¡Honduras Al Mundial!

Well, it has been quite a while since I wrote something. The summer has been short-circuited with rain, cold weather and the swine flu. Ah, the swine flu. First, in Mexico we saw the hysteria of the swine flu H1N1, people in the streets wearing masks, Dr. Sanjay Gupta from CNN making a special trip to Ground Zero in Mexico City to report to us about the Mexican flu..which began to dissipate or just continued on its natural course. Then we stopped seeing the Mexican flu and then realized that this indeed was a pandemic and now all 50 states of the American Union have reported at least a case of the swine flu...la gripe porcina. So last month I got a telephone call from my cousin Carlos, San Pedro Sula: "primo, la fiebre porcina esta matando nuestro país. Después del desastre de Mel Zelaya esto era lo último que nos faltaba". Yes, Carlos was reporting that the swine flu was a calamity in Honduras, not a welcome distraction after the debacle caused by Mel Zelaya's grab for permanent, chavista power in Honduras. I explained to Carlos that with good hand hygiene and cleanliness, Honduras should overcome this health crisis with little impact on its economy and population...how could it? You cannot do worse than extreme poverty, extreme political corruption, extreme economic stagnation, and extreme apathy in my beloved Central American birthplace. So you see...nothing really changes and nothing really matters... until Miss Universe and the World Cup. But first, Zelaya.



Manuel "Mel" Zelaya Rosales decided to run for the Presidency of Honduras in 2005. He was a very successful and wealthy lumber merchant in Olancho, Honduras' largest departamento, akin to America's largest state. He was a member of the left-leaning Partido Liberal, my mother's political party. My father, who was living in Honduras at that time, moving there after my mother passed away in 1999, was very suspicious of Mel. He did not trust the man and accused him of being a closet communist disguised as "mainstream" in the Honduran political landscape. I looked at my father at that time with amused suspicion since I knew that he was a die-hard member of the right-leaning Partido Nacional and according to him the devil always wore red, coincidentally Zelaya's party official color. Mel got elected President and took office in early 2006, much to my father's chagrin. My father died on November 2nd, 2006 from a chronic illness in Waterbury, Connecticut and even to his last breath warned me about Mel Zelaya. After his death I got busy doing my routine of being a doctor in Connecticut. Until June 28th, 2009. I received a text message from Sandra... she will appear sporadically throughout my flight of ideas...and she wrote that there a a coup d'etat in Honduras! ¡Golpe de Estado en Honduras! I turned the television on and CNN en Español had a scene out of Dante's Inferno: Mel Zelaya, disheveled and unkempt, in his pajamas next to Costa Rican President Arias complaining about the military take-over in Honduras. I was riveted. I could feel my father smiling in Heaven (I think) having the last laugh. Hugo Chavez was angry. Daniel Ortega was angry. Evo Morales was beside himself. Rafael Correa was in a state of shock. Cristina de Kirschner was furious: hey Cristina, take care of your people in Argentina dying of swine flu! Then a scene out of "One Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest", Roberto Micheletti being sworn in as President of Honduras! Hugo Chavez was now very angry! "I will invade Honduras and throw out Goriletti and re-install Zelaya" What did Obama think? Who cared? He was too busy reversing Bush's dismal record. The UN, OAS, and all the diplomatic manouvering did not help Zelaya. Why? Zelaya betrayed his people. Once again, Honduras was victimized by a native son. Most of Honduras supported the so-called coup and despise Zelaya, an empty promise, a Trojan Horse for Chavez and his unsustainable Bolivarian Revolution. What a mess in Honduras! Isolated, despised by the diplomatic community, reviled as the ultimate Banana Republic. But we preferred six months of isolation to twenty six years of repression. We have enough arroz, frijoles, tortillas and guineos to survive; long live Honduras and the rest of the world, ¡váyanse al carajo! We have Miss Universe and our beloved National Soccer Selección to make us forget of Mel Zelaya.


Ahhh, Miss Universe. All through the years, Honduras has sent a delegate to the Miss Universe pageant, a self-fulfilling prophecy of cameo appearances by the Honduran representatives, ill-prepared and ill-informed. So we have Miss Honduras 2009, not elected in a beauty pageant but selected by a panel of so-called beauty experts... surprise, surprise, we had a great candidate, Belgica Suarez from Tegucigalpa who arrived in the Bahamas full of enthusiasm, charisma and became a fan favorite to classify to the Final roud. Honduras forgot about the Zelayista Affaire and focused its attention on the new beauty heroine... Paddy Power bookmakers had her as a favorite; could it be possible? Would Honduras join the top echelon of Latin American beauty alongside Puerto Rico and Venezuela? But once again we were disappointed on August 23rd; she did not make it, Venezuela won it, but we were happy for the brief interlude of reality.

So we are left with our National Soccer team. Frankly, I have had little hope of making it to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. I'd figured that it would be Mexico, Costa Rica, and the United States with Honduras or El Salvador going against Ecuador or Argentina (that is if they are not dead from swine flu, thanks Cristina!). Once again, surprise, surprise: Costa Rica, USA and Honduras would make it if the playoffs were to end today with the arrogant Mexicans praying to defeat a South American machine to make it! We are now confident in Honduras that our National team will see action in South Africa. These guys are powerful but inconsistent. So our dreams are in the shoulders of Honduras' soccer team. Not even Mel Zelaya can spoil this for us. In the meantime, the Honduran Presidential campaign has started and Zelaya's sorry episode is being buried in Honduras' shameful political history. Who will it be this time? Liberal Elvin Santos or National Pepe Lobo...same difference, but we are now engaged in ¡Honduras al Mundial! ¡Honduras al Mundial!