A Letter from the Mission Field (November 30, 2013)
Greetings from Honduras! I hope you had a great Thanksgiving with your family! Here in Honduras we have a new president, Juan Orlando Hernández of the National Party (center-right). People went to the polls last Sunday, admidst fears of violence to voters. Yet the day passed peacefully and without incident. However, on Tuesday, Mel Zelaya, the husband of the opposing Freedom Party (Libre) candidate, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya (leftist), gave a press conference refusing to concede the election. Later in the afternoon, students sympathetic to Libre gathered at UNAH, the national university in Tegucigalpa (and just down the street from me), in a protest that turned violent. Heavily armed riot police quickly quelled it, dispersing the crowds with tear gas. Whether that was just an isolated incident, we`ll have to see. While the vote has not been totally tallied, the trend is significantly in Orlando`s favor, to the point that other foreign gover