Immigrants Sound Off on Honduras

This past weekend a few hundred men, women and children gathered for an afternoon of non-stop soccer games, fresh cooked plates of grilled steak, rice and beans, and lounging by the banks of Westchester Creek on the rim of Ferry Point Park in the Bronx. Over the last few years this out of the way park has become a gathering place for some of the estimated 40,000 Honduran immigrants in New York City--and more recently it has become the setting for heated discussion about the constitutionality of the recent coup d'etat in Honduras that removed President Manuel Zelaya from office, and replaced him with Roberto Micheletti, a thrice failed presidential candidate.

"It's a step back, a step back for Honduras and for Central America, there's no other way to describe it," says a gentleman who preferred not to give his name. Like a number of others at the park, he has family back in Honduras and was reticent about appearing in the press. Still other Honduran immigrants, like a former member of the Honduran military, were supportive of the coup (and some denied that Zelaya's removal constituted a coup at all). Others were more skeptical about the real differences between the warring political leaders in one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, where the lion's share of its wealth controlled by a dozen or so families.

"Here there are a lot of people who come to argue and get angry," a gentleman named Elvis told us. "But in the long-term, next spring Mr. Michelletti and Mr. Zelaya are going to be sitting around eating steaks together, and the country will still be as poor as ever."

For more perspective, read Greg Grandin's story from Honduras, "Waiting For Zelaya."

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