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1997-2007: Remembering Candido Amador Recinos

by W. E. Gutman

Tegucigalpa, Honduras --- On April 12, 1997, as night draped the village of Copan Ruinas in a mantle of inky darkness, Candido Amador Recinos, the 30-year-old charismatic champion of Indian rights and a rising star in the Maya leadership, was brutally, senselessly murdered.

Forensic evidence, including blood and hair, suggests that he was killed in the home of a local landowner with whom he had had words earlier. Candido’s lifeless body was then removed and dumped on a dirt path where he was found.  A government district attorney in charge of ethnic affairs who visited the scene later admitted he had withheld vital evidence.

Unsolved and unpunished, his assassination continues to plunge indigenous communities under a pall of fear and suspicion. In galvanizing Honduras’s ethnic minorities, the crime --- the 25th slaying of a tribal leader --- has also put an end to decades of silence, irresolution and self-restraint.

Candido’s death has reawakened pride, buoyed unity and fed a tide of revulsion and impatience at Honduras’s Byzantine judicial system. Frequent and increasingly large demonstrations in the capital have added both substance and poignancy to their collective plight. They have also helped expose the nation’s sluggish human rights apparatus and less than scrupulous attention to justice.

Ten years after Candido was found shot, riddled with multiple stab wounds and scalped, few if any believe the government’s assertions that his killing was “engineered to create an indigenous martyr,” that it was the result of “intra-ethnic disputes,” or “the culmination of insurmountable personal problems.”

“Next, they’ll tell us that Candido died of self-inflicted stab and bullet wounds, and that, for dramatic effect, he also scalped himself!” quipped a demonstrator during a recent anti-government rally.

Instead, as widespread rumors suggests, most Hondurans have quietly concluded that Candido was eliminated by landowners and cattle ranchers who felt threatened by his militancy, which included demands that ancestral Maya lands be returned to their rightful owners.

“Since colonial times,” a Maya informant told me, “foreigners have contrived various strategies to usurp our national patrimony, plunder our resources and deprive us of our hereditary rights. Not only did they snatch and parcel out among themselves the ill-gotten booty -- gold, arable lands, wells, water rights and large stretches of pristine riparian and coastal areas -- they also gained political and economic supremacy, much of it facilitated by the U.S., and which empowered them to steal and exploit regions traditionally inhabited by our people.”

Contrary to assertions made in the Honduran press, the Maya have only grudgingly endured the “passive role” imposed on them by tourism. Candido characterized tourism as “a mercenary commerce controlled by the State and local landed gentry, and ‘sewn up’ by foreign developers assured of a ‘non-intrusive’ local government and afforded significant political and economic leverage.”

Candido once bitterly remarked, “What, tourists will trudge up the mountain and gawk at the ‘quaint indios’ and take pictures of our grass huts and womenfolk and children, and commiserate with our elders, perhaps buy a few trinkets? Or they will marvel for an hour or two at the tattered vestiges of the ‘mighty Maya’ before retiring to air-conditioned hotels --- none of which we own --- and dine in eateries none of us can afford to patronize?”

Candido, a symbol of ethnic pride revived, understood that his idealism and fiery rhetoric could cost him his life. He accepted the risks and publicly declared that he was ready to shed his blood for his people. Activism, he predicted shortly before his death, would meet with “intimidation, threats, illegal detentions, evictions, arson, calumny, fraudulent lawsuits, even assassinations, all designed to quell dissent and dismember our people.” All his predictions came true.

Candido’s murder is symptomatic of the turmoil gripping Central America. The very fact that it took place in “laid back” Copan is indicative of the nation’s mood and predilections. That his assassins (whom I identified after a lengthy investigation and whose names I shared with two members of Honduras’ Congress) should still be free is all the more alarming. The half-hearted, brief and tainted inquest that began and ended two days after the crime can only be called a travesty and a monumental hoax.

“We want our enemies to know that Candido’s death has made us stronger and more resolute in our struggle to recover our lands and regain our rights,” my informant told me as we parted, his hand on my shoulders, his inscrutable black Mayan eyes burning into mine.

“Make sure they get the message.”

I promised “they” would.

Ten years have passed since Candido’s violent death. Evidence of foul play, incontrovertible and damning, continues to prey on the minds of Honduras’s ethnic minorities and their supporters, baffling some, turning others to stony silence.

Fickle and self-serving, the public entombs what it need not remember or it enshrines what it will doggedly not forget. Candido’s memory hangs somewhere in the middle, venerated by his people, ignominiously ignored by the rest.

Meanwhile, as the cauldron of inquietude and discontent boils over, Honduras remains a violent and dangerous place for Hondurans and for the misguided foreigners in search of El Dorado.

I predict that the next decade will mimic the last. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Landau, Reality check for Panama City real estate craze
Sirias, Ocean Embassy's meeting a stiff challenge
O'Barry, Of dolphins and decency
Weisbrot, Dragging the World Bank into the 21st Century
Lehmann, The European Union and MERCOSUR
Gutman, ¡Candido Amador Recinos, presente!
Sánchez, Venezuela's security and foreign policies
Wheeler, Morales makes a power play

Silié, Garifunas emerge from oblivion

Pilgrim, Gunman on campus

Bernal, Our rights at risk

Jackson, Revolutionary justice