Propping Up Honduras

Bucking a tide of instability in Central America, Jose Azcona Hoyo last week became the first civilian leader in 50 years to succeed another elected civilian as the president of Honduras. But Azcona’s inauguration offers scant hope for the region; he is virtually powerless to change his nation’s role as the United States’ most valuable pawn in the Central American crisis.

For the last five years, as the Reagan Administration has become increasingly obsessed with the presumed dangers posed by the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, Honduras has become the center of U.S. military activities in Central America. The nation has been used for continual U.S. military maneuvers that are designed to keep the Sandinistas off balance. Its isolated border regions are staging areas for U.S.-supported rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government, the so-called contras. Not surprisingly, this overbearing military presence has badly distorted the politics of an extremely poor and backward nation.

About 70% of Honduras’ 4.5 million people live in rural isolation--many of them landless, illiterate and diseased. Only Haiti, among the nations of the Western Hemisphere, is poorer. Yet it was not frustration over social conditions that brought Azcona to power. It was the military. Despite the pretense that Honduras is a nation run by civilians, a stance imposed on the generals by the United States to maintain at least an appearance of democracy, the nation’s armed forces have the final say on key matters. In Azcona’s case, he was one of several candidates in last year’s presidential election, and got only 26% of the popular vote. But under a complicated electoral formula dictated by the armed forces to prevent infighting among civilian politicians, Azcona was declared the winner over a candidate who received 46% of the vote, because Azcona’s Liberal Party received more total votes than the rival’s National Party.

By most accounts Azcona is a sincere democrat who is dismayed by Honduras’ role in Central America. His inaugural speech contained fine words about the desperate need to do something about Honduran underdevelopment. But, as a minority president, Azcona is unlikely to challenge the generals. He must accept the fact, for example, that more than one-third of the $230 million in foreign aid that Honduras will get from the United States this year will be for military spending. And the generals want even more.

If Azcona needs any reminder of his powerlessness, he can look at the final weeks in office of his predecessor, Roberto Suazo Cordova. Suazo wanted a second term, but the generals and the U.S. Embassy would not hear of it. Suazo retaliated by trying to delay shipments of U.S. supplies destined for the contra forces. But now Suazo is gone, and the contras remain. And contra leaders are also asking for more money in the coming year--$75 million to $100 million, by most estimates, including arms and other forms of lethal aid--and the Administration wants to give it to them.

As long as the United States, with overwhelming influence in Central America, emphasizes military power as the only counterbalance to the Sandinista revolution, things will not improve for small, poor nations like Honduras--no matter who leads them. A far better option for this country would be to look to diplomacy as a solution to the region’s problems, especially the peace negotiations organized by our Latin American allies in the Contadora Group. Once the shooting stops in Central America, efforts to end the poverty of nations like Honduras can begin. For economic development is this country’s best protection against political instability in Central America.