[Sean Gruber]

Honduras, A Country of Five Families

Article in original Spanish:
https://www.elmundo.es/america/2009/...259331572.html

English translation (machine translated, cleaned up by me; all bolding mine):

Honduras, A Country of Five Families
by Jacobo G. García in "El Mundo," filed from Tegucigalpa, Nov. 28, 2009

The walls in Tegucigalpa's labyrinthine streets share one visual feature. They are covered with graffiti.

There are modern cement walls, old colonial-origin walls, either electrified or topped by sharp glass to prevent assaults, but all are painted with often misspelled phrases..."Eject Goriletti," "Bloody (bruising) coup," "Turks Get Out of Honduras."

Almost everyone points to them. In a contest for "most hated," Micheletti, the Church, and the "Turks" would win in a landslide among those who were expelled from power on June 28. They get more insults and spraypaint than anybody else...even the army.

Michletti is hated for stabbing "Mel," his former friend in the Liberal party. The Church is hated for accusing Zelaya of leading the country to the current situation. The "Turks" are hated because they are the oligarchy. "Oligarchy," an obsolete term in the First World. But in the third poorest country in the Americas, "oligarchy" means a handful of coordinated families both before and after the coup that toppled the president who was flirting with the Chavez movement.

Although everyone calls them "Turks," they are actually Jewish families who came from Arab countries between 1940 and 1950, to flee the desert and the conflicts there. It's the Rosenthals, the Facussés, the Larachs, the Nassers, the Kafies, or the Goldsteins. Five surnames that control Maquilas (manufacturing and industry), thermal energy, telecommunications, tourism, banking, finance, media, cement, commerce, the airports, and the Congress. Pretty much everything. They are the hard core of that 3% of Hondurans who control 40% of national production. They are the elect of a country in which 70% of the citizens are poor.

Characters like Jaime Rosenthal, presidential candidate in 4 elections and owner of banks, airports, breweries, football teams, and media companies. He has investments in cement, telephone companies, meat export, insurance, and telecommunications. Or the Facussés, related to the Nassers and who have spread their influence between politics and business for decades. They are the bosses of the textile sector in a country dedicated to making many of the brand garments that then travel to the USA. They also control chemical companies or precious woods. Many government ministers have come out of these two families. There is no decision in the country that does not pass through their hands.

Most did not know how to read, write, or speak Spanish when they arrived, but they waxed behind shop counters, creating newspapers, exploiting mines, or filling the country with electricity and telephones. They married each other, sent their children to American universities, displaced the traditional bourgeoisie (of Spanish and German origin), and three generations later they continue to control the country without admitting anyone to their club of "the powerful."

Powerful among the powerful

They are families like the Atala, owners of Banco FICOHSA. Or the Kafies, "powerful among the powerful" according to the book Honduras: The Powers That Be and Political Power edited by Víctor Meza. The Kafie family is the most influential in the country and one of the most powerful in Central America thanks to its investments in banking, food, and construction and its many contracts with the administration: "estate auctions that it hardly loses," to quote the book. Or the Canahuatis, a family of great influence not only because it controls two newspapers but also because it has bottling, pharmaceuticals, and fast food businesses like Pizza Hut and KFC.

Almost all of them contribute economically to both parties and alongside them met with the U.S. ambassador, Hugo Llorens, only a few hours after hearing that Zelaya appeared in pajamas in Costa Rica. Zelaya heckled and shouted in such a way that more than one was offended--so they explained to all the Americans present. That was the first time America seemed to have heard of a coup d'état in Honduras.

That's why the Obama administration's first crackdown was aimed at leaving many of these families without visas. They are behind the decision to make the election the bandage that closes the "wound" of the Chavez movement. The pessimists among them still believe that wound is bleeding.