Honduras

I'm beginning to get the measure of the place a little. Another Saturday, another internet cafe. Hello to all from Espresso Americano, another slice of wealthy Hondureño life.

An interesting fact that I learned from my boss this week. She's a mine of information (often scurrilous), and has herself firmly rooted in the heart of Honduran political (rather than civil??) society.
It seems that, in the midst of the turmoil of two world wars and disastrous Western mandates in the Middle East during the last century, vast numbers of Palestinians, particularly Christians, fled to Latin America. Many came to work on the construction of the Panama canal, and many subsequently made their way north to the banana republic of Honduras, where the US had succeeded in wiping out any nascent indigenous business class. As a result, to this day the business interests of Honduras are largely in the hands of 2nd and 3rd generation arabs: of the country´s four national newspapers, 3 are arab owned. The other one is Jewish. Now, it seems, the same families are beginning to move into politics.
I learned this at the opening of a women´s refuge, to which I was invited as a representative of our civil society programme, and at which it was suggested I really ought to "show my face". Some ostentatious television cameras were wandering around the pretty wooden building (paid for by the Taiwanese gov´t - much more present here than the Chinese), focussing all their attention on two government ministers with suspiciously large noses...
(Is this unacceptable? Offensive? I don't mean to pass judgement - but I think it's a very vivid demonstration of the breach between ordinary Hondurans and the power that governs their country, as much now as back when it was a straightforward banana republic.)

So far my days have been a confusing whirl of petty and profound gatherings: the government has just launched a new poverty reduction paper and civil society is in a tizz trying to form a response. I'm in a tizz trying to understand what's going on: at meetings on the future of the poverty reduction strategy, I'm faced with a triple comprehension barrier. This goes as follows: 1)it's very specific to a political context that's completely alien to me: 2) it's in a foreign language, in which I'm still pulling myself up to speed; and 3) it's a technical/ management jargon which, regardless of my Spanish linguistic skills is still essentially gobbledygook. Through all of this I think I'm struggling along quite effectively, but really only the campesinos want to talk to me. That's ok: I only want to talk to the campesinos -politicians and diplomats wear me out.

I'll let you know when "my" analysis of the poverty reduction paper is out! Keep the comments coming! Or better still the emails...