La Gringa's Blogicito

Oreo Pops (recipe)

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:34:00 +0000

A month or so ago, I was looking for something on the internet, which led to something totally unrelated, which led to something else (Cake Pops), and then I stumbled upon Oreo Pops.

Maybe this is old news to those of you in the USA, but "Cake Pops" were something new to me. They are little dessert treats on a stick, like a sucker, and some talented people decorate them like you wouldn't believe! Cartoon characters, Santa Claus, animals, flowers, you name it (click for photos). It sounded like something fun but since I couldn't find sucker sticks or fancy decorating ingredients in La Ceiba and didn't feel like baking a cake, I decided to make Oreo Pops, or more accurately called Oreo Bites since I had to use toothpicks.

I had reservations as I thought these might be a little too sweet for my taste since the white Oreo filling is mixed in as well. Not so. They had a deep, rich chocolate flavor that wasn't overly sweet. The final texture is kind of like fudge, but not as sweet as fudge generally is. El Jefe liked them, too.

This is a great recipe for Honduras, especially for those of us not in the mega shopping areas, since it only has three ingredients: Oreos, cream cheese (which has been readily available in La Ceiba for several years now), and chocolate. I think it would also be a fun recipe for kids to make.

Oreo Pops

makes about 30-36

1 16 oz. bag of Oreos
1 8 oz. package of cream cheese
4-5 oz. semisweet, milk, or white chocolate*

*I used Bakers Semisweet squares, but you could use chocolate chips or Dove chocolate candies if you can find them, or even use plain chocolate candy bars if your selection of chocolate is limited. You could also use a little of two kinds of chocolate and drizzle a design of white chocolate over a semi-sweet coating or vice versa.

If you have a food processor, dump all of the Oreos in it and let 'er rip until the Oreos are fine crumbs.

If you don't have a machine, put the cookies a few at a time into a heavy sealable plastic bag and either using a rolling pin or your kitchen rock (you do have one, right?), and smash until the cookies are in fine crumbs. Place the crumbs into a medium-sized bowl. It looks a little like potting soil at this point.

Add 4-6 oz. of the cream cheese and run the machine for a few seconds at a time until the mixture begins to pull into a well-mixed ball. Or, if you aren't using a machine, mix in the cream cheese with a big spoon, spatula, or your hands, part at a time, until the "dough" is firm and will agreeably roll into a cohesive ball. Add more, a couple of ounces at a time, as needed. I only used about 6 oz. total, though most recipes call for the whole 8 oz. You want the mix to be about play dough consistency. Too soft and your balls will flatten out, too dry and your balls will crumble.

Pinch off an amount to make about a 1 to 1 1/4 inch ball. If I had sucker sticks, I would make them bigger. Roll the dough in your hands until it is a nice round shape. Place the balls on a wax paper lined cookie sheet and put it in the freezer for 15-30 minutes.

Melt your chocolate carefully in the microwave or rig up a "double boiler" with a bowl and a small pot. I like the double boiler so I could keep the chocolate warm for dipping. As it cools, it thickens and that isn't great for dipping.

Side Note: I've been having problems with chocolate seizing (getting hard and never melting in the microwave) lately — all the time! I don't know if it is the quality of the chocolate (note the photo, this chocolate has been melted in transit at least once and apparently stored under less than optimal conditions) or if it is just from the high humidity in the air. If you use a double boiler, be sure that no boiling water spatters into your chocolate as it will definitely seize.

If your chocolate seizes or seems too thick for dipping, stir in a teaspoon or two of shortening or manteca to thin it out a bit. Don't use butter — it will melt later. This time my chocolate did seize as you can see in the small bowl to the side. I tried to melt the congealed mass over the stove with no joy, so I added a bit of shortening, and a bit more, and a bit more, until it finally got to the right consistency. Though I wouldn't purposely add that much shortening if I had a choice, the finally taste really didn't suffer.

When the balls are firm and the chocolate is melted, take a toothpick, dip the end into the chocolate and then insert it into a ball. The chocolate is supposed to help keep the toothpick from falling out of the ball and it seemed to work. I never lost a single one.

Holding the toothpick vertical, plunge the ball completely into the melted chocolate to coat it thoroughly. I used a spoon in the other hand to help the chocolate cover completely and the back of spoon to scrape some of the excess off the bottom, but work fast as the chocolate will look messy if you play with it after it starts to cool. Do this one by one and place the chocolate covered balls back on to the wax paper (foil might work, too), but definitely do not place them on a plate as the chocolate will stick like glue.

If you find the balls are getting soft before you finish, put them back into the freezer for a few minutes to firm up again before dipping the rest.

Chill in the freezer until the chocolate is firm and enjoy! I'll bet you can't eat just one.

Another note: Most recipes for Cake Balls say to not store them in the refrigerator because the chocolate will 'weep' (form condensation on the outside). Here in the tropics, the chocolate would melt if I stored them at room temperature, so I stored the Oreo Balls in the freezer. I just put some on a plate and let them thaw for a few minutes before serving.

Question: Have any of you in the tropics had problems with chocolate seizing when there has been no chance of moisture being introduced by the cook? I melted many a chocolate in my previous air-conditioned kitchens and never had this problem before. Now I have the problem almost every time and I'd like to try to pinpoint what the issue is.

As always, please let me know if you try the recipe and how you liked it. ;-)

Freedom of the press in Honduras

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:14:00 +0000

Honduras President Porfirio Lobo
Photo: El Heraldo, Honduras

The Miami Herald article discussed in Corruption in the upper echelons of the Honduran police is reporting what newspapers in Honduran can only hint at, if they even have the nerve to do that.

While freedom of expression and freedom of the press are enshrined in law and the constitution of Honduras, the reality is different. There is the very real fear of retaliation for what it said or written — about 17 journalists have been murdered in the past couple of years and many more have been threatened or intimidated by police, other government officials, or criminals. It is widely rumored that some journalists simply accept payment for covering/not covering or putting a certain slant on a story and even that one television 'journalist' extorts his potential victims — 'Pay up and we'll leave you alone. Don't pay and we will crucify you with wild claims and made up 'proof'.

Sometimes family politics and financial interests also get in the way of the "whole truth and nothing but the truth". The government of Honduras is one of the biggest advertisers in Honduras. That's right, in addition to their own two dedicated propaganda television channels, the government of Honduras spends millions on paid advertising incessantly telling us on TV, radio, and in print what a good job they are doing, using money that could be better spent actually helping the poor instead of trying to get their party reelected. Less than transparent government officials are often able to successfully confuse or cover up the truth or mislead journalists. Then there is also the possibility of being charged criminally or sued for millions for reporting derogatory stories.

You see, in Honduras, the archaic calumnia law (liable, slander, and insult) provides that anyone who even feels that their honor and dignity was offended can file a criminal complaint. It's called a "crime against honor" and is listed in the penal code in Título III, right after homicide and rape. It can be punishable by 6 months to 3 years in prison, as well as huge monetary damages in a civil lawsuit.

Reminiscent of the feudal era, which still exists to some extent in Honduras, and reflecting Honduras' strong and never ending love of impunity, in the case of "insult", the accused is not even allowed to present the truth as a defense except in the case of public officials. However, proving the truth is next to impossible in a country where "investigations" continue indefinitely and the few cases brought to trial rarely result in successful prosecution. Publishing a retraction, even if you have reported the truth, is the only option to avoid criminal prosecution. Even caricatures of public officials can be classified as a crime, though my favorite caricaturist and congressman Dario Banegas certainly pushes that to the limit. [Cartoon entitled a Cabinet of Goalmakers: A grinning President Lobo: I only half close an eye and .... goal! (the soccer balls spell 'corruption').]

Thankfully, this law, like so many laws in Honduras, is mostly ignored. Cases were filed and threats were made several times under the administration of Manuel Zelaya, including his threat to sue Otto Reich, former US Assistant Secretary of State, for Reich's comments made and published in the USA (coincidentally in the Miami Herald) stating that Zelaya was complicit in the Hondutel/Latinode corruption case. Reich's response to Zelaya was more or less "bring it on". In a big show for the Honduran public, the enraged Zelaya even sent high level government officials to the US to see what they could do, which was nothing.

Republishing an 'offensive' article that was previously published elsewhere in the world can also result in lawsuits. We saw that in 2007, when Hondutel official and nephew of then president Manuel Zelaya, Marcelo Chimirri (who has since served some time in prison for corruption but is now out), sued two television journalists individually and sued La Prensa and El Heraldo newspapers for L.500 million (US $26 million) for the re-publication of a Mexican article which directly linked Chimirri [photo] to Hondutel corruption and was later reported by CNN. Those cases were thrown out, but it took almost five years for the underlying fraud and bribery to be investigated in Honduras, despite the fact that Latinode officials plead guilty to bribery in US court. Unfortunately, the US public court documents only list the Hondurans who made the deals and received the bribes as "Official A, Official B, and Official C".

Honduran officials still claim to not know who "Official A" is, though it was claimed that he had close connections to Zelaya. I think the case is "still under investigation" in Honduras, which apparently has much higher standards of evidence than the US. < /sarcasm > Chimirri was arrested and taken to jail shortly after the ouster of President Zelaya to the cheers of many. It now appears that other than a few months in jail, during which he was allowed visits from his stylist and masseuse, nothing more will happen to Chimirri related to the specific corruption charges made in the article. He was released on L.4 million personal bond and nobody investigated where that money came from either.

In 2007, when the cases against the media were thrown out, several members of the national congress spoke out saying that freedom of expression is one of the pillars of a democratic society. Several mentioned that the law which makes defamation a criminal offense, as well as the new transparency law, needed to be changed in order to guarantee the citizens the right to be informed. One diputado went so far as to say that "to file a lawsuit against journalists who denounce corruption only reflects the class of functionary who isn't prepared to show his innocence." But more than four years have passed and the big talk was not followed by any action.

Names and photos of police who have been suspended and/or accused of crimes are withheld from the public — who have a real need to know — because, officials say, they could be sued for releasing the information. Police and other government officials, who have no similar qualms about giving out names and allowing photos of alleged criminals before charges have been filed or proven in court, have a whole different attitude about their own. Amazingly, even the Public Prosecutor says that the names and cases have not even been released by police to their office. No investigation, no trial — no need to embarrass or defame anyone.

That brings us full circle to the Miami Herald article. Honduran officials, including those named in the article, curtly dismiss the article, saying that it is unethical, merely rumors, and asking the Herald to provide proof. Since the only ones in a position to provide proof are those devoted to covering up the truth, there is not much chance of that ever happening.

Remember that Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla said back in November 2011 (see Minister Bonilla responds) that he had no knowledge of any investigations against his command officers but that he had requested any investigative files against them from all sources. Apparently, he has not yet received those files or he is covering them up, because he's still not talking and he definitely hasn't said that the files don't exist. Leaks to the media seem to be the only way that the public can get any information.

Despite the many unsolved murders of journalists and many recent charges of attacks and intimidation, rather than addressing those issues, Honduran President Pepe Lobo announced on Wednesday that he would be sending a decree to congress intended to "regulate" the media. He didn't give any details but said that the objective is to guarantee that media divulge information without bias and that no media should be allowed to "defend personal interests". What he meant by that remains to be seen. And it doesn't bode well for freedom of expression if the government is in a position to decide what is biased and what is not. I would like to see the government propaganda channels subjected to the same criteria.

In addition to loads of coverage about the crime situation, criminal police, and lack of investigation and incompetence within the justice system, the media has exposed details of several suspicious government contracts lately as well as cases of laws passed by the congress in which the wording was mysteriously (and illegally) changed prior to being published in La Gaceta. It would be so much 'prettier' if only the media wouldn't talk about such things. In fact, the government is in the process of developing their own media campaign to improve the image of Honduras. Wouldn't a better effort be to improve the reality in the areas of crime and corruption?

Juan Orlando Hernández, President of the Congress seems to have lately put his presidential aspirations above his previous 100% support of every action of Lobo. He says that the President has a right to send a decree to Honduras, but that the congress has a right to not approve it.

On Friday, President Lobo added that the national media should obey "an ethical framework to inform and orient the public opinion in an impartial manner." "If I grab a newspaper, I am assuming that they are telling me the truth. The reader doesn't assume that the owner of a newspaper is the owner of a business that wants to get a [government] contract...." Unlike his previous announcement, this time he said that he would consult with journalists, the Inter American Press Association, and Reporters without Borders.

Honduran journalists have declared themselves "in alert" against any effort to limit their rights under Article 72 of the constitution. Proceso Digital writes that Lobo's reiterated declarations that he will legislate the exercise of the profession of journalism indicates his intolerance for criticism. [Both links in Spanish]

The Inter American Press Association has already announced its concern, citing one of the media's greatest roles as being a watchdog over the powers that be.

Related article:

Andres Oppenheimer: Press censorship on the rise in Latin America

More on Celín Pinot Hernández

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:17:00 +0000

Celín Pinot Hernández, alias "Cabeza"

I previously wrote that Celín Pinot had not served nine years in prison as Miami Herald reported. I determined that based on the articles about his death which reported that he was serving nine years for the July 2009 crime. But I was wrong. Maybe reporters were purposely misled by police or maybe they assumed the same that I did, that Pinot had served his time for the 2001 murder and/or 2003 attempted murder and was out committing new crimes. I tried to find more, but the newspapers search functions don't go back that far.

My source clarified that for me.

Celín Pinot was in prison at least since 2003, which might have been on the 2001 murder charge. My source says that "he was in prison for a time and then out for a few weeks and then back in again. Whenever he wanted out, he just had to pay off the police for each week he was out. People from DGIC (police criminal investigation) came and collected the money from him so that he could stay out even though he was supposedly serving his prison sentence. He had to pay for his vacations." This practice of letting out criminals was also confirmed by a friend of friend who was being held for a time in the La Ceiba jail and spoke of a narco who spent his days handling business and voluntarily returned to jail at night.

Regarding the July 2009 crime, the source said this: "In 2009 he was arrested near to Camosa, below the airport in Tegucigalpa. When he was arrested he was supposed to be IN jail, but he was out on a paid-for vacation and the police knew it. But he paid them to be able to leave prison and paid them weekly or monthly to stay out, so he did the kidnappings and the robberies and paid the police from money earned but when it got too 'hot' for the police then they would arrest him again and back to jail he would go to finish his sentence. The police never did the paperwork for him to have to go to jail for additional charges, like for escaping or the additional kidnappings, etc."

So when police were telling reporters about Pinot's nine-year sentence, they either falsely stated or implied it was from the 2009 crime, because to do otherwise would have shown that he had been allowed to leave prison by the very police who were making such a show of capturing this dangerous criminal. Note also that the July 2009 article mentions that witnesses saw the abduction in process and called the police. The article congratulates the police on their quick action. But maybe the real story is that because of the witness calls, they did not know who the perpetrator was and then had to deal with that potential embarrassment once they realized who had been captured.

The source goes on: "The last charge he had pending was this 2009 secuestro (kidnapping/carjacking) case. He went to court on that but was released the same day (October 13, 2011) because no witnesses came to testify against him. The police showed up, but the case was poorly put together, so the case was thrown out. He was given the carta de libertad (get out of jail letter) which was delivered by the court to the prison at 7:00 PM the same day and then they forced him to leave at 11:00 pm at night when the police killed him." This sounds similar to the case of narcotrafficker Begué in La Ceiba, who was murdered shortly after his questionable release from prison, according to this El Faro article [in Spanish].

It seems obvious that Celín Pinot represented a huge risk to the police, given their complicity in releasing this dangerous criminal on the public and even demanding a cut of the crime profits if what the source says is true. As long as he was 'serving time', the police had the option and could hold the threat over his head of picking him up and keeping him in prison or worse, arranging that he be one of the frequent prisoner murder victims in 'gang disputes' that so often happens in Honduran prisons. Once Pinot was legally free, he might talk. Or maybe he might not be so agreeable to turn over a portion of his profits to the police. Or maybe one side or the other got too greedy and an example to other criminals had to be made.

The source goes on to show the close connections between National Director of the Police, Ramírez Del Cid, and Commissioner of DSEI, Danilo Orellana: "They were married at the same time on the same date in the same wedding ceremony with the ex-director of the police Flores Ponce as the padrino of the wedding. They have been really close ever since police cadet school and are always into everything together."

The source also gives some financial details: "They own property together and owned a large piece of land in Jicaro Galán in Valle in the south of Honduras. They sold that land to the police cooperativo for a lot more money than it was worth. Now the member police can't get loans, because the cooperativo has no money for loans — yet another story that everyone is afraid to publish. Del Cid also owns a "company" which rebottles palm oil located in Germania and he uses lots of police to guard it. Orellano has chicken restaurants."

It seems pretty clear that Celín Pinot Hernández was a bad guy, a violent criminal, and probably even a murderer. Reader comments on the news story of his death were generally congratulatory toward whoever killed the three pandilleros (gang members). Some mentioned the price of L.200,000 as the cost of 15 days outside of prison and mentioned it was a common practice. Some speculated that the police had killed them. But police who think they have the right to kill will also kill innocents, as they did a week later when two university students were murdered by police in Tegucigalpa.

The Honduran media should be able to verify when Pinot was convicted and the sentence he received. They should also be able to confirm whether the case for the July 2009 kidnapping/carjacking was thrown out on October 13, 2011, and whether or not he should have still been serving a prison sentence at the time of the crime. Certainly the DIECP (new commission created to probe police corruption) should be able to investigate this and the financial aspects.

Celin Pinot, murdered to cover up criminal police activity?

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:54:00 +0000

Celín Pinot, murdered to cover up criminal police activity?

How would Celín Pinot Hernández, an inmate serving 9 years in the maximum security prison of Honduras, come to be dressed in a Honduran police uniform and carrying a police weapon? Why was he obviously posed for this photo, appearing uncomfortable and perhaps frightened that those directing him might actually pull the trigger? His expression is definitely not one of a cocky gang member showing off for the camera. Who would have the power to force a supposed dangerous gang leader to pose like this? Why would a dangerous criminal sentenced to nine years be released from maximum security prison by officials at 7 pm (or some say 11 pm) at night?

The above were all questions that I had when I was sent this photo a few weeks ago along with the story and a link to a YouTube video. I was told that the Honduran media had been given the photos and story but weren't going to run them. The person who sent them to me was afraid to tell me too much more.

The Miami Herald article discussed in my previous article "Corruption within the upper echelons of the Honduran police" touches on the case of Celin Pinot:

"The U.S. aid allocation included $2.5 million to help fund a maximum security prison. Among the inmates who were sent there: Celin Eduardo Pinot Hernández, aka “Cabeza,” leader of the notorious 18th Street Gang.

"For an inmate, Pinot had pretty good perks. He had a cell phone and was regularly let out to run drugs and visit his various girlfriends. Photos show him at the lockup in a police uniform and sporting a gun.

“For the past two and a half years, he was always let out at 9 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and, if not, on weekends,” a childhood friend of his told The Miami Herald. “He was doing business for the boss — drugs, weapons. He would deliver drugs and bring money. ”

“The boss,” his friend says, was the high-ranking cop who runs prisons.

"In Honduras, managing prisons is one of the most lucrative jobs in the hierarchy of the National Police. Inmates pay bribes for everything from phones to freedom and are let out to commit more crimes at the behest of their captors, people familiar with the practice say.

"After spending his nine-year sentence doing illegal bidding for police buddies, Pinot, 30, was released on Oct. 13. He was immediately gunned down, felled by gunshots a few hundred yards from the prison gate. [This is not correct, he had only served two years of the nine year sentence.]

"Two women who had come to pick him up and take him home that evening told human rights activists that they saw police officers do it. A few days later, the police officer who usually accompanied Pinot on his get-out-of-jail outings was also murdered. Then one of the witnesses to Pinot’s killing was stoned to death. The other vanished.

“It’s very difficult to investigate the jails,” said Human Rights Prosecutor Sandra Ponce. “They tend to self-govern. There are inmates with de facto authority.”

"Ponce said her office is looking into Pinot’s death, because there were enough “irregularities” to suggest law enforcement involvement, including the fact that he was released from prison at night, an unusual move that helped make the surprise attack easier.

"Prisons director Danilo Orellana insisted he has cleaned up the jails and that escapes, murders and crime are all on the decline, despite widespread overcrowding and a lack of resources. He said he had heard rumors that Pinot was sometimes let out, but denied that prisoners regularly go on drug runs.

“I can tell you that during my term, it isn’t happening. The jails have changed a lot,” Orellana said. “I put my hand on the fire for myself. I do my things correctly.”

"Because this is Honduras, Pinot’s case didn’t cause a ripple in the news media. ..."

Celin Pinot's death was reported in the Honduran media here, here, and here [in Spanish], and questions were raised about his release but never answered.

Along with another gang member, Pinot was arrested in July 2009 [in Spanish] after abducting a businessman and his luxurious vehicle. At the time of arrest, he was also in possession of a DNIC (police criminal investigation) shirt and two police issued bullet-proof vests indicating he might have had police connections prior to his prison time. Investigators claimed that he was also involved involved with the murder by machetes of three women and had been charged with murder in 2001 and attempted murder in 2003. No information was reported about whether or not he had been tried for those cases or whether or not he had previously served time. Police described him as extremely dangerous and said he was linked to a series of kidnappings, extortions, and murders in Tegucigalpa. In this case, according to news reports, Pinot was found guilty of numerous charges, including attempted kidnapping and aggravated robbery, and was ordered to serve nine years in prison.

On July 6, 2011, he was one of the first prisoners transferred to the newly opened maximum security prison due to being considered extremely dangerous and possibly involved with the murders of other inmates at the Tamara prison.

But on the night of October 13, 2011, both Pinot, alias Cabeza, and his accomplice in the July 2009 crime, Neptalí Coello Flores, alias "Lágrima", were murdered in a rain of bullets only 500 meters away from the prison minutes after being released by authorities. Investigators collected more than 60 bullet casings of different calibers, including AK-47. Police had no other clues and presumably, "the case is still under investigation".

Perhaps they were killed by rival gang members as the police speculated off the record to reporters, but you might wonder how rival gang members could have known that they would be released on that day and at that unusual time. The idea of a heavily armed rival gang hanging around outside a maximum security prison for hours without notice is a little farfetched. Perhaps police were angry at his release and took vigilante justice into their own hands. Or perhaps these criminals had served their usefulness to police authorities and needed to be silenced.

My source says that the photo at top was taken a few days before Pinot was released and killed. The photo at right is another one that was taken inside the prison. The photo below is an older ID or mug shot photo which was previously published by La Tribuna.

My source also stated that Pinot was regularly allowed out of prison on Tuesdays and Thursdays to do drug runs for Ramírez del Cid, National Director of the Police, and Danilo Orellano, Commissioner of Special Preventative Services which is in charge of the prison system.

My source told me that a police chauffeur who regularly drove Pinot on drug runs was murdered a few days later, as was Pinot's girlfriend, who along with two other women, claimed that they saw police kill the released inmates. The second woman disappeared, leaving behind a 5-month old nursing baby and is presumed to be dead. The third was arrested but Human Rights was able to get her released before anything happened to her and she is now in hiding.

The YouTube video called "El Tiky: Ascenso de un Criminal en Honduras" (El Tiky: The rise of a Criminal in Honduras) was uploaded by a group called Frente Civil por la Paz y Seguridad who seems to have no other internet presence. It strongly accuses Ramírez del Cid (who they call El Tiky) of being a loyal pawn of organized crime and gives specific cases, including assassinations, in which Ramírez is alleged to have been involved. The video claims that the assassination of Celin Pinot was done with the collusion of Danilo Orellana. It also makes claims of past corruption of Minister Pompeyo Bonilla and asks President Lobo to open his eyes and look for new security leaders.
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In curt interviews today, both Minister Bonilla and Commission Ramírez del Cid rejected the charges reported in the Miami Herald article.

Prior to the publication of the Miami Herald article, on Friday US Ambassador to Honduras Lisa Kubiske [in Spanish] admitted to reporters that there were many rumors surrounding the police leadership. She classified as urgent the need for purification of the police department.

So there you have it. I doubt that we'll ever know how much is true and how much is not.

See also "More on Celín Pinot Hernández" for more information.

Corruption in the upper echelons of the Honduran police

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:35:00 +0000

Minister of Security Pompeyo Bonilla announces promotions, November 1, 2011

Frances Robles of the Miami Herald wrote an article in the long list of those entitled "Honduras named murder capital of the world". I almost didn't read it because there have been dozens with similar titles, all saying the same thing. However, a friend sent me the link pointing out that this one was different. This one was hot. The Herald has since changed the title to a more descriptive "Graft, greed, mayhem turn Honduras into murder capital of world".

The subtitle of the article is: "An unholy alliance of cops, crooks, prisoners and politicians has turned the nation into a shooting gallery." The article relates some of what everyone in Honduras is afraid to say — that some of the officials promoted and transferred to the upper echelons of the police department on November 1 by Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla and approved by President Pepe Lobo are suspected to be among the most corrupt and are rumored to have narcotrafficking connections.

"But Herald sources say those tapped to head the department have some of the worst reputations in Honduran law enforcement and are notorious for taking bribes, ordering hits and offering protection to drug traffickers."

The article includes some specific examples of how police investigations are sabotaged by higher level officials. My comments are in italics in brackets:

"One intelligence agent recalled being on a stakeout of a clandestine drug landing strip when he was called by a colonel and redirected to a location three hours away to check out a tip that turned out to be bogus. When he returned, the drug plane had come and gone. [Though narcoplanes and drugs have been captured many times in Honduras, to my knowledge, no narcotraffickers have ever been captured in these raids.]

“You write a report, give it to your boss and then realize it was him who was committing the crimes,” a military intelligence investigator told The Herald. “I have friends who are criminals and hit men. It’s the police, the army, the security ministry — it’s not just police or armed forces. It’s even prosecutors.” ["Friends?" Is this part of the problem? ]

"That was the case with María Luisa Borja [photo], the former head of police internal affairs who was sidelined eight years ago after repeatedly denouncing high-ranking police brass.

“The minister of security took away my gas budget so the cars couldn’t move. I started paying my own gas,” she said. “So he took my car.”

"Eventually her office was stripped of files and she was suspended for leaking information. The people she accused of murder and evidence-tampering were promoted, one of them to vice minister of security."

[Coralia Rivera (photo), now second in command in the police department, was charged but ultimately absolved for allegedly ordering the alteration of arms in police custody in 2002 so that the weapons could not be identified or tested as evidence in the extrajudicial executions of 50 people. The case remains unsolved the murderers remain in impunity.]

"Another ranking police investigator told The Herald he discovered that his supervisor allowed members of the special forces squad to double as bodyguards for drug traffickers. That supervisor is now a commissioner, the highest rank in the police department.

“Maybe the ratio of honest to corrupt in the police is 10 to 1. But it doesn’t help that nine are clean if the one who is dirty is in charge,” the investigator said. “In this country, bosses are named to specific posts with the purpose of facilitating the entry and exit of drugs.” [Some say the ratio of 'good cops' is more like 6 out of 10, but in my opinion, a cop who covers up for a dirty cop is just as guilty.]

The Miami Herald names more names:

"The most controversial name in law enforcement is Commissioner José Ricardo Ramírez del Cid [photo], the newly named director of the National Police."

[As I reported previously, Honduras' Iron Lady, Julieta Castellanos, whose son was murdered by police, made some damning comments about Ramírez del Cid including, "If something happens to me it is the fault of the police, primarily señor Ramírez del Cid, because there is no one more interested in something happening to me.... and no one more knowledgeable about corruption in the police since he was the former head of Intelligence."]

[You may remember that Ramirez del Cid was also the police official who, when summoned for questioning about the release of police officers accused of murdering two university students, showed up at the Prosecutor's office with 20 armed police lining the hallways, in what appeared to be an effort to intimidate the prosecutors.]

"The head of the police department’s internal affairs unit said there are at least four cases and multiple boxes of reports against Ramírez, involving allegations such as abuse of authority that have never been probed.

“I was surprised when he was named, because I saw people of higher rank who were passed over and I thought, ‘why weren’t those people named? What’s happening here?’ ” said internal affairs commissioner Santos Simeon Flores. “We are going to reactivate those cases. We really shouldn’t have cases up in the air like that.” [Internal Affairs no longer exists and has been replaced by a new separate civilian organization [Dirección de Investigación y Evaluación de la Carrera Policial — DIECP] which will have it's own budget and investigators. It remains to be seen whether this organization will be as incompetent, underfunded, and sabotaged as Internal Affairs was previously. Indications so far are not good. Under Santos Flores, the internal affairs organization failed to complete the majority of investigations for years on end, submitted only a small percentage of its cases for prosecution, and produced almost no results, certainly none among mid- to higher level police.]

The prison system is part of the corruption:

"In Honduras, managing prisons is one of the most lucrative jobs in the hierarchy of the National Police. Inmates pay bribes for everything from phones to freedom and are let out to commit more crimes at the behest of their captors, people familiar with the practice say." [In some cases, the practice of letting prisoners out to commit other crimes has been proven to be true when the inmate is killed or captured while committing a crime outside the prison walls. Other than that, there is no way to determine how frequently this happens. There have been recent cases in which we are told that the inmate (from the maximum security prison no less) had a "pass" signed by a judge and prison officials would have "violated the law" if they had not abided by the judge's orders, though they mentioned the possibility that the release orders may have been falsified. We were promised a thorough investigation. No further mention was made in the media and apparently the judges in question had no comment.]

"Prisons director Danilo Orellana [photo] insisted he has cleaned up the jails and that escapes, murders and crime are all on the decline, despite widespread overcrowding and a lack of resources. He said he had heard rumors that Pinot was sometimes let out, but denied that prisoners regularly go on drug runs." [More on Pinot in the next article. About once a month we read of raids within the prison and see photos of confiscated weapons, cell phones, and drugs which could could only be entering the prison grounds with the collusion or incompetence of prison guards.]

“I can tell you that during my term, it isn’t happening. The jails have changed a lot,” Orellana said. “I put my hand on the fire for myself. I do my things correctly.” [More on that in the next article.]

Now that this information has been published, the Honduran newspapers are reprinting the article, mostly without editorial comment so far. There have been no responses from police or government officials yet.

Please read my next article about the murder of one prisoner:

Celin Pinot, murdered to cover up criminal police activity?

Read the entire Miami Herald article here:

Graft, greed, mayhem turn Honduras into murder capital of world

The article is also available in Spanish here:

La corrupción de las autoridades ahoga a Honduras

Please also read this background story about Miami Herald reporter Frances Robles' trip to Honduras after one of her sources was killed.

The dangers of being a Honduran whistleblower

Most violent city in the world award goes to ...

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 04:36:00 +0000

Murder map, Seguridad, Justicia y Paz

The international news has been reporting on crime and violence in Honduras frequently lately. When I started my series on Crime in Honduras in October with "Crime is out of control in Honduras", I had no idea that the 'stuff' was going to hit the fan in the international media, I just felt that people had a right to know and that if a problem doesn't get recognized and addressed, it never gets fixed. Sweeping the crime situation under the rug might bring a few more tourists and volunteers to Honduras, but it doesn't help all of the Hondurans who live (or die) with it every day.

For those who don't keep up with Honduras news, first there was the flawed UN study reporting Honduras to be the most dangerous country in the world in 2010, with a murder rate per 100,000 population of 82.1 compared to a current worldwide average of 6.9. (See the previously linked article for the discussion of the flaws and a link to the report.) Then the effect of narcotrafficking on Central American countries received and is still receiving a lot of coverage. Last week, a Mexican organization named Seguridad, Justicia y Paz (Security, Justice, and Peace - SJP) declared San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with a murder rate of 158.9, to be the most violent city in the world [in Spanish] surpassing Juarez, Mexico, for that dubious distinction. Distrito Central (Tegucigalpa) was ranked 5th with a rate of 99.7.

There are tons of complaints coming from Honduran police officials and politicians about that latest study, some justified and some not.

First, Honduran officials are using as an excuse the country's inability to develop accurate statistics. This is one of those TIH (This is Honduras) responses that I don't even know how to address. If the murder rate goes down this year, I promise you they will be relying on those same "bad" statistics for comparison to show what a good job they've done. By the way, I am extremely concerned that officials are fudging the current murder reports to show that Operación Relampago is effective. President Lobo's and police officials' continued claims that crime has been reduced by 60% or 50% or 80% or "practically to zero" are belied every day by the newspaper and TV news accounts of murders.

Second, yes, we know that Honduras' crime statistics are not accurate, but the homicide statistics are the most accurate of all crimes because there are bodies as evidence, 95% of them with bullet holes or knife or machete wounds, so there isn't much chance that they should have been recorded as natural or accidental deaths. Also, in the case of murders, unlike most crimes, there is usually independent verification from the morgue, grieving families, and news media, which often sends reporters out to take photos.

Third, the only way that Honduras' murder figures are inaccurate is that they are understated, not overstated. I state this as a fact and explained why in the linked article. I don't think you will find anyone in Honduras who would try to argue it, unless they work for the police department or are the president. In a 2003 Wikileaks cable titled "Truth is scarier than fiction", the US Ambassador expounded on the many ways that Honduran murder statistics are understated. Even more damning, the Ambassador lamented that the year-to-date figures showed a 50% increase in homicides, but the final 'massaged' 2003 figures showed a 39% decrease. I have personally been told of murders in which the police either never came, or came and merely told the family to take the victim's body home, completing no paperwork. This is especially true in outlying areas in much of the country where the police don't even have a vehicle to transport bodies, but it also happens in La Ceiba.

Fourth, officials say that bodies are brought to the San Pedro morgue from all over the country and are implying that they are all recorded as San Pedro homicides, unjustly increasing the San Pedro statistics. That may happen occasionally, but logically, that argument just doesn't fly. Honduras only has three morgues, in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro, and La Ceiba. If all homicides were recorded in the city of examination, we wouldn't see the high homicide rates in all of the other states and cities that we do. This is another TIH argument, as one would think that the police paperwork would show where the murder occurred or at least where the body was found. While this argument may make San Pedro's statistics a little more palatable, a murder is a murder, and it should have been counted somewhere else in the country.

On the other hand....

But, one argument being made by Honduran officials is that the study used (they say) 600,000 as the population of San Pedro Sula when (they say) the actual population is around 1.3 million. Worldwide homicides statistics are commonly compared on a per capita basis (rate of murders per 100,000 population). I found the SJP study [downloadable here in Spanish] and was able to confirm that this statement is not true and is an attempt to confuse the Honduras public with falsehoods. The SJP study used the same 2010 San Pedro population figure used by Honduras' own Observatorio de la Violencia, 719,447. While that does result in some overstatement of the homicide rate, since they are using the 2011 homicide number (sort of, see below) with the 2010 population number, it is not understated by 700,000 as officials shamelessly claim.

I have a copy of the last Honduras census, 2001, and the population of the municipalidad of San Pedro was 515,000. The 719,000 figure represents an estimated increase of about 3% per year for San Pedro Sula. Estimated growth of 3% per year might be low, but again, not to the extent that officials are claiming. I then found that the Observatorio de la Violencia (OV) uses the Honduran government's Institute of Statistics [in Spanish] population estimates so it is a little crazy for Honduran officials to claim the numbers are off by more than a half million.

Another argument could be made that the SJP article cites numerous cases which show that the Mexican data is purposely understated by officials — but then again, so is Honduras' data. Like the UN report, the SJP did not always compare the same year data. In some cases, data was from 2010 due to unavailability of 2011 statistics.

I then looked at SJP's methodology for Honduras and it is not good. They used sketchy newspaper report figures, not the actual OV report, to calculate some of the data and apparently failed to notice that those reports were only through December 15, not the entire year — but that would only make the real figures higher, especially since the last four years data shows that December is always the highest murder month of the year with significant increases over the prior 11 months. For other Honduran statistics, they used the OV January-June report to project total 2011 murders. [Both links in Spanish]

So, yes, there are flaws in the SJP report, but the resulting errors go both ways and I'm not sure that Honduras would come out looking any better in the ranking if all these errors were accounted for. Labeling San Pedro Sula the most violent city in the world is misleading when it is not even the most violent city in Honduras on a per capita basis.

The Observatoria de la Violencia has apparently not released the complete 2011 crime statistics yet. If anyone has access to the actual final report, please send it to me.

Happy news

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:49:00 +0000

Some of the most exciting things that happen to a blogger come at inopportune times or it seems inappropriate to be snapping pics, etc. Sometimes, it's so exciting that I forget the camera altogether. Darn! In this case, I forgot the camera, and my cell phone, and part of the journey was too dark to use the camera anyway.

I mentioned several months ago that Arexy, our housekeeper, was pregnant again. There were issues which I'll write about later (oh, I always say that, don't I?), but I'll tell you the happy ending right now.

Arexy was supposed to be due around the 17th of this month. This gringa had decided from the beginning that we weren't going to let her life or the life of her baby be threatened in Hospital Atlántida and Arexy happily agreed to go to a gringo missionary hospital. I've been trying to get her to stay with us for a month so we could be sure to get her to the Loma de Luz Hospital in Balfate in time. She finally came to stay with us on Tuesday evening. (Why we were going that far away, I'll have to tell you another time.)

Balfate is about 50 minutes on a rough dirt road from Jutiapa. Jutiapa is on the highway about 35 minutes from La Ceiba, longer with police operativos. Just Wednesday, we had had a long talk with Arexy at dinner about being sure to let us know in time as soon as the contractions started, especially since she had told us that her third baby was born at home because she only had an hour's notice!

Arexy tapped on our bedroom door about 4 a.m. on Thursday to tell me she was having contractions. I am not a morning person and definitely not a 4-in-the-morning person, but after circling the bedroom a couple of times trying to think, get clock, no, brush teeth, no, get dressed, no, get clock, I finally grabbed my little bedside clock and went downstairs. She said she had waited 30 minutes just to be sure that it was for real. ;-/ She was having a contraction at the time. Fine. 4:10 a.m., noted. I started a pot of coffee, picturing myself sitting with her for a couple of hours before we left for the hospital. Another contraction. 4:12 a.m.! What?! I looked at Arexy wide-eyed and said, "I'm going upstairs to get dressed! Get your bag!"

Brushed teeth, combed hair, threw on some clothes and poured some coffee into travel mugs as El Jefe yelled at me that I was wasting time. We were in the car and on the road at 4:21 a.m. just as Arexy had another contraction. Next one 4:25, 4 minutes apart. Well, that's good, I thought. Next two were 4 minutes apart. Good. Much better than 2 minutes apart. Next three were 3 minutes apart. Then a few at two minutes apart and we weren't even to Jutiapa, though El Jefe was literally flying down the highway.

Driving that dirt road would have made a heck of a video! Not only is the road in such terrible shape that it just about jars the teeth out of your mouth, but we had to dodge and swerve to avoid two herds of cows, several dogs, and some horses and ponies in the dark. More animals were out on that road at 4:30 - 5:00 a.m. today than we have seen in all of trips out there during the day. Oh, and I forgot to mention the 2-foot high piles of gravel in the middle of the road in a few spots, just to keep us on our toes.

Arexy's pains were getting increasingly stronger and were not helped by bouncing around in the car. I finally thought to call the hospital to tell them we were coming. I dug through the crumpled papers in my purse from previous visits and we tried a few phone numbers. Voice mail. Not surprising considering the time of day. Then I thought of my friend Dave from the hospital. Call him at 4:45 am? Yup. Gotta do it. I told him where we were in the journey and he reassured me and said they would be waiting for us.

The last 15 minutes or so, Arexy's cries were getting louder and louder. J was reassuring her, "Hang on, Arexy. We're almost there. Not too much longer. Only 10 more minutes. We're almost there. Only 5 more minutes. Look, there's the hospital. Dave and the doctor will be waiting for you!" I was feeling terribly useless and couldn't even reach to grab Arexy's hand for moral support.

We arrived at the guarded gate of the hospital. El Jefe told the guard that we were transporting a woman having a baby right now. The guard insisted that we not enter until he called someone to okay it. J hesitated about 10 seconds. OHohOhowOWowww! came from the back seat. El Jefe said, "Sorry, we can't wait. She's having the baby now and this is an emergency!" He hit the gas pedal and up the hill to the emergency entrance we sped.

It was 5:01 a.m., an amazing 40 minutes after we had left for our hour and 20 minute journey! We pulled up to the emergency entrance and I jumped out of the car to see if the door was unlocked, opened it, yelled, "Hellooooooo!" and ran back to help J get Arexy into the hospital. She was really, really in pain and walking was difficult for her by that point.

Another pregnant girl was there pacing the hall, and the doctor and staff were already there. They looked from her to Arexy, to her and back again. Arexy obviously won that contest but just to be sure, as I was holding an agonized Arexy up, I said, "She's been having contractions one minute apart all the way from La Ceiba!!!" (only a slight exaggeration, I'm sorry!) They grabbed Arexy and took her into the delivery room.

Approximately three minutes later, we heard a baby cry.

We were that close to delivering a baby in the car, in the dark, on a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere. And I hadn't even had time to look it up on the internet to figure out how to do it yet.

More Honduran police crimes

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:51:00 +0000

[Image: Danger, Police in the area]

Back in November, I was keeping track of cases of criminal cops who made the news and other stories which indicate police collusion in crimes. I continued to make a note of links to articles, with a big gap around the holidays, so this lengthy update is by no means complete, and of course, does not consider that the police are able to successfully cover up many of the crimes of their compadres. One of the reasons that I'm tracking this is to show that bad cops apparently have no fear of the supposed purification and another is that I'd like to be able to compare these names (when given) with those released on the lists of fired police agents.

José Rubén Pozo López, one of the escaped police accused of the murder the two university students [in English] in October, voluntarily turned himself in to the National Human Rights Commissioner (non-governmental organization) in early December. The initial judicial hearing was unusually held in a military installation to protect the accused. He was ordered held in custody in an unnamed military facility for the charges of murder and abuse of authority. The charge of aggravated robbery was provisionally dismissed. Pozo López asked the judge to consider the fear he had in turning himself in, as evidenced by the fact that police patrols were circulating around the military facility that day in a seeming effort to intimidate him. Continuing as fugitives from justice are Carlos Gáleas Cruz, Wilfredo Figueroa Velásquez, and Arnulfo Padilla Rodríguez.

Mother of one of the victims, Julieta Castellanos, accused the Human Rights prosecutor Sandra Ponce of negligence for knowing for several days that Pozo López wanted to turn himself in and doing nothing to facilitate the process. Ponce denied the charge, but said that she had received a call from the Pozo's attorney and was waiting for another call from him.

La Tribuna revealed details of the case of the murder of the two university students. Police not only stole the victims' money and cell phones, but also a leather jacket and even the shoes of the victims. Previously, it was reported that one of the police agents used the victim's cell phone at the crime scene to call his girlfriend as he "had no minutes" on his own phone.

Police agent Luis Enrique Pineda Castillo, assigned to barrio Los Dolores, Tegucigalpa, along with two civilians, were charged with extortion, aggravated robbery, and carrying illegal weapons after being caught in the act of receiving money from the victim. All three were released by the court and ordered to present themselves voluntarily once per week until the case comes to trial. Pineda Castillo was ordered suspended from the police at the request of prosecutors.

Police agents Nery Saúl González and Jaime Adalid Soriano were charged with stealing a gun and other evidence. The gun was decommissioned from suspects but never reported to supervisors. The owner of the gun presented a denuncia of the theft. An unnamed police source said that many police steal guns and other evidence from suspects resulting in a lack of evidence for prosecution and the criminals go free.

Two drunken members of the Honduran air force, René Alfonso Romero Reyes and Neptalí Osmín Morales Nufio, were arrested for carrying three 9 mm guns and threatening the lives of others.

Ex-police agent Nelly Emilio Vásquez was found guilty of homicide in a San Pedro court for the 2010 murder of a prostitute who he had a dispute with while using her services. The sentence will be given in January.

Prosecutors charged Homicide police inspectors René Darío Sierra y Maynor Salomón Cáceres with rape and robbery of a police vehicle in which one of them tried to escape. Two young women were leaving a discotheque when they were chased by the two police inspectors. One of the women was allegedly raped and subject to other acts of lechery. Police initially refused to name the suspects, but names were later released by prosecutors. Salomón Cáceres is currently a fugitive from justice.

Police agent José Luis Alemán Pérez (23) was captured by DNSEI agents (Special Investigation) in the act of extorting L.200,000 from executives of a cooperativa. Alemán was in possession of two IDs, one in the name of José Luis Rodríguez Yánez, as well as his police badge, at the time he received the cash from the intended victims.

During the initial hearing of police agent Wilmer Alexander Zavala, judges ordered him to be held in prison pending trial for the murder of a 16-year-old in the capital. Zavala is accused of confronting two minors in the street, grabbing one by the neck and shooting him causing instant death. The other boy fled.

Ex sub-commissioner Jorge Alberto Barralaga, previously suspended [in English] for his role in the escape of four police agents accused of murder, has been accused of attempted murder by a citizen in Tocoa, Colon. Barralaga denies the charges.

Padre Marco Aurelio Lorenzo denounced that he was beaten and tortured on December 26 by police agents in Intibucá who stole L.11,500 from him. However, the police responded saying that their report showed that the priest had been in a car accident and was drunk, and that the police merely took him to the hospital. The spokesperson noted that the police were accompanied by "persons of prestige" at the time and speculated that maybe he had been robbed by some other uniformed persons prior to the police arriving. The priest's parish stands by him and demands action by the justice system [in English, also read the comments which add additional information].

The Salvadoran Transportation Association continues to denounce that truck drivers are intercepted by police up to 10 times during their deliveries of products in the south of Honduras and have to pay up to US $30 each time, for an estimated total of US $9,000 per day in bribes to Honduran police. As before, police promise a profound investigation and to take corrective measures.

In Comayaguela, a man supposedly caught in the act of extorting an impuesto de guerra (war tax) from a citizen was shot various times and killed by DNIC agents who said that when they told him to raise his hands, he fired on the investigators who shot back.

Police intervention in Tela, Honduras

Honduran police authorities intervened in Tela, Atlántida, and "suspended" 80 police agents, who have been sent to the Cobra unit for "investigation". No information was given as what sort of investigation will occur or when these police will resume duty in Tela. Currently naval personnel and Cobras from San Pedro Sula are performing patrols in the city. The only information given by the police spokesman was that police were not performing their duties in high crime, noted gang and narcotrafficking areas and that they will be retrained to determine whether or not they can resume their duties. Speaking of that, I can't recall ever hearing anything else about the 176 agents "suspended" in Tegucigalpa [in English]. Apparently the results of that retraining, and the 100 or so agents who refused to report for it, is one of many police secrets.

Criminals using police equipment

Two robbers were found to be in the possession of a police weapon when arrested.

Seven suspects were ordered held in custody for seven days by judges in Tegucigalpa after being captured in an operativo in which AK 47s, grenades, and three luxury vehicles, along with seven bulletproof police vests and three anti-gas masks were seized. Prosecutors have this seven days to present enough evidence to have them held in custody until the trial.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:29:00 +0000

Honduran congress

Here I am, lowly blogger, doing the job the Honduran media should be doing — exposing the big fat lies of Honduras' elected representatives. [All links in Spanish unless otherwise noted.]

On Monday I received a mea culpa sent out by the congress stating several things, the most amusing of which was that they will set up a committee to make sure that in the future they read the things they are approving before they approve them. Now there is a concept! They blamed approval of the Securiport contract and new $34 security tax on the President and told us that they are always working for the pueblo. Numerous congressmen have been in the news crying that they didn't know what they were voting on, blaming it on President Lobo, who later decided not to the tax after the uproar, and President of Congress, Juan Orlando Hernández, who interestingly did not vote at all on the issue.

The missive also stated that the decree was passed at 2:26 in the afternoon, not in the madrugada (middle of the night) as the news had reported (though the new exit tax passed the same day was passed at 11:30 pm). As proof, they included a link to the main page of the voluminous Congressional website. So after navigating the congressional website, I found the 24 pages of files of attendance and votes for December 2011, a mere 472 PDF files. Luckily, the latest file uploaded and one of the only file names with a date, was the attendance record for December 14.

Plowing through the records

Imagine my surprise to see that the "attendance" record is 114 pages long, logging all the ins and outs, requests to speak, time of speaking, etc. of the congressmen during the approximately 14-hour session. It was in time order, not by name. No way could I determine who was there without doing a multi-page spreadsheet logging the 114 pages of ins and outs, and I wasn't interested in doing that.

Even the 10-page individual records of the votes on each issue are not in alphabetical order, making finding the several hundred votes for that day very difficult. Each voting record is in a separate 10-page PDF image file that can't be searched and is not in alphabetical order!

The 472 PDF files have titles like "Art. 52" and similar which give no indication of what the issue was much less any details within the files. Article 52 of the constitution, Article 52 of a contract, or Article 52 of a law or regulation, and which one and what was the change? Your guess is as good as mine, there is no information whatsoever.

So while this congress continually claims to be the most transparent ever, they manage to present mountains of information in such a way that it would take a full time staff to find and wade through and document their votes and still there is not enough information for even the congressmen to determine what they were actually voting on.

They also like to refer to their televised sessions as transparent but the truth is that even if you have the time and patience to watch their TV channel 24 hours a day (and be subjected to hours of Juan Orlando Hernández government-paid presidential campaign propaganda commercials), you still won't know how congressmen voted unless you take a photo of the TV at each vote and have the seating chart (by which the for and against votes are shown in green or red) memorized to compare against the photo later. There are no names shown for votes, so while a diputado (congressman) could publicly rail on and on against something during the televised session, he could actually electronically vote for it and no one would know unless they have the time to search the voluminous files at the website.

The congressional website has only posted four laws in the past 5 years and none at all for this congress which started in January 2010 and brags that they have passed more new laws than any congress before. What were those laws and where are they? Under "Conozco su diputado" (Know your congressman), pages of photos with a name underneath are presented with no information about what departamento (state) they represent, what they stand for, what their voting record is, nothing at all except which party they are with. If you want to know who your elected diputados (congressmen) are, you won't find out at the congress website, because the sad truth is once you elect them, they cease to be your representatives and become the "party's" diputados.

Information on motions, dictamens, decretos, actas, and so forth are similarly lacking with little or no information posted in 2010 and 2011 and none in 2012. The little information that is there is presented in such a manner that only the most determined would spend the days or weeks required to sift through. Only in the rarest of cases are proposed laws made public in advance or published on the congressional website after they approved. So you might find out, as I did for example, that they approved several acts conceding "amnesty for debts with the state" (there were several of these in the madrugada on December 14), but good luck finding out who got the amnesty or for how much.

One of the biggest factors of non-transparency is La Gaceta, which is the government's official publication of laws, regulations, and so forth, which could easily be online but is not. Individual organizations of the government include publication of some laws on their websites, but you have to be a detective to find them and often they are not posted for months or years after they are passed. I know because I've spent more hours than I care to admit trying to find the text of various laws. Transparent? No way.

Who voted how?

In Big Brother comes to Honduras [in English], I mentioned that two of the three congressmen that Proceso Digital interviewed didn't know about the new US $34 travel/migratory/security tax and the third voted against it.

From Proceso Digital's interviews earlier this week, here is a translation of what they wrote:

"Meanwhile, the Liberal legislator Waldina Paz expressed that she voted against this decree. "I am against more taxes. That was approved in Interairports package. I asked them if what they wanted was the buildings constructed with dollars of the people," she said."

Go to page 8 of the vote results and you'll see that Jariet Waldina Paz also voted 'si' on this issue. She did vote 'no' on the increase to the InterAirports exit tax.

Proceso Digital also wrote (translated):

"Another of the interviewees was the Nationalista parliamentarian Antonio Rivera, who said he was unaware of what the decree in question referred to, adding that "I have no knowledge of the decree because I was not present at the parliamentary session."

Not only was Diputado Rivera present, but he voted in favor of the decree. Go to page 4 of the vote results and you'll see that Antonio César Rivera Callejas voted 'si'. Rivera did not vote for or against the InterAirport increased exit tax. He now says he doesn't remember voting on it. He's joined by Diputados Carlos Martínez Zepeda, Celí Discua Elvir, and others who say they just don't remember voting on this issue.

Scanning through the yes votes, a couple of diputado names caught my eye. You might think that congressmen elected in tourism areas would look unfavorably upon additional taxes for travelers which could serve to harm the tourism industry, but I found that the sole diputado for the Bay Islands, Romeo Silvestri of Roatan, and Gonzalo Antonio Rivera of La Ceiba, Atlántida, also voted in favor of this travel tax. In fact, there was only one vote against it. Of the 109 diputados present, 68 voted for the tax, one abstained and 39 didn't vote at all.

Of the other seven Atlántida diputados, only Ramon Antonio Leva Bulnes (PN) voted in favor of the increased tax. Rodolfo Irias Navas (PN), Margie Dip (Margarita Dabdoub Sikaffi- PN), Marcio Rene Espinal Cardona (PN), Daniel Flores Velasquez (PN), Jorge Alberto Elvir Cruz (DC), and María Aracely Leiva Peña (PL) did not vote at all.

Then I became curious about the votes on the other travel tax passed that same day, the increase in the exit fee proposed by the executive power and then later vetoed by the same. I waded through pages of documents to find the vote on the increased exit tax, though it was identified only as "approve 2nd modification to InterAirport contract". The vote on this issue was 88 in favor, 15 against, 8 abstained, and 14 did not vote, for a total of 125 diputados present.

Of the nine Atlántida and Bay Islands diputados, Romeo Silvestri of the Bay Islands and Ramón Leva, Marcio Espinal, Daniel Flores, Margie Dip, Gonzalo Rivera, and Jorge Elvir of Atlántida all voted for the increased exit tax to be paid to InterAirports. Rodolfo Irias and Maria Leiva did not vote.

Excuses, excuses

Some of the gem excuses that have been given to reporters:

Juan Orlando Hernández, President of the Congress: "the $34 should be absorbed by the airlines and in no manner is to affect the final users." Oh, please, that is such a huge insult to the intelligence. He also made a dismissive comment that most of the pueblo (voters) can't afford to fly anyway so it won't affect them.

Secretary of the Interior, Áfrico Madrid: "there was no public bid because Securiport is the owner of the technology." Are we to believe that Securiport is the only company in the world that provides the technology for immigration control in every airport in the world?

Olancho Diputado Francisco Rivera: He blamed the media for not reporting on the issue when it was discussed in session. Now that's really hypocritical. The media has been denied all information about this contract and only found out about the tax after the airline association was notified that they must begin collecting it. José Francisco Rivera Hernández incidentally voted for both travel taxes.

Cortés Diputado Wenceslao Lara (PL): "I am sure that this Nacionalista government is the worst that we have had in the history of Honduras, because they are in charge of disgracing our country, making our already impoverished society even more poor." Proceso Digital quotes him as saying that he voted against the new travel tax, but the voting records show that Lara did not vote on either tax issue.

Francisco Morazán Diputado German Leitzelar: lamented that they continue playing with the dignity of a noble pueblo and qualified those who approved this law as bats. "They operate in the night and sink their teeth into the heart of the Honduran pueblo." Diputado Leitzelar did not vote for or against either tax issue.

Kinder, gentler US immigration laws

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:37:00 +0000

Americans like to think that they live in the freest country in the world, but many have had a shock when they find out that their government has something to say about who they fall in love with in and whether they are going to be allowed to live happily ever after. Well, not so much who, but whether the American will be allowed to live with their spouse in their own country of birth, in the land of opportunity among their friends and family.

I've heard from hundreds of Americans married to Hondurans who families are being or have been torn apart because of US immigration laws. Their choice is to leave the only country they've known in their life or to split up their families and let their children grow up without a father for years while the spouse goes through the lengthy immigration process. In the case of Honduran spouses, that could mean living a life of extreme hardship by chosing to come to a country where there are no jobs, where there is no decent healthcare in many areas, where it will probably be impossible for them to earn enough to pay for even adequate schooling for their (US citizen!) children, and where the crime situation is frightening. Is that what the US government wants for its citizens, its children?

And before you hard-hearted people say it's their own fault and they should have known, I propose that a lot of people did not know the immigration laws! Maybe not so much now, with the stink there has been about immigration in the past few years, but before that, yes, I think most people only had a very vague idea of what the US immigration laws were. I think that many thought they could marry whoever they fell in love with and if they weren't US citizens, they could just apply for them and boom! Their spouses would become citizens, too.

Many American spouses had the shock of their lives to find out that their loved one had to leave the country to apply for a visa, and sometimes, depending upon their status, had to stay away for 3 years even if they entered the US legally or even up to 10 years if they didn't.

The Obama Administration has now proposed a “tweak” in the immigration law. The New York Times reports, “Although the regulatory tweak appears small, lawyers said it would mean that many Americans will no longer be separated for months or years from family members pursuing legal residency.”

I think this is a good thing. Immigrants who are married to US citizens should be given priority and US citizens shouldn't be put through the hardship of being separated from their spouse for many years. As one interviewee put it, “We can’t survive without each other,” she said. “I should have a right as a U.S. citizen to live in my country with my husband.”

I hope this helps many of the people who have written to me with sad stories.

Big brother comes to Honduras

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 03:12:00 +0000

Update, January 9: President Lobo has just announced that he is suspending the sanction of this decree pending review. No mention yet what this will mean for the new migration measures.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just yesterday, we surprisingly learned that another 'travel tax' was approved on December 14, 2011 (in the middle of the night, says El Heraldo), adding $17 to the cost of a airline ticket for each international passenger on entry and exit, for a total of $34. The tax is to provide for new migratory control security measures which will be put into force not only at the airports but at all immigration checkpoints in Honduras.

Last month, a law was passed by congress to increase Honduras' exit fee from US $37.80 (for foreigners) to US $60.20 but ultimately was vetoed by President Lobo because of public outcry even though it was Lobo's own decree. It was felt that the tax would have a detrimental effect on tourism and voluntourism, already suffering from the crime situation in Honduras, especially so since Honduras' tax is not hidden in the airline ticket price as many countries are, but must be paid separately at a bank in advance or by standing in line at the airport which tends to leave a bad taste in some visitors' mouths. So now instead of the $22 increase, air travelers will be facing a $34 increase in their travel costs. I don't know if the original plan was to increase air travel taxes by a total of $56 to $94 (!) or if the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing.

The new tax is in addition to the security tax law [in English] passed in September last year which primarily affects businesses and citizens and residents of Honduras who have bank accounts or credit cards. This law, which was initially expected to generate some L.4.5 billion (about US $237 million) over 5 years for strengthening the justice system and crime prevention, still hasn't gone into effect. Some people, like President of Congress Juan Orlando Hernández, are asking why implementation has been delayed.

Honduras has contracted for 10 years with a US company called Securiport whose president is Enrique Segura, and in which a majority ownership is held by the ENSE Group. This was another one of those "emergency" situations where public bidding wasn't required and apparently not even the congress was really aware of it. Two of the three congressmen contacted by Proceso Digital didn't know anything about the new tax and the third voted against it.

Secretary of the Interior and Population Áfrico Madrid said that the content and details of the contract can't be given to the public because he could incur civil, administrative, and criminal penalties since this is a matter of security. Reporters were only asking why there wasn't a public bidding process, not details of the company's patented technology, so I think that Madrid is really stretching this secrecy thing to avoid being transparent, as usual. Passing the law in the middle of the night when many congressmen were not there and keeping it under wraps for three weeks also makes it look like there is something fishy going on.

As part of the deal, Securiport will make an investment of US 31.6 million in equipment. Translated from La Tribuna, under Decreto 252-2011, Securiport will ...

"provide and install in all of the windows of migration attention, a system of control of the entrance and exit of the persons to and from the national territory, which includes the scanning equipment, computers, programs, training of migration personnel, adaptation of installations and server requirements for the digitalization of the images, archives, obtaining and comparing of fingerprints of said persons. This also includes the installation of equipment and programs based on the same technology to control the access of persons to the zones reserved to the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería. The technology referred to is supported in the employment of ultrasound scanner developed by Ultra Scan Corporation, strategic partner of Securiport."

The decree refers to Executive Accord 29-2011 dated March 24, 2011, in which the Secretary of the Interior was authorized by the President to directly contract with Securiport for the operation of system of control of the entrance and exit of persons to or from the national territory at any of the international airports and the 22 land and maritime frontier points of the country. It also states that Securiport will be paid directly by the airlines collecting the taxes. That was a wise move by Securiport or they might have ended up like the company who formerly provided the gun registration technology to Honduras.

Secretary Madrid stated, "The charge of US $34 will serve to avoid the free circulation and entrance of persons related to organized crime, narcotraffickers, assassins, kidnappers, money launderers, and arms traffickers that have utilized the country as a center of operations due to the lack of a modern and scientific system of migration control". He went on to say that the tax would be charged only to foreign citizens. Madrid is also quoted as saying, "we don't have the economic resources so someone has to pay for it".

El Heraldo unfortunately published an article quoting at length the President of CANATURH (tourism business association) Epaminondas Marinakys who apparently did not have his facts straight. He says that all who enter Honduras will pay the $17 tax on entry and exit, that he supposed that bus passengers would be off-loaded to pay at the frontier, and even that the one million annual cruise ship passengers would pay $34 for the privilege of setting foot on Honduras soil for a day. Either Madrid is lying or Marinakys did not actually see the decree and was only supposing based on what he had heard.

Better migration controls (if they can be enforced) is probably a good thing. Based on the number of people who have been captured with 10s of thousands of dollars strapped to their bodies or hundreds of thousands in their suitcases, there have probably been lots more who got away. There is a lot of corruption in Immigration, where many agents seem to make up their own rules as they go, and where official 90-day visa renewal stamps in passports can be bought for varying prices — there is legally no such thing as a 90-day visa renewal. I've heard from various people that in San Pedro a stamp allowing someone to stay an additional 90 days costs L.2,000 (about US $105) and in Roatan about US $150. Not all immigration agents are corrupt, but many are, especially those in the outlying areas. A bigger issue than perpetual tourists are the wanted criminals who are able to get away even when there is a migratory alert out for them.

It sounds like those who have been living 'undocumented' in Honduras might need to get their paperwork in order. Or maybe not. You never know how these things will work out in practice in Honduras. Where there's a will (bribe), there's a way. If only some of the brain power used by corruptos in thinking of ways to lie, cheat, and steal was put to use pulling Honduras out of poverty instead!

On a final ironic note, with these new measures, Honduras may be protected from its criminal visitors, but who is going to protect its visitors from Honduras?

What has been going on in Honduras?

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:33:00 +0000

President Pepe Lobo, Esdras Amado López, 'journalist',
and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez

The following are some tidbits about what has been going on in Honduras lately to catch you up-to-date after my much needed news break. All of the links are to articles in Spanish, unless otherwise noted.

Deja vu all over again

Talk about rejoining Hugo Chávez's ALBA and Petrocaribe has picked up again after Honduras failed to qualify for US Millennium Challenge program funds because of corruption, human rights violations, and other issues — which resulted in an angry response from President Lobo, just as back in 2008 when Zelaya said he wasn't getting enough cash from the US and needed to look elsewhere. Even more worrisome, Chávez is getting a direct foothold in Honduras territory, specifically the Bajo Aguán, noted for militant campesino groups and Venezuelan narco plane landings [article in English], a place ripe for Chávez propagandizing.

As Proceso Digital so delicately put it, "These funds, since they are placed in trust, beyond the strict budgetary control, are coveted by rulers not inclined to fiscal rigor." Evidence of the lack of transparency is the fact that though these funds were received in 2008-2009, the public was just informed for the first time on January 5, 2012, how much money was available from Petrocaribe (originally US $183 million and now zero), when it was spent (the last of it 8 months ago), where it went, and what it was actually spent on (we still don't know).

In a press conference apparently impulsed by rumors of a 'missing' US $150 million, Minister of Finance William Chong Wong and President of the Central Bank Maria Elena Mondragón went to great pains to differentiate between Petrocaribe funds (which have to be paid back) and ALBA funds (which don't), but were only very vague about when and where the ALBA funds were spent, of which US $49.8 million supposedly remain. The ALBA funds were to be used for such things as providing housing for the poor, so you might wonder why it has been sitting in a bank account since 2008. The first article states that Honduras indebted itself with Venezuela for more than US $263 million, but second states that the current remaining amount is US $200 million. Chong Wong said that La ENEE authorities are responsible for detailing where its US $51 million was spent (since there is some speculation about misuse of funds there, too).

Also interesting is that in May 2011 during one of the many pushes for rejoining Petrocaribe [Blogicito article in English], the media was led to believe that the 2008 Petrocaribe funds were still in the bank. Yesterday in the press conference apparently prompted to dispel rumors, the public found out that the funds had actually been spent in 2009, 2010 and April 2011. Very deceitful of the government.

Pepe says Petrocaribe is a go. He likes the "flexibility" of Petrocaribe and the fact that it doesn't come with any conditions on what they do with the money or anti-corruption measures like the US money does — which he resents greatly. Putting the country into further long term debt for current consumables is not an issue for him, neither is reducing the over-inflated government payroll budget. Honduran politicians would sell Honduras to the devil himself if it meant more money in their pockets and/or more political currency for their party (more bonos — cash bonuses to give out).

Selling the farm to buy the pig

The finances of Honduras are in dire straits. The government is unable to meet the ever-growing, exaggerated government payroll costs, and unwilling to cut expenses in this "government of austerity", which passes out jobs and cash bonos like money comes from a bottomless barrel. By one estimation, Lobo is desperate for funds because he has a failed government which has increased the bureaucracy and national budget while giving out Bonos Diez Mil without any idea of how to pay for any of it. In order to shore up the barrel before the Venezuelan funds come rolling in, Honduras will be holding two large auctions of public property in 2012. I'll bet you a dollar that we will never know who bought what or how much they paid for it!

Striking teachers

Teachers' unions claim that 50% of teachers did not receive their vacation pay in December and they are already planning strikes in 2012. The Honduran public school year runs February through November and supposedly includes 200 days of classes, though most schools have not reached 200 days of classes yet in this century. Last year, some schools had as little as 80 days of classes due to teacher strikes. Even worse for the future of Honduras, high school graduates can become teachers with no university training at all. More deja vu.

Emergency!

In less than two years of his administration, President Pepe Lobo has declared 17 state of emergencies, on average an emergency every 38 days. Decoded, "state of emergency" often has nothing to do with true emergencies. It means that the government can make direct purchases and grant abusive contracts to friends, family members, convicted felons, and others without those pesky requirements to have an open bidding and qualification process as required under the Law of State Contraction. One of those recent emergencies resulted in a 16-year 100 megawatt multimillion dollar contract for electrical energy with a company (Westport Finance) who has no experience in the area of energy and had revenues in 2010 of about US $96,000 and two employees.

A 16-year emergency? Only in Honduras. "It stinks of corruption," said one congressman. Honduras government officials had the nerve to lead people to believe the contract was with the well-known Finland company Wartsilla, when in fact it was not. The contract itself was not even provided to congressmen until the night of the vote. So much for transparency.

Mañana

The total of these emergency contracts in the past two years is said to be L.5.8 billion. Repeated complaints of fraud and corruption from citizens, congressmen, and other organizations have had no effect. Now the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Henry Salgado (who I'm not sure has ever won a case) announced that they will be investigating whether there are any penal responsibilities related to these emergency contracts.

He also promises action in the ENP (port authority) corruption and the L. 80 billion fraud and corruption in INPREMA (teachers' retirement fund) cases within the next three weeks. Check out the reader comments on this article — no, don't bother. I'll save you the time and translate for you, too: "jajaja" (hahaha). A separate article reports that the Anti-Corruption unit has a backlog of 4,000 cases and between 10-15 attorneys to handle them! Pure show and more deja vu.

Unemployment

The unemployment rate in Honduras is somewhere around 30-40% according to various reports. However, coffee plantations, which need around a million seasonal workers, are required to fill about 100,000 of the jobs with Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans because, they say, Hondurans do not want the work. Sadly, they also say that foreigners are better workers. Though this type of worker is paid by the piece (sack of coffee beans), they say that an average worker makes more than minimum wage (about L.250 per day vs. L. 183 per day) and a good worker makes almost twice that. So they say anyway. Some readers have different opinions.

Minimum wage

Negotiations between business and labor have not resulted in an agreement on the new minimum wage and it is likely that President Lobo will end up setting the 2012 minimum wage as required by law. Hopefully he won't wait until November like he did in 2010. This is a really complicated issue. While we always focus on the poverty in Honduras, the Honduran minimum wage is higher than all of the competing countries. Nicaragua and Guatemala in particular will be watching this issue and waiting for more businesses to pack up and move to their countries. (Click cartoon to enlarge.)

Taking security into the neighborhoods' hands

In a program called Barrios Seguros (secure neighborhoods), the municipality of Tegucigalpa has been allowing neighborhoods to close various street entrances, leaving one or more secured or controlled entrance in an effort to slow crime. San Pedro Sula has been allowing something similar. A group of anti-corruption attorneys has filed a complaint with the Supreme Court saying this conflicts with the free circulation right provided by the constitution and laws which proclaim streets to be public property.

The Mayor of Tegucigalpa and presidential candidate, Ricardo Álvarez, says the measure is to protect lives in this wave of violent crime and that is what should be considered first. Well, why not? Honduran laws are made to be broken, though lately it appears that Honduran laws are made to protect the guilty, never the innocent.

Purification

The new commission, Dirección Nacional de Investigación y Evaluación de la Carrera Policial (DIECP), which was supposed to be the answer to our prayers about purifying the police department has done nothing except emit statements about how it isn't their job, they don't have the budget, and the law doesn't permit them to intervene anyway. It seems that in congress' rush to pass this law and appoint the commissioners in a big show to appease the public, they failed to note that the purpose of the new commission conflicts with the current internal police law as well as the constitution.

In a Diario Tiempo editorial, they wrote that those with experience knew since the beginning that the new commission would not function and that there has been no evidence of political will to intervene, purify, or restructure the justice system (police, military, judicial, and prosecutors), much less real capacity to do so. "The gangrene in the police organization, for example, starts at the base, in the police academy, and from there on up, no doubt induced at the top."

However, Pompeyo Bonilla, Minister of Security, announced this week (with no details) the upcoming separation of some unspecified number of police from the basic level to the highest levels in "important positions". Yesterday it was announced that 50 police agents and 25 officials would be fired by next week and some additional number would be rotated. That number was increased to "up to 100" today and then later an announcement was made that 52 police had been separated, including one commissioner general, two commissioners, and one sub-commissioner, and that another separation would occur soon.

Names were not given by police spokesman Ivan Mejía, who said that the law prohibits it and that the affected police could sue the state for damages, even though names have been given in the past. (I'll be watching for a leak.) These police were separated for grave faults (misconduct?), but the Minister of Security is taking no legal action against them as that is the duty of other organizations to investigate and make charges. Mejía refused to give more information despite prodding from the media. He did report that some of the fired personnel had 25-30 years with the police department.

In another blow (no pun intended), 28 new police cadets (5% of the total) were fired after their drug tests came back positive. Apparently the government is taking the position that new hires can be tested for drugs but current employees can not be forced to be tested. That isn't the way I read the law but I'm not an attorney. If that is what the law actually says, then of course it should be changed so that the public is protected, not drug-consuming police officers.

Honduras' Iron Lady

Julieta Castellanos, Rector of UNAH and mother of one of the university students murdered by police in October [article in English], proclaimed the actions as a "fictitious purification" done to calm the public and evade real purification. Castellanos says that we need information about whether these are real firings, suspensions, or rotations, and whether these people are still receiving salary. In a strong statement in which she used words like deplorable, grotesque, and abominable, she said that the organization has had three months to destroy the evidence of police corruption, and she lamented the fact that honest police have not come forward out of fear or intimidation.

Asked by La Tribuna whether she fears being assassinated because of her constant denuncias against the police, she stated that she isn't looking for that, but that she does what she has to do. "If something happens to me it is the fault of the police, primarily señor Ramírez del Cid [National Director of Police], because there is no one more interested in something happening to me.... and no one more knowledgeable about corruption in the police since he was the former head of Intelligence."

She also pointed out that it should be easy to prove corruption of police agents and officials who live well beyond what their police salaries could provide, like with three US $25-30,000 cars and houses in wealthy areas. She also reported that as late as a few days ago, police were out in police vehicles in Tegucigalpa extorting businesses. One of those businessmen was expected to pay L. 350,000 because he was an undocumented foreigner, but when they took him to the police post to pay, he only had L.38,000.

New justice system

President Lobo announced Thursday that he will be sending a new packet of security measures to the congress soon to "make changes in the structure of the Judicial Power". I hope he reads the constitution first.

Washington Post is soooo mean

A Washington Post article, which was only the latest of many articles in the international media about Honduras' severe crime and criminal police problems, resulted in an uproar from some in Honduras about how unfair it was to write about the situation and possibly scare off tourists and volunteers.

Marco Cáceres of Honduras Weekly [article in English] called the complaints a cop-out.

"The negative publicity for Honduras worries me too, but honestly... not nearly as much as attempts by people within the Honduran government and business community to downplay the strife. The simple fact of the matter is: It is what it is; the numbers do not lie (at least not too much)."

False pride is a big factor in Honduras' failure to take action against corruption and impunity. As long as those in power are more worried about covering up the embarrassment to the country than taking action to do the right thing, nothing will change.

Stupid Capitalinos

In yet another vague and demeaning comment intended to divide the population, not reconcile it as he incessantly claims, yesterday in Comayagua, President Lobo said how good it was to be there talking about production because in Tegucigalpa (the capital), they only talk stupidities. Maybe he has a point, but by not naming names, he just insulted some 1.5 million plus Hondurans.

Phew! And that was primarily from the last 2-3 days of news. Can you see why I needed a break from the news? If you don't read or watch the Honduran news, I hope that you found this helpful.

2011 Rainfall in La Ceiba, Honduras

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:12:00 +0000

My tropical-sized 24-inch rain gauge

In the past, I lamented that there was no official rain measurements for La Ceiba so I was determined to do my own unofficial measurements for my own information. Being a former CPA (For the crazies out there: note that is C-P-A, Certified Public Account, not C-I-A), I like numbers, facts, and statistics. Saying, "Man, we had a ton of rain yesterday!" just doesn't do it for me. It took me a while to get a tropical sized rain gauge — I had to have my own made. Prior to that, I made an effort but between the small gauges overflowing during the day and dogs knocking over or eating the plastic gauges, it was hopeless. Now I have the dog-proof 24" rain gauge shown above.

I don't have one of those fancy electronic weather stations, but, hey, it's better than nothing, right? So continuing La Gringa's official unofficial rain statistics for La Ceiba, here you go:

Monthly Rainfall La Ceiba, Honduras **Inches**
Month	2012	2011	2010	2009	Average
Jan	0.00	25.75	30.56	20.13	25.48
Feb	0.00	8.88	16.63	9.13	11.54
March	0.00	2.62	20.88	4.38	9.29
April	0.00	0.00	4.38	7.25	3.88
May	0.00	0.69	3.75	4.06	2.83
June	0.00	6.12	6.88	2.75	5.25
July	0.00	9.12	12.13	8.00	9.75
Aug	0.00	7.38	8.75	14.25	10.13
Sept	0.00	9.75	19.0	4.13	10.96
Oct	0.00	21.81	12.63	16.50	16.98
Nov	0.00	17.00	17.63	25.00	19.88
Dec	0.00	16.13	13.31	12.19	13.87
Totals	000.00	125.25	166.50	127.75	139.83

For those who think in centimeters instead of inches, check out the centimeter chart on my Rainfall page.

The most unusual La Ceiba, Honduras, rainfall activity in 2011 was a severe drought in the spring time. Our rainy season is roughly September through March and May is usually the month with the least rainfall, but in 2011, we had not a drop of rain for a 48 day period from March 19 through May 5. We had a few sprinkles in May but no real tropical rain until June 6 when we received a much appreciated (by the thirsty tropical plants) 1.5 inches.

The days with the largest amount of rain were January 15 with 9.5 inches, January 22 and 28 with 3.5 inches each, February 11 with 5.5 inches, September 10, 3 inches, October 7, 3.75 inches, December 9, 5.25 inches, and December 10, 3.25 inches. The largest rainfall day is much reduced from the past in which I recorded 16 inches in December 2008.

The number of rain days per month were: January 12 days, February 7 days, March 4 days, April 0, May 4 days, June 22 days, July 22 days, August 11 days, September 13 days, October 18 days, November 18 days, and December 21 days, for a total of 152 days. Many of these days, however, were just a light afternoon sprinkle that dried up in 10 minutes.

This part of Honduras totally missed the severe tropical storms and hurricanes this year and we had no lengthy periods of heavy rain days. I think we only had one or two days of mopping up rainwater from leaky windows this year. What a treat!

Weather in general

I have a little weather widget in the sidebar which gives the current La Ceiba temperature and "real feel" (in the far right column, about 6 clicks down). You can also click the links in the widget to get the Accuweather forecast.

My monthly rainfall tables (in inches and centimeters) can be found on this page. I keep a daily chart but usually only update this page at the end of the month.

How is the weather in La Ceiba? gives an overview of the weather in this part of the country and links to a good overview of Honduras weather — which despite what many websites imply, is not the same all over the country. "When is the rainy season?" cannot be answered without first asking "What part of the country?". Here is an overview from Countries of the World:

Although all of Honduras lies within the tropics, the climatic types of each of the three physiographic regions differ. The Caribbean lowlands have a tropical wet climate with consistently high temperatures and humidity, and rainfall fairly evenly distributed throughout the year. The Pacific lowlands have a tropical wet and dry climate with high temperatures but a distinct dry season from November through April. The interior highlands also have a distinct dry season, but, as is characteristic of a tropical highland climate, temperatures in this region decrease as elevation increases.

And to skim through everything I've written on weather (and earthquakes), check out the 'weather' topic.

Mayan end of the world

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:24:00 +0000

The truth about the Mayan calendar

I had a laugh about this cartoon. How about you?

Honduras has a new tourism campaign, touting the supposed Mayan prophesy that the world would end in December 2012 and if that is so, you might as well spend your last days in Honduras. That seems to leave a lot of room for bad jokes that wouldn't be particularly favorable to Honduras tourism.

But Mexico, which does a much better job of promoting tourism, has a similar tourism campaign going on which will include celebrating Mayan rites and incense burning in the historically Mayan areas of Mexico. We can assume this will not include the human sacrifice rituals and partaking of the delicacies of the sacrifices. Aztec mythology included the world passing through the "Nine Hells of Increasing Doom", each one worse than the last, prior to the end of the world.

I haven't done much reading about this so I'm no expert but apparently there are alternate theories that the whole 'end of the world' prophesy has been misinterpreted and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era. The beginning of a new era sounds much better to me!

May 2012 bring the beginning of a new era of peace and prosperity for you and for Honduras!

Where has La Gringa been?

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 16:53:00 +0000

No hammock time for La Gringa!

Dear Blogicito readers,

I just realized it is December 18th and I haven't posted since November! Given the subject that I have been writing about, some friends and readers have been worried about me. I really have to apologize for that. And thank you to all of you who have written.

I've just been extremely busy helping El Jefe with a project that has taken almost every waking moment of our lives. ;-/ Along with being totally overwhelmed and depressed about the crime and corruption news in Honduras — yes, I do take things that affect Honduras personally! — this has resulted in blogger block.

As usual, I have a backlog of more than a dozen articles on the crime/corruption theme drafted but can't seem to find the time or the mental focus to edit and finish them. I hadn't even finished posting the original crime series when the 'stuff hit the fan' on the criminal cops scandal. The media is full of new stories every day, including the assassination of Alfredo Landaverde, a high-profile person who was previously involved with the Anti-Narcotrafficking Directorate (DLCN) and likely had much inside knowledge that isn't available to the general public.

Landaverde had been bluntly outspoken in the media recently about corruption and incompetence in the justice system. His wife, Hilda Caldera Tosta, who is not a Honduran citizen and who was also shot in the drive-by attack on her husband, promises to carry out his work and in a public statement to the cowards who assassinated her husband, "If you want to kill me, come and kill me!".

Señora Caldera has joined forces with Julieta Castellanos, mother of one of the university students murdered by police in October, and Leslie Portillo, widow of Arístides González who was the head of the DLCN at the time he was assassinated in a drive by shooting while dropping his daughter off at school. Señora Portillo has publicly denounced that the authorities know that police murdered her husband and they have done absolutely nothing for two years. They are calling their coalition the Honduran Spring against Crime. These three brave women may be able to get enough international attention to force action.

In my opinion, no real effective action that I can see has been taken. I also have absolutely no faith that any plans to do so would actually be carried out. It's corrupt and incompetent business as usual in Honduras, even when its citizens are dying at an alarming rate. I hope that I'll be pleasantly surprised, but don't think I will be. President Pepe Lobo has even made the incredible statement several times that he "had no idea that crime and corruption in the police department was so bad". I can only ask what country he lives in and why doesn't he start by listening to his ministers and reading the newspapers.

On another topic, to update you on the Facebook situation, I believe that the petition to restore my account was sent to Mark Zuckerberg but did not even receive the courtesy of a canned response, so not too much more I can say about that. :-/ The petition and the heartfelt comments left by Facebook friends was amazingly gratifying to me personally. You'll never know how much I appreciate Ricardo for setting up the petition and all of you who signed it and took the time to leave a comment. I'm going to consider my options again in January, but in the meantime, I sure do miss all the feedback from FB friends!

I'm not sure when I'll get back to this. I don't want to spoil your holiday season with these depressing topics and it seems frivolous to chatter about non-important topics. In the meantime, if you don't hear from me before then, I wish all of you a wonderful Christmas and a safe, peaceful, and prosperous new year. Please pray for change in Honduras.

Love and abrazos to all,

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Suspensions, drug and polygraph tests for Honduran police

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:50:00 +0000

National Director of Honduran Police, Ricardo Ramírez del Cid
Image: Diario Tiempo, Honduras

Bold headline, regurgitating official statements, but the reality is something quite different. [All links are in Spanish unless otherwise noted.]

Police suspensions

Some number of police agents and officials have been suspended. It is unclear exactly what 'suspended' means and some news articles have used the term 'separation'. If and when the charges are proven, these employees will be permanently removed from duty, always respecting the law, and their human and employment rights. Police spokesman Hector Ivan Mejía referred to "isolation" so that they can't interfere in investigations, but would not name names or the reasons for the suspensions. News reports have variously reported that the list includes 32, 38, 40, and 41 police, including up to nine mid- to high-level officials. Reader comments on the news articles clamored for names and photos of the suspended agents.

Some unknown number of the approximately 40 police could not be served with the written suspension notice on Monday because they requested vacation and the authorities, for some reason, cannot suspend them while they are on vacation. Similarly, some of the agents simply did not report for work on Monday so their notifications could not be served either.

The list has been sent to the Ministerio Público (MP) who has assigned five prosecutors to perform "profound investigations". Human Rights prosecutor Sandra Ponce has expressed concern that the MP wasn't called in by the Ministry of Security to observe the separation process, fearing that could result in legal flaws for which the accused could appeal.

If prosecutors do not find misconduct, the suspensions could still stand because of administrative violations, but there again, the employees are still entitled to the appeals process. The police in question will have 6-9 months to appeal and could be returned to duty as they often have been in the past. Always trying to save face, police spokesman Héctor Iván Mejía insists that the suspensions are a result of some administrative error or omission, not because they have proof of illicit acts. If that was the case, one would wonder why it couldn't be handled internally through normal administrative procedures rather than through investigations by the prosecutors.

El Heraldo reports that another shake-up of higher level officials is in process and that a list of commissioners accused of administrative faults and proposed for suspension is in the hands of President Lobo waiting for signature. Various police on that list are being investigated for illegal enrichment. This was later denied by police officials.

The list

Despite the secrecy, the list was leaked. The following are the suspended police, all of which are said to be from the "Cartel" La Granja police post in Tegucigalpa [in English] except as noted, according to El Libertador. In parenthesis are my comments and alternate spellings of the names.

LISTADO DE POLICÍAS SUSPENDIDOS (list of suspended police):
1. Subcomisionado de Policía Mario René Chamorro Gotay (who was replaced by Barralaga at La Granja, before that served at Los Dolores)
2. Comisario de Policía Einer Maryino Moncada Martínez (Elner; prior chief over La Granja)
3. Comisario de Policía Leonel Osmín Merlo Canales (Kennedy post, Tegucigalpa)
4. Comisario de Policía Nelson Martín Smith Hernández (La Esperanza, Intibuca)
5. Subcomisario de Policía Dorian Sobalvarro Buezo (San Francisco, Tegucigalpa)
6. Inspector de Policía Rosel Armando Nájera Hernández (old criminal charges of kidnapping)
7. Subinspector de Policía Zachary Mauriel Pineda Carbajal (Sachary, Rachary; old criminal charges of homicide, bank robbery)
8. Subinspector de Policía Essaú Gonzales Corea (Gracias, Lempira)
9. Subinspector de Policía Javier Armando Rivera López
10. Clase I de Policía Juan Gabriel Sosa Olmedo
11. Policía Manuel Eduardo Mondragón
12. Policía Eleazar Lorenzo Mejía
13. Policía José Reinaldo Turcios Corea
14. Policía Altair Castro Carrasco
15. Policía Carlos Alexis Sierra Rodríguez
16. Policía Jairo Javier Meza Pérez
17. Policía Miguel Antonio López López
18. Policía Leonel Martínez Castillo
19. Policía Javier Isaac Padilla Núñez
20. Policía Norlan Ariel Rugama Flores
21. Policía Joel Antonio Valladares
22. Policía Mauricio Moreno
23. Policía Gerson Alejandro Cruz Cruz
24. Policía Dennis Saúl Fúnez
25. Policía Miguel Ángel Castillo Ramírez
26. Policía Juan Ángel Zepeda Gonzales
27. Policía José Guadalupe Ordóñez Acosta
28. Policía Carlos David Quevedo García
29. Policía Alex Antonio Rodríguez
30. Policía Mario Iván Martínez Soriano
31. Policía Santos Alexis Morgan Mairena
32. Policía Ricla Wulmara Mendoza Córdova
33. Policía Edwin Francisco Zepeda
34. Policía Carlos Roberto Lagos Lagos
35. Policía Lucio Godoy Reyes
36. Policía Neptalí García Corea
37. Policía Emanuel del Cid Manueles
38. Policía Orlando Ramírez Flores

El Heraldo published the same list, adding that provisionally suspended were also ex-director of DNIC Marco Tulio Palma and Jorge Alberto Barralaga, responsible for giving days off to the four accused murder suspects. EH was also informed that one of the suspended agents was separated after discovering a million-plus lempira bank account. In this much commented upon article, several readers claimed that sub-commissioner Mario René Chamorro Gotay is an honest man and must be on the list by mistake. Chamorro apparently served as chief over La Granja from March 2010 until he was rotated out and replaced by Barralaga at the end of September.

Some of the agents are currently in custody for participation in homicides and bank robberies — though I did not find any crime news articles for any of the names on the list with the exception of two (Pineda Carbajal and Nájera Hernández; more on them later), indicating that authorities might have been able to keep some police-related crimes from the media. Conversely, none of the police agents for which I have reported recent accusations of criminal activity (here, here, and here, in English) were on this list.

Note that for the most part, all of these police were currently or in the past assigned to a few stations in Tegucigalpa, so it doesn't appear that any investigations have yet commenced in other parts of the country, despite authorities claims that all 14,000 police employees will be investigated. Tip: start with the ones who have been accused of crimes rather than diluting and delaying action by trying to investigate all 14,000.

Drug and lie detector tests

Authorities announced that voluntary drug and lie detector tests would be given to all police employees starting with the highest level officials. Authorities state over and over again that they have no legal power to obligate police employees to submit to drug or lie detector tests, just as they similarly state that they have no power to fire police agents accused of crimes, no matter how heinous, unless and until they are found guilty in a court of law. It is certainly hard to believe that employees flipping burgers at Burger King can be required to take drug tests, while police officers carrying guns cannot be.

Reading the Ley Organica de Policia, I don't understand why authorities are claiming that they have no right to subject police agents to drug tests. Article 33, paragraph 12, prohibits "the use of illicit drugs in any form" and gives the directorates the right "to order and apply blood and other tests that scientifically can demonstrate the use of the same." Article 115 states that a member of the national police submitted to a criminal process or disciplinary procedure for a serious offense will be suspended from their functions. Article 123, paragraph 2) describes drug use as a serious offense and paragraph 14) also describes a positive drug test as a serious offense. Article 126 clearly states that police can be fired for any of the following acts which include "1) for noncompliance of violation of any of the obligations or prohibitions established in the law". If there is some loophole elsewhere in the law that requires the police department to continue to provide uniforms and weapons to accused murderers, kidnappers, robbers, and drug addicts, obviously that law should be changed immediately.

Hopefully, these will be serious drug tests. In one La Ceiba laboratory that does drug testing for private companies, job applicants are told to "bring in a urine sample" when they come to the clinic. That sort of testing kind of defeats the purpose, don't you think?

Though much ado was made about testing all police and about the top-level authorities setting an example by voluntarily being the first to take drug tests, only 12 persons were actually tested on Monday. Missing from the list of those top level people tested was Joaquín Mejía Alvarenga, Director of the Preventative Police. On Tuesday, it was announced that 36 unnamed additional officials were drug tested. Forty-eight down and 1,352 to go.

The urine tests will check for cocaine, marihuana, heroin and amphetamines. When asked when basic level police would be tested, National Director of the Police Ricardo Ramírez del Cid said the situation is difficult and the tests are expensive, but that police suspects would be given tests — but again stressing that the tests are voluntary.

On Tuesday, in typical Keystone Kops or upside-down world fashion, the results of the first 12 drug tests were given directly and privately to the individuals, with no results provided to either the MP or police authorities, and of course, with no indication to the media if any of the tests had positive results. So if these individuals had any personal doubts about whether or not they were consuming illegal drugs, now they know. So much for that ruse. Save the taxpayer money. Don't do any more pointless drug tests. There are times that I can't think of anything to say except TIH (this is Honduras) and impunity is going to reign regardless!

Echoing President Lobo and Minister Bonilla, Martínez del Cid went on to say that other evaluations must be gradual and that "in some 10 or 12 years, we are going to have the police that we deserve".

In an interesting turn of events, Ramírez excused himself for not taking the lie detector test as he had planned. He explained that "to apply the lie detector test, a more complex process is required." I don't know if that means that he wasn't prepared to take the test or whether it means that the police organization is not prepared to give lie detector tests. I think the latter.

Police need to work on credibility

Police lose even more credibility by making bold announcements which they and everyone else knows they are completely incapable of following through on (all police stations will be investigated, all police will receive drug and polygraph tests, police department will be purified in six months, peace and tranquility will reign in Honduras in nine months, etc.). These statements are completely belied by the responses to reporters' specific questions. Additionally, though a certain amount of secrecy is required in open investigations, the police have been less than transparent about the extent of the problems. And if investigations are going to continue for 8-10 years as some have? At what point does the public have a right to know?

Many have suggested that congressmen, ministers, judges, prosecutors, and political candidates should be subject to the same tests, though there is no discussion of that ever happening.

From the 'too odd to believed' criminal cops files

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 19:40:00 +0000

Poll: Do you agree or disagree that international organizations supervise the purification of the police?
79% agree, 14% disagree, 7% don't know or no response.
The chart on the right shows the political parties of the respondents who agree.
Image: La Prensa, Honduras

Kidnapper cop

On his day off last Saturday in San Pedro, police agent Adonis Faustino Romero Banegas accelerated to avoid a military road block. A soldier fired a warning shot in the air and Romero stopped further on, but two other suspects in his vehicle fled before soldiers reached his car. Though he tried to use his police position to avoid search, he was caught carrying two weapons without documentation, one of which was verified to have been stolen in 2007. The VIN numbers of the vehicle he was driving had been altered and a complaint was made that he had been lent the vehicle and failed to return it. [all links are in Spanish]

Furthermore, it was discovered that Romero had an unexecuted order of capture against him issued by a Copán court in January 2002 for the crime of kidnapping. The article didn't mention whether he was hired by the police before or after the kidnapping charge or why the police were unable to capture a suspect for 9 years who is on their own payroll. In the initial hearing for the charge of carrying an illegal weapon and abuse of authority, Romero was released by the judge and must voluntarily report to the court periodically until the trial. Apparently the kidnapping warrant was still not executed. "The investigations continue and if he is found culpable, he should be castigated.....", said the police spokesman.

Is this an example of change and police purification that Minister of Security Pompeyo Bonilla and President Pepe Lobo have promised?

Top level narco-cop "investigated" since 2002

In another police exposé, apparently tipped off by a high level official, El Heraldo has exposed massive corruption and criminality of a high-level police officer who has been 'under investigation' by the DLCN (anti-narcotrafficking department of the MP) and the Anti-Organized Crime prosecutor since September 2003. During the 8-year period of 'investigation', not only was the official not criminally charged or even suspended, EH says that the unnamed official has accumulated great wealth and has been promoted from comisario through the upper ranks, and is now head of one of the five directorates of the police department.

In the voluminious report of which EH has a copy, it was shown that the official and a relative of his have ties to organized crime and narcotrafficking through a female relative of narco Manuel Antonio Avilez Durón, who was captured in Panamá in 2002 and extradited to the USA. The investigation began when this official was comisario in Copán, later transferred to Gracias, Lempira, only 45 kilometers away.

Accusations include drug trafficking, including selling drugs out of his own heavily secured and walled house, personally passing on shipments of cocaine and heroin to Guatemalans, transporting drugs from Colón and Olancho to Santa Rosa de Copán, as well as distributing drugs within Copán. Through his police connections, he was also tipped off to operativos, which might help to explain why even when massive amounts of drugs are confiscated, there are almost never any narco suspects captured in Honduras.

Other accusations include that, along with a police chief in Santa Bárbara, he participated in robberies of shipments of goods by truck. His personal vehicle was a F-150 truck originally owned by Avilez Durón. He and his relative have suspicious financial activity that could point to money laundering and illegal enrichment. The investigations also pointed to contacts with "influential persons in the current [at that time] government" as well as involvement in a 12-person gang of auto thieves.

In a response to DLCN in February 2004, Coralia Rivera, then director of the police and now Vice-Minister reporting directly to the top police official, stated that they had knowledge of the situation and that is why he was transferred to a different position.

The case was initially opened in September 2003 under the direction of Julián Arístides González, head of the DLCN, who was assassinated in a drive-by shooting in December 2009 while dropping off his daughter at school. In a new report in 2010, the DLCN gave a summary of the advances in the investigations. It was noted that the official took out large long-term loans, but then paid them off in 3-4 months, and that all three suspects had large bank accounts with suspicious financial activity.

Though not naming the person, EH concludes the article by listing the five commissioners who are the current heads of the five police directoratives. A few days later, Proceso Digital through a source in the president's office, announced that Transit Commissioner Randolfo Paguaga Medina had been suspended [alternately spelled in the news Paguada, Pagoaga, and Pagoada]. That rumor was quickly and firmly denied by police authorities.

Under investigation for 8 years! Not fired, not charged with crimes. Instead transfered here and there spreading the corruption, and then ultimately promoted to one of the highest levels in the police organization.

Minister Bonilla's response

You aren't going to believe this: On a morning talk show on Monday, the day after EH's exposé was published, Minister Pompeyo Bonilla asked El Heraldo to provide him with the investigative report and tell him who the commissioner is because Bonilla doesn't know. "My door is open and when we know, we'll take action in this case." — this despite 8 years of investigation, including stakeouts outside the suspect's home, the detailed information about where he was assigned when, information about his vehicle including his license plate number, and confirmation that Bonilla's number two official was cognizant of the investigation in 2004! If El Heraldo would only tell him who it was, Bonilla promised a "profound investigation" and if anyone has committed "indecorous" or criminal acts.... well, you know the rest of that line. "Indecorous"?

I was going to write that that 'Bonilla disingenuously asked....', but let's call it what it is: 'Bonilla deceitfully asked....'. The seriousness of the police scandal has been in the headlines for a month. Bonilla has promised thorough investigation and purification of criminal cops including at the highest level. There are only two choices here: Either the top cop and his immediate command are completely incompetent or he is being deceitful about what he knows. I guess we'll be looking at another several years of profound investigation until this pops to the limelight again as this unnamed official is obviously one of the 'untouchables'.

Inspector General of the police, César Augusto Somoza, also affirmed that he has no knowledge of any member of the police leadership involved in organized crime.

In an interview with El Heraldo reported on Friday, Minister Bonilla made the amazing comment that he has not even asked his top cops if they are the one in question. Additionally, he says that he has asked for reports from the prosecutor's office, DLCN, the courts, and others but implies that he has not received them yet. He has not spoken directly to DLCN. He basically implies there is nothing he can do until and if the official is charged and tried at which point he "will ask for the official's resignation". Wonder if he will receive it.

When asked directly where were ex-director José Luis Muñoz and the other officials who were replaced on October 31, Bonilla evaded the question by saying, "I haven't had the pleasure of communicating with them in the past days. They are in a condition of availability". When asked about other separations, he blamed the employment laws as preventing him from taking action, adding that the laws protect the rights of a few people at the detriment of the majority of society. He says that he needs the legal tools... but when referring to the law proposed by former Minister Alvarez, Bonilla also states that they can't be dictatorial. He also has been unable to find a diagnostic report about the police department performed by Colombian experts in the past few months.

Is this an example of transparency and police purification that Minister of Security Pompeyo Bonilla and President Pepe Lobo have promised to complete within the next six months? Is this an example of the authorities promises over and over again to the public that they will not cover up for any police officers? Why must whistleblowers leak information to the media in order to for the authorities to admit anything?

Narco police raid or police narco raid

In another one of cases from the 'too-odd-to-be-believed' file, in July of 2009, 12 Tegucigalpa police agents, some of them on vacation and another suspended from duty, traveled to La Mosquitia in the remote state of Gracias a Dios either to a) rob a narco's home of 143 kilos of cocaine (estimated value US $1.1 million) or b) perform a secret police operativo unknown to their supervisors, the local police, prosecutors, the DLCN, or the Minister of Security.

In addition to no one in authority knowing anything about this 'operativo', a few other pesky details were that the raid occurred at 4 am (an illegal hour for such activities), these officers were assigned to areas such as homicide and auto theft, some were on vacation at the time and one was suspended, the cocaine was not turned over to higher authorities but instead was hidden and was being guarded by a civilian, the officers used illegal weapons such as AK-47s and grenades, they stole two boats to transport the drugs upriver, and one of the officers was found hiding out in a hotel room with a kilo of cocaine and two AK-47s.

Neighbors alerted local police to the early morning home invasion by armed strangers. The suspects were later captured by a joint operation of local police authorities, DLCN, DNIC, and navy officials. The ten police could not justify being in the area and had no paperwork authorizing the operativo. They were charged with eleven administrative and criminal offenses, including trafficking of drugs, illegal weapons, and theft of two boats.

Captured were Mario Guillermo Mejía Vargas, head of the Homicide unit, Marvin Mauricio Zavala, sub-chief of the auto theft unit, Karil Alexis Romero Maldonado, Wilmer Fiallos, Josué David Villalobos, Jorge Luis Borjas Valladares, Miguel Ángel Cerna y Víctor Hernán Ortiz. The other two, injured in the operativo/robbery, were subinspector Juan Francisco Sosa (who was at the time suspended from duty) and agent Carlos Díaz, who were sent to the capital for treatment and later escaped.

The operativo was supposedly unilaterally ordered by José Francisco Murillo López, then commissioner of DNIC (criminal investigation), who was initially suspended and investigated for the suspicious anti-drug operative. He was returned to duty in November 2009. He said that he had only sent the sent the agents to gather information, not perform an operativo, and he produced a memorandum to that effect, some believe after the fact.

Julián Arístides González, now deceased director of the DLCN, described the entire situation as totally irregular and said it was evidence that the DNIC was infiltrated by narcotraffickers.

At their initial hearing, they were ordered to prison pending trial. That decision was confirmed by the appeals court in May 2010, and the Supreme Court in February 2011. This was celebrated as one of the few times that the justice system seemed to work against corrupt cops.

The case seemed pretty clear, but alas, in March 2011 the La Ceiba sentencing court chose to believe option b) and not only absolved the suspects from any wrongdoing, but ordered them back to police duty. Police authorities were able to hide from the public the fact that these agents have been back at work since May 2011.

This may have been around the same time that former Minister Oscar Alvarez became more vocal, but still vague, about police corruption and judges forcing the department to reinstate bad cops. In September, he proposed a law which would allow the Minister the discretion to fire police officers. He was asked to resign shortly after that. Both President Lobo and Minister Bonilla are blaming him for the poor administration within the department.

From the President

Meanwhile, President Pepe Lobo tells the public that the police will be purified within six months and that we'll all be living in peace and tranquility in nine months. In somewhat of a contradiction, Lobo stated to media directors in a meeting on Friday that "We stand practically in zero on the police investigations; we don't have the capacity to investigate".

Cartoon titled "Times of horror", by Dario Banegas, La Prensa.

Continuing police crime, November 25

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 23:22:00 +0000

Funeral of 8-year-old Tony Jafet Rodriguez
Photo: La Prensa, Honduras

"My son was playing on his bicycle in the middle of a gun fight. There was nothing I could do to save his life!" cried the grieving father at the funeral of 8-year-old gun shot victim Tony Jafet Rodríguez Espinoza. He said that his son was in the street when three vehicles suddenly pulled up, surrounding the child, and began shooting. He ran out among the bullets to rescue his child but it was too late.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In La Ceiba, a Tuesday afternoon shoot-out between police and 10 suspects, some dressed as police left four suspected gang members dead. Also killed during the crossfire were an innocent 16-year-old and 8-year-old Tony. Local TV news reported that a 4-year-old was run over, but that was not confirmed in later reports. At least one other civilian and a police agent were injured. Several auto accidents resulted from the police chase from near the port road on to the east boulevard through several colonias, including Lempira, Sierra Pina, Alvarado, Bella Vista, and Carmen Elena and on south to the highway. In Carmen Elena, muros of several houses were marked by bullet holes. Suspects abandoned their vehicle and stole another near the Texaco station on the highway near the Saopin bridge, where the highway was blocked and another shoot-out occurred. Two other gang members were captured in a house where police discovered police vests, explosives, and the body of another gang member.

One of the suspect victims had been detained for several weeks after being involved in another police-gang shoot out lasting about 6 hours in colonia Miramar — but he had been recently released. Police appear to be planning to close many open cases by claiming this group of La Ceiba gang members were responsible for everything from attacking police stations in San Pedro Sula to bank robberies, murders, pawn shop robberies, assaulting other businesses, auto thefts, etc. Tidy.

Diario Tiempo reports that Operación Relámpago has not commenced in La Ceiba, which has the highest murder rate in the country and an average of three business robberies per day. Police road blocks, however, are a daily occurence so at least we can feel secure that everyone is driving with a current driver's license.

There has not been one hint of police accepting responsibility for the innocent lives lost, injuries, or property damange as a result of reckless and irresponsible police actions. A few days later, four police were seriously injured in another reckless chase through the streets of La Ceiba.

Continuing the police-involved incidents since last week

In Saba, a vehicle in which three young people were returning from a baby shower was chased and then shot at by police agents Odis Sabio y Roberto Ferman Paisano. At least three bullets passed through the vehicle and a 25-year-old woman passenger was shot in the back. The agents, along with subinspector José Muñoz and agents Junior Vallecillo, José Herrera, and Javier Tercero, initially refused to transport the injured victim to a hospital but later relented. Friends and family arriving at the hospital were indignant and demanded action against the police. Sabio and Ferman were charged and the other four are being held. A family member who wouldn't give his name for fear of repisals said, "Here we have more fear of the police than the criminals".

Police agent Wilmer Alexander Zavala was presented to the court for the October murder of a 16-year-old in the capital. Judges ordered a "judicial detention" pending the initial hearing scheduled for November 28. Zavala confronted two minors in the street, grabbed one by the neck and shot him causing instant death. The other boy fled. The police report gives no motive for the murder.

Twenty armed men, at least two of whom were dressed as police, assaulted a house in El Mogote, Yoro, in what police called a dispute over territory between two criminal bands. The shootout lastest for more than an hour beginning at 5:15 am on November 22. Four people died and two others were injured. A survivor said that the confrontation was a result of a 21-year feud between families. The witnesses said that the authorities are involved with the other family and that even a helicopter was flying over their house.

Miguel Ángel Perdomo Pineda, a soldier in the Honduran armed forces, was arrested for a 2006 murder in La Campera, Lempira, on an arrest order that was issued in November 2006. It is not known how he was able to enlist in the army with an outstanding murder warrant.

Salvadoran trucks drivers have denounced that they are extorted by police
El Jicarito, Choluteca, and Santa Ana, Francisco Morazán, and required to pay up to US $100 to police continue transporting goods through Honduras. A businessman in the area also confirmed that Salvadoran tourists often complain about being extorted by the police for bribes.

Police sub-official José Lázaro Herrera Portillo with 18 years service was assassinated in La Paz. Ex-DNIC agent Josué Herminio Medina was assassinated and then his body was burned inside a vehicle left in an area of Santa Barbara known for dumping bodies.

Diario Tiempo reports that police have a report showing that Comisario Fredesbindo Bonilla Bustillo, who was kidnapped and assassinated in August, had only hours previously denounced the corruption and band of criminals within La Granja police station. On September 1, authorities previously accused gang members of the crime.

US police captured Honduran ex-subcomisario Jairo López Méndez who was wanted for a 2008 L. 7 million bank robbery in Gracias, Lempira. López is thought to have been the leader of a band of robbers, to whom he provided police uniforms. In October 2008, police decommissioned several vehicles registered in his name and indicated that he was being investigated for several crimes including paid assassination. According to US authorities, López also has connections with the criminal group Los Zetas of Mexico. Another police agent along with 10 civilians were already serving time for the bank robbery. In an interesting note, the unit in which López served in San Pedro was temporarily closed down and all the agents were investigated and reassigned to "purify" the police in 2008. At that time, as now, police assured the public that there was not the least intention to tolerate any illegal act from the highest commissioner to the lowest level of police.

Three police assigned to Operación Xatruch in Bajo Aguan were detained for drinking alcohol during work hours. Their weapons were decommissioned but there was no mention of charges being filed.

Stopped for speeding, a solider, Pedro Gabriel Mejía Carías, assigned to the honor guard of the President in Tegucigalpa, was detained in the middle of the night in San Pedro Sula with a M-16 and a 9 mm gun, both property of the state for which he had no documentation. Authorities were investigating what he was doing in the north of the country. He was released the next day by prosecutors after military officials presented the weapon documentation. Interestingly, a government email clarification was sent out in which the Honor Guard denounces the actions of the police, particularly the chief in San Pedro, for reporting this to the media, stating that Mejía was on official duty in San Pedro, an assignment to protect an unnamed dignitary. Odd.

Interpol agent Allan Benítez Valle, who was suspected of assisting a Colombian in exporting US $200,000 via the San Pedro airport, was released by judges for lack of evidence in the initial hearing of the charge of money laundering.

Antonio Alvarez Izaguirre, member of the Cobra unit, was accused of pawning his police weapon. The agent was released by the court after the initial hearing whereupon he angrily threatened to come looking for the news photographer if his photo was published in the newspaper.

Tegucigalpa police agent Luis Henrique Pineda Castillo, assigned to Los Dolores, along with two civilian, was captured in the act of extorting a citizen. The case has been sent to the prosecutors.

La Kennedy, another pus-filled police station

La Tribuna published an exposé of the Kennedy police station in Tegucigalpa in which a criminal "mafia" of police agents is run by a police authority known as El Diablo (the devil). After publishing the original story about El Diablo, Tribuna has received dozens of citizens complaints and information about police extortion of "impuesto de guerra" (war tax), outright robbery of residents' money and cellphones, involvement with gangs and drug houses, auto thefts, and up to murders and disappearances of young people who have been "captured" by the police, only to show up dead later.

Residents of the area claim that they have witnessed murders and recognized police as the assassins. In one case, several witnesses watched as a local police removed a weapon and other evidence from a dead body before DNIC investigators arrived. In another case, police stole a victim's car and the following day, he received a call saying he could have it back if he paid L. 80,000. Witnesses even report cases of the police killing other police agents who didn't cooperate. Human rights groups have denounced the Kennedy police post but no investigations have occurred. One resident who did go to complain to the chief in charge that day was told to get out there if he didn't want to disappear. Residents feel defenseless and impotent.

As much as authorities would like us to believe that there are "only a few bad apples" within only a few police stations, that is obviously not the case. A "bad apple" might be careless in his duties or ask for bribe at a transit stop. Murderers, extortionists, auto thieves, drug dealers, and kidnappers are not "bad apples"; they are criminals.

The latest from authorities

Authorities have announced the suspension of 32 police agents, including two comisarios and one sub-commissioner for supposed illicit acts. No names or duty locations were given to reporters. Similarly no information was given as to whether these were civil or criminal acts, or whether they were related to the 100 or so Belén and La Granja agents who refused to report to the Cobras or related to older cases. For that matter, the public does not even know what exactly is meant by 'suspension' since in other cases that only meant that the agents were transferred to another duty assignment and are still wearing uniforms and carrying guns. This is not fair to the public who has a genuine fear of the police. They have a right to know and the government has a moral responsibility to let the public know. This is not transparency.

Former police spokesman Silvio Inestroza told Diario El Tiempo that two of the arrested murder suspects, Santos Arnulfo Padilla Rodríguez and Wilfredo Figueroa Velásquez have been investigated for hired assasination, kidnapping extortion, vehicle theft, and other organized crime activities — yet they continued to wear the uniform and carry guns, which they used to murder two university students.

Hundreds of police agents are "stampeding" from the department, some because they are embarrassed about what is happening and others because they fear being caught. This is primarily in the metropolitan areas where so much corruption and scandal has been exposed. The police were already short-handed because of so many agents under investigation.

National Director of the Police, Ricardo Ramírez del Cid, made the incredible comment that they are transferring agents from one location to another to purify the police. Police spokesman Héctor Iván Mejía said that the police organization is infiltrated by criminals, but went on to say that purification should be gradual. But nothing shows the hopelessness of the situation quite like this interview with Minister of Security Pompeyo Bonilla.

Repeating what they have always done in the past shows that authorities don't even understand the definition of the word 'purification', much less have any idea of how to go about it. What they actually are doing is systematically contaminating other areas by assigning dirty cops to them, not to mention putting lives and property of the public knowingly at risk — all because the collective government ego cannot admit just how out of control the police are.

Juan Arnaldo Hernandez, member of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) committee studying the police corruption issue, reiterated yesterday, "The police are the most dangerous criminal group in the country". The UNAH committee is proposing international intervention, saying that the police are incapable of investigating and purifying themselves.

Why report this depressing stuff?

I think it is important to compile and document how serious, invasive, and continuing the problem of police corruption is in Honduras. Hondurans needs international help; it's not going to be solved from within the same corrupt police department. Local online news includes articles almost every day of new incidents — I can't keep up! — but coverage in English has been slim and inaccurate. The fact that so many incidents are still occurring, at a time when the police are under the microscope, and at a time when Operación Relámpago is in full swing, shows that bad police have no fear of punishment and that empty threats of purification have not slowed them down. Criminal police acts are not only occurring in the "Cartels" of Belén and La Granja as authorities would like us to believe, but all over the country.

I know that I promised to show you that criminal police and police corruption is nothing new. I will do that, but other things have come up in the meantime. I should never say, "in the next article"!

Related articles:

Shake up in Honduras police

Police crime and corruption

Weapons, weapons, who's got the weapons?

Honduras police corruption continues, November 21

The two murders that brought this scandal to the forefront: Two university students

And for more on the out-of-control crime situation in Honduras: crime

Threats against the media

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 22:55:00 +0000

Some of the headlines the president doesn't want us to see

La Tribuna published a public denunciation of police intimidation and threats:

On November 20, a member of La Tribuna's investigative team driving a motorcycle was followed by a vehicle from which two shots were fired at him in Tegucigalpa. He accelerated and was able to flee from his pursuers.

On November 18, a reporter received a call at the office from someone who identified himself as a police agent from the colonia Kennedy station and asked the name of the reporter who covers crime, because, he said, they had just captured someone and wanted the Tribuna to cover it (something which the police had never done before). The agent would not give his name but insisted in knowing the name of the crime reporter. The agent finally hung up when the reporter refused to give the name.

On November 22, a Tribuna photographer was threatened by Cobra agent Mario Antonio Alvarez Izaguirre, accused of losing (or pawning as this article reports) his police weapon. The agent was released by the court after a 3-hour initial hearing. When the photographer tried to take his photo, Alvarez threatened, "Remember that I am free. If you publish my photo, tomorrow I will look for you...."

Also, a Tribuna editor was detained in front of the Las Brisas station on the nights of November 9 and 11. When questions led to him identifying himself as an Tribuna employee, the police became hostile, made him exit his vehicle, to search for weapons. They held him for hours, supposedly to make telephone consultations before they let him leave. Later, the editor was followed to work and again in the afternoon. He was also followed on various other occasions.

La Tribuna stated that they will hold government authorities responsible for any harm suffered by their employees.

Two San Pedro radio journalists who have been exposing police corruption have also reported receiving telephone death threats.

Reporters and editors of El Heraldo, Televicentro, Radio Globo and Globo TV have also reported being the objects of intimidation and physical and death threats in the past few days. A Heraldo editor was also followed by two people, one of them dressed as police. The license plate of the vehicle was found to be registered to a different car, which was decommissioned by police in an organized crime raid. Twenty journalists have been murdered in the past two years.

The Human Rights prosecutor, Sandra Ponce, will be opening an investigation. Commissioner of Human Rights (CONADEH) Ramón Custodio has denounced threats and acts of intimidation against reporters and editors to international jouralist orgranizations.

The following day, La Tribuna's November 24 editoral implied that it is likely that their complaint will be archived into the same circular file as all of the other citizens' complaints. The editorial pointed out the the Tribuna manager had suffered an attempt on his life a few months ago in which nine bullets were fired at his car — and to date, the case remains pending, unsolved, uninvestigated, with no clues and nobody knows anything.

No word has been issued yet about President Lobo's meeting this afternoon with national media directors.

Red Alert! - meddling with the Honduran media?

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:47:00 +0000

Porfirio Lobo, President of Honduras

Proceso Digital announced today that Honduran President Pepe Lobo has summoned all directors of the major Honduran media to come to a meeting on Friday to talk about those "national themes that have caused controversy in the country".

If Lobo was going to congratulate the media on their excellent and thorough coverage of the criminal police scandals and the important role they have played in impelling exposure which will hopefully result in the purification of the rottenly corrupt and deadly police department, he likely would have done that in a press conference.

More likely he is going to suggest a gag order among the media, possibly telling them that they are threatening national security or trying to destabilize the government (favorite claims of authoritarian administrations). Maybe he'll just ask them to "give him some time" and he'll take care of everything personally thereby buying time until the media goes on to the next scandal and the exhausted public forgets about this one. Maybe there will be implied threats of possible charges of interfering with investigations or defamation, which is a criminal offense in Honduras for which "the truth" is not a legal defense, and for which other corrupt government officials have sued reporters and newspapers for millions of dollars in the past. Maybe there will be carrots dangled in the form of government advertising contracts. Will we ever know? I hope so.

The public is told weekly by various government leaders, up to and frequently including President Lobo himself, that other individuals and organizations within and outside the government are corrupt. Presidents, congressmen, judges, prosecutors, police, ministers, directors, generals, heads of La ENEE and Hondutel, government 'oversight committees', businessmen, attorneys, unions, teachers, NGOs, and "the rich" in general are all regularly smeared with the muddy brush of corruption directly from government officials' own lips in press conferences. (If I've left out any group, it was inadvertent. No one in Honduras escapes from these vague claims.) These same officials, including President Lobo, never ever get around to naming names or filing official denuncias about this corruption of which they always claim to have concrete information and should have a moral duty to report.

So the odd thing is, the main difference between the "demonizing" that the media has been doing and the "demonizing" that the administration has been doing is that the media has presented facts and figures to back up what they say whereas the administration only tries to make themselves look better by claiming everyone else is worse.

I see the Honduran media as the only possible hope of getting some resolution to the police corruption scandal — which the government is obviously trying to downplay — though of course, the media gets its own accusations of corruption and financial influence as well.

The government is a major advertiser in the Honduran media, probably the biggest after the cell phone companies, and it has often been reported that many journalists accept payment for covering or not covering news or for putting a preferred slant on it. Channel 10 news is currently showing an incredible number of lengthy government commercials, more than I've ever seen in the past, including during the "Cuarta Urna" media blast of Mel Zelaya in 2009.

The national congress, Secretary of Health, La ENEE (government owned electric monopoly), Hondutel (government owned telephone company), Secretary of Tourism, and the "Government of Unity" are all major advertisers, who use tens of millions of taxpayer money to buy commercials to tell us what a wonderful job they are doing, while the majority of the population lives in poverty and malnutrition, without electricity, running water, or any kind of decent health care, missing half or more of the school year, and with no hope of finding a job much less taking a vacation to Roatan from it.

All of this is in addition to not one, but two, dedicated government TV channels in which one-sided propaganda and political campaigning is blasted to public for 16-24 hours a day. These channels are even blatantly used for unfair political campaigning and demonizing political opponents and those who don't agree with whatever current actions the President and his minions in Congress are trying to take. Equal time for opposing opinions? Open debate of the issues? Forget about it! No, Lobo is using the government station in the same offensive way that Zelaya did, to manipulate the public.

On top of all that advertising and dedicated propaganda channels, both President Lobo and full time presidential candidate Juan Orlando Hernández (who happens to also be President of the Congress in his spare time) abusively take over the airwaves of all television and radio stations in incessant, vapid, and patronizing cadenas in which we are told that crime is already reduced by 90% or 60% or 50% or "to almost zero" in one area or another, that "el pueblo already feels so much safer than we did before because of Operación Relámpago", how we must not be naughty by demonizing the police because of a few bad apples, and that the rights of bad cops must be respected.

During the meeting of ministers in which the media meeting was announced, Lobo also announced that his government will start a campaign and an international forum where they will "expound on the defense of freedom of expression versus the defense of economic interests" — whatever that means.

We'll see what happens on Friday. I have faith that the Honduran media won't be intimidated.

Honduras police corruption continues, November 21

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:25:00 +0000

Honduras police purification
Cartoon by Dario Banegas, La Prensa, Honduras

Exposure of criminal cops and other police scandal continues in the news — at least for now — despite efforts by President Lobo to downplay the seriousness of the situation by chastising the public to not "demonize the police" and by vastly overstated claims about the effectiveness of Operación Relámpago [English].

[Note: all links are in Spanish unless otherwise noted.]

Police crimes in the news

Various individuals dressed as police abducted two young people from their home in El Hato, Tegucigalpa.

Witnesses state that two brothers, ages 15 and 17, were taken by suspects dressed as police and driving a police vehicle in La Lima, Cortés. Hours later their bodies were discovered in a sugar cane field, murdered by several shots to the head.

Two suspects dressed as police stopped a young driver claiming that his vehicle was stolen. They were later joined by two more suspects dressed as police. After police confiscated his belongings and prepared to steal the car, the victim yelled that it was an assault. One of the uniformed police told the others "kill that son of a bitch ..." so the young man launched himself into a ditch and then ran away. The thieves took the car but abandoned it before a road block. Hours later it was recovered by the robbery unit of the DNIC.

A policeman was detained in Danlí driving a vehicle reported stolen in Guatemala. Oris Medina Urbina said that he bought the car and can produce papers to prove that.

Subinspector José Manuel Lagos Luna was detained when driving a Toyota Prado reported as stolen in El Salvador. Luna stated that the vehicle belonged to an official assigned in Tegucigalpa. Police are giving no further information.

Two police agents were fired for asking for payment from citizens before attending to a police matter. No details about the circumstances were given and no explanation as to why they were able to fire these agents when generally police authorities claim that "bad cops" cannot be fired unless and until they are convicted. The cases were not sent to MP for prosecution.

Shortly after the detention of a Colombian attempting to transport a suitcase containing US $609,000 in cash to Panamá at the San Pedro airport, Alan Benítez Valle, a subcommissioner of Interpol, was detained under the suspicion that he had allowed another person to pass through with a suitcase containing US $200,000. During the decommission of the money, a prosecutor threatened reporters and photographers that he would take their cameras and break them.

The above sampling shows that bad cops have no fear, despite authorities claims to be purifying the police department and despite the claims that Operation Relampágo is reducing crime significantly.

US Border Patrol agents are working in operativos with Honduran border police in Trujillo, Sabá, San Pedro Sula, La Lima, and El Progreso, none of which are "border" towns of Honduras or the USA.

Finally, La Tribuna reported that 114 agents (of the original 176 reported to be under investigation) [English] removed from the "Cartels" of Belén and La Granja (police stations) are undergoing retraining and receiving motivational chats. The agents will be reassigned to other locations when the chief decides they are ready. Authorities are being very closed mouth about this. Neither this nor any other news reports give any mention of investigations or results and no clue as to what happened to the other 62 agents. Police authorities have issued no further information. Poof! In an instant we've gone from deeply imbedded criminal cop rings, to 114 born again clean cops. If only it were that easy.

More unsolved high profile murders

The body of police agent José Efraín Claros Benítez, assigned to the Belén unit, was identified after 8 days in the morgue. The article does not give a cause of death or indicate whether he was one of the original Belén officers or one of the recent replacements.

Ex-Cobra agent José Paulo Hernández was assassinated in San Pedro by three suspects in a pickup who fled the scene. He was not robbed.

No arrests have been made in the November 7 drive-by assasination of noted attorney Judith Aleman, her driver, and secretary. Reports of video from nearby security cameras may have provided some clues but the police have issued no official statements as to the status of the investigation. Attorney Aleman was reported to have denounced corrupt judges in the past.

In the courts

Santos Arnulfo Padilla Rodríguez, one of the escaped police agents, along with two other policemen, were previously tried in December 2010 for the kidnapping of a North American and his wife and the theft of their vehicle. The case was dismissed and all three suspects were released because the victims did not show up at court to testify — because they had received death threats from the accused. Amazingly, Padilla was still working for the police in October 2011 when he alledgedly was involved in the police abduction and killing of the two university students [English].

Víctor Manuel Zelaya Suazo, accused of pawning police weapons in his custody, was ordered to be held in prison and suspended from his police job, but Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla states that only one witness appeared and that Zelaya could be let free in days if the others don't appear to give their testimony. No mention was made whether the witnesses were receiving any sort of protection or whether they committed any irregularities by pawning the stolen weapons.

A Tegucigalpa police officer is currently on trial for the 2010 attempted murder of a bus driver. The bus apparently grazed a police vehicle and kept going. Police agent Luis Enrique Pineda chased the bus and alledgedly shot the driver.

Magistrate Jacobo Calix says that 26 judges were removed during 2009-2010. Some were dismissed for being denounced for acts of corruption or for granting substitute measures (release on bail)rather than incarceration pending trial , which is prohibited by law in organized crime cases. About a year ago, the Congress emitted a decree that only the President of the Supreme Court had the power to name or remove judges rather than the full 15-member court. Since that time, Calix says there have been irregularities in the appointment and removal of judges, including a judge who should have been removed but was arbitrarily given a suspension of 3 months. Some of those appointed to the judiciary failed to pass the selection process involving a competency examination but were appointed anyway and have been allowed another opportunity to retake the test. He reported that the Civil Court in Tegucigalpa includes at least three judges who failed the examination but are still presiding and that two of them are the most denounced judges in the system.

In what La Tribuna calls "a slap in the face for freedom of the press", a tribunal of three judges, one of them a former DNIC agent, aquitted three DNIC agents of abuse of power and illegal detention of a La Tribuna reporter who was taken into custody in February 2009 because police agents were annoyed that he was photographing an accident scene. The reporter was intimidated by holding a gun to his head, assaulted, and thrown into the back of a police vehicle then continued to be illegally detained at the police station even after the prosecutor ordered his release. The judges noted in their decision that the reporter was exercising his journalistic activities wearing socks and sandals. (Bad dress is justification for police assault?)

Within the upper police ranks

The MP (prosecutor's office) has subpoenaed the top police authorities to determine whether there were irregularities which could result in criminal responsibility in the release of the four suspects or other irregular aspects of the investigation of the murders of two university students. Unfortunately, the Human Rights Fiscal seems to be focusing on the premature release of their names rather than the physical release of the police agents. Since the agents were in custody of the police, releasing the names did not tip them off to flee.

Commissioner of the National Police José Ramírez del Cid arrived to give his formal declaracion accompanied by more than 20 armed police and an attorney. Were they there to guard him or to intimidate the prosecutors?

After only two months in that position, official police spokesman Silvio Inestroza was replaced with Héctor Iván Mejía, who had previously served as spokesperson. Inestroza was rotated to Inspector General of the special investigation services unit (DNSEI). El Heraldo predicts that there will be other changes in the police leadership, even though it has only been 15 days since the last shakeup. EH reports that there was dissastisfaction within the National Internal Security Commission (CONASIN) with the recent nominations. Sources state that the Minister of Security has submitted a list of five commissioners to the MP (prosecutors) to confirm whether or not there are any criminal investigations against them.

Nothing new

As shocking as all of this and my previous article show the situation is, individual and organized criminal acts committed by police are nothing new. In fact an exposé of criminal cops in the very same "Cartel de Belén" police unit was reported at least as far back as 2007 and was allowed by authorities to continue until 2011. In the next article, I'll show that the authorities have known and done virtually nothing for many years as police scandal after scandal have been reported and later swept under the rug with a complete lack of transparency from the government as to the danger in which the public had been placed.

For more on crime and police scandal in Honduras, click the "crime" topic below.

Weapons, weapons, who's got the weapons?

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:20:00 +0000

Weapons in police custody
Photo: El Heraldo, Honduras

"If you can't hide it, confuse it"

The multiple cases of 'missing' police-owned and confiscated weapons just gets more and more confusing with contradictory statements and reports. El Heraldo stated that the Anti-Organized Crime Prosecutor has known since 2008 about the theft of 3,000 weapons in custody of the Cobras but has done nothing to bring those responsible to justice.

[Note: all links are to articles in Spanish unless otherwise noted.]

El Heraldo's confidential informant says that the police slogan is "That which can not be hidden must be confused." Authorities seem to be adhering very nicely to that slogan. [Cartoon entitled "Guard your silence" by Dario Banegas, La Prensa.]

Later reports about the 3,000 weapons said that those weapons are or were in the custody of the Honduran armed forces, not the police, disputing an official report of the disappearance from police custody which was reported on in detail, and begging the question as to why the prosecutors would have an open case if the weapons were safely in the custody of the military. An unnamed military official initially responded with the strangely vague comment, "In effect, yes, there are some 2,500 AK-47s in the bodegas of the armed forces", not verifying whether or not they are the same weapons in question or what might have happened to the other 500.

El Heraldo said that the official military statement was being worked on until late hours November 15 despite the fact that El Heraldo broke the story on November 7 and the military to date had made no statement about the weapons, almost as if they were unaware that they did have custody or possibly because the 'solution' to the 'problemita' had not yet been developed.

Finally, about noon on November 16, Communicado No. 04 was posted online in which they briefly verify that records show that in December 2007, they took custody of 1,615 AK-47s in bad condition from the police, again with no mention of which weapons these were or what might have happened to the other 1,400 weapons if they were part of the missing 3,000. Police confiscate arsenals of weapons virtually every month in raids in Honduras which could easily be substituted for other weapons.

UN called it a farce

In 2003, an estimated 3,000 prohibited arms were 'bought back' for L.1,000 (about US $53) by the police under a United Nations sponsored program in order to get them out of circulation. These included other arms in addition to AK-47s but there is no report of exactly how many weapons were bought back, what type they were, or who was paid. Julieta Castellanos, who worked with the UN weapons destruction program in Honduras, says that she knows the weapons were not destroyed as required by the decree.

Castellanos said that a UN team arrived in 2004 to witness the destruction of weapons as required by the program but the UN representative declared "the entire process was a farce" when police presented them with rusty pieces of weapons and chatarra (scrap metal) which were obviously not the weapons bought from the public. Both a police official and a prosecutor have verified that the majority of weapons bought in this program were in good condition. As a result, the UN only funded one million lempiras (approximately US $53,000) of the program.

Apparently in this case and at least one other, the inventory records themselves are missing, too, so there is no way to know which weapons are in the custody of the military or whether they are the same chatarra presented to the UN for destruction.

More attempts to confuse and confabulate

Ex-commissioner of the National Police, José Luis Muñoz Licona, initially denied any knowledge of a theft of weapons and then assured other reporters that in his administration there was no robbery of arms from the police, referring to the recent scandal in which 300 weapons and 300,000 projectiles were stolen from the police. Then to cover all the bases, he said that the quantities were exaggerated, that it all happened in the past, and that there was no recent report, a statement which disputes the written report to which the media has had access and the statements of other officials that Muñoz had been informed of the August 10, 2011 investigation report. Confronted with that information, Muñoz then went on to say that there was a report, but it hadn't been verified, the investigation was not concluded, it is still in process so he couldn't confirm it. Former Minister of Security Oscar Alvarez also states that he was never notified by Muñoz of the existence of this report. In a different article, Muñoz stated that he had informed Alvarez about the report of which he had no knowledge. Confused yet?

Julieta Castellanos qualified Muñoz's comments as an attempt to confuse the people and smear the entire state. Worried about her own security based on the information she has made public in the vast police corruption scandal, Castellanos went on to say that she is not the only person in possession of the information and that they will reveal more facts directly to the intervention committee when it is established. She also commented that she has heard from other mothers whose children were killed in the same manner as her son and that they were threatened by the police to not file denuncias (complaints).

More and more weapon irregularities

Other weapons have been loaned to judges, prosecutors, and other officials for their personal protection. In 2007, 152 of 186 weapons stolen by a "high level official" were located in Nicaragua to be shipped to a South American country. About 40 weapons were stolen from the police training academy. Prosecutors have custody of some 80 police weapons because they are "in the process of" bringing charges against police for crimes of murder, robbery, etc. In 2007, it was reported that more than 950 weapons had been stolen in past few years from the Supreme Court evidence room [English].

In another weapons case, a 2010 TSC audit of the ministry of security for the period of 2006-2010 showed that ownership of 65 police-issued weapons have been illegally registered in the names of individuals, including police officials. On July 5, 2010, a response was received from the Minister of Security promising an "exhaustive investigation", however, because there are no records of who was responsible for custody of these weapons, it was impossible to hold any functionaries or employees responsible.

Even Coralia Rivera, appointed only two weeks ago to the number two spot in the Ministry of Security was charged but ultimately absolved for allegedly ordering the alteration of arms in police custody in 2002 so that the weapons could not be identified or tested as evidence in the extrajudicial executions of 50 people. The case remains unsolved and in impunity. We can presume that the 50 murders remain unsolved as well since the weapons could not be used as evidence.

Tight lips

Director General of the National Police, Ricardo Ramírez del Cid, says that he can give no information about any investigations in the hands of the prosecutors. Prosecutors, of course, can give out no information about cases they are in the process of investigating. Police also can give no information about any cases that they themselves are investigating, so as long as these investigations remain open — for years and years or perpetually, as they nearly always do — we can expect that the only information the media will attain will be from confidential sources. Ramírez del Cid also stated the Minister of Security Pompeyo Bonilla has ordered audits of arms and other logistics in all of the police facilities to see if there have been any irregularities and to take corrective measures.

In other weapons news, General René Arnoldo Osorio Canales announced that the Honduras military would be purchasing some unnamed amount of assault weapons from Israel and the USA to replace the current weapons which have served their useful life. The quantity was not named because of "national security". The general also confirmed that a military official was in prison for theft of weapons, giving no further details. He assured reporters that the unusable weapons would be destroyed, but left himself an out by saying that some could serve as spare parts for other weapons still being used. Here we go again: weapons, weapons, who's got the weapons?

Gag order

Possibly as a result of all the police leaks to the media, a memorandum was posted in police facilities indicating that the Minister of Security Pompeyo Bonilla has prohibited giving information to the media. The only case in which police agents may speak is to limit their comments to "the national police are working for the benefit of the Honduran population". [Click photo to enlarge.]

Summary of recent news:

Missing some or all of the 3,000 weapons bought back from citizens in 2003
186 weapons stolen, 152 later appeared in Nicaragua
40 weapons stolen from the police training academy
300 weapons and 300,000 projectiles stolen from the Cobra unit
20 weapons stolen from the Belén police bodega, 12 found in pawn shops
32 weapons stolen from prosecutor's evidence storage
950 weapons stolen from Supreme Court evidence storage [English]
Unknown origin of the 1,615 damaged AK-47s in military custody
Unknown amount of weapons stolen from the military
Unknown amount of weapons loaned to government officials
Unknown amount of weapons possibly sold to privately security companies
Unknown amount of illegal weapons simply returned to criminals [English]
Unknown number or location of confiscated weapons
Unknown number of ex-police still in possession of their police-issued weapons
Unknown number of criminally accused police still on duty and carrying weapons

But one simple fact to remember is that if the police don't know how many weapons they have, they can't possibly know how many have been stolen. Another is that we can not assume that the media has been able to dig out every case of stolen weapons in government custody. Most of these cases have only been confirmed by authorities after exposure in the news.

Conclusion:

The police and military have been highly successful at covering up and confusing massive and continuing thefts of weapons to the point that it is obvious that no amount of auditing or investigating will ever be able to determine how many weapons have been stolen or to hold anyone responsible for the thefts.

After all, this is the same government that hasn't even been able to hold anyone responsible for the theft of narcoplane stolen from a guarded military base.

Police crime and corruption

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:31:00 +0000

Poll: How much credibility do the police have for you?
None, 85%; Little, 13%; Much, 2%
Images: Diario El Tiempo, Honduras

[All links are in Spanish unless otherwise noted]

Last Friday, police spokesman Silvio Inestroza said that he was confident that many of the 100 or so police agents missing from La Granja police station had not reported to the command of Cobra unit for investigation and special retraining because they are sick, on their days off, or on vacation. Half of those who did report were currently off for the weekend. The chief of the Cobras stated that is normal because they are not in a condition of detention and are entitled to their salaries and days off. Director Carlos Aguilera Mendoza stated that the high authorities weren't sure whether the agents will return on Monday.

Interestingly, no mention was made in the news this week about whether or not the missing officers reported to the Cobra unit on Monday. These are part of the 176 police agents erroneously reported by international media as having been "arrested".

The "Cartels" de Belén and La Granja

El Heraldo's investigative unit has exposed another putrid police district which they call the "Cartel de Belén". Belén is one of the largest police districts in Tegucigalpa and covers an area with many illegal drug, weapons, and sex businesses as well as 'chop shops' where stolen cars are dismantled. In order to avoid problems with the police, both illegal and legal businesses such as taxi stands pay an impuesto de guerra to police.

Through access to intelligence reports, El Heraldo connects the murder on Tuesday of police agent Juan Carlos García Flores with his "violation of the police code". García is said to have reported by name an intermediate police official in La Granja who pays L.100,000 per month (about US $5,200) to a higher authority within the police in order to keep his job. It's an exorbitant amount considering that base pay for an entry-level police agent is about US $320 per month, but easily accumulated through the "war tax" and by getting cuts of extortions and other illegal activities. Additional, El Heraldo reports that there is an established fee for returning confiscated weapons to criminals rather than officially reporting them.

One report indicated that patrol vehicles were followed and police agents were observed unable to even stand up after leaving known drug houses. The report establishes that corrupt Belén agents have to pay L.180,000 (about US $9,500) to a higher official to maintain their jobs due to that area being more lucrative than La Granja.

Police have not found the four missing police agents accused of being involved with the murder of the two university students [in English]. One of missing, Wilfredo Figueroa Velásquez, was accused by his brother of killing his own father. It has been revealed that there were other 'unresolved' investigations in Internal Affairs against these same agents.

Missing weapons

After police weapons were found in Tegucigalpa pawn shops, Minister Bonilla has ordered an inventory of all police issued and confiscated weapons, including makes, models, and serial numbers. [What a novel concept!] La Tribuna has confirmed through pawn contracts that the weapons were pawned by the officer in charge of the Belén bodega, Víctor Zelaya Suazo. One of the pawn shop owners stated that the officer would say that he was pawning the guns at the order of his captain. Zelaya Suazo was indicted on Friday and ordered to be held in prison pending trial.

But in another exposé, El Heraldo reported that no one in the police or prosecutor's office can answer where are the 3,000 prohibited weapons (many of them AK-47s) confiscated during former President Ricardo Maduro's 2003 campaign to register legal guns and remove illegal guns from circulation. Credible sources within the police say the weapons are missing. [summary in English] The policeman in charge of the Cobra bodega has disappeared and a denuncia has been filed that he was murdered to prevent him from testifying which functionary had ordered the removal of the weapons.

The murder of a DNIC inspector in La Lima is also suspected to have been a result of his investigation of robbery of arms. Other missing guns have also been reported in the news, 40 from the police academy and 32 from the prosecutor's office. No one has ever been held responsible in any of these or other cases of missing weapons. The Minister of Security has named a commision to investigate all of the missing weapons.

Unresolved Internal Affairs investigations

La Prensa revealed a long standing Internal Affairs investigation of sub-commissioner Jorge Alberto Barralaga, currently being considered for criminal charges for the release of the four murder suspects. Barralaga was accused of commandeering 80 police from other divisions for 16 hours for the inauguration of a municipal building in Copán, possibly this narco mayor's White House look-alike [in English]. He falsely claimed that he was acting on orders from his superior and later paid each of the officers L.1,000 in cash. Commissioner Juan Carlos ("the tiger") Bonilla submitted the report to higher authorities in March 2011. No action was taken. Barralaga was later transferred from Copán to La Granja in Tegucigalpa in October and Bonilla was castigated for "disrespecting superior officers" by submitting the report. La Prensa indicated that this is not the only Internal Affairs investigation of Barralaga not acted upon.

Other police "complications"

Former district commissioner over La Granja, Einer Moncada Martínez, has been reassigned to the Statistics Unit pending investigation by the Fiscal of his possible involvement with organized crime. Unofficially, La Tribuna was told that Moncada had fled, but this was denied by a police spokesman.

Commissioner Danilo Orellana admitted that it was uniformed officers who assaulted a congressman and stripped him of his belongings, including a luxury vehicle, and that police officials did not take action on the complaint at the time. Previously, officials had denied any police involvement in this case on national television.

Three police agents from El Progreso were released on substitute measures yesterday after one of them "accidentally" shot a citizen on Tuesday and the other two attempted to cover up the action.

Two police agents were "put at the disposition of the prosecutor" for what was vaguely reported as "bad procedures" related to the arrest of four taxi thieves.

On Friday, a 15-year-old tortilla vendor bravely denouced being assaulted and robbed of L.550 (about US $29) while being detained by three police agents, whom he identified at the police station. The agents were indicted and are supposed to be translated to Tamara prison pending trial. The three police agents were assigned to the purified Belén station mentioned above.

Another police killing

The May 2011 drive-by assassination of Raúl Reyes Carbajal, coordinator of prosecutors in Puerto Cortés, has been connected to DNIC (criminal investigation) police agent Walter Zepeda Ramos. Fiscal Reyes was investigating certain police who were being paid up to L.30,000 for permitting crimes. Zepeda had previously been accused of murder in February 2009 but was released on "substitute measures" and apparently was able to continue with the police department until 2010. Zepeda supposedly abandoned the police and fled in August 2010 with his badge and weapon after an unexecuted order of capture was finally issued for the 2009 homicide. The day following Reyes' murder, Zepeda, using his police badge, questioned neighbors in the area of the crime as to whether they had seen anything. A few weeks later Zepeda was said to have been murdered because the victim's body was found to be carrying his badge and regulation weapon. However, an investigation accessed by La Prensa establishes that the agent is still alive and active within the police department. Failure of Puerto Cortés authorities to advance in the investigation resulted in personnel from Tegucigalpa being assigned to the case.

Phantom operativos

By order of Commissioner of the National Police, Tegucigalpa authorities have designed a plan to avoid unauthorized "phantom operativos" such as the one in which the two university students were murdered. All road stops will be supervised by an official and will include a minimum of eight agents. Police will be identified by yellow vests and police traffic cones. Tegucigalpa citizens were asked to denounce suspicious road stops by calling Subcommissioner Rony Flores Díaz on his cellphone at 9910-8953. (Later two additional numbers were added, 2222-SEGU for cell phones and 800-2222-SEGU for land lines, but media have reported and demonstrated on television that there is no answer at these numbers.)

Flores says that it has been the custom of police agents to execute operativos without authorization. In the past, individual police posts or agents have performed illegal road stops in order to extort drivers for trumped up charges which they then offer to overlook for a price. These measures will later be implemented at a national level

Honest forces within the police and justice system appear to be leaking very damaging reports to the media. It appears that long-pending investigations are coming to light after months and years of inaction by the government.

Guest blog: Poverty equals crime

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:43:00 +0000

The following is a guest response to "Crime is out of Control in Honduras":

I took the time to read your thoughts on the ongoing violence in Honduras and I can add that the only way things are going to get better in Honduras is by getting as many people out of poverty as possible.

This rampant poverty, lack of education and lack opportunities drives some young people to become delinquents and gang members. They grow up to become thieves and killers. They grow up to believe the only way to get ahead is by going against the system and taking advantage of those who can be taken advantage of. They feel above the law because many of them are members of the law themselves, members of the government themselves, or they work for a corrupt government official or corrupt law enforcement official.

And if they don't work for anyone but themselves, they chose to be criminals because they know they can get away with it as police forces are incapable of pursuing every law breaker out there. Unless the government focuses its resources on purging the system and washing out the scum and worthless, the government will continue to be in the crapper, and in turn, everyone else in the country.

I was watching CNN en Español sometime before the events at the San Pedro Sula airport, and they were talking about the constant and prevalent violence in Honduras. The CNN anchorwoman opened her news story by saying "In Honduras, where every adult citizen is entitled to own up to five firearms, crime and violence continues to dominate". Her opening statement was to point out that Honduras was a society allowed to be armed as to imply that the fact that citizens have the legal right to own weapons, that it may be a contributor to the violence.

In reality, legal ownership of firearms is not the real contributor to crime or violence since many of these crimes and killings are committed with weapons of illicit origin or illegal to be in the hands of civilians.

Committing acts of violence is already a crime and killing is already a crime so clearly passing laws that penalize this or that won't make any difference in a society and culture where killing is the norm. People don't commit murder because there's a law that allows them to own a gun (we know the weapons used in crimes are of the illicit nature to begin with) nor do they commit murder because it isn't illegal (it is illegal, we all know that), they kill because they have been raised in a culture where it's okay to do whatever you have to do to get by and because they know the chances of being caught and punished for their crimes are slim.

The government can pass all the laws they want or even take away the right to bear arms entirely since they could as gun ownership is not a constitutional right in Honduras, but it would still not reduce crime. There are already thousands of illegal guns in the hands of criminals and as long as the laws are not enforced and police forces are not properly equipped with the funding, the manpower, a descent salary, the equipment and the tools to do their jobs, thugs will continue to rule the streets.

— The author lives in the United States, lived in Honduras for several years before, has traveled back and forth to Honduras since 1994, and is familiar with Honduran culture and its people. He graciously consented to the publishing of his response to "Crime is out of control in Honduras". Your comments are welcome.

Facebook and Google+ identities: online, real, common, fake

noreply@blogger.com (La Gringa) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:35:00 +0000

Cartoon by Dave Walker
Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

The 'nymwars'

After doing a lot of reading about the online identity issue, I wanted to share some of what I've found with you. I know that many might initially think that someone who uses a "fake" name does it for nefarious purposes. It is often true among cyberbullies and spammers. That can't be denied. But the 'nymwars' (name wars) is an important issue for many other people for many legitimate personal, professional, political, or safety reasons, especially those living in less democratic and violent societies.

The 'nymwars' is a hot topic and some of the articles I ran across point out the futility and ridiculousness of the "real name" policies. In some cases, the legal names of persons of foreign nationalities just haven't been real-sounding enough for Facebook and Google+ employees. In other cases, even real American ('center of the universe') names just don't sound real to the powers that be, as in the case of Violet Blue, a high-profile author whose account was terminated by Google+.

The "real name" policy is not something that can be realistically enforced unless these mega companies are going to ask all umpteen million users to submit government identification. Until then enforcement is most likely to come by two means: 1) Extremely unusual or obviously unreal names, or 2) complaints from other users. As in my Facebook case, a malicious user complaint could be merely because someone doesn't like your political opinions or doesn't want others to see the information that you are sharing. In some parts of the world, being able to so easily silence another user could severely limit freedom of expression.

After a lot of bad publicity and significant pressure from the nymwars, Google+ just announced that they have reconsidered their "real name" policy. But from what I've read, they may adopt Facebook's policy of requiring a government issued photo ID. I'm not willing to do that.

I imagine that most of you would also be offended or concerned about your own privacy if you were asked to submit a copy of your ID merely for a casual online account.

What's in a name?

I understand the reasons for these policies. The internet can sometimes be a very unpleasant place because of trolls, spammers, and cyber bullies. I commend Google+ and Facebook for trying to make the internet a more civil place. YouTube comments are a perfect example of "freedom of speech" gone totally wrong.

On the other hand, a real "sounding" name can be meaningless, and does nothing to protect other users. This article reported that a man created 130 Facebook pages just to harass his ex-girlfriend. Apparently his fake names sounded real while mine didn't. Facebook's real name police didn't protect the victim.

Currently, I am again being cyberstalked by someone who purports to be using his real name. He follows the typical pattern of cyberstalkers: Many cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim with false accusations intended to turn other people against them. They may set up their own websites, blogs or user pages for this purpose. More commonly they will repititiously post defamatory or derogatory statements about their stalking target on web pages, message boards, and in guest books. In some cases, they may pose as the identity of the victim and publish material in the victim's name that defames or ridicules others. Some cyber-bullies may also send threatening, harassing, and obscene emails and instant messages to the victims and their friends (sometimes using anonymizer email services), or post rumors, gossip, or false "quotes" attributed to the victim. Google's name polices have not protected me from cyberstalking, and in fact, Google's Blogger policy specifically does not protect against personal attacks or alleged defamation.

This points out the irony of the "real name" policies. I felt that using a false name would be dishonest. But as it turns out, if I had lied and said I was Maria Garcia or Jane Thompson, neither Facebook nor Google+ would have questioned my name and Facebook wouldn't have demanded an official government-issued photo identification. Most readers would have never questioned the lie either.

So what these "real name" policies actually do is to encourage dishonesty in people, who for valid reasons, don't feel they can or should use their legal name. After all, we aren't opening a bank account or applying for food stamps, we are just being "social", as they tell us we should be. Most importantly, what these policies do not do is to protect users against abusers or cyberstalkers.

What can be done to keep the internet "civil"?

I realize that it is extremely difficult for large companies to control abusers, but I think that they should at least make a cursory review for actual abuse before terminating someone's account. For some online services, one way that I've had to verify that I am who I say I am, the author of La Gringa's Blogicito, was to put a code provided by the company in the HTML section of my website, very simple to do and virtually impossible for anyone else to fake.

Robert Scoble, celebrity geek blogger, gave a long list of suggestions to Google+ about this issue, including the one I mentioned above. He also suggests implementing features similar to the Disqus commenting system (which I use here on the Blogicito). Disqus makes it very easy to almost completely eliminate spam and abuse. Google+ could make it easier to allow users to decide to block "fake posters" if they don't want to see them, but still allow others to see them if they want to. Scoble also recommends adapting an internet "clout" system. That might not be so different from what Google now uses to determine which search results go on top.

Update on my Facebook Status

The online petition to reinstate my Facebook account has received over 500 signatures. Thank you all so much. The petition will be closed and sent to Mark Zuckerberg soon. If you haven't signed yet, please hurry.

Dr. Ulf Erlingsson set up a page Reinstate La Gringa's Facebook Account. If you are on Facebook, I hope that you will join it.

Maybe nothing will be resolved in my case but I have a bit of hope if this article is true. It says that in this case, someone was able to have their FB account restored with an apology from FB.