Supermarket Run

Mel is back. He has managed to come climb mountains, forge rivers, and then sneak into Tegucigalpa on his arduous quest to regain power (I hope you can sense my sarcasm at his dramatic antics). Now he seeks asylum in the Brazilian embassy, throwing his country in chaos once more.
Since his return became public yesterday, we as a country have been on “house arrest” – a toque de queda, they call it here. I suppose its purpose is to keep people from demonstrating. Rumors circulate about six protesters killed by the police today. My dad, who seems to have an opinion on all things political and historical, tells me this is standard practice for a country in Honduras’ situation. But couldn’t they just take away the right to assemble, instead of the entire country’s freedom? The desperate poor are unable to work, the sick unable to visit a hospital, children unable to attend school. Today they lifted the toque de queda for several hours to allow people to go grocery shopping. This allowance must have had the same semblance to everyone else as it did me: if they are lifting the curfew for a couple hours to allow us to stock up, they must not have any intention of restoring our freedom soon.

A run on groceries. A run on gas. Fortunately, we – the Diaz family – are some of the few with (a) a car to get to the grocery store at a reasonable hour to wait in line for it to open; (b) the means – a credit card – to stock up if this toque de queda continues indefinitely.
This simply demonstrates, in my mind, another example of the abundance available to us as Americans, and the hardship facing by the poor majority, aggravated by clumsy politicians.

O Mel, if you really care about your people, why not wait for the elections in November, and let us live and work in peace?