11 and 13 - just spent six weeks here, feeling secure and welcome everywhere they went.

But Kaya Omer, the 33-year-old British tourist, had a different, tragic experience. 

It’s hard to tell tourists there are two Honduras. Copan Ruinas, Tela, Santa Rosa de Copan, most smaller communities are completely safe for travellers. The big cities are dangerous. 

The risk is that people will either be scared from the whole country, or not scared enough where they should be.

Omer was walking and shooting video in a nice San Pedro Sula neighbourhood around 11 a.m. Accounts vary, but it seems two young men and a woman tried to steal the camera, and his backpack, which contained two more cameras, an iPad and money. He resisted, they shot him.

You can’t blame the victim. But when we go to Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula, we carry nothing when we walk. Certainy not a backpack of valuables; if you travel with possessions in the city, you take a cab, with a driver you know. (Most Hondurans do the same if they can.)

During our in-country Cuso orientation, we learned to be ready to avoid eye contact and hand whatever we had over to a robber if it came to that. (And to carry at least a reasonable amount of money so the bad guys wouldn’t get mad at a mingy payday.)

But how do you give tourists that kind of advice and still expect them to visit? We found the orientation, with its bleak scenarios, alarming, and we were committed.

The real solution, of course, is to reduce the crime and violence. Tourists almost never experience crime, but urban Hondurans - especially those without the money to insulate themselves - live with the risk every day. Small businesses, taxi drivers, vendors in the city pay weekly extortion to stay safe.

Two days after Omer was killed, President Porifirio Lobo said security has improved this year. “Everyone feels that has gotten better,” he said.

But it’s hard to find anyone who actually say that. Some groups are predicting the murder rate will be higher again for 2012. There might have been a few tiny steps on police corruption. Drug seizures are up. (But Canadians have learned giant seizures don’t make a bit of difference to the trade, supply or crime.) But life hasn’t changed, or security improved, for Hondurans.

The Observatorio de la Violencia just reported on 2012 massacres, events in which three or more people were killed in the same attack. There were 115, killing 432 people. Half were gang executions, and another eight per cent involved fights between gangs. Imagine a mass murder in B.C. every week, based on the relative populations.

There are no easy solutions. The enforcement and justice systems don’t work - more 90 per cent of murders go unsolved. “Impunity” is a big public complaint. Some people are just above the law.

Still, efforts could be made. El Salvador reported a 41 per cent drop in murders in 2012 as a result of a truce between the two major gangs. That took the rate to 38 murders per hundred thousand people, from 65 in 2011. The Honduran rate in 2011 was 87; Canada’s was 1.7. (The deal was facilitiated by Adam Blackwell, a Canadian diplomat now on the Honduran Public Security Reform Commission. He has raised the idea of a similar truce in Honduras.)

It’s far from a cure-all. But two or three fewer murders a day would free up a lot of police time.

The frustrating thing, again, is that Honduras is safe for tourists, or as safe as their home countries. You can walk the streets of Copan Ruinas late at night without fear, people are welcoming and they are eager for you to like their country. 

But it’s asking a lot to expect people to ignore the headlines.

Liberals suffer big self-inflicted damage in three ridings: What's gone wrong?

The Liberals’ fumbling in three potential swing ridings is baffling. They’re spending big money on political advisors and campaign staff (some from party funds, some from taxpayers).

But the Liberals have suffered self-inflicted wounds in three ridings - Vernon-Monashee, Boundary-Similkameen and Abbotsford-South. 

Polls point to an easy New Democrat victory. If the Liberals hope for a surprise win, they’ll need those seats.

Instead, they’re giving the advantage to rivals.

In Boundary-Similkameen, the Liberals have bounced sitting MLA John Slater. Publicly, they say he has “personal issues that, in our view, impact his ability to represent the party.” Privately, Liberal operatives have whispered he has a drinking problem.

Slater says no. He’s naturally outspoken, he says, and that’s uncommon in caucus. He concedes the interaction of prescription drugs and antihistamines and “a glass of wine” might have affected him on a few occasions, including in a caucus meeting after he had a glass of wine at lunch.

That’s not a great explanation. Many people have decided a glass of wine at lunch isn’t a great idea; certainly after one bad episode that would seem prudent.

But the party people could have convinced Slater to step aside. An delegation of MLAs could have talked to him. Or the party could have backed another candidate in a nomination contest and let party members in the riding decide.

Instead, Slater says, they came to him in December, claimed polls showed he couldn’t win and pressured to go quietly or else. He thinks the polls were fake. The riding association president quit in protest.  An Osoyoos Times editorial described the party’s treatment of Slater as “abhorrent, disgusting, amateurish, disrespectful and childish.” 

And now that he’s been turfed as a Liberal, Slater is running as an independent.

Which is bad news for the likely Liberal candidate, Oliver Mayor Linda Larson, who had been lined up in advance by the big guys. (Real nomination meetings have certainly become rare in some parties.)

Slater won the 2009 election with 38 per cent of the vote. The NDP candidate came second with 33 per cent, the Conservatives third with 20.

So if Slater takes 10 per cent of the vote and some Liberal supporters stay home because they don’t like the way their MLA was treated, the NDP wins easily.

These kinds of situations are difficult. There was likely no tidy outcome. But this seems a  good example of how not to do it.

The situation in Abbotsford-South is similar. Abbotsford Coun. Moe Gill was encouraged to run for the Liberal nomination. He signed up 1,500 members and had a lock on an open contest.

But then Rich Coleman and party brass told him they had decided Daryl Plecas, a Fraser Valley University crime prof, should be the candidate and there would be no real nomination contest.

Gill initially bowed to the pressure, changed his mind, and is now running as a motivated and angry independent.

Again, bad news for the Liberals. Plecas will compete with Gill, incumbent John van Dongen and a Conservative for the traditional Liberal vote.

In the last election, van Dongen won with 59 per cent of the vote, with the NDP candidate at 26 per cent. This time, the NDP actually has a chance, although van Dongen remains the favorite.

And then there is Okanagan North. 

Liberal MLA Eric Foster, chair of the legislative committee responsible for appointing an auditor general, has been under fire for his role in the decision not to re-appoint John Doyle. 

In part, because Foster remained chair even though he was singled out for criticism in an auditor general’s report last year.

The auditor general’s office raised concern about a potential conflict of interest, as Foster spent $67,000 on renovations for a new constituency office in a building owned by the family of his assistant. Foster referred that issue to the conflict commissioner, who found no wrongdoing.

The auditor general also raised concerns that Foster requested $78,000 in reimbursements for the landlord without any supporting documents - receipts, quotes, evidence of value for money. About $67,000 was eventually paid. (Foster says no one told him of the report.)

Foster refuses to provide the documents. And Conservative candidate Scott Anderson has questioned the spending, alleging the family of the constituency assistant bought the building a week before the election, and the downtown office used by Tom Christensen, Foster’s predecessor, cost taxpayers about 40 per cent less a year.

Not the Liberal party’s fault. But the leadership’s inaction - the bad decision on Doyle, the failure to make Foster produce the documents, the long delay in facing the problem - let the questions build. (Christy Clark finally tried to address the Doyle issue this week.)

In 2009, the Liberals won in Vernon-Monashee with 37 per cent of the vote. The NDP candidate came second with 32 per cent, Greens third with 17 per cent and Conservatives fourth with eight. 

Conservative candidate Scott Anderson has received good local media coverage on the constituency office issue. Even a small Conservative gain would mean a Liberal loss.

One blunder, you could chalk up to the nature of politics. Not everything goes right. 

Three strikes should worry Liberal supporters. 

Footnote: The other questions are how these missteps affect donors and volunteers. Top-down campaigns, where candidates are picked by a handful of party strategists, risk alienating the local troops. And no one wants to give money to a losing cause, or if there are doubts it will be spent competently.

Another bizarre and alarming twist in the auditor general scandal

The Times Colonist has a damaging story and column on the decision not to reappoint John Doyle as auditor general.

Rob Shaw and Les Leyne reveal that Liberal MLA Eric Foster, the chairman of the committee that turfed Doyle, was cited for spending and conflict concerns in an auditor general’s report in October - “the only MLA singled out.”

The devastating audit identified widespread sloppy management practices of MLA expenses and $63 million in legislature spending.

And it cited the case of $78,000 paid to the landlord for renovations at Foster’s constituency office in 2009.

Doyle raised several issues. First, there was a possible conflict of interest, he found. The rented office was in a building owned by the family of Foster’s constituency assistant. The renovations benefited the family.

Foster took that concern to conflict commissioner Paul Fraser, who cleared him.

The October audit also found the bill for renovations was “"paid without an appropriate level of review for reasonableness and without adequate supporting documentation." 

Foster's staff provided only a spreadsheet showing $67,000 in work, without invoices, details or evidence quotes were obtained for the work to get the best price.

The payment also violated policy on renovations in rented offices, which are to be covered only if specified in the lease. The auditor was told Speaker Bill Barisoff ordered the payment to be made.

It seems clear Foster should have quit the committee, given the possible perception that he had an axe to grind with Doyle. 

This is where things get bizarre. Foster says he never knew the spending was questioned in the audit. So serious concerns are raised, and no one in government or legislature even bothered to ask him about them. He didn't think the auditor's concern about conflict was significant enough to justify stepping aside

A remarkably sloppy way to treat the public’s money, and handle an important appointment.

The land where fireworks are king

I’ve lived in places where they set off fireworks to celebrate different cultural events, but Hondurans are the most enthusiastic.

Fireworks here feature in the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. They start early. We were listening to the whistles and bangs - some quite resounding - by mid-December. The really big explosions are at Christmas and New Year’s. 

I grew up in Ontario, and fireworks were pretty much a one-night thing, on Victoria Day. In Quebec, fireworks were a St. Jean Baptiste Day tradition, although more subdued. (Or maybe just more subdued for anglophones.)

When we moved to Victoria, things got stranger. Fireworks were part of Halloween. Times Colonist columnist Jack Knox suggested that since British Columbians already had excited children in masks running around dark streets, and fireworks, they might as well legalize drunk driving for the night and go for the danger trifecta. 

The late Jack (the Wonder Dog, not the columnist) hated Halloween firecrackers, hiding as best he could. But it was usually brief - one night, with occasional bursts before or after.

In Honduras, fireworks are a year-round affair. There is a birthday tradition of blasting the lucky celebrant awake at 5 a.m. with fireworks and music. The road between La Entrada and Santa Rosa de Copan has a collection of firework stands, all identical, selling products made in small factories in nearby towns. (Though the stands increase in the run up to Christmas. I counted 28 on one side of the highway.)

There is a certain danger in all this. In October, a fireworks factory blew up killing the owner, injuring five workers and damaging nearby houses. Tegucigalpa, the capital, has tried to ban fireworks because of the number of kids showing up in emergency wards with burns and missing fingers.

In a country with an average 21 murders a day, firework enforcement might seem less urgent. But policing priorities are always hard to understand. In December, La Prensa reported police had swept in on eight stores selling knock-off Pepe jeans and seized their stock. Protecting the value of a global billion-dollar brand took priority, apparently, over protecting people riding the buses.

Of course we bought fireworks, from the back of a truck parked outside Bodega Gloria and from a neighbour who had set up a table in front of his house. We’ve had youngsters - grandboys,with family - visiting from Canada for a while, and cheap, potentially dangerous firecrackers, Roman candles and mariposas and little balls you throw down to the ground to produce a satisfying bang all seemed attractive.

We set a few off in Copan Ruinas to celebrate surviving the end of the world. 

Though, actually, we had a great end of the world. The ruins were open for the night, with a couple of spotlights and rows of Tiki torches. There were few people, and it was magical to wander among 1,600-year-old stone structures and sculptures under the stars, as glow bugs flashed in the grass. We climbed the stones on the side of the ball court, and went into a small room with an arched roof, and with a tiny light saw dozens of bats roosting in the stepped ceiling. We sat on the pyramids and watched the sky, and walked home very happy.

We set off a couple of fireworks on Utila for New Year’s Eve, blasting Roman Candles into the palms.

And a few more for Zachary’s 13th birthday on the beach in Tela, although the fireworks were a little battered by then, having travelled by bus and ferry in a crowded backpack. The Roman candle fizzled. But the mariposas - butterflies - were impressive. It’s a small firecracker, with little wings, and instead of going bang it takes off like a rocket, if you’re lucky. It dives into the ground if you aren’t.

We’re back in Copan now. Happy New Year. I hope you had fireworks.

Honduran economy depends on migrants' transfers to families

A couple of stories in the newspapers this week suggest the best way North Americans could help Honduras is to let a few more people head north to find jobs.

La Prensa reported remittances - the money sent back by Hondurans working in the U.S. - will be up 12 per cent this year.

That would bring the money sent home to about $3.2 billion, or about 18 per cent of the country’s GDP. Put another way, without remittances the GDP per capita would drop from about $4,400 to $3,600. (In Canada, the comparable figure is about $40,000.)

Just about everyone you talk to seems to have friends or relatives working in the U.S., generally without going through the immigration process. They send money home to support the family and cover the costs of getting ahead - a house, or a business. Many come home after a few years of working and saving have given them a chance at a better life here. (The issues are more complex than that summary suggests - some don’t come home, some forget their families and start a new life in the U.S., the money can create jealousies in communities.) 

La Prensa also reported that, with two weeks left in the year, 31,270 Hondurans had been deported from the U.S. by air. Every few days, a jet full of deportees lands in Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula. (The new call centre industry has started recruiting among the returning deportees, looking for those who speak English.)

Thousands more are turned back at the border or robbed, killed or thwarted on the long and dangerous trip from Honduras through Guatemala and Mexico to the U.S.

There are about a million Hondurans in the U.S., about 60 per cent of them “undocumented,” the current term for illegal. Letting a few more in - or cutting the deportations - would mean more remittances and more investment.

Canada, of course, could offer the same opportunities. A small number of Hondurans have been allowed in under temporary worker programs. Opening the door a little wider - and not just for the jobs employers are looking to fill cheaply - could do as much for Honduras as many aid programs.

A country where kids can't do math has a grim future

Honduras is in a constitutional crisis this week, as politicians take on the Supreme Court. Important issues, to be sure.

But there’s another crisis. A major international report on math and science knowledge gave horrible grades to the Honduran educational system.

The Human Sciences Research Council tested math and science knowledge of students in 45 countries. Honduran students ranked at the bottom, with South Africa and Botswana.

Children here aren’t stupid. They start school with potential. But they don’t learn.

The tests were administered to Grade 8 students in most countries, Grade 9 in Honduras, and assessed basic skills and knowledge.

And they showed the school system is failing Honduran kids. Badly.

Take one measure, performance at an international math benchmark. In the U.S., 68 per cent of Grade 8 students reached at least the intermediate level. In Chile, 23 per cent met the standard. In Botswana, 15 per cent.

And at the very bottom, Honduras, at four per cent. Only one in 25 Grade 9 students performed the intermediate level or better in math skills. 

Canada doesn’t participate as a country. But in Ontario, 35 per cent of students met advanced or high benchmark standards.

In Honduras, one per cent achieved the same levels.

Math skills are fundamental. If you’re going to run a business or farm, manage a family budget, plan for your future, you need to be able to deal with numbers confortably.

And the international tests show the Honduran school system is failing to provide students with basic numeracy.

No country - let alone a poor country - can afford to deprive 96 per cent of the population of the basic skills they need to make the most of their potential. The next Bill Gates might be growing up in Honduras, but without a basic education, he or she won’t likely succeed.

There are no easy answers. Schools are closed far too often due to labour disputes, but the government is also incapable of paying teachers on time consistently. Class sizes - perhaps 50 students in five grades - are ridiculous. Teaching methods are antiquated. 

But if things are going to change for Honduras, a better school system is critical.

The politicians can wage their constitutional battles. Unless students are getting a quality education, little will change in Honduras.

Great news - 4,500 people are going to lose their jobs

My grandfather - my mother's dad - was proud of his 40-year pin from General Electric.

There were a few years when he didn’t work, during the Depression. My grandmother served up food to the desperate men who showed up at the door, despite her family’s own hard times. 

But mostly, over more than four decades, Arthur Jones walked a long block down Lansdowne to the Davenport Works each day, came home for lunch, and went back in the afternoon.

There was an implicit deal - do the job well, and GE’s managers would do their job well so you would continue to be employed.

I thought about my grandfather this week, when a National Post headline sounded a familiar theme. “CP Rail shares climb on CEO's plan to cut 23 per cent of workforce,” it said. 

I like the psuedo precision, and neutrality, of phrases like “23 per cent of workforce.”

While shareholders were bidding up CP Rail stock, about 4,500 families - that’s the number of jobs to be cut - were coping with very bad news. People learned they would be unemployed, losing a good job a time when finding any work can be challenging.

I know CP Rail isn’t in business to provide jobs. That if managers didn’t cut these positions, then customers might go to a more efficient railway, and more jobs might be lost. And that shareholders deserve to have managers who run the business effectively and prudently on their behalf.

And I know that no one is being malevolent. CP Rail CEO Hunter Harrison and the management group are charged with - and rewarded for - increasing shareholder value. If they can run the railway with a fewer people, they have an obligation to do so. I’ve been a manager, and made those decisions.

But it’s troubling that we don’t see, or talk about, those 4,500 people and what’s ahead for them, as we talk about the share price. Can government help them, or should there be policies that protect the jobs, or support retraining?

I saw a lot of newspaper stories about Harrison’s plan to cut costs and jobs. But I didn’t read any stories about the family dead terrified by the prospect of unemployment, wondering how they would tell their kids that they had to move because they couldn’t make the mortgage. 

Who does speak for those people?

And how did the social contract between good employers and good employees change so dramatically, without a public discussion?

My grandfather’s tenure with GE came at the end of an era. Celebrity CEO Jack Welch won great praise for chopping more than 100,000 jobs at the company in five years in the early 1980s. 

It’s quite a contrast. My grandfather built giant transformers, as a worker and a foreman. When he was getting older, the company moved him into the guardhouse at the entry to the works, instead of eliminating his job. (He died too young, of lung cancer. You might wonder about the PCBs in those transformers. Or the roll-your-own cigarettes he smoked for 50 years.)

GE wasn’t an anomaly. Employers considered it correct to look after the people who did the work.

That’s changed. Global competition, reduced unionization, tremendous pressure on managers to produce better results every quarter - the social contract has been rewritten.

What’s troubling is that we haven’t talked about the change. We haven’t tallied the cost, or considered policy options, or discussed mitigation strategies. We’ve just adopted policies that resulted in millions of lost jobs. And millions of damaged families.

I doubt the CP Rail jobs could be saved.

But attention must be paid. (Yes, it’s a quote.) People’s lives should not be so casually altered for the worse.

And our public policy debate should be based on more than share prices.

Details of MacIntyre firing shows premier's office plays rough

They play rough in the premier’s office. At least that’s the way it looks from a series of emails following Sara MacIntyre’s firing as communications director in October.

Vaughn Palmer wrote about the emails this week.

MacIntyre seemed “blindsided and bereft” at her firing after eight months in the job, Palmer notes. She had apparently given up a pretty good gig as press secretary to Stephen Harper to join Christy Clark’s team.

The hiring might not have worked out. Certainly MacIntyre messed up in one notable exchange with the media - the video is here - that came to define her in a negative way.

But the firing, based on the email exchange, was brutal and unprofessional.

MacIntyre was called in for a morning meeting with Dan Doyle, Clark’s new chief of staff and told she was out of the job and would be dispatched to a undefined role in the government communications and public engagement office. (The PR shop.)

Later that day. MacIntyre tried to find out what the new job would be, what she would be paid and what her options were. That’s reasonable. That kind of downward move is a firing. The person involved - MacIntyre - has to consider whether to opt for severance rather than the new, lesser job.

So she emailed Lynda Tarras, head of HR for the government. 

“I would like to request some sort of written job description with duties and obligations, reporting structure and terms of employment as well,” wrote MacIntyre.

Tarras said pay and benefits would be unchanged and MacIntyre woud find out what her duties were when she reported to work for her new boss the next morning. No job description was provided.

As a former corporate guy, I have some experience in pushing people from jobs. 

And MacIntyre’s shift was not good HR practice. She should have been given information about the new role, a couple of days to consider her options - and see a lawyer - and respect as an employee.

It’s particularly brutal from the office of a premier who professes to be interested in a different way of doing things. (Though perhaps explained by a desperate desire to avoid paying still more severance to political appointments shown the door.)

I dealt with MacIntyre in her Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation days and found her professional, good at communications and always helpful.

Which doesn’t mean she was the right person for the communications’ director job, of course. And at that level of political job - it paid something like $125,000 - the risk of dismissal is always present.

But the emails suggest a basic disrespect and lack of professionalism.

Palmer notes another interesting aspect to this. The NDP used an FOI request to get the emails, which show HR head Tarras was communicating with MacIntyre in writing. But in ousting Clark's chief of staff Ken Boessenkool a month later after an incident in a Victoria bar with a female staffer, Tarras committed not one single word to paper about her investigation or the departure.

That too shows either poor HR practice, or a desire to avoid FOI accountability.