said to the coffee producers who came to the capital in January complaining of contra invasion of their lands and of their inability to harvest their crops because workers fear coming to the area? And when Sandinista troops cross the border, as happened late in March, in pursuit of contra forces who continually attack them from this extraterritorial haven, the Sandinistas are suddenly invading Honduras, and threatening Honduran sovereignty. ISs a classic bait and switch psychology-Made in the U.S.A.—designed to pull Honduras into a war it wants nothing to do with. After this most recent border incident, Reagan granted Honduras an additional $20 million in military support, an amount it denied having requested. Newly elected President Jose Azcona Hoyo, a Liberal, walks a very thin line. To date he’s endeavored to resolve both internal and external problems d ip lomatically, listening to all sides in his increasing ly embattled country. Honduras’s second consecutive c iv ilian president in more than half a century, Azcona was elected with a minority of the popular vote, and has had to forge an ungainly coalition with his key opponent. Hondurans I talked with consider him an honest man, in a country known for its corruption. But Azcona rules with one wary eye on his military, which has overthrown countless predecessors, and the on the U.S. Embassy, whose military and economic support largely define what he’s allowed to do. The heavily guarded U.S. Embassy is the dominant presence on both sides of Peace Avenue. People stand in a perpetual line outside the whitewashed walls waiting for visas. Even with a U.S. passport, security was tight. Inside, reporters from stateside hung around the United States In fo rmation Serv ice (USIS) office, their home away from home, and flirted with the attractive Honduran secretaries in English. I was finally received by Arthur Lloyd Skop, head of USIS in Honduras. After making an ill- fated attempt to connect me with the Oregon troops in the field, he told me that this was the only USIS branch in the world which currently has a military comI t ’s being done without the traditional delicacy o f the United States, which has S t s o f ^ C a r e fU l t o r e sPe c t rights o f these small nations. Legatitu has not been very important to the y Reagan people.” Manuel “Meme” Acosta Bonilla in his home ponent. “ Kind of reminds you of Vietnam in the early days,” he concluded. The Vietnam comparison is apt but misleading. It’s undoubtedly true that (North) Americans do not want to relive seeing body bags stacked up for TV news broadcast. And no doubt protest would rise up against any long-lived war. But the military strategies and tactics employed by all parties, especially because Central America is so close to the U.S., would inevitably produce dramatically different scenarios. In actual fact, the greater uprising would occur across the entire mundo latino, for events in Central America have become pivotal for Latin Americans everywhere. Across the hemisphere, democracies have replaced military regimes. In Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay, progressive governments have endorsed the Contadora process, a 1984 treaty which sets up procedures for peace negotiations in the region. Every government in Central America, despite the financial ties of several to the U.S., has stood firmly behind Contadora, which was created by the governments of Mexico, Panama, Columbia and Venezuela. Washington has played its own game, refusing to endorse Contadora despite this Latin American unity, while applauding the points it wants emphasized. In the end, the U.S. finds it difficult to accept a treaty which was created outside its own chambers. The U.S. neo-colonial empire is in tatters, the result of its inability to adjust to inevitable change in the region. The Nightmare Z l s Central Americans struggle to X A g e t the reigns back into their own hands, the U.S. government and the most deeply invested economic interests feel betrayed; and export the dark side of our culture, the tools of repression and violence. One long popular method is the use of national military apparatuses to control dissidence. Though Guatemala has by far the bloodiest history of torture and other internal violence in the region, Honduras is far from innocent. Dr. Ramon Custodio Lopez, the director of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras, asked me to read the groups 1985 report prior to our interview. The report implicates the Honduran military, systemically and up into the highest ranks, in most of the several hundred cases cited. My head was left spinning with accounts of murder, rape, disappearance, kidnapping and much more. Because of the many military people implicated by name in the report, when we met the next day I asked if he was afraid for himself or his family. “ I am convinced I am doing the correct thing,” he replied. “ If you don’t speak out about what you believe, what is life about?” Though I’d found the report chilling, the number of cases seemed small compared to Guatemala or El Salvador. “Guatemala is in a civil war,” he pointed out, “ and human rights violations should not be measured in statistical terms. The situation in Honduras is not happening by accident. I t ’s a political decision. Some 128 people have disappeared since 1981. “We think the United States government is deeply involved. 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