Human tragedies - Human trafficking

Prostitution is not ilegal in Honduras but still sex tourism is not as obvious as in the Dominican Republic or Costa Rica. In these countries there are dosens of websites advertising sex-tour packages. The prefered victims in Honduras are children, and in 2006 a 58 year old man from Florida was arrested by the FBI for arranging trips to Honduras for men interested in having sex with underaged girls. The man was a navy commander in the US Navy Children`s program. He was teacheing young people the navy values of honor, courage and commitment. In 2004 a pediatrician from Brooklyn was sentenced to 21 years of jail for having tricked chilrdren in Honduras and Mexico into sex. It has been reported that between 8 000 and 10 000 children are involved in sex work in Honduras alone, as Honduran teenagers are among the most frequently trafficked children in Central America. Most of them are going to brothels and resorts in Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador, where the patrons are American, European and Australian men. Groups like Casa Alianza have worked to raise awareness of the problem, which in their opinion has grown in the wake of of crack downs in Thailand and other Asian countries that have been known for a long time for their pedophilia rings and prostitution. The Casa Alianza had to fire their own director in Tegucigalpa in 2004 when it was known that he himself had paid a 19-year old to stay in a group shelter for youth to have sex. The director was a British citizen, well known as a children`s advocate. He had even won a medal of honor for his work with homeless children. The Order of the British Empire Medal. That was in year 2000.  In year 2000, also, the USA was pressured to pas a law against human trafficking. The law has been particularily effective in Asia where trafficking rings have been broken up, and the victims returned to their homes. Latin America has been slower to respond, but Honduras has now trained 7 000 police, prosecutors and judges, and 10 000 students have been trained on Human trafficking. Due to corruption the law can be hard to enforce.


http://www.blog.polarisproject.org/2011/07/21/graphic-meth-ads-and-their-similarities-to-human-trafficking/

blog on Meth ads and their similarity to human trafficking

http://www.polarisproject.org/what-we-do/client-services/survivor-stories

More about sex and labour trafficking in USA.

Caribbean dream in Honduras

The pictures speak for them selves. Underneath: Utila Princess II that runs between La Ceiba and Utilas only town, East Harbour, 2 times a day; 9:30 am and 4:00 pm from La Ceiba and 6:20 am and 2:00 pm from Utila. The ride takes one hour and a bit, and going in the evning I have heard can be very bumpy and caotic ride. It is best to ask the capitan if yopu will need a pill against seasickness. I left La Ceiba with the boat 9:30 am and the sea was calm. The boat is overbuild, so you sit inside a large room that with just benches for the passengers and nothing more. It was still a pleasant ride. As you travel from shore at La Ceiba you see the mountains coming up from the ocean, it is beautiful.  

                                                       The church.

 Buildings are made of mahoganytree wood. It reminds me of Belize. This is the dentist.

                                       Old pirate house.

                                     If you are nuts for pizza :)

Utila is a quite small island lying far out in the Caribbean sea outside Honduras. It has a much bigger neighbouring island called Rotan in the east, even further out in the ocean, they belong to the Bay Islands (Islas de la Bahia). The history of the islands is very interesting; They were inhabited by AD 1000 for sure, but the inhabitants are unknown, and also where they came from. Christopher Columbus landed on the island called Guanaja in 1502 and met a large indigenous population there as on Rotan and Utila. Spanish slave traders kidnaped islanders and sent them to work at platations in Cuba and silver mines in Mexico. In the meanwhile, English, among them the famous Henry Morgan, Dutch and French pirates established hideaways on the islands and used them as bases to launch raids on Spanish cargo vessels laden with gold and other treasures. There were 5000 pirats on Rotan alone in the 17th century. The Spanish captured Port Royal on Rotan in March 1782 killing most of the pirates and selling the rest as slaves. Rotan was unoccupied until 1797 when the British marine dumbed 2000 black Caribs there. They setteled in the town Punta Gorda on Rotan and became known as Garifuna. Until 1859 Bay Islands were contolled by the British, then it became territory to Honduras. It is strange to see how white, black and mixed people and Spaniards live in such harmony here. The population is very diverse and I hear different languages. English is spoken with the Carib accent, like the people of Jamaica, then there is the Garifuna that is constructed language and Spanish. The Spanish is a bit difficult for me to understand. I see a lot of European looking and I thought they were tourists like me, but they are decendants of early Irish and British settlement. that came here over a centery ago. But there are settlers from the US, Israel, France and England that came here traveling and then just never left. They work in the tourist oriented businesses.

Traveling in Honduras - La Ceiba and crime

                                                      Me in Copan. Below: a parrot now living there

Traveling in Honduras is wonderful. They have proper busses with a lot of space for my legs, and, although very worn out, the seats are wonderful. I think I will not have to catch a single chickenbus here! It is almost like traveling in Mexico, and the people working on the busses are taking care of their passengers and herding us almost like sheep so we will not miss the departure or get lost on the break. I particularily liked Diana Express that runs between San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba. La Ceiba is a big city with a population of ca. 178 300, and the first foreigners coming here was the Garifuna. Today on the bus was the first time I have ever heard the contructed language garifuna, and I had a feeling of beeing in Africa! Not that I know very much about Africal languages, but the Garifuna decend from black slaves, and I guess that the mens deep, husky voices makes me think of Africa. Many men in Honduras are quite attractive, I guess part of it is thanks to their exotic African blood. The Garifunas came here in 1810 from Trujilo, followed by waves of im migrants in 1828 that where fleeing the violence that broke out in Olancho and lasted 50 years. The Spanish did not show up until 1846, and in 1857 French settelers came. In 1872 this was officially a city, and it was called La Ceiba because of a huge Ceiba tree near the coast that was used by the community as a gathering place. The beloved tree, of more than a 100 years old, was cut down in 1917 to make room for a new customs house. There are a lot of Cuban and Arabic settlement here as well. In 1899 Dole Food Company came to the area, and so the making of Banana Republics began. Here in Honduras US fruit companies controle the infrastucture and economy in the North. They own the principal lands, globbing up as much land as they could, as quickly as they could, and the fondation was laid  for increased US involvement in the region with the Spanish-American war in 1898. Since then the fruit companies have been extremely powerful with rivaling companies allying themselves with competing political parties. A lot of missery has been caused by their acctions of bribery, repressive labor practices and use of extremely toxic pesticides on their products. Think of that when you eat a Dole banana! A law from 1962 was designed to redistribute unused land to poor farmers, but it was undermined by the USA fruit companies. And the president that signed the law Ramon Villeda Morales was removed by the military a year later! The health and environmental impact of the Banana barons from USA has been devastating for the country, as has the impact of Canadian silvermining further south.

I have already explored some of La ceiba. Since one of my problems is that my cloth are falling apart (they do not make good cloth any more), I went to find the local Mall here to see if I could find something to buy. I had been walking around for quite a while when I saw one center, but it was not the one I was seeking. I asked 2 women where the center I wanted was, and they told me that it is near, but warned me about walking alone. Take a taxi they said. Do not go alone there! While standing there thinking a car stopped to pick up the 2 women. They called me for getting in with them in their car. I know that women are potentially just as dangerous as men, but they were all nicely dressed with a quite nice car. They offered me a lift to the Mall, it took less than 5 min. to get there. The woman driving  is a lawer who acctually has a client from Norway. They made comments about the latest events in Norway and before I left them they told me to take a taxi back. Being in the situation of knowing how it is to be robbed, I was not about to ignore their advice. So after having bought (just) a dress and a t-shirt, in a mall with the biggest selection of beautiful garment I have seen, I ate some food, and because it was dark by the time I headed home to Banana Republic Guesthouse, and because of the warnings, I took a taxi the few blocks to my hostel. Yes, there is a LOT of nice cloth here. Women in Honduras dress less conservative than Guatemalan women, and it is easy to find colourful long, flowing carribian-style dresses like the one I bought. I can not help to think that if a city of less than 200 000 has this selection of beautiful garment, how is shopping in Tegucigalpa??

According to some the Mara Salvatucha is the most dangerous criminal gang in the Americas. It emerged in Los Angeles in the 1990s from the poor, though streets. A new immigrationlaw in USA had alien criminals departed rather than tried in the US court causing the gangs to take root in the bottomless pools of poor, disaffected youth in Central America. Today there are a 100 000 members between Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), many of its members El Salvadoran children of refugees that were fleeing the USA sponsored civil war in El Salvador, and Mara (M-18), its rival. In Honduras 30 000 young people are thought to be gangmembers (I will write about sextrafficing of Honduras in a later blog). The maramembers are known for their tatoos and their gruesomme attacs with machetes. Mostley the gangs attac each other, but in 2004 there was an assault on a public bus outside San Pedro Sula. 28 people were killed. Former president Ricardo Maduro adopted a hash anti-crime policy known as Mano Dura (hard hand) that made the prisons overflow with prisoners, and so in 2003 a fire at a prison in Honduras killed 68 suspected gangmembers, but investigation showed that at least 59 had been shot by the guards. In 2004 another 104 suspected gangmembers were killed in another prisonfire, the guards of the prison stood by watching. Something similar to military death squads formed by off-dury officers and private security guards has killed more than 2000 children and young adults between 1998 and 2004. That means, in fact, that the goverment is more dangerous than the gangs. In 2009 a military coup has changed the face of Hnduras forever, but the pople here are strong, and you do not hear them complain, or see them live only half a life. They are not smiling quite as much as the Guatemaltecs, but they are not giving up on looking forward, and taking small steps towards a better future. I have just come to realize how much Honduras has to offer in natural wonders. Huge national parks, rainforests, beaches and magnificent islands, and a rich culture. The infrastucture of tourism is not very developed and tourists rarely go beyond Bay Islands where the largest tract of rainforest this side of the Amazon lies. And I was surprized to read that a lot of critters are living very well here. It acctually equals Costa Rica with its flora and fauna and it is so much cheaper!

The meeting at Copan Ruins

Mayan glyphs is the writinglanguage of the people that once inhabitated this land, and they are thought to be one of the oldest known writingsystems, and highly developed. The writing of the Mayans consists of glyphs for words such as; bird, house, jaguar and so on, and glyphs for syllables enabeling them to express abstracts. Carving their glyphs into stone allowed them to make them 3D so that they could combine 2 or more glyphs to make a sentence or a word.

A stelae of a Jaguar. Jaguars are the highest ranking animals in Mayan beliefsystem.

                                                              Beautiful altar

Overview of the archeological site.

On saturday I visited the Mayan site here in Copan. From the beautiful and peaceful little town it is only 15 min. walk on a beautiful path through lush, green environment, where you can even see some coulorful birds and huge larvaes. The ruins themselves are situated in the middle of the lush, green valley, and though it is hot and humid, it has enough big trees to offer some reliefe from the middaysun. When I came there, some people where about to let loose 5 beautiful big red parrots from a cave where they had been rared to be let loose one day. It was marvelous too see the big georgious birds fly in a well of sparkeling red. They soared up to the tops of the nearest trees and setteled there calling each orher. Two of the birds obiously had formed a bond, and was flying together over our heads. Theese parrots will live for 60years and mate with the same mate through their lifes. When I went inside the archeological site I felt the tingel of excitment in me. The carved stelaes are so beautiful. I don`t think the pictures can do them justice at all, and they are of the best perserved carvings found on this continent. Coming here awakened again my curiosity and sense of adventure. I felt alive and ready to meet the world head on again. All of theese ancient sites do that to me. I feel a deep connection to the land, past and the people, both from the past and present. And I feel I can understand their view of life to some extent. They were surrounded by beautiful nature, dangerous animals and colourful birds. I spent hours at the site. One reason is because I met a young man from Japan who was on the same shuttlebus as me, and then I met him again at the site. We started out talking about Japan, Japaneese food and my favourite drink; green tea cream frappucchino! We ended up discussing 911, the mayans and the difference of the cultures, conspiracy, the power of the media. I asked him about how it is in Japan, and he told me that it is hard to know, because the media is lying a lot, and keeping a lot from the public eye, and also from the international eye. I told him a few mayan legends, stories and facts, which he appreciated, because I made the ruins and the ancients come alive to him, he said. And then we started talking about 2012. Since I started travelling here, I have found people who talk about spirituality and spirits, ancient knowledge, the forbidden, the unknown. People who have a feeling or know that there is something "else". Another conciousness, other dimentions, another knowledge. That there IS true knowledge and that we can access it if we want to. Something more than everything we have been thought through our cultures. We know so little because it is decided for us what is useful for us to know and not. Knowledge of the spiritworld or healing is frown upon, and even laughed at. When I meet a person like this, like this Japaneese, who listened to what I have to say, and who feels it, and respond with the deep knowledge that is burried deep within us all, my crown opens wide open, and I say things that I have no idea where they come from. I just know that it is important. This kind knowledge we far to often are willing to throw away as nonsense, because we want to be liked, we want to be accepted, we want to do the "right thing". And we never speak what we truly feel. I just know that it is the truth from the bottom of my being. I used to believe that there is no higher truth, and that it is different for different people and cultures. Yes, every one of us carry his or her own truth, and acting according to it can never be wrong. But there are also "higher truths". Like the people of Norway know now after the horrible events that took place. One higher truth is LOVE. Hatred and revenge belong to another catagory. Hatred and revenge will never be a higher truth, even if it might be true for some people. But how do they come to that? No one is born hateful and revengeful. No one is born angry or a terrorist. This is something a man or a woman learns. People might say that something is wrong in theese peoples minds when they kill someone. But who is to say what is normal or not when we all acctually can be a "victim" to the that kind of learning? Is claiming mental illness not a way to push away our responsebility to take a good look at what our culture has become. Full of lonely, frustrated and medicated people. Old people without proper care. People who goes from work, then home to their TV sets sending comercials every 5 min. Reminding you that you are nothing but a consumer, and that your value lies in how much you buy. In the meantime we are overstraining our planet, and creating tonns of toxic garbage. Do not forget that for the past 10 years we have been thought to hate and fear muslims, and islam after 9/11. We have learned to fear one little word; terrorism. I have heard it repeated so many times that I am sick of it. They never ever let us forget and live a normal life. Terrorism was /is used as an excuse for so many revengeful and fearful actions against certain groups. Subtle things, like banning the burka in some countries to bombing one of the poorest countries in the world. And now private amercian companies are earning tons of money rebuilding it. If you want to earn money theese days, you bomb a country and then rebuild it. You make the world an unsafe place to be, and then you sell security to the people. In the tradegy that happened in Norway maybe there is a big chance to make a change. We can show the world that we are special and pure. That we can respond with the higher truth of love and take a good look at our selves, and our culture and ask what can we do to teach people love and compassion in stead of hatred and fear? What is the part our media and goverment play? Do I have TIME for a friend in need, or am I too afraid to adress the needs of others and myslef? We live in a culture where people prefer spending time with their electronic toys, where men and women act as enemies causing a lot of stress and lonleyness. Where little children move back and forth between their mum and dad like a nomad and too many kids are diagnosed ADHD and medicated with speed. When I met this Japaneese and we had talked for a long time, and he turned out to be one of the truly wonderful people I met. Someone that I know intuitively and mentally makes sense of what I say and what I know and I know that there is HOPE for the planet. In spite of all the terrible things happening, like the events of Norway, there are marvellous people out there, who SPEAK the truth. Like the French man I met on the Xela - Atitlan trekk, who most "rightbelieving" people would laugh at. It turned out that one from the US also had some unusual points of view, and we all exchanged a lot of information. These are the people who walk this planet with their eyes open and fearless of knowing the truth in their own beeing. And I know theese are the people that in the end will connect the people of the world, when we all let go of fear. There are more of theese people in this part of the world. Maybe becuase where there is more suffering and mayhap people can not afford to be asleep? And I think also it is because they are the "maya". If not in pure blod, then in spirit and knowledge. Why do I say that? Because always, may that person be a tourist from Japan, Belgium or France, or a native to the country, it is always in the proximity of the Maya I meet them. And the Mexicans has indeed decleared me a Maya. And my Nauhal is the magician, the Jaguar. In Mexicali the Ozelotl. All symbols of the hidden and elusive, the magician playing with illutions. Meeting Mishiko at the ruins, and talking to him made me realize that if I had not been robbed and unable to go to Copan earlier I would not have met him, and in the end we found that we had been sitting among the ruins for several hours, oblivious to other people and the burning sun, just talking and talking. It was sad to say goodbye as he left for Utila on Sunday. And I am going to La Ceiba tomorrow to take the ferry over there. 

According to the Popul Vuh, the Maya bible, it took the goods 4 attempts to creat a beeing powerful enough to maintain the world. On the first attempt the gods made deers, ants, wolfs and other animals, but when the gods called upon the animals to make them speak the names of the gods, they just grunted and roared. The second attempt the gods made a human out of  mud, but the mudperson spoke without knowledge and understanding and soon he fell apart and dissolved back to mud, replaced by a human out of flesh. But the fleshbeings where wicked and evil, and the gods decided to wipe them out in a great flood. The third attempt the gods carved a person out of wood. They were better than the mudpeople, but not perfect, although they could speak, walk and even have children and populate the world. But the gods found that they walked around sleeping with no purpose at all. They had also forgotten their farmer, their shaper, and so they were destroyed. The surviviours turned into chattering monkeys found in the trees all over Mesoamerica. The gods finally got it right when they discovered maize. They made the flesh of the human we now out of maize. The mayans call themselves children of maize, and indeed with the knowledge of genetics that we have, researchers have found out that the genetics of maize is acctually VERY similar to human genetics. Meaning that we are closley related to maize, so the Maya acctually seem to have known this! Or the gods of the Maya anyway, but it took them 4 times to get it. Popul Vuh is one of the GREATEST religious texts of ALL time and contains facinating stories and legends of Maya belief and creation.    

My first day in Honduras

Friday I woke up 3:30 to take a shuttle bus to Copan in Honduras. A 6 h. drive from Antigua, but when the border is crossed it is 15 min. inside Honduras territory in the north. The ride to Copan Ruinas was not without some scary events; we almost had an accident with a bus driving through Guatemala City in the dark. All I saw was hundreds sharp of flashing lights, and then two of them came straight at us. The driver of the shuttlebus was standing on the brakes, and I think we where just a few cm. from being flattened by the big red citybus. The citybuses of Guate (Guatemala City) are some of the main targets for gangs of bandits that are after some quick cash. I had to catch them when I went to the embassy and the immigrationoffice, but then I had no money or anything else to take, and I did not have money to go by taxis. The ride to Copan, Honduras were on some of the most dangerousley trafficated roads that I have seen. And I have seen a lot! The danger is the number of big trucks and busses that are plunging down the hillsides. Guatemala is all hills and mountains, so we climb up and speed down. When hills are rolling away undisturbed by human settlement, it is green and lush, especially now in the rainyseason. Unfortunatley the nature here has many scars, causing tragedy for the human population.  

The main attraction of Copan is the old Mayan site which lacks the massive pyramids further north in Guatemala and Mexico, but has some of the worlds best preserved carved stelaes. Records on theese stelaes, and ceramic evidence show that people have been living in the Copan valley from 1400 BC, but they must have been in the valley before that time. At its peak, Copan may have housed as many as 20 000 people. Today, saturday, I went to check the site out! When the Spaniards found the place in 1576 there were only 5 families living there. And they had no idea of the history of the ruins!! It might make us wonder if the people that are called mayans today really are decending from the mayans. The thing is that ALL the places I have visited were left long before the fleets from Spain came. They found ruins taken over by the forrest already everywhere. And I have heard a theory that the natives of this continent are decending from the islands, that they are secondary settelers. I am not going to argue any of that now, because I am not archeologist. But I know that all of the people I have been writing about in my blog are still mysteries to the scholars as to where they came from and where they went.

The pictures below are from Copan Tuins town. A really, really hot but friendly place where all thrillseakers hang out, go to see the ruins, go horsebackriding (I am going to try that!) and even go tubing and /or rafting in a river.

The church in the park.

The park 

Fountain in the park.

Honduras: The Ruins of Copan

Since many people have asked me to write my blog in English I took the opportunity to do so after I was (brutally) robbed of my dear Lenovo laptop, and am now stuck with a Spanish speaking laptop. Sometimes it speaks Spanglish as well, if I am lucky, but basically now I HAVE to learn how to read Spanish with its technical terms.

The film that is above is where I am going in the next couple of days, and I am really hopeing that this trip will snap me out of the my deep crisis after what happend! It is not that I am not fine! Even if the thought of going to Honduras seems more dangerous now, because Honduras is a country that has seen a rise in violence through 2009 /2010, than before, when the whole world was my safe Disneyland, if one can use this kind of expression. Now I am faceing some existential questions, and I think the only thing keeping me on this wnow is stubbornness. But I know that I want to come back to Latin America when I leave here one day. So dangerous and so beautiful, this se two expressions go hand in hand most places I have been on this planet, and I guess that I, reluctantly or not, fall in love with just that.

I will come back with photos and info on Honduras and Copan. Photos if I find out how my Spanglish speaking camera works. It even has a touch screen! It sounded so hip that I had to have it. It is cheap however, and will have to do for the rest of my travel. The Republic of Honduras is south of Guatemala, bordering El Salvador in the west and Nicaragua in the south. Before the Spanish came in 1524  it was home to many native tribes, among others the Maya. The main interest of the Sapniards were silver mining, and the natives were used to do the job. The natives, however died of disease brought from Europe, so slaves were brought from Africa to replace them. The decendants of the slaves now form the Garifuna culture along the Carribian coast, with their own constructed language, food and colourful garments and festivals. Like all countries in Latin America Honduras has had a lot of problems. One of the reasons of the violence and poverty is that it was made one of USA bananastates in the 20th century, with little economical growth for Honduras, but with US fruit companies controlling substantial land and infrastructure in the north. In addition the hurricane Fifi 1974 and Mitch in 1998 both caused destruction in the country. Especially Mitch that caused 50 years of progress to reverse, according to president Carlos Roberto Flores, with its massive and widespread destruction of nearly all bridges and secondary roads, 70 % of all crops and 33 000 houses.      5 000 people were killed.

More on Honduras next blog.