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Next time flying saucers?
by W.E. Gutman
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News Business Editorial Opinion Letters Arts Reviews Community Fun Travel |
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Next time flying saucers?
by W.E. Gutman
Nothing vindicates a soiled reputation like a very public act of contrition. Politicians, televangelists, bankers and common thugs have all shed crocodile tears when caught with their pants down. Many are back in business.
But in the Kafkaesque world of Honduran politics, nothing works quite as well as a fortuitous act of heroism. Take the Honduran police. First, they were put to shame by one of their own. Risking her career, if not her life, Subcommissioner Maria Luisa Borjas accused the constabulary of committing atrocities and covering them up. Borjas' denunciations were followed by an excoriating United Nations document validating her allegations.
Furious, the police responded with counter-charges, intimidation and threats --- but offered not a single shred of exculpatory evidence. Their reaction was predictable but it did not help ventilate the stench that had by now wafted around the world. Then, suddenly, in what many consider an inspired moment of creative genius, the police began "finding" bombs --- by chance --- and disarming them, Ojala! before they could claim any victims.
Bombs were found in schools in San Pedro Sula, at the Empresa Nacional Portuaria in Puerto Cortés, and, to make it look good, in an office building and a bank owned by President Ricardo Maduro. In every instance, the "explosive devices" were subsequently "neutralized." None exploded, perhaps because they contained nothing more sinister than a steaming lump of refried beans.
The Honduran media have been curiously ambivalent about these occurrences. Not a single publication has ventured to ask, not even in editorial jest, whether calls were actually made to the police to warn them of an impending catastrophe. And the police, astutely, did not volunteer information. The papers merely reported that bombs had been found and dismantled "just in time." Nor did they have the courage to echo a growing popular suspicion --- that the police in fact planted the bombs in a desperate attempt to elicit sympathy and dispel any hint of wrongdoing.
"The scoundrels needed heroes to polish their tarnished image," said a respected Honduran journalist on condition of anonymity. "It is not beneath them to contrive implausible scenarios, then weave fantastical stories to lend them credibility."
Another veteran newsman said, off the record, "People here are scared to point fingers at the police. And this includes the media." He concluded, blending poignant melancholy and economic verities: "Everybody here lives in fear. Fear of criminals, fear of the police, fear of the military, fear of inflation, fear of stifling austerity measures, fear of corruption, fear of ingrained collective apathy. The government's remedies are worse than the maladies they purport to cure. Gas has gone up --- again. Wheat prices are soaring. Bread will be more expensive and loaves will shrink in size. Things are dismal."
Ironically, the bomb scare has provided its share of comic relief. Some predict that the police, eager to look smart and resourceful, may soon announce the discovery of an alien spacecraft.
Meanwhile, the sideshows will go on and the government, long on empty rhetoric and short on solutions, will turn a deaf ear in the hope that the histrionics they evoke help divert public attention from what many in Honduras view as a desperate and worsening situation.
(W. E. Gutman is a journalist. He lives and works in southern California.)
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