Civil Society, part 2

Over the Christmas (as we say back home), two environmental activists were assassinated by members of the Honduran police force for their attempts to combat illegal logging. They belonged to the group I visited a few months ago, in this entry. There's a good briefing on the story in English here. That's what was in my inbox when I came back to work in January. I just wanted to mention it.

But here's an insight into how we work in a small donor NGO: everybody wants to do the follow-up on that case. Suddenly, the organisation involved is everybody's partner organisation, the issue falls under everybody's theme (it's human rights; it's civil society activism; it's environmental management; it's livelihood security; no: it's an issue for the director - and you see, it IS all of those things). There's no conflict around this, it's just revealing that everybody finds assasination so sexy. I include myself in that.

Local democratic participation is less sexy. On Friday I headed about 80 kilometers up the road to the municipality of Talanga to chat to the community about their participatory budget. I was taken aback by the mess of the place: it's a decent-sized town by rural Honduran standards, and it was washed by mud thanks to the light drizzle: none of the roads are paved. Only the three main streets of the town - out of the whole municipality - have any sort of a sewage system. The municipality has sod all money, and traditionally, what it has had it's spent on backhanders and pocket-lining. Now, Puerto Alegre style, the citizens are coming to the town hall to write the budget.

There's not much room for them in the town hall, primarily because nobody stays in their office. The place is wide open, wind filing down the corridors behind the rows of shuffling people shaking hands and greeting each other, hanging out on park benches, then shuffling back out again, the important business of hand-shaking being done for the day. I got to interview the mayor, a huge man with a busy politicky attitude, who I swear to god could be from Tipperary with his pale skin and big rosy cheeks. He's thrilled with the whole process, thrilled that the people have a say in their spending, thrilled that he's better than the last mayor (he spent a lot of time convincing me of that, though last time I looked I didn't have a vote in Talanga). I left the mayor - he gave me his card, cualquier cosa, he told me, estoy para servirle - and joined the transparency commission of local volunteers involved in writing and following up on the budget.
This crowd aren't as poor as the ones I met in December. This is far from the poorest place in Honduras. And they're a lot more buzzed. In November, they attended consultations all over the municipality to find out how the locals would spend the pittance the municipality had to spend, given the choice. They gave them the choice. Then they held a great big open assembly, in which everybody came and submitted their projects, and they agreed the criteria, and they voted for the best ones. The result was a budget devised and approved by the citizens of Talanga.

To be honest I don't think this budget is any better - or any more feasible - than the budgets that the mayors of old used to write sitting in their baths full of champagne. But it does make a difference. I think it'll take a few years for people to realise that even when the municipality isn't robbing them blind, they're not much better off. But one day they will realise that, because they're watching closely now. And they'll start to think about spending the money a bit more strategically, and they'll think about the money they have no control over: national spending, the way taxes are charged. At least, I hope that's what'll happen, and I know that there are plenty of local NGOs encouraging them to think that way. Right now, it's their engagement that counts, which is itself a new thing for the sleepy people of Talanga.

You know what they're most exercised about though? About paying taxes. They're obsessed with telling everybody to pay their taxes, so that the municipality can get more money. I found that a bit odd, and a little wrong: I'm a big believer in taxation, but I don't really believe they'd been given reason enough to trust the mayor to spend their money well just yet.

It's a long slow process this participation business. It's not really tested properly anywhere yet. But people are watching. That watching, that can go so far as to inhibit policemen from shooting environmentalists with impunity. And that would be nothing short of sexy.

Tegucigalpa: Back broken on

I was coming home from my SHIT Spanish school yesterday evening, chatting to the taxi driver, looking down at the neon on the Bulevard Morazan, and a wave of warmth for this damn city came over me. This is bad news for Simp, but good news for me. Good news for you guys too, who respond so quickly to emotional blackmail. Thanks for the comments, and the emails: you're all legends.

It's taken 3 months for me to feel warmth for Tegucigalpa, and in the end, it was a good old drinking session that sorted it all out. Two enabling factors: 1) the arrival of an Irish tv crew to film one of our partners for a week, and 2) (somewhat improbably) the decision on the part of a bunch of sporting heathens that the best possible way to spend a Saturday evening would be watching Honduras play Denmark in a friendly match in the national stadium.
The match was lousy. There were two goals, one apiece, equally forgettable. There were a couple of Danes dotted around the stadium (most of whom ended up out for dinner with us and the tv crew, somehow), and not so many Hondurans. When, about 60 minutes into the game, Denmark scored the first goal, the Hondurans all stood up and cheered them delightedly. Apparently that's what they do: if their team is shit, they'll just switch allegiance, and hiss and jeer their own lads. You can draw your own conclusion about the Honduran character, and its appreciation of loyalty.
You don't want to know about my Saturday night: suffice to say it made me very happy. And ended, having involved weeing in a traffic island at 3.00AM, at a house party full of Honduran people who didn't look like they'd shoot you for your mobile phone or boo their own national team; rather, a bit like my mates.

Now, I put all that in their so's you'd know not to worry about me. I'm definitely settling in. I'm off to write a serious blog about civil society now: you should read it for homework.

Blank

I'm sorry, but I have nothing to say. I don't know if anyone's reading this, but I've run out of ideas. I can't determine what's interesting or unusual any more. But I've just finished catching up on my friends' blogs (and I commented on All Of Them, sometimes twice), and I'm feeling all nostalgic for my buddies. Ahem. I'm sorry, I'm being maudlin. I need to go shopping, I think...

I met a CIA man on Friday night, working in the US embassy here and broadly spying on the Sandinistas. He talked about his Christian rock band. Not sure if that was a cover, or if it was sincere - but he didn't seem that interested in maintaining a cover.

That's actually the only interesting thing that's happened to me this week. I'll try to come up with more, and I'll let you know.

Really people, if you're reading, PLEASE post a comment. I have lost all sense of whether this is being read or not. (Clare, Lucy, you're exempted, for being exemplary. Everyone else, you should be more like Clare and Lucy).

Travels in Central America

Sorry about the radio silence everyone: I've been on holidays. Simp flew home yesterday morning, so after an incredible hiaitus, I'm back to the continuity of my Tegus life that you've been following right here on this blog. No boring droning on about civil society right now though: I'm still thinking about my holidays.

For people who are interested in these things, our itinerary was as follows: a week in Utila (an island off the north coast of Honduras) learning to scuba dive; then a day in Copán Ruinas, some of the Mayan world's best preserved ruins; New Year's Eve in Antigua de Guatemala; and finally some quiet time relaxing and hiking around the spectacular Lago de Atitlan. At the end of 3 weeks, Simp joined me for a week in Tegucigalpa, where I worked, and he cooked and checked out the city. I've invited him to guest blog on his experience of the above.

I know a decent number of readers of this blog have been in some or all of the places listed above, and I don't think any of them have been here in recent years. So I'm interested to know if my observations ring true with any of you. Here, for your comments and consideration, are my observations:

• Have there always been this many gringos in Central America? I learned more about American culture in my travels than about Guatemalan. Here's the profile of the majority of gringos I met - and we struck up short term travellers' realtionships with about 7 of them: West Coast (California or Oregon) intellectuallish (teachers, movie people, events managers) left wing, well-travelled, tedious in their descriptions of their previous travels, jewish or zionist (no less than 4 of them had travelled to Israel, one for his HONEYMOON), middle class (if that wasn't obvious). Have you heard of Trader Joe's? They all shop in Trader Joe's. I think that's kind of equivalent to Waitrose. Which, at a stretch, is kind of equivalent to Superquinn. When I was backpacking here 5 years ago, the people I met were almost entirely European. Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Canadians from British Columbia (now they're all Quebequooise.. what gives?). The vast majority of Americans I met were working here, mainly as Peace Corps. Has there been a sea change in American attitudes to Central America as a tourist destination.. or have I slipped into a different class of travel this time, the one the gringos always occupied?
• You see, before, I (or rather, me and Luce) had a very floppy time schedule and we travelled mainly by chicken bus. It was Very Much the case that the journey was the destination. This time round, we only had three weeks, and we were covering what are in fact fairly substantial distances, and doing them as a loop rather than a straight line getting ever closer to our destination. So we took a lot of tourist buses, and a few flights. This altered our experience of travel massively. Instead of having your head tucked into the armpit of a man with a white hat, gold teeth and a big machete, you're bored silly by a Lonely Planet wielding kiwi asserting that Tikal is "just like Angkor Wat". As though everything can be reduced to a giant National Geographic picture book, the ruins, the jungles, the handicrafts, the native peoples - completely without any political or social context. Sitting on those buses with those people (and they were nice people), I was struck again and again by the fact that they didn't even know Guatemala was poor. I swear they didn't. Just pretty.
• Shit - it's getting dark outside, and we all know what that means in this town. I should either be drunk and oblivious to personal safety, or safe at home. I'll return to this theme again though. If you know this part of the world at all, please comment. Is it changing, becoming more commodified - or am I just seeing different things now I'm not as broke??