Struggles for dignity, truth, life and hope

COPIN urges end to U.S. military exercises
COFADEH: Decalogue for the new government
ENLACE: Newsletter of the CCD
July 1998 human rights delegation to Mexico

Living under death threat ...
constructing alternatives ...

One delegation of nine persons concentrated on the human-rights work and the building of a women's shelter while the other of eight persons helped to construct a health clinic and shipped a school-bus full of clinic supplies which arrived at a Honduras port while they were there.

The human-rights delegation met with leaders of several organizations whose activists advocate for indigenous rights, the halt to secret U.S. involvement in Honduras affairs, for victims of military and police torture, the end to domestic violence against women, to help street children, to locate persons "disappeared" by death squads, and who report about Honduran government and military coverups.

Assisting this delegation in its work was the Christian Commission for Development (CCD), an ecumenical social justice project, and three of its associates, Lyda Pierce, Paul Jeffrey and Andres Thomas Conteris, all of whom are United Methodist missionaries.

The delegation was lead by Wes Rehberg, who founded and directs SPAN and is pastor of the supporting Reynoldsville, NY, United Methodist Church. It met with:

* Indigenous leaders from COPIN (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations), who express opposition to current U.S. military exercises in Honduras as an invasion of Lenca Mayan Indian lands and a source of continuing U.S. military interference in Honduran affairs. COPIN leaders presented a letter of protest to the U.S. embassy during SPAN's visit and implicated Honduras death squads in the death of one of its leaders.

* Bertha Oliva de Nativa, director of the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), who described efforts to document the deaths and disappearance of community, labor and human-rights organizers. Thus far more than 180 cases have been documented, said Oliva, adding she daily faces the fear of death herself. "Each morning I kiss my child when I leave for work, not knowing whether it will be the last time I will see her," she said. She implicated the infamous Battalion 3-16 and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the disappearances. Her husband, Tómas, was one of the first of the "disappeared," Oliva said.

* Dr. Juan Almendares, a U.S. trained physician who heads the Center for Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture and their Families (CPTRT). Almanderes also implicates the U.S. and the CIA in the physical and psychological torture of Honduras popular organizers, works with a combination of natural and typical medical techniques in therapy with victims, and said he also faces the constant present of death from death squads. He particularly condemned training of Latin American military "assassins" at the U.S. School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga.

* Thelma Mejia, a journalist with the Interpress News Service and coordinator in Honduras of the U.N. University for Peace, who writes about Honduras government and military corruption, their complicity with brutal oppression and widespread poverty, as well as with international drug trafficking. Mejia also lives under death threat for her reporting. Though efforts to change structures of oppression and violence have resulted in minor changes within the governmental and judicial systems, violence is endemic in Honduras culture, she said. She said recent support for the conversion of the huge U.S. Palemerola military base in Honduras to a regional center for combatting drug traffic is viewed also as a disguise for continuing military involvement in Latin American affairs.

* Enma Mejia, director of the Actions for Popular Development (ADP), an organization that seeks to provide options for women who face domestic violence, rape, incest and sexual abuse, and which runs the only safe house for women presently in Honduras. Besides the shelter, her organization also provides a hot-line, prevention programs, consciousness raising efforts, work with men who do violence, women's empowerment projects, and legal referrals. Although a law against domestic violence has been recently passed, it has virtually no teeth, Mejia said. Because of severe economic problems, many women who have been assisted often are forced to return to violent family conditions, she said.

* Teresa López, coordinator for gender and organization of the Christian Commission for Development, who described major problems in Honduras as the following: public hygeine, food supply, nutrition, legalizing of land claims and ownership, illiteracy, and problems from warfare, including the effects of past U.S. military support of the contra war against Nicaragua in the 1980s. López also works to find alternatives to a culture that supports domestic violence, one project of which is the construction of a rural women's shelter, only the second such facility in Honduras, which will house 20 families and is expected to be completed in three years. The SPAN delegation helped in the construction of this site.

* Leaders of the Honduras branch of Casa Alianza, which operates group homes for street children. The SPAN delegation visited one home on January 6, the Feast of the 3 Magi, where a celebration was held and gifts were exchanged. Though up to 200 children can be attended to at one time by Casa Alianza in this city, there are more than 2,000 street children in the capital city of Tegucigalpa, children who often form into gangs ("maras" or "pandillas") for survival and who are linked to thefts and high incidences of drug use. One Casa Alianza worker said children who are aided by Casa Alianza frequently stay only awhile and then return to the streets, hopefully changed. Others are led through educational and psychological programs. Casa Alianza is also active against the torture and murder of street children.

* Leaders of a CCD project in La Esperanza, in the province of Intibucá, where many Lenca Indians live: In one small highland village without electricity and running water, community leaders spoke of the need for a teacher, for health care, and noted the increased involvement of women in community affairs and in directing community growth. Also noted during this visit was the so-called humanitarian aspects of the current U.S. military exercises (dubbed "New Horizons"), which is to include construction of schools and health clinics that go unstaffed because of the lack of personnel.

SPAN's other delegation, supported by its companion organization, Shoestrings & Grace, and led by Pamela and Robert Comstock of North Sanford, NY, helped to supply and construct a health clinic in Meambar, sponsored by Project Global Village, an American-led religous project based in north-central Honduras. Members of this delegation gathered medical and hospital supplies to outfit the clinic, sought and received a donated schoolbus to ship the supplies to Honduras, and provided manpower to help build the clinic, still in its early stages. It also visited Tegucigalpa's main hospital and sought information about health conditions in Honduras.

Conditions at the hospital were deplorable, marked by poor sanitary and kitchen conditions as well as overcrowding, said members of the delegation. Honduras suffers from a lack of medical and health care facilities and supplies, but not from trained personnel, thus the need for the health clinic and supplies in Meambar. Also noted by this delegation was the rise in tuberculosis throughout the country.

Since the health-clinic delegation's visit, the schoolbus of supplies, medicines and materials has cleared customs and is now in the project's office compound in Siguatepeque.

Of the 17 members of both delegations, eight had participated in at least one other past SPAN delegation, including trips to Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba and Mexico, with special attention to human-rights work in Chiapas. The human rights delegation included, from upstate New York, Amy Gunning, Amy Wirth, Anne Dimock, Arlene Fiske, Cathy Lee, Eileen Robertson-Rehberg, James Pasternak; and from, Pittsburgh, Ellen Tafel. The health clinic delegation included, from upstate New York, Viola Rajnes, Mischa Hoetzlein and Michael Clark, and from Denver, Craig, Melissa and Nicolette Clark.

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This article and photos are copyrighted by Strategic Pastoral Action and Wes Rehberg (c)1998 and may be reproduced if credit is given.

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