In every little piece of land, close to spring and river
─ My grandmother would say ─
You have to plant a tree, a little nutritious or medicinal plant.
Clean earth and water maintain health of
Body and mind, the animal and human community
Excerpted with minor editing by Carolyn Bennett from Dr. Juan Almendares’
“Letter to Mother Earth and Humanity of the Planet”
I grew up watching my mother pedal day and night on a sewing machine to make shirts for a factory that exploited her without minimal labor rights. We were ‘those from below’ the railway where poverty, brothels, alcoholism and violence proliferated.…
I was eight years old one of seven brothers and sisters. At 3 o’clock one morning, I went with my mother to see the almost decapitated body of my father who had been killed by an assassin hired to take away a piece of land. We learned from that not to have hate or vengeance, not to commit violence or consume drugs and alcohol.…
We suffered hunger, humiliations and poverty to be able to study medicine. I worked with one main idea: to serve the poor, the peasants, workers, original peoples, Garífunas and students. I carried out post-grad studies in medicine in the United States. The peace movement of the U.S. youth against the war in Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Gandhi were inspiration for my position against militarism, torture and structural violence.
… The essence of capitalism, I came to understand, is anti-human and racist, that in its bosom is engendered the process of qualitative transformation of humanity itself and that we can’t be indifferent or neutral but have to take a position against injustice, war and the violation of human rights.…
Though I have the firm conviction of not being racist, classist, sexist, homophobic, neither participant in patriarchy nor authoritarianism, I cannot keep silent before the crimes and lies of the military geopolitics of international financial capitalism, articulated with the oligarchic power and the ideology of neo-liberalism.… I am anti-imperialist.
If we ask ourselves who are those who have been dispossessed of their lands and of the waters by the mining, banana, shrimp and wood companies and the plantations of African Palm for agro fuel, it is the original peoples, the Garífunas, the Misquitos [Miskitos], and the peasants. They are the ones who make the land produce, who live in pauper conditions, and those who have the worst conditions of health, education, potable water and housing.
When I examine the original and peasant peoples, I observe the infamous process of social injustice that forces beings into autophagy (eating oneself). The boys and girls have sad, anemic, dry eyes, with their bellies bulging and full of parasites, bare-foot, emaciated and swollen because of pain. …
Violence screams in every sweaty pore of the peasant and the system buys the consciousnesses to hide the truth. To defend at all costs the life of humans and of the planet should be our mission. In this small country, with an oligarchic system and an army of international capitalism the multimillionaire plans for proliferation of military bases, media campaigns and growing multimillionaire religious and media fundamentalism against Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and the suffering people of Colombia are reflected.
They are rehearsing and experimenting with a war in Honduras that begins against the peasantry and the original and Garífuna peoples. It is the power of the arms business and the buying of consciousnesses against the process of liberation and historic dignity of the peoples of Latin America…
This horrendous reality does not just move me and make me cry, but my consciousness acquires a greater commitment with the people in resistance.…
My firm conviction is that without local, regional and global solidarity, and vice versa, substantial transformations in the bosom of humanity will never be made.…
Based on these historical antecedents, we appeal to unity, organization and mobilization of the local national and world conscious with the objective of stopping the machinery of geopolitical, ideological and anti-human war against the peoples of Latin America.…
We celebrate the strength of the spiritual and cultural unity of
The resistance of the peoples of the world
against pain and suffering
against pain and suffering
Our ethical and libratory commitment should be
to such a degree that with
to such a degree that with
The slightest showing of injustice,
the subtle flight of the hummingbird
the subtle flight of the hummingbird
Moves us and invites us to defend dignity and life.
Sources and notes
Dr. Juan Almendares: “Letter to Mother Earth and Humanity of the Planet,”
Sunday, April 11, 2010, Voices of the Resistance in Honduras [Tegucigalpa], http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2010/04/dr-juan-almendares-letter-to-mother.html
Dr. Juan Almendares has helped to organize protest movements against transnational companies that impinge upon and exploit rather than assist the lives of Hondurans [http://www.enableinternational.com/cohapaz.html].
Dr. Juan Almendares Bonilla is an internationally known Honduran medical doctor, human rights activist, environmental leader and alternative medicine practitioner. He also holds a medical degree from the University of Honduras and the M.S. in physiology from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He is recognized for his work in combating alcoholism, tobacco and drug abuse, malnutrition, ecological damage, and pesticide poisoning in Honduras. Dr. Almendares has received international recognition for his humanitarian efforts in Honduras and Central America. He received the 2001 Barbara Chester Award for his groundbreaking efforts with prisoners, victims of torture, poor people, and indigenous populations. In 2007 Dr. Almendares was the sole recipient of the Humanitarian Award from InterAction in Washington DC.
He has publicly addressed the impact and effects of mining on the Central American environment and people, and has devoted considerable effort to reducing the prevalence of violence against women. A torture survivor himself, Dr. Almendares has been targeted by death squads on several occasions in the past [http://www.enableinternational.com/pdf/Almendares.bio2008A.pdf].
ENABLE INTERNATIONAL (EI) is a not-for-profit 501(c) (3) organization incorporated in the U.S. State of Illinois. Its mission is “to enable impoverished and vulnerable people worldwide meet their basic human needs and improve their quality of life.”
Britannica notes
Ga•ri•fu•na \"gä-rē-'fü-nə\ n, pl Garifunaor Ga•ri•fu•nas [Garifuna garífuna, a self-designation; akin to Taino caribe, caribi Carib, Island Carib (Arawakan language of the Lesser Antilles) Callípona: a self-designation, Guianan Carib kari'na Carib, person] (1977) : a member of a people of African and American Indian descent that live mainly along the Caribbean coast of northern Central America called also Black Carib ; also: the Arawakan language containing many Cariban elements spoken by the Garifunas
Tegucigalpa is the capital city of the Republic of Honduras.
Modern Central American Miskito [Misquitos] are agricultural, their culture influenced by European contacts and intermarriage with Africans brought to the area as slaves. Many Miskito Indians fled to neighboring Honduras in the 1980s after conflicts developed between them and the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, and some Miskitos joined rebel groups seeking to overthrow the Sandinistas.
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