Caribbean & Central America - December 2011 (ISSN 1741-4458)

“The tiger is crouching”, declared a left-wing deputy ahead of the approval in congress of new executive-proposed measures to give the Honduran military broad policing powers. President Porfirio Lobo is putting the military on the streets under a 18-month state of emergency in order to combat the rising tide of violent crime in the country, which now has one of the highest homicide rates of anywhere in the world. Despite strong concerns about the move locally, the president is not for turning and, ahead of the congressional vote, he proudly touted figures showing a marked drop in crime in the main cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula following a recent joint military-police deployment known as Operation Lightning Strike. Critics warn that Lobo might do well to look north towards Mexico, where President Felipe Calderón’s military security strategy has led to a massive upsurge in domestic violence and is largely considered a failure. Indeed, in late November, a Mexican lawyer lumped President Calderón and several members of his government in together with the (alleged) local drug kingpin Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán in a complaint filed at the International Criminal Court in The Hague alleging “systematic human rights abuses and crimes against humanity”.

Sergio Castellanos, a member of the government-allied Unificación Democrática (UD), expressed fears that the measures would result in a repeat of the human rights violations that took place in the 1980s when, he said, at least 182 people were ‘disappeared’ and 200 murdered in extra judicial military activities. “These are very real concerns based on real events”, he stressed, underlining the need to ensure that the new measures are explicitly temporary and exceptional in nature. Castellanos reminded the plenary that in 2010 it had also approved the enlargement of the Honduran army to include an additional 2,000 members. (According to the UK-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Honduran army numbered 8,300 active members in 2010 (with a further 1,400 in the navy and 2,300 in the air force).

The inference is that Honduras is taking a major step backwards in putting military boots back on the streets in large numbers, a strategy President Lobo first adopted on a small scale in mid-2010 and one that is being also being rolled out anew in neighbouring Central American countries such as El Salvador and potentially also in Guatemala, where authorities are besieged by the spread of Mexican drug trafficking gangs across the region.

Lobo’s decision to draw more heavily upon the military also comes in the midst of very damming corruption scandals in the national police force, which despite intense official pressure has been hostile to a purge and internal reform. The president claimed on 19 November that Operation Lightning Strike (Operación Relámpago), which deployed 2,000 soldiers alongside some 14,000 police officers, had succeeded in lowering the number of violent crimes in the central district (which includes the capital) by 90%, and in San Pedro Sula by 60%.

Under Article 274 of the 1982 constitution (written by a retreating military regime), Honduran troops are allowed to work with police officers “in a supportive capacity”, including in the fight against narco-trafficking. The executive petitioned congress to vote in favour of a broad interpretation of Article 274 so as to give the military more explicit policing powers under the temporary state of emergency, such as the right to issue and carry out arrest orders, undertake search and seizure activities and direct street operations.  Just as police are not trained for war scenarios, the military has no training in civil policing. Lobo said on 28 November that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) may assist in policing training schemes for the military.

Typically under a state of emergency, public gatherings are banned and other civil liberties restricted. The government could also impose a curfew. Given that Honduras is entering an election period in 2012-2013, there are concerns that a military presence could interfere in the process.

Controversially, Lobo is also ‘fusing’ the ministries of defence and security, which oversee the military and the police respectively. The idea is to establish a single civilian ministry to coordinate both, with three vice ministries to separately oversee the police, the military and a proposed new investigative force. Critics accuse the president of overstepping the mark. He counters that desperate times require strong measures.

• Honduran women endure terrible violence

On 25 November to coincide with the United Nation’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Grissel Amaya, the special prosecutor for women at the public ministry, reported that over 1,500 women were murdered in Honduras between 2008 and 2011, on official estimates. The real figure is probably higher. Amaya said that the ministry now receives some 20,000 reports of domestic violence a year, while reports of sexual violence exceeded 11,000 in the three year period to 2011.  The crime of femicide, where women are killed on the sole grounds of their gender, is prevalent throughout Central America.