In the very slow bus on the way to San Pedro on July 11th, somewhere near Siguatepeque, was a graffiti that somewhat dramatically read "dedo manchado dedo cortado" on the wall of a business called ESC Security Consultants. On the same piece of paper where I scribbled that down, thinking about the eternal security theme, I noted how recently three different friends had gotten uncharacteristically angry at me for being late- something that's hard to avoid when I'm doing fieldwork and reliant on other people's timeliness and transportation. And each time, their reasoning had not been "you made me wait!" but rather "I had no idea what had happened to you! You could have gotten attacked or kidnapped!"

In preparation for the July 12 workshop I had been asked to give to a variety of health care sector workers at the Paz Barahona Centro de Salud on market-based healthcare, neoliberalism and possibilities for radical international solidarity, I scribbled down a few notes to go with my translated and slightly modified powerpoint presentation from the NNU national nurse assembly in May that I rightly suspected I wouldn't be able to screen. In part (and in Spanish), they read: Corporatizing democracy; Not aspiring to a professionalism that lacks militancy, you can't protect your patient from neoliberalism that way, in other words, there can't be professionalism without militancy.

On the way into the room I was instructed to learn about STDs:

I really like the quantity of homemade educational materials. There's so much more thought and creativity that goes into gonorrhea control and other important nursing and public health topics in Honduras than in U.S. hospitals.

The break room where I met with around 15 nurses (auxiliary and professionals), lab techs, and a med student in resistance was hyper-air conditioned. Despite the chill, throughout and following my presentation on neoliberalism, healthcare, and international nurse unionization, we had a great conversation. They told me more would have come, but it was hard for them to get off with the declared dengue emergency. They said that the Lobo government's response to the global increase in dengue as it manifested itself in Honduras was too little, too late. They called it tapar el sol con un dedo (covering the sun with a finger). Since January they had seen an increase in dengue cases, y no puedes combatirlo cuando ya está encima (you can't wait to fight it until it's already on top of you).

Aprovechan las coyunturas para hacer lo que les conviene a ellos, they told me—they take advantage of junctures to do what they want. They called Lobo's government el gobierno de las emergencias. The government is employing many more contract employees in the health sector, they noted. And contract employees can't unionize (at least under current law). This dengue emergency meant that governments could hire many more people, but who are they hiring? Not a single LPN/RN. They hired their friends or people who worked on their party-based political campaigns, to do admin, which actually means sitting around doing nothing. This year there were 120 admin posts, triple the previous year. It's clientelismo político. In all governments it's the same thing, they admitted, but es el peor que hemos llevado—this is the worst one we've had. In addition to adding useless admins with the excuse of the dengue emergency, they were also cutting technical personnel to add even more admin.

They also linked the coup epidemic itself to the coup. Antes del golpe fumigaron mejor. They claimed that the government was using dengue to stop the increase in the minimum salary, and that the timing of Lobo's emergency announcement was particularly intended to hurt the contract negotiations underway with the health sector and other unions.

The professional nurses spoke of their pride in Planilla 2 of the Colegio de Enfermeras Profesionales (the resistance slate) winning the elections. They won, they told me, even though the other side disqualified all their San Pedro votes. A pesar de eso ganamos. This victory, and a broader political vision, was particularly important to combat privatization. Because the agenda is to turn public health operations over to the municipal governments para decir no sirvió y privatizar—to be able to say the public sector doesn't work, and privatize it. They've also been in a 10-year battle against the reclassification of nursing personnel.

At least some of the nurses there were big fans of Mel. They gave me the stats: an auxiliary nurse (LPN/LVN) earned L. 3,229 in 2005, and Mel raised this to L.5,800. Professional nurses went from 4,000 in 2005, to a base salary of 10,000, thanks to Mel.

My friend Beatriz who had organized the event spoke (ever organizing).
"Mel Zelaya nos abrió los ojos verdad, vimos que los problemas que tenemos no son superficiales son problemas estructurales"—"Mel Zelaya opened our eyes, right, we saw that our problems are not superficial; they're structural problems."
"...sólo cambiando la constitución..." ("...only by changing the constitution...")
"...han pasado muchos mártires, mucha sangre derramado para llegar a eso, a una refundación del país"—"...we have had so many martyrs, so much blood spilt to get to this point, to get to the refounding of the country." She called on those present to work at a very base level, to organize resistance groups by gremio—nurses in resistance, lawyers in resistance, etc., working with their peers to form union/resistance cells based in common relation to ownership of the means of production at the factory/hospital and state levels, telling the nurses to go to other hospitals, to do real one-on-one grassroots organizing: "organizándonos abogados en resistencia, enfermeras en resistencia...no perder la identidad...cada grupo está obligado a crecer, rompemos ese esquema y vamos al Catarino, es un trabajo de ahorita organizarse."

One of the nurses told me, Aquí no podemos decir que todos son resistencia. También tenemos golpistas, traidores—We can't say that everyone [at the hospital] is resistance either. We also have golpistas, traitors. She spoke of her extracurricular resistance activities and just how much time they dedicated to them (this auxiliary nurse was the union rep too): "tenemos que ir todos los días vendiendo sopa y tamales al parque" ("we have to go to the park to sell soup and tamales every day") to earn money for the Resistance. "Estamos conscientes que la única solución aquí es la constituyente," she said. "We are aware that the only solution here is the constituent assembly." "Así es," another nurse responded.

They told me about how they had been in the hospital once and Xiomara (an administrator) called los chepos (the cops) on them. "Nos golpearon," ("they beat us up") one of the nurses said. "Por ejemplo yo fui amenazada a muerte"—"for example, I received death threats." Beatriz described how she had been shadowed outside her home, a car waiting always outside. "Te intimidan, es pura intimidación porque si te van a matar te matan"—"They intimidate you. It's nothing but intimidation because if they want to kill you they'll kill you." A nurse added that it's a constant struggle. "Es una lucha con las compañeras, una lucha con las jefes, con los mismos hijos a veces." Some of them had golpista offspring, to their mutual dismay.

As the meeting broke up, conversations wandered in different directions. A couple nurses were laughing about how the child of a friend had been sent home from school for having shouted el pueblo unido jamás será vencido. "Y lo mandaron a traer del kinder"—"And they sent him home from kindergarten." This reminded one of them of another child—"Como aquel nieto que no puede ver un chepo sin gritar ¡golpista!"—Like that grandson who couldn't see a cop without shouting 'golpista!'"

They told me about the popular chant "estudiar y aprender para chepo nunca ser."

At this point, with various different conversations going on, the med student, a young woman at CURN, spoke up. She was as resistant as they come, and told me about some of the problems that med students had within the university. First of all, she spoke of the structural-level pressures of privatization (which I had spoken of in my talk). Since UNITEC wanted to open a 5-year fast-track MD, and was thus pressuring the UNAH to close its degree, the profession would now really be only open to those who could pay a lot (it's already a degree that requires a fair amount of money going in, but this would exclude many more qualified students). They were fighting this. "Los catedráticos nos influyen mucho," she said—"the professors have great influence over us..."a que eso no fue un golpe, nos educan para que seamos comerciales, de ver al paciente como fuente de dinero"—"[they tell us] that this wasn't a coup, and they teach us to commercialize our practice, to see the patient as an income source." She added, "el médico aquí es muy comercializado."

She spoke of Rafael Ferrari's influence on a societal level—Rafael Ferrari maneja Televicentro, nos está inculcando—and of how within the university dissidence was not tolerated, that there are represalias contra el alumno—repercussions for students in resistance—they are failed in their classes on merely ideological grounds.

And most med students went along with the golpista tendencies of their professors. "El estudiante de medicina en su mayoría es gente adinerada no les conviene que hablan mal de sus papas"—"The med student here in general comes from money, and is not enthusiatic about critiques of his/her parents." In addition, med students in resistance had to face the threat of right-wing student collaborators. "En la U el FUD les decía quienes estabamos en la resistencia para que nos secuestraran, para que nos golpearan"—"In the U the FUD told them [the repressive golpista forces] who of us were in the resistance so that they could kidnap us, so they could beat us up."

Leaving the room, I searched for Beatriz. I saw her talking to one of the most militant nurses, who had paid close attention throughout my talk, nodding enthusiastically. Now she was crying and trying not to. Her only child, a grown son in his early 20s, had been killed in May by young men who were robbing his car. Beatriz, whose own son had died several years ago in an electrical accident, was trying to convince her to go to a group of mothers who had lost their sons, most of them to street violence. As we drove off, my friend told me about the group and how much it had helped her. "Comenzamos 15 y ahora somos más de 80 yo no quiero que crezca"—"We started with 15 [mothers] and now we're more than 80, and I don't want it to grow anymore." She had a clear feeling of panic about being on the other side of the tracks (the dividing line in San Pedro's center), and kept telling me to make sure not to roll down the windows, and to look out.

The next morning, I walked down to get my caffeine fix at the Espresso Americano. It's hard being a tea drinker in such an avowedly coffee country. But motivated by addiction I've figured out all the sources of green tea. On the way, this ad cart passed me. It had sound too.

Being a green tea addict, this looked tempting, if it hadn't been for all the sugar. I tried to explain to a friend why the name might, just might, be construed as offensive...and failed.

The SPS recycling campaign seemed to need a bit more work.

As I walked past the Plaza la Libertad, I saw Samuel Madrid at the mic again.

He was talking about the new phase in the resistance. Today was the last day to get the carnet—resistance ID card (the same one I'd written about with deep concern a month earlier). This [plaza] is a space that won't be divided, he proclaimed. I stepped on an American Eagle label, apparently from Topeka, and wondered about its journey to this place.

No basta rezar played, blasting on the massive resistance speakers throughout the park. "It's not enough to pray- there are many things that must be done to achieve peace." It was the Los Guaraguao version- here they are singing it in the Brava Theater in SF:

Again and again I am struck by the importance of San Pedro's centralized permanent and public resistance space, and what an advantage that gives the movement there over Tegucigalpa's more spread out, more privatized-technology-dependent (e.g., facebook convocatorias) and private & sometimes fresa-identified resistance spaces (e.g., Cinefilia, MUA, Café Paradiso). Knowing that the resistance will always be there, outside, listening to music and selling hot dogs and agua de coco, thumbing its nose at the cathedral in front and the city hall behind, makes it so much more open, inclusive, and fun.

I met a young friend, Arturo, with the Rojos organization, and walked to their office with him to see some books he'd told me about.

We passed another curriculum del chepo stencil.

And a La Prensa page questioning the American Dream...it's convenient for the golpista media to critique gringo structural racism; it takes the focus off the fact that they and their policies are expelling their youth and many other Honduran poor, giving them few choices but to risk their lives for this dream into which most enter well aware of the risks.

Arturo told me the story behind this graffiti, which asks "What independence?"

It's a campaign that he and a number of other young people started four or five years ago, against the blind patriotism of the September 15th Independence Day celebrations. They spearheaded a campaign using a variety of media and going to local elementary schools, where the same teachers who had to lead the children in la india bonita contests were sympathetic to their radical anti-nationalist, anti-imperialist message. Arturo gave me some of those pamphlets, the first of which you can see in its entirety here (click on the images for higher res):

The second pamphlet, produced a year or two after the first, employed a number of cartoons (particularly Allan McDonald's) to illustrate the points included.

Here, the feminized nation giggling at 187 years of politicians' blather:

This one speaks for itself, and the subtitle reads: "We must serious acts of great civic import."

Ideological contraband, with the country as dogbone:

"The fatherland is a silly romantic notion...What really matters is a hacienda full of slaves." Underneath, the National Committee of Popular Resistance (predecessor to the Frente) declares in all caps: WHEN OUR NATION KNOWS ITS TRUE HISTORY AND STOPS BELIEVING DISINFORMATION ABOUT THE ABOMINABLE ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY THIS CAPITALIST SYSTEM, IT WILL CERTAINLY RECOGNIZE [THE NEED TO] FIGHT AGAINST THAT SYSTEM AS SUCH, AND IN DOING SO, WILL FIGHT FOR SOCIALSIM, SOCIAL PROGRESS AND PEACE.

The people/nation are an alter (i.e., the most holy, the most important) and not a pedestal:

In the STIBYS building, outside of which a resistance member was shot by police the day after I arrived in Honduras-

...a rather distorted Che kept watch:

And an old stencil called for everyone to join the general strike:

A Dutch-design delivery bike (according to my resident bike messenger) sat on the side of the building, which I explored while waiting for Arturo to return with the very old but resistant and sprightly man with the keys (I think he told us he was 93).

Through a fence, I took a picture of this creative Goriletti bastard:

Once inside, I was struck by the Nakba solidarity poster. Arturo told me they had held a protest in solidarity with Palestinians. He thought he could retrieve the photos for me, although the group's hard drive had gotten fried. One of their members who knew computers was fixing it...

Another of the earlier stencil, calling for Goriletti to get out:

Media terrorism, a grenade with a pen coming out of it...

and a larger view of the wall:

Arturo was going to the U, and I was walking back to the center, so he advised me to not walk back the way we came...but I had to take more pictures (in particular, the cual independencia graffiti above), so as I often do, I ignored his security warnings. I'm either immune, or due, probably the latter. Anyway, some of the benefits of my incaution follow.

This precious little stencil of San Mel (that's what I think I'll call him from now on—the Mel statue kind of solidified it), right next to a rather pornographic graffiti aimed at Michelleti that I featured on this site over a month ago:

The UNAH (National Autonomous University of Honduras) is no good privatized:

Corrupt fascist piti-turcos (again, a play on Chavez's "piti-yanquis" refering to the military working for the golpistas, some of the most powerful of whom are of Arab descent and thus mis-labeled turcos) who kill the [Honduran] people. Note that the swastika here is specifically accusing the golpistas of being a Nazi-like, fascist force; not calling for the extermination of any group but rather identifying the resistance itself with the victims of the Holocaust.

The two following images show a similar use of the swastika.

Pepe, Romeo, and "Gustavito" Alvarez (presumably linking security minister Oscar Alvarez with his genocidal street cleansing policies to his uncle Gustavo, head of Batallion 3-16) fascist killers of the people (note the 666, thrown in for good measure):

And here, No to Privatization, Out with the Turks (i.e., Palestinian Hondurans), URGE MEL. The swastika with the line through it here appears to send a "down with the Nazi turkos" message:

Murderers- armed forces of the turcos, on the wall of the San Pedro Museum of Anthropology and History (the best museum in the country, which has not at all been identified with golpismo—quite the contrary—but provided a good open wall space):

And the cannons in front of the museum, painted in resistance colors:

And Burger King, beneficiary of the ridiculous neoliberal tax shelter for "tourist" industries, which lets fast food members of the INTUR group not pay taxes, here called Turker King (shown here with Nazi bun), Golpista garbage:

I went to dinner with Agustina and Arturo, and checked in early because I had a long day of travel ahead to the north coast, and an early start. When dropping me off, Agustina told me about some of her recent resistance exploits. She had been fundraising among her bourgeois friends to provide supplies for her young graffiti artist friends. Her rich lady friends who identify with the resistance but would never risk themselves in that fashion were delighted to chip in for paint, which she would then buy and deliver to the jovenes. She always made sure to buy sandpaper as well for plausible deniability, in case she were stopped by the police and searched. In gratitude, the graffiti artists always ask her if there were any consignas en particular que quieren—any particular slogans she wanted them to write on the walls. She had some she really liked, but was too nervous they would reveal her identity, so told them to use their own discretion.