I I a windy, easily transited thoroughfare. It’s only when the people come into view that the Honduran reality returns. The hill people I talked with were glad to earn the equivalent of $2.40 for a 10 hour day. It’s just enough to buy corn, beans and an Orange Crush to wash down the dust in the throat at day’s end. One rural store owner exclaimed his gratitude for the medicine and other aid dispensed from nearby Palmerola. “ People there are very generous, very civilized,” he beamed. Further down the road, a poor mestizo woman, mother of 13, told me of her deep desire to go to the United States, where she’d been led to believe she could easily earn enough to buy a house on her return. And right along the highway near Palmerola we saw several highly visible cinderblock homes constructed with AID funds and sold to local residents for around $1,000. This same woman told me of the caminata (long march) she witnessed last July, toward the “ promised land." Organized by a profit-minded contra figure, the core group set out from Tegucigalpa on foot. Along the way, dreamers trickled out of the poor hill villages, swelling the group to some thousand people by the time it passed her adobe home. “They filled the entire highway from side to side, as far as the eye could see,” she recalled. “There were very old women and babes in arms. They were convinced they could walk to the United States. I thought they were crazy.” The group was finally turned back at the Guatemalan border, 200 miles further up the road, but no less than 2,000 land miles from the nearest Texas border town. The pilgrims were kept under guard on a soccer field until they could be trucked back to their abandoned homes. The old (North) American dream still plays big in Central America, among people of all social classes. That evening in San Pedro Sula, a young mulatto gentleman told me of his two brothers in the “States” and one in Canada. “ I’ve spent quite a bit of time there myself and have even been to Alaska three times on an oil tanker.” When told where I was from, he exclaimed to his wife: “That’s where (a relative’s) family moved, with all their children. Portland, Oregon.” In these past weeks, we’ve heard the Reagan Administration get terribly excited about Central America, worrying us with the threat of a red tide sweeping across our southern border, planting seeds of fear that vast numbers of Central Americans will come our way if we don’t stop communism dead in its tracks. This latter-day McCarthyism was quickly derided in the press and even by some moderate Republicans, but it obviously had its effect, as the Senate vote to fund the contras demonstrates. As it is, we’re receiving vast numbers of immigrants, fleeing the very regimes we’re underwriting in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But greater numbers are drawn by the beacon of “ hope and prosperity” we constantly beam southward into the misery and despair of most people’s daily lives. The real fear in Central America is not that communism will sweep across these tiny nations, but that the United States will continue to abet the status quo and thus let the social fabric decay even further. Unlike the entrenched oligarchies and their military aides-de-camp, the middle class, workers and peasants are losing ground and growing more restless and resentful. Even the Catholic Church, long an ally of the privileged, has by and large embraced “ liberation theology,” which promises hope where people live. It’s a fragile, dangerous game we play in Honduras and Central America, compounded by Mr. Reagan’s desire for military solutions to complex problems. Most of those I talked with were pleased to be able to share their feelings and perceptions with someone from the empire which plays such a role in their lives. They know far, far more about us than we’ve cared to learn about them. Most feel that they alone can define a future which truly confronts the deep-seated problems they face. Those solutions will be “ Made in Central America.” David Milholland is co-editor of CSQ. HOMEOPATHY • HYDROTHERAPY • NUTRITION DR. TORI HUDSON; NATUROPATHIC PHYSICIAN Spec ia liz ing in Natura l, Drugless Therap ies Portland N a tu ropa th ic C lin ic 11231 S.E. M a rke t Street One session hypnotherapy to $10 off with this ad Dr. Alvin L. Ackerman Ph.D. Licensed Clinical Psychologist Counseling Existential Therapy Major Health Ins. 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