Honduras’ Suazo : Town Reaps President’s Generosity

A block from President Roberto Suazo Cordova Avenue, catercorner from Roberto Suazo Cordova Hospital and not far from a new municipal market commemorating the presidency of Roberto Suazo Cordova, stands a pedestal awaiting a statue.

Citizens of La Paz smile sheepishly when asked who might someday be honored with a statue on the pedestal. They say they do not know, that this is a question for the authorities in the capital, not for provincial folk like themselves.

Of course, they would not be surprised if it should turn out that it would be used for a statue of President Roberto Suazo Cordova. Suazo, after all, is the benefactor of La Paz, his hometown.

“Why not?” Mayor Manuel de Jesus Chevez said the other day. “No one ever paid any attention to La Paz before. Senor Presidente is the first national leader ever who has not forgotten his own people.”

A Living Monument

La Paz is a living monument to Suazo’s somewhat eccentric rule. All the streets are paved, a situation unique among Honduras’ 200 or so municipalities. Shiny new government offices have gone up on the outskirts of town, and children’s parks have been created in the neighborhoods of mud shacks.

On the main plaza, a “municipal palace” has almost been completed, to replace a city hall built earlier in Suazo’s term of office. At the entrance to the city stands a 30,000-seat soccer stadium, the third-largest in the country. La Paz has 4,000 people--and no soccer team.

La Paz is Spanish for “peace,” and this has given rise to a widely shared jest. Road worker Carlos Mendes told a visitor:

“We have a saying now: ‘Everyone in Honduras wants peace.’ Suazo Cordova is not president of Honduras; he is president of La Paz.”

$200-Million Annual Deficit

Clearly, Suazo’s three years in the presidency have been a windfall for La Paz, but any benefits for the rest of this impoverished country are not so clear. The national economy has become stagnant. The economy grew slightly last year, but this was attributed solely to the construction of a hydroelectric dam funded mainly by the United States.

The government’s annual deficit is about $200 million, in part because the authorities have been unable to collect taxes efficiently. More than 20% of the work force is unemployed; the cost of imports exceeds export earnings; the value of the national currency is being eroded.

Suazo is not solely responsible for these ills. World prices for Honduras’ bananas, coffee and sugar are severely depressed. But he has been widely blamed for failing to formulate any kind of economic policy.

But he finds plenty of time, his critics say, for political activity. People appointed by Suazo make up a majority on Honduras’ electoral tribunal, so he is in a position to decide disputes not only in his ruling Liberal Party but in opposition groups as well.

As a result, it may be that he will choose his successor as president. Two candidates of the opposition National Party, having won competing conventions, claim to be the party’s official candidate in elections scheduled for November. Suazo, through his influence over the tribunal, could decide the dispute.

“I fear he will create one strong party--his--and a weak appendage--ours--and rule forever,” Gregorio Reyes Mazzoni, one of the National Party candidates, said recently.

Under a new constitution, Suazo is barred from seeking reelection, but he is said to have considered staying on for two more years, arguing that he was elected under the old constitution for a term of six years.

Fortune Teller’s Prediction

At Christmastime, he added fuel to this talk of continuismo by entertaining a fortune teller who predicted he would stay in office four more years.

This prompted Manuel Gamero, editor of the newspaper El Tiempo, to observe: “This is the first time we have had a witch as president. He exploits the backwardness of our country.”

Still, if Suazo had any plans to stay, they have been discouraged by the military. Late last year, the armed forces chief, Gen. Walter Lopez, warned that “ambition and personal passion should be put aside because our country is not vaccinated nor exempt from disturbances that can harm our society.”

Suazo, 57, is a former country physician who commutes almost every weekend to La Paz from Tegucigalpa, the capital. He rose to power in the Liberal Party by helping hold the organization together in the 1960s and 1970s, when Honduras was ruled by military dictators.

Suazo was elected president in 1981, with U.S. encouragement. Reaction to revolutions in surrounding nations had persuaded the military to surrender power to a civilian.

The ‘Perfumed Boys’

Suazo has a common touch. On government-produced television programs, he is referred to as “citizen president.” A canny politician, he is given to using saucy language in public. When accused of being unable to govern effectively, he refers lustily to his manhood and contrasts it with the “perfumed boys” who frequent a certain restaurant in Tegucigalpa.

Suazo also tends to dwell on religious themes, a popular move in this strongly Roman Catholic country. On a hill overlooking La Paz, he built a church to house an image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Unable to find an acceptable image of the Virgin, he allegedly contracted for one.

He is said to have traded a Honduran passport to a Spanish businessman fleeing scandal in Spain in exchange for the proper work. Wags here call it Our Lady of the Passport.

All this might add up to nothing more than small-time political shenanigans except for the U.S. involvement here. To support the fledgling democratic process in Honduras, Washington has poured in millions of dollars in economic and military aid. The Honduran government wants even more as a reward for cooperating with Washington in military activity against Marxist Nicaragua to the south.

“They scream for more money, then they build that stadium in La Paz,” a U.S. Embassy official said. “It’s a joke.”

‘Who Can You Love?’

In La Paz, though, people think Suazo has done just fine.

“If you don’t love those you know, who can you love?” said Graciela Suazo, who is not related to the president.

She said she is happy that it is no longer necessary to travel to a crowded hospital in nearby Comoyagua for medical treatment, because a shiny new hospital was opened in La Paz last year.

Santiago Ayala, a member of the Nationalist Party and former mayor of La Paz, said: “I’m a political opponent of the president, but he has been good for La Paz. Who knows how many years will pass before someone cares again like this?”

Still, not everything is coming up roses in La Paz. The new construction has created new jobs, but there is no new industrial or agricultural base to support the town’s economy. Further, if the opposition takes over the government in Tegucigalpa, La Paz may be asked to pay for the good work Suazo leaves behind here. No one knows how much has been spent on the town, but it is clearly several million dollars.

“All the other municipalities are going to demand that La Paz pay the price,” Efrain Diaz, a Christian Democrat, said.

Mayor Chavez sighed and said, “If they try to make us pay, we may need some true witchcraft.”