The book is a collection of essays presented at a conference “Honduras: An International Dialogue,” held in Miami, Florida, 1984. Sponsored by Florida International University, the conference brought together agricultural, business, peasant, and religious leaders from Honduras to meet American scholars and representatives of firms doing business in Honduras. In addition, former president Oswaldo López Arrellano (1963-71 and 1972-75), two senior colonels, and several Honduran scholars were also present. As noted by James Morris in his Honduras: Caudillo Politics and Military Rulers (reviewed by HAHR, August 1985), “Hondurans retain the ability to talk to one another. Political opponents are able to function together.”
The scholar or student with little background might first wish to read chapter 11, “Honduras: Agricultural Policy and Perspectives” by Mario Ponce, a former director of the National Agrarian Institute. His discussion of the different agricultural, economic, and demographic characteristics is straightforward and devoid of the bias found in several other contributions, especially those of Christian Democratic Deputy Efraín Díaz Arrivillaga; Carlos Roberto Reina, leader of the M-LIDER faction of the Liberal party and 1986 presidential candidate; Ramón Custodio, founder of the Committee for Defense of Human Rights (CODEH); or Fernando Lardizábal, former president of both the Honduran Private Enterprise Council (COHEP) and the National Federation of Farmers and Ranchers (FENAGH), and a defeated candidate of the National party in 1986. Nevertheless, their values and biases need to be taken into account. I myself would have liked to have seen participation in the conference by members of the Azcona (ALIPO) faction of the Liberal party, the Callejas faction of the National party (PN) or at least Ricardo Zúñiga, long-term PN eminence grise, and the urban trade union movement.
As someone who has visited Honduras 11 times since 1959, it is sad for me to see Shepherd taking a position that the U.S. presence in Honduras is contributing to the “Saigonization” of Tegucigalpa. While there are problems brought about by the close ties between recent Honduran governments and the Reagan administration, various public opinion surveys since 1983 show the overwhelming majority of Hondurans looks favorably on the U.S. presence, is very sympathetic to the Duarte regime in El Salvador, and is worried about the direction of politics in neighboring Nicaragua.
Scholars and students can compare the contention of Shepherd in his conclusion that the Suazo government did not do enough to confront the nation’s “worst socio-economic crisis … in the last fifty years” with the data of Paul Vinelli, longterm president of the Banco Atlántida, and Ubodoro Arriaga, another former director of the National Agrarian Institute and currently minister of finance in the Azcona government. It is likely that scholars will look more benignly on Suazo’s regime for its extension of public services to rural areas along the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan borders than on the motives of different persons active in efforts to perpetuate Suazo in office in early 1985.
