This issue of Enlace comes out a bit later than planned, for which we hope you will forgive us. But the theme of the issue, hurricane Mitch and what it blew away and what it blew the lid off, is still very relevant. And as we wait for a verdict on General Pinochet’s future from the English Law Lords, we offer thoughts on justice catching up with tyranny from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and our Lascworder.

The articles dealing with Mitch deal with the issue from a range of perspectives. Some review the physical destruction caused by the wind and rain, while others look at issues of debt and agriculture. Adrian Fitzgerald’s photographs from Honduras remind us of the damage that has to be dealt with by the people affected.

All the articles point to the combination of natural and artificial factors which exacerbated the potential for destruction. Poverty and debt lead to structural adjustment dictated by the IMF, which leads to more poverty and weakened infrastructure. This then has disastrous effects on the way land is worked and the places people live in, setting them up to be flushed away by the rains. and when public health services are needed to cope with an emergency, they too are found wanting.

This year Latin America Week (20th to 27th of March) takes debt as its main theme. The same week will see the region’s economists present the case against debt at a tribunal in Rio de Janeiro. And as a warm up exercise to all that information and discussion, Trócaire are making a human chain around the Central Bank in Dame St. in Dublin to protest against the debts on March 7th. Debt kills, and it’s time we started fighting back.

For many of LASC’s members the horrific pictures of Hurricane Mitch immediately brought to mind places they knew well or had visited in Central America. Many of us have worked in Nicaragua or in other countries of the region, either on long-term assignments or on solidarity brigades. In the years when the people of Nicaragua suffered the full brunt of US aggression and constant attacks from the Contra, many people from Ireland went to show solidarity with the Sandinistas and the people of Nicaragua in their struggle to build a new society. Many of the Nicaraguans we worked alongside became close friends, and have stayed in contact over the years. As the extent of the hurricane destruction unfolded on our television screens we received phone calls and e-mails describing the levels of devastation, loss and hardship and the immediate response by many of the local organisations on the ground.

One contact who comes from the León area of Nicaragua has pleaded with us to send help directly rather than through official channels: “And I ask that those who support us do it directly so that their help goes straight to the local emergency committees. Those of us who live alongside those who have been affected, who hear the mothers who cry for those they have lost, and cry even more for those who have survived but who are dying of hunger, only we can really feel the heartfelt despairing tragedy of the Nicaraguan people.”

Meanwhile, Cristina Rodriguez, whom many Irish people will have met when she visited Ireland some years ago says that in her area of Chinandega “The government is providing no support, indeed many of the people who have been left homeless have been forced to go and work picking coffee in other areas. The situation is terrible. But we feel that the only hope is in solidarity; because it gives us great strength to continue fighting.”

Although neither LASC nor the Irish Nicaragua Support Group are established aid agencies, people here wanted to do what they could to help. Our friends and contacts on the ground needed our solidarity. While the INSG had already begun to raise funds among its own members, LASC launched a more general appeal, calling it Central America Hurricane Relief Appeal - CAHRA. A fitting title for an expression of friendship between people here and friends in Central America.

To date over £50,000 has been raised, and funds continue to come in. An initial disbursement of US$8,500 was sent to provide emergency food and supplies to 5 areas in Nicaragua we were in direct contact with immediately following the hurricane. These were communities where our members have worked and know many of the people very well. Representatives from some of those communities have visited Ireland in recent years. In all cases there were established relief programmes being run by the local organisations we were supporting.

And now for the next phase. Reconstruction. Although there is still a need for emergency relief it is vital that these communities have the means to reconstruct their livelihoods and earning power, whether that be agricultural production or some other activity. CAHRA has agreed that a minimum of 80% of the funds raised should be directed towards long-term initiatives by the communities. So, while one cooperative we are in contact with has asked us to help them replace the 2 cows and 4 calves which were drowned, we have received other requests for equipment and supplies for health programmes as well as many for funds to purchase chickens and seed for replanting food crops. Requests have come from all countries of the region.

CAHRA is committed to getting assistance directly to people in order that they can stay in their own communities and reconstruct their lives. Specific criteria for the projects have been sent to over 20 organisations in Central America. However any readers who have contact with groups or organisations in the region who might like to present a request should contact LASC for information on the criteria and application process.

Val Roche

Matagalpa, Nicaragua

December 17, 1998

This week, in the wake of hurricane Mitch, the United States Marine Corp began "operation hope" in Nicaragua in an effort to win hearts and minds, adoration and admiration for the big boys with THEIR big machines. Now that we have a government extremely friendly to U.S. and Taiwaneese political and economic interests we have qualified for a real live "good will" mission.

On the third day of the "hope" deployment (1,877 marines and over 1,000 vehicles and machines) the same U.S. armed forces began another merciless attack against Irak. This could have been us here in another space in time but as a spokesperson for the U.S. embassy stated here, this batch of soldiers are here on good will and "don't know about history." They haven't heard or read (I doubt they are allowed to) about Sandino or the Somozas or the Sandinistas or about the 1980's when the U.S. government sponsored and directed mass murder and destruction in Nicaragua. The embassy spokesperson didn't add the obvious, that neither she, her leaders or the troops remember that the World Court condemned the U.S. agression and that the U.S. never paid one cent for war crime reparations they committed here.

Now Nicaraguans are supposed to cheer the good will, put out their hands for the good candy and keep quiet about the fortune of those now on the receiving end of the carrot and stick.

Tippy and Hilly already came and Billy, if he is still running the death/good will ship, is due here in February to put the icing on the cake. Nicaraguans will be expected to bow and cheer the skipper and beg for more "good will" ie. a prolongation of the big boys stay here.

That's all for now,

Circles Robinson

(former editor of Nicaragua Farmers’ View)

Hans Christian Anderson saw it. In the Emperor’s New Clothes he saw the emperor and a whole population gulled by a smart tailor and in the grip of a collective hallucination. It took the simple truthfulness of a child to say, “But he’s nude! The Emperor has no clothes!” Oh, for that child in our present situation!

“But,” you say, “is this supposed to be an article on global debt? What possible correlation can there be with a Danish fairy tale? The peoples of the earth (including those of the 'great satan' USA) are struggling to pay astronomical sums in interest on all kinds of debts, private, national and international with the result being that approximately four hundred families own half of the earth. But the hallucination of all hallucinations is that we struggle to repay loans which never existed, even repaying multiple compound interest on them, repaying them with our commodities, and our very real lives‚ labours.

Some people somewhere discovered the tailor’s secret of all time when they learnt to invent money from absolutely nothing by merely writing it, printing it or, today, keying it into a computer. However, a loan of nothing isn't anything; it cannot be repaid. Interest on nothing, even compound interest, is nothing. At most we might owe some bits of paper of dubious quality or some digital pulses down a telephone line; I doubt it, but if so it could be arranged. But we, the earth's peoples, are owed our lives, our labours and our commodities; how can they ever repay that? They can't and we would be fools to hope for it as we have been fools to have believed (credo) in their credit, for this was the ultimate con trick of all time, to con an entire planet!

Kind liberal public servants such as Peter Sutherland call for forgiveness of the debt. Indeed how kind they are! But why do we need

forgiveness? Is this some new religion where the only sin is debt? What about the old religions where usury was anathema? We do have the choice of forgiving them for robbing a planet. For myself, I do not care whether they forgive the debt or not. What debt are they talking about? There is no such debt. To think about it is to admit to psychosis. To repudiate it is a waste of energy and an engagement in a dialect that is fruitless. How often its apparent repudiators have merely sought the profitable job of administering it. Organising revolutions to overthrow it is like trying to overthrow something that isn't there, and so by that very act one has affirmed it and guaranteed its continuance. How often the revolutionaries come to sit in the palace.

One must abandon hallucinations and cling to realities. Commodities are realities and thus barter is a reality. Gold and silver are realities.

Our lives and our labours are realities.

In the open rent-free markets of the future when the invisible emperors of this age of ours come naked with wheelbarrows full of valueless paper, no one will sell their wares for such junk; but I hope at least we have the charity to pass on to them some of our old clothes to cover their nakedness.

Abdassamad Clarke

At the same time that Cuba announced the cancellation of a $50 million debt,the right-wing anti-communist government of Nicaragua, in a bizarre move, refused a Cuban offer of doctors and medical supplies. However, the Nicaraguan people and the media reacted much differently.

La Prensa, La Tribuna, El Nuevo Diaro and the Bolsa de Noticias published a message from President Castro in full; the radio stations reported on it; and radio listeners from all over the country called the stations to express their thanks. Many recalled that even during the era of the Somoza dictatorship, Cuba always lent a hand.

The Nicaraguan President, Arnoldo Alemán refused to accept a brigade of Cuban epidemiologists to aid the hurricane victims: "Nicaragua has quite enough doctors to go around, thank you. If we fill our hotels with doctors who will be pressing for helicopters to get to the scene , it will only cause more chaos." Nevertheless health authorities in that country received a donation from the Cuban government of 1090 kilograms of medications valued at about $80,000. The donations included equipment and instruments for the detection of the leptospirosis virus and the biological rodenticide called Biorat.

Three brigades with Cuban medical personnel (two in Honduras and one in Guatemala) are now treating thousands of people affected by Hurricane Mitch. The 27 health professionals in Honduras and 19 in Guatemala each have a field hospital for the provision of emergency care.

Declan McKenna

Cuba Support Group

On the 7th December 1998 Lt Col Hugo Chavez had a resounding victory in the Venezuelan presidential elections, winning almost 57% of the vote against a right-wing independent. He is backed by Polo Patriótico, an alliance of five left-wing parties and the Movement of the Fifth Republic.

Chavez first came to the public eye when he lead a coup against the then President Andrés Pérez in 1992 as an expression of discontent with the prevailing economic order. After being imprisoned for two years he was amnestied by Pres. Caldera.

He has taken his inspiration from populist military dictators such as Torrijos of Panama and particularly the Peruvian generals of the 1970s, Velasco Alvarado and Morales Bermudez, whom he served under. Historically he harks back to the ideals of Simon Bolívar.

The victory of Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez has been greeted as a sign of hope amongst opposition forces in Mexico and Colombia

In 1991-1992, when Chavez and his Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement first rose to prominence, Venezuela seemed to be in very good conditions economically. In 1992, GDP increased by 9.2 %, inflation was under control, there was a significant rise in investments and the external debt had been renegotiated. The privatisation of the telephone company, the national airline and three banks gave the government nearly 2,000 million dollars while the oil continued to be an essential source of income and taxes for the economy, in spite of the reduction in production agreed with OPEC.But the common people gained nothing from this as at the same time, as in all other countries subjected to the rigours of structural adjustment by the IMF, subsidies for basic foodstuffs were removed and education, transport and health services were cut, allowing for a brutal concentration of wealth while 80% of the people lived in poverty.....

A later agreement with the IMF and the World Bank reached by the then President Caldera (who had been elected for taking an anti-neoliberal stance) meant that petrol prices rose by 850% and electricity by 10% monthly, VAT rose from 12% to 18% and the 'Bolivar' was devalued by 70%. By the end of 1996 inflation had passed 100% and the following year was 30% with an economic recession that obviously affected consumption. Meanwhile unemployment and the informal sector increased, as did the concentration of wealth and the concomitant poverty.

By 1997, the traditional political parties, the social democratic Democratic Action and the christian democratic Copei (Independent Electoral Committee of Political Organisation) were in crisis to the point that opinion polls favoured a former Miss Universe, Irene Saez, who had no previous political experience.....

....Hugo Chavez may turn out to be a heavy handed populist, in the style of the Peruvian generals of the ‘70s (Velasco Alvarado and Morales Bermudez) for whom he has expressed open admiration, but it is undeniable that the people of Venezuela have voted overwhelmingly against the neoliberalist agenda imposed by the IMF.

Lesley Clarke

“For Trocaire, this disaster means a decade of work has been lost and hundreds of people helped by Trocaire and the Irish people have been killed. Some 29 Trocaire projects have been wiped out and another 30 in health and agriculture made meaningless.”

Thus wrote Sally O'Neill in the Irish Times on November 4. Trocaire's Central America representative, based in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, was describing the aftermath, not of a war, but of Hurricane Mitch.

The hurricane affected Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Belize, more or less in that order of seriousness. Two years' average rainfall fell on Honduras in five days, causing the worst flooding in two centuries. Up to 11,000 may have died - well over half in Honduras.

With a reported per capita GNP of $600, nearly six million Hondurans pay an average of $100 per person per year in debt service, so much does this impoverished nation owe. The shambolic economy which existed before Mitch has been all but obliterated by the hurricane which flooded half the country and ruined up to three-quarters of the crops. About 90 bridges were destroyed, and five airports put out of

action. A million people were made homeless. Electricity, water and telephone systems sustained massive damage. As the floodwaters receded, a diseased landscape of dead animals and uprooted trees emerged, like something out of a painting by Salvador Dali.

With a population of 800,000, Tegucigalpa is bisected by the huge river Choluteca, which rose alarmingly, smashing bridges and destroying whole neighbourhoods. Mudslides caused by rain did the rest, as thousands of shacks slid down off the hills on which they had precariously perched.

The following is an extract from ‘Facing up to Mitch’, an article by Jon Snow in the Guardian on November 9:

“There's something that veers between utopia and hell about Central America. Graham Greene caught it. As someone who reported in the 1980s in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala and saw the old Cold Warriors use the region for their power play, I caught it too. Now the region challenges the "new world order" as never before. This catastrophe is not simply unfolding in America's back yard, it is most poignantly in ours. We leave its resolution to the US government at our peril. The military aid relationship down the years is part of the infrastructure that delivered death squad deploying dictatorships. The post cold war period has been a time when these countries began to emerge from the 20th century shadow of the American fruit companies, and US backed military dominance of power. The danger now is that limited American band aid will redevelop those old relationships and that the suffering people will be left two decades back from where they were before Hurricane Mitch struck.”

Though I have never set foot in Honduras, I think I know what Snow means by "US backed military dominance of power". Some years ago in the United States, a former marine described to me, without being asked, what it had been like to serve in Honduras in the 1980s, helping the local military to hunt, torture and kill Honduran rebels while awaiting Reagan's order to cross the Nicaraguan border and face death against the Sandinistas. Afflicted by desperate poverty and a traitorous ruling class, Honduras was ripe for this kind of prostitution, hiring itself out as a US base in return for limited economic gain and help in repressing elements of its own population. Snow's point would seem to be that, if Europe does not help sufficiently with reconstruction, Honduras could fall that low again, even in a post Cold War world.

Los enemigos

Ellos aquí trajeron los fusiles repletos de pólvora,

ellos mandaron el acerbo exterminio,

ellos aquí encontraron un pueblo que cantaba,

un pueblo por deber y por amor reunido,

y la delgada nina cayó con su bandera,

y el joven sonriente rodó a su lado herido,

y el estupor del pueblo vio caer a los muertos

con furia y con dolor.

Entonces, en el sitio

donde cayeron los asesinados,

bajaron las banderas a empaparse de sangre

para alzarse de nuevo frente a los asesinos.

Por estos muertos, nuestros muertos,

pido castigo.

Para los que de sangre salpicaron la patria,

pido castigo.

Para el verdugo que mandó esta muerte,

pido castigo.

Para el traidor que ascendió sobre el crimen,

pido castigo.

Para él que dio la orden de agonía,

pido castigo.

Para los que defendieron este crimen,

pido castigo.

No quiero que me den la mano

empapada con nuestra sangre.

Pido castigo.

No los quiero de embajadores,

tampoco en su casa tranquilos,

los quiero ver aquí juzgados,

en esta plaza, en este sitio.

Pablo Neruda, Chileno.

It was our enemies

Who brought the loaded guns,

The cruel extermination,

Finding us a singing people,

A people united in duty and love,

And the slim girl fell with her flag,

And the smiling youth fell injured at her side,

And the people, stupefied, pained and angry,

Saw the dead fall.

Then, at the spot

Where the murdered fell,

They lowered the flags to soak them in blood

In order to raise them again

Against the murderers.

On behalf of these, our dead,

I ask for punishment.

For the executioner who ordered this death,

I ask for punishment.

For the traitor who climbed on the shoulders of crime,

I ask for punishment.

For he who ordered death,

I ask for punishment.

For the defenders of this crime,

I ask for punishment.

I don't want to shake the hand

Soaked in our blood.

I ask for punishment.

I don't want these people as ambassadors,

Nor at peace in their homes,

I want to see them tried

In this square, here.

Pablo Neruda, Chilean.

(Transl. Kieran Furey)

The following is a brief synopsis of a long article which appeared in the November edition of the Nicaraguan magazine Envio (vol 17, No. 208).

Nature can be a bully sometimes. She likes to kick poor countries when they're down. In the western Hemisphere, no country except Haiti is poorer than Nicaragua, and no country except Honduras was harder hit by Hurricane Mitch. Over the previous quarter century, Nicaragua had suffered an earthquake that levelled the capital, Managua, killing ten thousand; a revolutionary war against Somoza; a counterrevolutionary war against the Sandinistas; Hurricane Joan; and a devastating tidal wave. Then came Mitch which, without ever blowing directly over Nicaragua, nevertheless caused enough rain to kill up to four thousand people, destroy thousands of kilometers of road and a third of the country's crops, in addition to destroying or damaging up to 800,000 homes. Forty hurricanes have hit Nicaragua in the 20th century. Mitch's visit to neighbouring Honduras caused far more destruction in Nicaragua - mainly in the north - than any of the hurricanes that actually hit the country directly. In the mountainous province of Jinotega, rainfall was a thousand times the October average.

The Río Coco is Nicaragua's longest river. In Quilali, just north of the river, a brand new baseball stadium, built at great cost and with much sacrifice, was ready for its grand opening. The river rose and washed it away. In Wiwili, the Coco destroyed 2,500 of the 2,800 houses. In the thickly forested area near the Atlantic coast in the northeast, 70 Miskito commuities lost their homes.

In Posoltega, in the province of Chinandega, the Italy-Nicaragua Association had already chosen the names for the new schools it was about to build for the local children in the shadow of the extinct 1,400-metre volcano called Casita. For four consecutive days, rain caused by Mitch poured into the crater lake atop the mountain. Then, at midday on October 30th, the crater rim gave way and a huge avalanche of water, mud and rocks buried two thousand people in eight villages.

The hurricane broke 70 bridges. It also broke the back of the false image of a new, booming Nicaragua so laboriously constructed over the previous months by the neoliberal government of President Miguel Alemán. What comfortable northern tourist or investor will now be interested in a destroyed country whose chronic poverty as well as its present disaster has been so widely portrayed on the world's TV screens?

The government dithered for days about declaring an emergency, fearing any deviation from policies imposed by its foreign masters who hold the purse-strings.

Now, as the bodies emerge from the mud, the danger of disease rides in like yet another apocalyptic horseman: malaria, dengue, leptospirosis, cholera, and myriad infections are all real dangers.

International aid has been quick to arrive, saving countless lives and fending off catastrophe in the short term. But the long-term outlook is more worrying: infrastructure and crops destroyed, people flocking to the cities, an internal market destabilised by destruction and food aid, are all phenomena liable to affect the country for years. The 1972 earthquake hastened the demise of Somoza. Did the 1998 rainquake mark the beginning of the end of the fat man's friend, Miguel Aleman? Only time will tell, and Nicaraguans have, if nothing else, at least plenty of that.

By Phil Gunson in Honduras

Hurricane Mitch, which left much of Honduras and northern Nicaragua in ruins last October, has been called the most devastating natural disaster to strike the region in 200 years. Ironically however, with the exception of the Bay Islands (Islas de la Bahia) and part of the Caribbean coast of Honduras, it was not the 180-mile-an-hour winds of this exceptional “category five” hurricane that did the damage. As Mitch slowed from category five to category one - and then to mere “tropical storm” status - most people assumed the danger was past, and that the ex-hurricane would blow itself out harmlessly over the Caribbean.

In fact, the horror was about to begin. Instead of following its predicted course, the storm described an extraordinary s-curve, entering Honduran territory near the port of Trujillo and exiting close to the Guatemala/El Salvador borders.

Blocked by a cold front from advancing northwards, it dawdled for days over Honduras, dumping the huge volume of water it had picked up from the Caribbean over the mountainous spine of Central America.

In less than a week, much of Honduras experienced the equivalent of half a year’s rainfall. Only slowly did it dawn on the country’s authorities that a major tragedy was about to occur.

But although the storm itself appeared to be a freak, once-in-a-century occurrence, the consequences were all too predictable. Environmentalists had been warning for years that deforestation and a lack of urban planning would combine to produce a disaster in the event of a serious storm.

No one had heeded their warnings, and as a result, thousands would die and hundreds of thousands be made homeless. And all this in a country where - almost unnoticed - a farming technique that its proponents claim would help avoid such disasters was already being modernised with great success.

Mitch passed almost directly over the remote village of Guarita near the border with El Salvador. But you would be hard pressed to find any evidence of its passing.

This is the poorest and most forgotten region of the country. “We’re so abandoned, even Mitch ignored us,” joked one resident. It was to these high mountains that the Lenca chieftain Lempira withdrew in the 16th century to lead resistance to the Spaniards - and it was here, according to legend, that he plunged to his death from a rocky outcrop near the summit of the highest peak.

Much of the population is still of Lenca indian origin. Just one telephone and four doctors serve the area’s 110,000 people - and the doctors do not work weekends. Malnutrition is put at 64 per cent and illiteracy averages 50 per cent. The roads resemble dry riverbeds.

But no one died in the southern third of the departamento (province) of Lempira and, physical damage - other than to the roads - was minimal.

The explanation is a system for farming mountainsides invented by poor subsistence farmers and currently being refined and promoted by Honduran agronomists with foreign assistance.

So successful is the system that those employing it lost only 10 per cent of their crops in last year’s severe „El Niño” drought and even after Mitch had a grain surplus of 50 to 60,000 quintales (1 quintal = 100lbs) with which to alleviate hunger elsewhere in the country.

Known as the “Quezungual” method, after the village where its use was first observed, it avoids the ruinous “slash-and-burn” technique which destroys the forest and leads to erosion, soil degradation and the destruction of vitally important watersheds.

“When I first came here six years ago,” recalled agronomist Germán Flores, “this area was just one big fire.” Now farmers who burn their land have been reduced to single figures in many of the 84 communities in which the Prolesur project is working.

The reason for slash-and-burn is to give the soil a quick injection of fertiliser - in the form of burned vegetation - just before the rains come. But although it results in good yields in the first year, production quickly tails off, and with no tree cover the soil is eventually washed off into the rivers.

Seventy per cent of Honduran farmland is hillside, but the country’s agricultural colleges have traditionally taught plains farming, in the interests of the agribusiness companies that dominate the export trade.

The destruction wrought by Mitch was a direct consequence of this one-sided approach, according to Ian Cherrett, who directs the Prolesur project for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), with finance from the Dutch government.

“There is no such thing as a “natural disaster‚” Cherrett argues. “There are natural phenomena which interact with human activities.”

When Mitch released an unprecedented volume of water over the Honduran mountains the lack of vegetation and soil on the hillsides led to extremely rapid run-off. Eroded soil, loose rocks and trees added to the weight which eventually crashed into roads, bridges and houses downstream.

The toll of the disaster was exacerbated by a lack of planning which left houses, factories and farms right in the path of the flood waters.

The concrete bridge across the mouth of the Rio Cangrejal in La Ceiba, for instance, was smashed when the swollen river-waters picked up an entire small factory and hurled it against the bridge’s westernmost span.

The Quezungual method involves planting crops under trees, whose roots anchor the soil. Pruning provides the soil nutrients and terracing - or the use of natural, plant barriers - helps eliminate erosion. Instead of ploughing, farmers use the traditional pointed stick when sowing.

Yields have increased, crop varieties are multiplying and birds and animals which had fled the increasingly barren hillsides are beginning to return.

“Before, we just had vegetables to feed ourselves,” said 20-year-old Juventina Aguilar, as she stood among pineapples, papayas and a dozen other crop varieties in the family’s hillside plot above the hamlet of San Pablo. “Now there’s a surplus of everything and we have to sell our produce.”

According to Celestino Serna, a peasant farmer in San Pablo and a convert to the method, it was “the scarcity of water” that forced local people to change their ways. “I remember when there were more trees and bushes here and water was more abundant,” he said.

“But nobody told us what was wrong until the experts from Prolesur started helping us.” Quezungual is based on a local technique, but there is no record of how long ago it was first used, and it had almost died out when agronomists began studying it in the early 1990s.

Now, in the aftermath of Mitch, the Honduran government has expressed interest in extending Quezungual to other areas of the country. Although it is primarily suited to small, hillside plots, variations for larger farms and cattle ranches are being developed.

“The key is sustainability,” argues Ian Cherrett. “The adoption of this system is not enough: a number of complementary activities are required, otherwise they will simply double their population - and then they’re back where they started.”

“What we are proposing is that they should be seen not just as peasant farmers but as landscape managers. They would be paid for this through a tax on, say, electricity and water.”

“If the inhabitants of San Pedro Sula (the country’s industrial centre), for instance, had paid out a little at an earlier stage, they wouldn’t be faced with such a huge repair bill. You could look on it as a kind of insurance.”

Ironic as it may seem, the dirt-poor descendants of Lempira may be just in time to save the remainder of the country from five centuries of mismanagement by those who drove them into the hills.

Why did he want him to stand trial?

Now, these are all questions to be asked at next years LASC pub quiz so pay attention. There might be a bottle of wine in it for you or even a Cuban cigar (health warnings notwithstanding). Well then, what’s the answer? Pinochet, of course and he wanted him to stand trial for the murder of Spanish citizens (Of course Franco had the good sense to die in the job and his acolytes are treated with collective amnesia). So the next question is did he get it right? Well, sort of. You see when a group of mass murderers get together to do a job, they count on others who can provide them with the weapons and the logistics. Safe houses are not needed as anyone can call on Mrs T for some tea.

Right then, for a spot prize, who did Garzón leave off his list? Practically everybody. The list is so long I couldn’t possibly name them all here. Well, let’s start off with dear old Ted Heath whose government supplied the Hawker Hunters and Chieftain tanks that were used with such deadly effect on the day. Nixon ( I know, he’s dead and can’t stand trial. But he could be dug up, he wasn’t exactly anymore forthcoming when he was alive) and Henry “Peace Prize” Kissinger who bombed Cambodia into the stone age. Of course others kept Pinochet going once started, such as Ford, Carter, Callaghan and Thatcher (that’s Baroness Thatcher to all you sycophants in the respectable press, but she is still Mad Maggie the Belgrano Butcher to us). So here’s to hoping that Pinochet and Maggie are charged.

Is there anyone we left off the list? The banks of course. While the rest of the population has trouble getting money for a mortgage Pinochet could get no end of money for his army and their torture centres. So we can put the IMF and the World Bank in there as well. We are running out of space in the dock so we’ll allow another couple of candidates. Any guesses? Come on, they wear white and green clothes and couldn’t play football to save their lives. Yes! The Irish squad that was the first team to play the Santiago stadium after the last corpse had been removed. Giving moral support to the likes of Pinochet must be a crime and if it isn’t I am sure we could make it so. And while we are at it, we can charge them with something in relation to their football which was in the 70s nothing short of criminal, though we’ll have to ask someone other than Garzón to prosecute that one.

So when Missile Maggie says that Pinochet should be shown compassion and that he was an ally of Britain during its murderous crusade in the Malvinas what she really means is that it is herself and people like her who are equally criminal who should stand trial alongside Pinochet, for he did nothing without their help. Murder Inc. Murder PLC. and Murder Financial Services Ltd (i.e the USA, Britain and the banks) are all equally to blame if not more so and the only compassion Pinochet deserves to be shown is that he be given a lot of co-defendants to keep him company.

However, none of them will be charged, if only because they are still at it today. Arms are still sold to murderous regimes and we all know what oil companies still get up to. We haven’t seen the last of the likes of Pinochet. Right now future Pinochets are being formed. Some call themselves democrats and others work for multinationals. As we gear ourselves up for the next millennium lets not kid ourselves that we will begin it any better than we are finishing off this one. And there is still a year left (two if you count right, but that’s another issue) to get some torture and killing done.

Irish Film Premiere in aid of LASC

Best Foreign language Film and Best Actress

(Fernanda Montenegro)

March 7th, Screen Cinema, D'Olier Street, Dublin 2.

Directed by Walter Salles and starring Fernando Montenegro, Marilia Pera and Vinicius de Oliveira.

This intimate, acutely tender and involving film tells the story of a simple odyssey: one boy’s search for his father; one woman’s search for her feelings and one country’s yearning for its roots. Dora, an ex-teacher, earns a living in the stifling halls of Rio de Janeiros Central Station writing letters for the

illiterate passersby. But one letter changes her life and sets her off on a troubled journey with a nine year old boy (Vinicius de Oliveira).

Followed by a Celebration of Salsa at Mother Redcaps (including a Havana Club rum promotion).

Tickets and information: Latin America Solidarity Centre Tel: 01 6760435

CHIAPAS

Sweat is the hard currency of the jungle.

The little government soldiers spend it freely

Under the dripping canopies of tents and trees and sky.

It lubricates their lives

As they scurry like ants

Through the shifting tunnels of history

In their ceaseless search for the past.

The legions of Marcos are everywhere:

Men with their roots in the soil,

Children with stars germinating within,

Women pregnant with hope.

The wind raises little flurries of agitation,

Kicks sand in the government’s face,

Whistles eerily in the velvet nights of the rich.

The prospect of revolution drips corrosively

From the open pores of the future.

It stings the eyes of the government’s troops

as questions tunnel like soldier ants

in the stodgy soil of their brains.

The winds of change rustle the trees,

Turning over new leaves in Chiapas.

Kieran Furey