Letters: Why Honduras is hurting
Re “Living by the rules in a city of mayhem,” Column One, Dec. 17
Tracy Wilkinson’s article about San Pedro Sula, Honduras, was moving, but it did not focus on one important issue.
Economic inequality has skyrocketed since the 2009 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Political repression has also accelerated: More than 220 politically motivated killings have occurred between 2009 and 2013, according to the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America.
The country’s new president-elect, Juan Orlando Hernandez, promised to end everyday violence, but the country’s newly created police force has committed atrocities of its own.
How can violence be rooted out from Honduras? This article doesn’t address this question, giving the impression that Honduras is inherently violent and that no one notices countless deaths.
But here in Los Angeles, we see these same issues, with deaths being buried on the back pages or not even appearing in newspaper coverage.
So what’s behind all this violence? Why aren’t we focused on poverty and economic inequality?
Ralph Armbruster
Santa Barbara
As Wilkinson reports, Honduras is one of Latin America’s poorest countries. Unemployment and poverty have skyrocketed since the 2009 coup.
The coup gave the U.S. a golden opportunity to forsake a vicious tradition of supporting rightist dictatorships that overthrew regimes devoted to their ordinary and poorer people (Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, the Dominican Republic in 1965 and more).
When Zelaya was overthrown, the U.S. had the opportunity to redeem itself by forcefully denouncing the coup. Instead, it cozied up to the new dictatorship, which favored the wealthy. This destructive pattern by the U.S. must stop.
Roger Carasso
Los Angeles
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