A sugarcane worker in Nicaragua (Photo: Anna Maria Barry-Jester)

In the western lowlands of Nicaragua, in a region of vast sugarcane fields, sits the tiny community of La Isla.

The small houses are a patchwork of concrete and wood. Pieces of cloth serve as doors.

Maudiel Martinez emerges from his house to greet me. He’s pale, and his cheekbones protrude from his face. He hunches over like an old man – but he is only 19-years-old.

“The way this sickness is – you see me now, but in a month I could be gone. It can take you down all of a sudden,” he says.

Maudiel’s kidneys are failing. They do not perform the essential function of filtering waste from his body. He’s being poisoned from the inside.

When he got ill two years ago, he was already familiar with this disease and how it might end. “I thought about my father and grandfather,” he says. Both died of the same condition. Three of his brothers have it too.

All of them worked in the sugarcane fields.

(Graphic: BBC)

Kidney disease has killed so many men here that locals now call their community not simply La Isla – which means “The Island” – but La Isla de las Viudas – “The Island of the Widows.”

The epidemic extends far beyond Nicaragua. It’s prevalent along the Pacific coast of Central America – across six countries.

“It is important that the chronic kidney disease (CKD) afflicting thousands of rural workers in Central America be recognized as what it is – a major epidemic with a tremendous population impact,” says Victor Penchaszadeh, a clinical epidemiologist at Columbia University in the US. He is also a consultant to the Pan-American Health Organization on chronic diseases in Latin America.

El Salvador’s health minister recently called on the international community for help. She said the epidemic is “wasting away our populations.”

Heat stress

At a health clinic in El Salvador, in the farming region of Bajo Lempa, Dr. Carlos Orantes recently found that a quarter of the men in his area suffered from chronic kidney disease.

What’s more, he says, most of the men who are ill show no signs of high blood pressure or diabetes – the most common causes of CKD elsewhere in the world.

“Most of the men we studied have CKD from unknown causes,” he says.

What the men in the area have in common is they all work in farming. So Dr. Orantes thinks a major cause of their kidney damage is the toxic chemicals – pesticides and herbicides – that are routinely used here in agriculture.

“These chemicals are banned in the United States, Europe and Canada, and they’re used here, without any protection, and in large amounts that are very concerning,” he says.

But he’s not ready to rule out other possible causes. For instance, the overuse of painkillers can damage the kidneys, and so can drinking too much alcohol. Both are major problems here, he says.

In Nicaragua, the disease has become a political issue.

In 2006, the World Bank gave a loan to Nicaragua’s largest sugar company to build an ethanol plant. Plantation workers filed a complaint, saying the company’s working conditions and use of chemicals were fueling the epidemic. They said the loan violated the bank’s own standards for worker safety and environmental practices.

In response, the bank agreed to fund a study to try to identify the cause of the epidemic.

“The evidence points us most strongly to a hypothesis that heat stress might be a cause of this disease,” says Daniel Brooks of Boston University, who is leading the research.

His team has found it’s not just sugarcane workers who are falling ill. Miners and port workers also suffer high rates of kidney disease, yet they’re not exposed to farm chemicals. What these men have in common, he says, is they all work long hours in extreme heat.

“Day after day of hard manual labor in hot conditions – without sufficient replacement of fluids – could lead to effects on the kidney that are not obvious at first but over time accumulate to the point that it enters into a diseased state,” says Brooks.

“This has never been so far shown to cause chronic kidney disease, so we would be talking about a new mechanism that has not so far been described in the scientific literature.”

But Brooks says a new preliminary study bolsters this hypothesis. His team tested blood and urine from sugarcane workers who perform different jobs. The scientists found more evidence of kidney damage in the workers who have more strenuous jobs outside.

Professor Aurora Aragon of Nicaragua’s National University in Leon says this explanation makes sense. She’s long suspected that part of the problem is the way sugarcane workers are paid – receiving more money the more sugarcane they cut.

“This way of working forces people to do more than they are able to do, and this is not good for their health,” she says.

No alternative

“Working in the field made us feel dizzy and nauseous,” says Jose Donald Cortez, who cut sugarcane for 18 years. “We often had fevers.”

Cortez now has kidney disease and heads an organization of sugarcane workers in Nicaragua who are ill. He’s convinced that something on the sugar plantations is causing the sickness.

Whatever it is, he says, those who are ill need treatment with dialysis – which can keep them alive when their kidneys fail. But few can get it because dialysis is extremely expensive and rarely available.

“If you ask the ministry of health they say they don’t have the money. If you ask the sugar company if they are responsible, they say no.”

For their part, the sugarcane companies say they’re not convinced that farm chemicals or working conditions on their plantations are to blame for the epidemic. Still, they say, they are trying to protect their workers’ health.

One conglomerate that owns several sugar plantations in Central America – the Pellas Group – says it’s started giving workers an hour-long lunch break and now employs staff to make sure the men drink water. The company also routinely tests its workers’ kidney function.

Company spokesman Ariel Granera says if a worker is found to have kidney disease, he is let go – out of concern, says Granera, for the worker’s well-being.

But the sick workers who have been dismissed say what they receive from the companies and from social security isn’t enough to live on – and when they lose their jobs, they lose the right to be treated at company clinics.

In La Isla, and many other villages like it, the men often seek new employment with contractors who do not check for kidney disease yet send the men to work in the same sugarcane fields.

“There is no alternative,” says one woman who recently lost her father. “No other way to support a family.”

PRI’s The World looked into this story with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a project of The Center for Public Integrity.

Learn how the United States promoted sugarcane production in Central America and resisted global attention to the CKD epidemic in this ICIJ story by reporters Sasha Chavkin and Ronnie Greene.

Video: Giant Guatemala City sinkhole

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  The Central American nation of Guatemala is still struggling to recover from Tropical Storm Agatha.  The storm caused flooding and landslides all over the country.  At least 180 deaths have been blamed on it.  The storm also seems to have played a role in creating a giant sinkhole in Guatemala City.  The hole is more than 60 feet wide, and about 100 feet deep.  It opened up during the storm, swallowing up a clothing factor and an intersection.  It’s not the first sinkhole to appear in Central America after a major storm, but it’s bigger than most and almost perfectly round.  Timothy Bechtel teaches geosciences at Franklin & Marshall College and the University of Pennsylvania.  He says the hole could still get bigger.

TIMOTHY BECHTEL:  It’s still very dangerous.  If you’ve seen the photographs of it, it’s really quite spectacular because the walls are nearly vertical.  It almost looks photoshopped, but it’s not.  That’s for real.  The problem now is those walls are much steeper than their angle of repose.  The angle of repose is the angle at which a material will be stable in the long term.  Probably anybody who has built a sand castle is familiar with angle of repose.  If you build a nice vertical wall out of sand it doesn’t stay that way for very long.  So those vertical walls are likely to begin losing material and trying to attain their angle of repose.  That angle is going to depend on the soil type, but it’s going to be probably something on the order of 35 to 45 degrees.  So that hole could get a lot bigger.

WERMAN: Do you think certain regions of the world are more prone to sinkholes than others?

BECHTEL: Oh absolutely.  The areas that are prone to sinkholes are really very well known, they are the areas that are underlain by limestone or dolomite or gypsum bedrock, any of the types of rock that are soluble.  The cavities develop underground and it creates an unstable situation.  If you picture the bedrock being like Swiss cheese, full of cavities, and there’s soil above it, the soil is going to want to drop down into the cavities and water is always the big factor in these things, that’s why Tropical Storm Agatha was involved.  There’s some indication that a broken sewer line may be involved.  There was a big sinkhole like this in 2007 in Guatemala City and one of the main causes there was a broken sewer line.  What happens is you get excess in the soil in a particular spot and it will flush the soil down into the underlying cavities.  That’s what creates the sinkhole.  The sinkhole actually starts down at the top of rock.  Soil drops into the cavities, there will be a little opening above the cavities in the rock and that opening will eat its way upward, pieces will fall off the roof and get lost down into the cavities and that void will stope, or eat its way upward until it breaks through at the surface.  So when we see that opening at the surface, essentially that vertical tunnel in Guatemala City has probably been eating its way up from the top of rock for days, if not months or years.

WERMAN: I’m wondering what the human role is in all of this.  You mentioned this broken sewer line.  Was that an exception or do humans have a lot to do with these sinkholes as well.

BECHTEL: Sadly it’s kind of a rule.  It’s very much a rule.  Sinkholes do occur naturally.  They happen all over the world and have for millennia, even in the absence of humans.  But human activities contribute greatly to the incurrence of sinkholes.  When we pave, or put up roofs, it takes rainfall that would have been distributed and there would be infiltration across a much larger area, we concentrate the runoff and that water infiltrating in a concentrated fashion, if it infiltrates above a cavity in the rock it will take soil with it and the sinkhole will eat its way upward.  And in addition, we have a lot of underground utilities that carry water or sewage, things that if they break will put a lot of water into the subsurface and that water will start flushing soil down into the cavities.  So it’s really man’s concentration of water in various places that leads to most sinkholes these days.

WERMAN: Now Timothy, one report I read said the sinkhole understandably spooked the locals in Guatemala City, but excited geologists.  So does it excite you and why?

BECHTEL: Excites and saddens.  It’s exciting because I’ve been fascinated with earth processes, particularly sinkhole processes since I was a kid.  I grew up in a house with a sinkhole in the backyard.

WERMAN: Oh, so this is personal.

BECHTEL: A little bit, yes.  So I find it scientifically fascinating and exciting, but from a human standpoint it’s very much a tragedy.  I think the people in Guatemala City have a right to be very nervous.  I think the occurrence in 2007 and this recent one really the rule rather than the exception given the geology and man’s activities in that location, there are going to be more of these sinkholes.

WERMAN: What can the officials in Guatemala City do to prevent further sinkholes?

BECHTEL: Without knowing a whole lot about Guatemala City, I can only speak about it in general terms.  It’s really too late to move the city.  People are already living there.  The biggest thing that could be done is avoid concentrated infiltration in any fashion.  I think they ought to be very vigilant about keeping on top of their underground infrastructure, their water lines and sewer lines.  When those leak, those commonly lead to sinkholes.

WERMAN: Timothy Bechtel, a consultant with Enviroscan, Inc. a geophysical consulting firm in Pennsylvania, thank you very much for your time; very interesting stuff.

BECHTEL: You’re welcome.  Thank you.

WERMAN: There’s a link to a video of the giant sinkhole in Guatemala City at the world dot org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The economy of Honduras is also at the breaking point.  The Central American nation was already hurting from the Global Economic Slowdown. Then in June the Honduran Army ousted the President, Manuel Zelaya. The political unrest has scared away tourists and foreign investors, and it’s driven up unemployment.  Hondurans are set to choose a new president on Sunday. Many of them hope the election will diffuse the crisis and get the country’s economy back on track.  Reporter John Otis sets the scene.

JOHN OTIS: American businessman Chris Haughey is trying to set up a toy factory on the outskirts of the capital, Tegucigalpa.

CHRIS HAUGHEY: So what you see in the factory here is roughly 50% of the machines were purchased here in country and the rest were, you know, have been brought in from the U.S.

OTIS: But shortly after Haughey broke ground, a military coup ousted President Zelaya. Street protests led to curfews, and that caused construction delays at Haughey’s plant, pushing back the start-up date for toy production.

HAUGHEY: The impact for us has mostly been with delays. You know, providers not showing up because there’s a curfew for all or part of the day and so they’re not going to come out to the factory.

OTIS: Haughey is determined to stick it out, but most new business ventures in Honduras have been put on hold.  Now the Honduran economy is expected to contract by 4% this year. But the economic problems began even before Zelaya was forced out of office. Most Honduran exports go to the United States, but the U.S. financial crisis depressed demand for the country’s coffee, bananas and apparel. Remittances from Hondurans living in the U.S. also plummeted.  Last January, President Zelaya boosted the monthly minimum wage to about $300.  He also decreed that domestic workers are entitled to Social Security Pensions. Those moves prompted a wave of layoffs and turned the Honduran business community against Zelaya.  Then came the military coup. Reductions in foreign aid to the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti soon followed.  Now, many Hondurans are buying only buying essential items.  Alaba Castaneda runs a printing press that turns out books, envelopes, and calendars. But since the political crisis began, Castaneda has laid off 5 of her 18 workers. Sales have dropped by 40%.

ALBA CASTANEDA: [Interpreted]   There were curfews.  We couldn’t leave home. It seemed like war could breakout. So people only bought the bare essentials, like food, because people have to eat.

OTIS: Hotel owners claim the coup has been even worse for business than Hurricane Mitch, which laid waste to much of Honduras in 1998.  Ana Maria Maradiaga runs the Hotel Escuela Madrid, a training school for future hotel and restaurant employees. She says aid workers flooded into Honduras after Hurricane Mitch and stayed in hotels for months. But the coup led to an exodus of tourists and a wave of cancellations.

ANA MARIA MARADIAGA: Tegucigalpa was completely empty. Big hotels, small hotels, restaurants.  I mean, everywhere, the tourism in Tegucigalpa was dead.

OTIS: Honduras is the third poorest country in Latin America with nearly 70% of the population living below the poverty line.  But the ongoing political crisis has put much needed aid projects on hold, says the American toymaker Chris Haughey.

HAUGHEY: There are constantly groups coming down from the U.S., from Canada, from other developed nations to assist with social project; water projects, health, you know, poverty alleviation. And those groups have basically put their plans on hold as well.”

OTIS: President Zelaya remains holed up in the heavily guarded Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa and it’s unclear whether he will be reinstated before his term ends in January.  Unlike the left-wing Zelaya, the two leading candidates in Sunday’s presidential election are mainstream politicians with close ties to business and to the United States.  U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens has pushed for Zelaya’s return. But he also maintains that the swearing in of a democratically elected president to replace the de facto government could go a long way towards stabilizing the economy.

HUGO LLORENS: Our hope is that democracy can be restored, the country’s situation can be normalized, its relations with the international community so that Honduras can again become a place for growth and investment.

OTIS: For The World, I’m John Otis, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• FAQ Honduras crisis
• William Troop on Zelaya’s return to Honduras in September

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. Honduras’ strange political saga comes to a head this weekend. That’s Hondurans elect a new president. Their last elected leader, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted five months ago but he remains in limbo at the Brazilian embassy there. Many Latin American countries are refusing to recognize the elections organized by the defacto government of Roberto Micheletti. Yet some Hondurans say this weekend’s election could be the first step towards ending the country’s political crisis. John Otis reports from the capital Tegucigalpa.

PORFIRIO LOBO: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

JOHN OTIS: During a televised debate presidential front runner, Porfirio Lobo, pledges to attack corruption and reduce poverty in Honduras. Lobo’s main challenger, Elvin Santos, offers a similar message in his campaign speeches.

ELVIN SANTOS: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

OTIS: But the issue neither candidate mentions is what to do about deposed president Manuel Zelaya, a leftist with close ties to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Zelaya was removed from office by the Honduran military on June 28^th amid fears he would try to change the constitution to remain in power. He was flown into exile. But he later snuck back in to Honduras and now remains holed up in the heavily guarded Brazilian embassy. Last month US diplomats announced they had brokered a deal to reinstate Zelaya for the remainder of his term. But the agreement hinged on the approval of the Honduran congress and most legislatures opposed Zelaya. They were also busy campaigning for re-election and have postponed their decision on Zelaya’s fate until next month. Miguel Gutierres is Honduran newspaper publisher claims congress is simply trying to run out the clock.

MIGUEL GUTIERRES: This has been a delay and a delay and a delay. I don’t personally believe that they will reinstate Zelaya back. Meanwhile Roberto Micheletti, Honduras’ provisional president is pushing ahead with the elections.

ROBERTO MICHELETTI: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

OTIS: To appease the international community Micheletti last week announced he would assume a low profile and make no more public appearances until after the voting. Still the elections are going forward under a cloud of suspicion. The organization of American states has refused to send electoral observes to Honduras. Brazil, Argentina, and other Latin American nations say they will not recognize the results. One presidential hopeful and dozens of pro-Zelaya legislative candidates have withdrawn saying their participation would only legitimize the coup.

[PROTESTORS CHANTING]

Anti-government marches have been banned in the capital Tegucigalpa but everyday Zelaya supporters meet in front of congress. They’re calling on Hondurans to stay home on election day and protest. Juan Barahona is one of the main opposition leaders.

JUAN BARAHONA: [SPEAING SPANISH]

TRANSLATOR: This is a coup regime. One that’s illegal and illegitimate therefore the electoral is illegal and illegitimate.

OTIS: Micheletti as well as the two leading presidential candidates are betting that relatively clean elections will make people forget about Zelaya. Daniel O’Connor is an American business man and a member of the Democratic Civic Union, a group that strongly backs Micheletti.

DANIEL O’CONNOR: I think there’s a strong expectation that the elections will be free, fair, and transparent. That the results will be ultimately recognized.

OTIS: The US government has cut off military and other non-emergency aid to Honduras yet critics say Washington could have taken a tougher stance. Instead American diplomats have hinted they will recognize the elections whether or not Zelaya is reinstated and that may have stiffened the resolve of the Micheletti government. US Ambassador Hugo Llorens says there’s still time for Zelaya to return to the presidency. He insists voters have the right to go to the polls next week and the condemning the elections would be akin to blaming the entire Honduran population for the coup.

HUGO LLORENS: We’ve worked very hard. We’ll continue very hard to restore the democratic order. But certainly free, fair, and transparent elections will be a part of the solution in Honduras.

OTIS: The next president will be sworn in on January 27^th. On that day all eyes will be on the figure handing over the presidential sash to the new Honduran leader. Lisa Haugaard of the Washington-based Latin America Working Group says that if Micheletti rather than Zelaya presides over the ceremony it will send a dangerous message to the rest of the region.

LISA HAUGAARD: We have thought that coups were things of the past and it’s very disturbing that there can be a coup that is more or less successful.

OTIS: For The World I’m John Otis in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

[MUSIC]

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The World’s science reporter Rhitu Chatterjee explores such aid projects in our latest science podcast. It features an interview Anu Ramaswami, an environmental engineer at the University of Colorado in Denver. And listeners have a chance to ask Ramaswami their own questions in our online science forum.

Reporter Eliza Barclay has this story from Nicaragua where two American brothers tried a technological fix to poverty in that Central American country:

Barclay: Mathias Craig is an engineer and social entrepreneur. He’s obsessed with windmills.

M. Craig: To me they seem a perfect mix of an opportunity to do something that has sort of a social good and an environmental good.

Barclay: As a child, Craig spent a lot of time in Nicaragua, visiting impoverished villages that had no electricity. Later, as an adult, he got an idea: why not bring windmills to these villages? The windmills could provide clean power and help people escape poverty by lighting schools and health clinics and…creating jobs. Craig explored this idea as a graduate student at MIT.

M. Craig: I took a class called entrepreneurship in the developing world. So I combined that with my interest in Nicaragua from my childhood, and came up with blueEnergy.

blueEnergy founders Mathias Craig (left)and his brother Guillaume (courtesy of blueEnergy)

Barclay: BlueEnergy is a company Craig founded in 2004. He started it with his brother, Guillaume. Guillaume Craig now oversees the company’s headquarters in the town of Bluefields, on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua.

G. Craig: We started here in this workshop. It’s about 30 feet by 40 feet deep. So that was our space for the first couple years…

Barclay: Guillaume Craig walks around the cavernous building where blueEnergy’s technicians build wind turbines. He points to a turbine inside.

G. Craig: It’s got the magnets and the copper coils and the lights that light up…

Barclay: When the brothers arrived here, they had their work cut out for them: 80 percent of the coastal population lacked electricity.

The Craigs installed their first wind turbine in 2005, and since then they’ve added 11 more. Gradually, they’re reaching the forgotten outposts of the Nicaraguan coast, places like Monkey Point.

The

View more pictures for this story

Barclay: In this tiny community, a spindly white windmill towers above the mango trees and fishing boats.

Last year, blueEnergy installed the wind turbine and a handful of small solar panels. Together, they produce about half the energy consumed by a typical American home. But here it’s enough to power 27 households, a school and a health clinic, at least for part of the day. Locals appreciate the electricity.

Georgina Marque is a young mother of two (Photo: Eliza Barclay)

Marque: “Before we were using candles. Everyone did. Now it’s better that we have light. I use it to cook, make the bed in the evening. “

Barclay: But the arrival of electric power has not transformed this community in quite the way the Craig brothers had hoped. The town is still poor and jobs are scarce. And if you talk to locals, and ask them, what’s the best thing about having electricity? Here’s what they’ll tell you: television.

M. Craig: “We’ve had a lot of debates internally about that.”

Barclay: Mathias Craig says promoting TV was not why he and his partners started their venture.

M. Craig: “Definitely some people within the organization, within BlueEnergy, were a bit frustrated, a bit disappointed that they had worked so hard to bring development and opportunity to the community and here they were using it on television.”

Barclay: Some volunteers who came from America complained about locals frittering away the electricity on TV. In fact, many residents emptied their small savings to buy televisions to watch soap operas.

The Craigs learned a lesson: they can’t dictate how people use the energy they bring.

Now, Monkey Point residents contend television is educational. Wayne MacClean, who manages the windmill, says TV helps kids develop their language skills.

MacClean: “The children them could come and watch TV and develop their minds even with the one word or one letter of the alphabet.”

Wayne MacLean (Photo: Eliza Barclay)

Barclay: But whether or not television is an ideal use of the electricity blueEnergy provides, the Craig brothers say they’ve learned another, deeper lesson. People in places like Monkey Point need many things: good roads, clean water, education. And these may be more important than electricity. Guillaume Craig conceded this point over beers at a bar in Bluefields.

G. Craig: “Their priorities are not always energy. Sometimes they’re drinking water because they’re getting sick and the children are dying from diarrhea. But we don’t impose now energy as the “what we do.”

Barclay: The “what we do” of blueEnergy is now much broader. The Craig brothers have turned their energy company into an organization that takes a holistic approach to poverty. Mathias Craig says he now understands that alleviating poverty is more complex than installing windmills.

M. Craig: “When you come at it from a technology perspective, you think your end goal is you build the system, you install it, and it delivers energy. And you do that, and then you get to the end of the path, and then you realize that that’s not actually the end of the path. That’s somewhere near the beginning of the path.”

Barclay: The new beginning of the path is asking people what they need before deciding what to give them. And that’s something the Craigs are just learning to do.

For The World, I’m Eliza Barclay, Bluefields, Nicaragua.

• Science podcast
• Science forum
• blueEnergy
• View more pictures for this story
• Eliza Barclay’s blog

• BBC coverage
• FAQ Honduras crisis
• The World’s William Troop on Zelaya’s return to Honduras in September

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: There was one other item on Secretary of State Clinton’s agenda today – Honduras. While still in Pakistan, Clinton announced a breakthrough for the Central American nation. Ousted President Manuel Zalaya and the interim leader Roberto Micheletti have agreed to a US broker deal. The agreement calls on the Honduran congress to decide if Zalaya should be reinstated as president. The agreement also binds both sides to recognize the result of this month’s presidential election. Neither Zalaya nor Micheletti are candidates. Zalaya was ousted from Honduras in coup four months ago. He slipped back into the country in September. That’s when he took refuge with supporters at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Andreas Conteris is one of the people inside the embassy. He’s with the US based Democracy Now en Espanol. Andreas we spoke to you a few weeks ago and you were clearly in support of Mr. Zalaya’s reinstatement. What is the mood inside the embassy today as we speak?

ANDREAS CONTERIS: Well the mood here is one of I would say cautious celebration. Because it clearly is a step forward in terms of what many, many Hondurans want – their president to be reinstated. But it’s also the overwhelming majority of the international community that has been demanding that President Zalaya be restored as the democratically elected leader of this country. So the accord is definitely a step in that direction. However there may be a number of loopholes in it which will permit the coup regime to continue to stall for quite a bit of time which is now a very precious commodity before the elections coming up November 29^th.

CLARK: The election is coming up very soon as you say. What do you expect will happen?

CONTERIS: It really depends on when President Zalaya is allowed to be restored as the president of the country. As I said, the delaying tactics could continue even though there is a signed accord which could last for at least two or three more weeks. But if that doesn’t happen. If he’s allowed to be president again soon, then he will have a lot more influence in terms of encouraging the electorate to look at his point of view in terms of which candidate he might support.

CLARK: And I’m just wondering you’ve been in the Brazilian embassy in Honduras for some 38 days now. How are conditions?

CONTERIS: Well conditions initially were very difficult because there was no way to prepare for hundreds of people moving into a building that is not set up for housing whatsoever. Over time some of us have been able to get air mattresses. But actually most of the people here have been sleeping on the floor – hard floors. And food for a while was hard to come by but then lately it’s been more regular. Both electricity and water has been cut off on occasion. But also really what has been done by the military and police have been what could be described as psychological warfare tactics. Using all-night loud music and animal grunts. The first morning we were victims of what is known as long-range audio devices. A very high pitched shrieking sound which is used as a weapon. So it’s been really difficult in that sense. But more recently we’ve acclimated to the situation and now we’re definitely ready to move on from here.

CLARK: Well Andreas is there much celebrating going on at the moment?

CONTERIS: Actually there has been some celebrating here last night. At the embassy there was celebrations. There was some fireworks that went on in the city of Tegucigalpa itself. So yes there is definitely jubilation and joy at this step in the process. But it’s important to point out that it’s also met with quite a bit of caution because it’s really uncertain how quickly the process will move forward for the president to be reinstated.

CLARK: Andreas Conteris is with Democracy Now en Espanol. He spoke to us from the Brazilian embassy in Honduras where ousted President Manuel Zalaya is holed up today. Thank you.

CONTERIS: Katy, it’s been a pleasure.

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JEB SHARP: No more curfew this week in Honduras. The country’s interim government lifted the restriction last night for the first time in two weeks. But the standoff continues over the status of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya was removed from office and thrown out of the country by the army. Critics say he was planning an illegal referendum to amend the constitution to allow himself to run for a second term as president. Zelaya, who was democratically elected, had six months left in his first term. Jennifer McCoy directs the Americas Program at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Professor McCoy, give us a little perspective. Why is the issue of being President for more than one term such a loaded one there in Honduras, and indeed, in Latin America?

JENNIFER MCCOY: Well, after Honduras went through a period of dictatorship, and returned to democracy in 1980, they wrote a new constitution to prohibit re-election in order to avoid the recurrence of presidents saying in power through illegal means, and turning into a new dictator. They were really trying to avoid the repeat of the historical legacy of much of Latin America having long-term strong men in office, who sometimes stayed in office through manipulated elections in the 19th and 20th centuries.

JEB SHARP: So even though this situation in Honduras is being seen as a kind of illegal coup, is your reading of the current situation that the motivation for removing Zelaya was a real fear that democracy would be endangered if he stayed in office?

JENNIFER MCCOY: Well, there was an added element in terms of the fear, in this particular case, and that was that president Zelaya had been growing increasingly closer to Venezuela. And so there were some important sectors in Honduras who feared that alliance with Venezuela, that he would intend to bring Honduras to a more leftist and anti-US policy. So that was an added component to, I think, this gear about his intentions. And the assumption was, that he would be asking for re-election. But, we’re seeing a growing trend across the board in Latin America, to change those single terms, and begin to allow for re-election. And this is the majority of the countries today, that now have this prevision.

JEB SHARP: And can you take us further back, and give us a sense of the history of term limits? I mean, when did they start being established in the first place, and where and why?

JENNIFER MCCOY: Yes. Most of the countries, as they were implementing democracy throughout the 20th century, did put in single term limits, again, to counter that historical past, especially from the 19th century at the strong men dictators. But, by the 1990′s, there was a desire, in certain cases, particularly Brazil and Argentina, I think, of those new democratic president to have a longer chance to implement the reforms, especially the economic reforms, that they were trying to carry out. And they actually started the trend toward changing the constitution to allow for re-election for at least one additional term.

JEB SHARP: Jennifer McCoy is a professor of political science at George Estate University, thanks so much.

JENNIFER MCCOY: Thank you.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. It’s a waiting game in Honduras, people in the capital Tegucigalpa appear to be waiting for the next step in the leadership crisis that’s rocked the Central American nation. Last Sunday their President, Manuel Zelaya was deposed in a military coup and kicked out of the country. The US has joined much of the world in condemning his ouster, that’s left Washington in an unusual position, sitting with Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chavez, on the issue. The World’s Katy Clark has the story.

KATY CLARK: It’s not often the president’s of the United States and Venezuela agree, here’s Barack Obama.

BARACK OBAMA: President Zelaya was democratically elected, he had not yet completed his term. We believe that the coup was not legal, and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras.

KATY CLARK: Using slightly more colorful language, Hugo Chavez also denounced events this week in Honduras.

HUGE CHAVEZ: [SPEAKS IN SPANISH]

KATY CLARK: The Venezuelan leader called it a Trogdlodyte Coup D’etat, and urged Honduran soldiers to use restraint against unarmed citizens. Never mind that Chavez himself threatened military action of his ambassador in Honduras was harmed. The Interim Government of Honduras has indicated it would consider early elections there if that would satisfy the international community. But the end of the political stand off remains far from certain. Michael Shifter is with the Inter American Dialogue, a Washington think-tank. He cautions that the apparent agreement that President Zelaya ought to be restored to power may be more superficial than appears.

MICHAEL SHIFTER: The are some differences for the motivation for why the United States came to the position that it did, and why countries like Venezuela and Bolivia, Ecuador have also condemned what happened. For those countries, they are governments identify of the left. Zelaya became an ally of them, so there is a kind of a political support there, which is different, I think, from the US’s point of view, which is trying to stake out a position in support of the rule of law democratic principles, which were clearly violated in this case.

KATY CLARK: Previous US presidents haven’t always taken this position. Most recently, when Hugo Chavez was temporarily ousted in a coup in 2002, the Bush Administration kept quiet.

LARRY BIRNS: The United States is clearly aiming for a new trajectory in its regional policy.

KATY CLARK: Larry Birns is director of the council on Hemispheric Affairs.

LARRY BIRNS: This provides a high visibility opportunity, for the United States to take a leadership position in establishing firmly that no extra constitutional overturn of a government by the country’s military will be tolerated by the Inter American community. That’s a good thing, to take place.

KATY CLARK: The message being the US might not like the person in power, but the democratic process must prevail. Jennifer McCoy of the Carter Center calls the political stand off in Honduras the result of democracy’s growing pains in parts of Latin America.

JENNIFER MCCOY: That could be the silver lining or part of the explanation for the crisis.

KATY CLARK: The crisis may come to a head soon. Honduras’s ousted president has vowed to return this weekend. For The World, this is Katy Clark.

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The new leaders of Honduras are under intense pressure from the United States and other nations a day after a military coup. But the country’s new president says the move was legal. Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Frances Robles of the Miami Herald who is in the capital Tegucigalpa.Listen

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is the World. There’s a nationwide curfew in Honduras today, but it couldn’t stop hundreds of demonstrators from taunting Honduran soldiers outside the Presidential palace. The demonstrators denounced the man who    is now the acting President of Honduras. He replaced President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted yesterday. Zelaya had insisted on going ahead with a referendum that might have allowed him to stay in power beyond the one-term limit. But the Honduran military kicked him out of the country. One protester today said Hondurans want United Nations peacekeepers to intervene.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] We want the blue helmets. We want an army to liberate us. We don’t want this man who usurped power. We want our President.

LISA MULLINS: Frances Robles of the Miami Herald is there in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. She spoke with us earlier this afternoon.

FRANCES ROBLES: What’s really interesting, I’m standing outside the Presidential palace, and what I can see, I would say about two blocks, as far as I can see are young men. Some of them with handkerchiefs around their faces, other ones carrying clubs. And a number of just families and older people demanding the return of the President. But what’s more interesting is that there’s quite a contradiction in reaction here. If you watch the television news media, they’re carrying on as if nothing has happened, frankly. They’re playing soap operas and cartoons.

LISA MULLINS: When you say that some of the protestors have handkerchiefs around their faces, what’s the purpose of that? Are they feeling they’re at risk by being out?

FRANCES ROBLES: I think they’re trying to look menacing [INDISTINCTIVE] [LAUGHS], because I don’t see any authorities here making any effort to stop them from protesting. So I don’t know if they’re trying to hide their identity. I think some people are just trying to cover their mouths from smoke. You see a lot of people wearing the medicine masks that you see for the people protecting themselves from swine flu, because there are burning piles of trash and tires and things of that nature.

LISA MULLINS: And those things that are burning are part of the protest?

FRANCES ROBLES: Part of the protest, yes, absolutely.

LISA MULLINS: [TALKS OVER] What do we hear in the background there right now, Frances?

FRANCES ROBLES: What you’re hearing is a number of people on loud speakers demanding the return of the President, and saying that they will not recognize Roberto Micheletti as the President of Honduras. They say that they’re not leaving here until Manuel Zelaya comes back.

LISA MULLINS: Until he comes back. And is there any indication that the former President will indeed be back?

FRANCES ROBLES: I don’t have that sense because they have an uphill battle. Because what I’m sensing here is a vast majority of the population [INDISTINCTIVE] establishment. You have the Attorney General’s office, you have the military, you have the supreme court, and you have congress decidedly on the side of this new President saying, you know, “Zelaya had to go, and this is the way we had to do it, and we did it [INDISTINCTIVE]. And then you have a small percentage of the population that I’m watching now in front of the Presidential palace saying, “No, no, no. That’s not the way things should be done.”

LISA MULLINS: And meanwhile, there is pressure coming in from the United States, maybe you can tell us how significant that may or may not be with Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, saying that they support the President who was ousted yesterday. That they believe that democracy should reign in Honduras. Here is what the acting President though has to say. This is Roberto Micheletti, who is speaking to Spanish TV.

ROBERTO MICHELETTI: [SPEAKS IN SPANISH]

LISA MULLINS:  Frances, I don’t know if you caught enough of that for me to ask you to translate for us. Did you hear that?

FRANCES ROBLES: I did heard. And actually, what he says is, nobody has the right, not Barack Obama or Hugo Chavez, has the right to come and threaten Honduras. Because there had been some comments from Hugo Chavez, sort of suggesting that this warrant of military action.

LISA MULLINS: To what extent does he fear what either Hugo Chavez, or certainly Barack Obama has to say about the coo that happened that brought him to power yesterday. I mean, the United States has been close to the Honduran military, but then we have the military, the supreme court of Honduras, the congress of Honduras, the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, all coming out in favor of this coo. I mean, what does that say in terms of how the US and its influence is viewed there.

FRANCES ROBLES: The US is in a bit of a tight spot because what you have here is enough institution that we’re in fear of the President, what looked like the President was about to conduct some kind of power grasp, where he was going to conduct this referendum despite the fact the Supreme Court has a little bit of ego, that the Attorney General has a little bit of ego, and that the Armed Forces refuse to participate in it. And then you have people who, “Oh okay. If that’s the case, then we’re gonna get this guy out of the country, we’re gonna [INDISTINCTIVE] him away. So what’s the United States supposed to do? On the one hand, I think they recognize that perhaps President Zelaya was perhaps up to no good. On the other hand, there’s ways to get rid of a President, than perhaps breaking into his bedroom in the middle of the night, is not the way you’re supposed to do it.

LISA MULLINS: Alright. Thank you very much. Speaking to us from the Presidential Palace in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Frances Robels from of the Miami Herald. Thank you.

FRANCES ROBLES: Thank you.

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