By Chris Dadok www.chrisdadok.com
Southwest Detroit at Sunset (Picture taken by Erik Howard)
It’s dusk, and Molly Sweeney, a community organizer at the Harriet Tubman Center, is driving back home from Honey Bee Market in Southwest Detroit. Suddenly she brakes, stopping at an intersection empty of people. A black dog with pointy ears and a fluffy tail is limping across the road. The dog has just been hit and it is panicking on its three legs, running in zigzags.
She is laying in the central park in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Her boobs are hanging out; she is already pregnant. Her brown hair is a grungy – littered with dandruff. She smells like trash. No one knows her name and no one seems to cares –not even little kids point at her. She is literally a bitch – a female dog – without a home.
The poverty of these dogs in Detroit and Honduras exemplifies detrimental economic parallels. Both Detroit’s and Honduras’s fate have been largely dependent on the profits of a single sector economy. Detroit is known as Motown for its inexorable connection to Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. Honduras is called the Banana Republic for its historical ties to Dole and Chiquita Fruit Companies. As GM filed bankruptcy last year, studies in The Economist and other mainstream newspapers have argued that governmental dependency on a small number of economic giants increases the risk of elevated unemployment because the job market of the populace fluctuates with the vagaries of the both the economy and the management of these respective megacompanies. Both Detroit and Honduras have unemployment rates over 27%.
Pregnant Female Dog Laying in Central Park Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Molly wants to call Animal Control. It is past working hours. “I hate seeing hurt dogs. I can’t just leave it,” she tells me. As Molly calls Animal Control, she tries to attract the dog to her Ford with the guacamole and chips she has just bought. The dog looks at her for a second and then jets away on its three legs.
Today, Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Detroit suffer from high quantities of destitute stray dogs. According to a survey conducted at Roberto Clemente Learning Academy in Southwest Detroit, 93% of parents said that stray dogs are a problem. Rebecca Brown, president of the Local School and Community Organization explains to me that stray dogs are liable to attack families, especially small children who are walking to school. In Tegucigalpa Honduras, residents bear scars from similar incidents. Moró Sosa, a nurse lifts up her pant leg and shows me a blackened scar on her ankle. “I’ve been attacked twice – this was when a little dog got my ankle.” According, to Alan Beck, veterinarian and professor at Purdue University, dogs are able to transmit 65 different diseases to humans.
Unlike Detroit, Tegucigalpa, Honduras neither has dog shelters, nor animal control. Even non-profit organizations like the Humane Society are non-existent in Honduras’s capital. Moró tells me that on top of this, there are very few veterinarians. According to National Geographic, the average lifespan of an urban stray dog is two years.
Molly’s call to Animal Control leads to a voice mail informing her that the office has closed. Molly tries to reach Harry Ward, the director of Animal Control in Detroit, but his cell phone has been switched off. The Humane Society staff has also left. As Molly follows the stray dog towards St. Anne’s Catholic Church, the oldest Catholic Church standing in the Michigan, she calls the neighborhood city office.
In addition to economic parallels, the lack of representative democracy speaks to another apparently crippling similarity between Honduras and Detroit. Less than 25% of liable adults voted for the elected officials in Detroit and Honduras. These shocking numbers speak to the disconnect between the public officials and the public. In a city where the literacy rate is 47%, Detroit Public Schools announced a $300 million debt last year due to embezzlement and misuse of funding. In Honduras, where the minimum wage was $120/month, last year the military and business leaders engineered a coup d’état against a democratically elected president who had increased the minimum wage by 60%.
In Tegucigalpa, Patrick Pavón, a social work student tells me, “When I was growing up, there was once a dog that lay injured on the road with one broken foot. The next day, when I awoke, his other foot had been run over and he couldn’t get up. The dog was yelping and whining alone for hours but no one took him in. The poor animal had died by the third day.” According to Patrick, most Hondurans don’t take in stray dogs because they hardly have enough money to take care of themselves. He tells me that he wishes Tegucigalpa had a dog shelter. He believes dogcatchers and a shelter could fix the problem of stray dogs in Tegucigalpa.
Molly hangs up the phone. Neighborhood Services of Southwest Detroit has told her that there are many other problems; and that they can’t even respond to her phone call. They might be able to take her call in 30 minutes. Molly’s frustration is characteristic of many newcomers to Detroit. As she takes the car out of parking, she mutters, “This city is broken. You can’t even save a dog.”
Stray dog in Tegucigalpa that appears lonely
Detroit has an Animal Control office and a Humane Society. However, the phenomenon of stray dogs apparently takes root in challenges deeper than the existence of city and non-profit dog shelters. Karen Santos, former coordinator of the International Fund for Animal Welfare says, “The animals need to be healthy in order to have a healthy community.” In Detroit and Honduras, at least, Karen’s logic seems to be reversed. Fortunately, a growing number of community organizers and leaders like Molly, Rebecca, Moró and Patrick are working to involve residents in efforts to change the cities’ unhealthy economic and political trends.
Erik Howard, Director of Young Nation took this picture. As a lifelong resident, he works with youth in Southwest Detroit to healthfully express themselves through contemporary medias. Both residents and the large puppies appear happy.
Inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa (Picture taken by El Tiempo Periodico)
Jan 27th 2010 Tegucigalpa
In the capital Tegucigalpa, buses and private cars surround the stadium as political party members, congressmen, international delegates, and mayors enter to attend the inauguration of the recently declared president of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo Sosa. Despite the high attendance close to 20,000, the stadium stands unfilled. Outside on Boulevard Fuerza Armadas -passing under the bridges inscribed with political graffiti – over 200,000 Honduran teachers, small business owners, lawyers, youth, farmers, and many other employed and unemployed people march 5 kilometers across the city. They are protesting what they see as corruption and an illegitimate government. The simultaneous rallies mark the divided nature in which the coup d’état has left Honduras.
On June 28th, former president of the Liberal Party, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted in a military coup d’état headed by Minister of Congress of the same party, Roberto Micheletti. The coup fell on the day that Manuel Zelaya had agreed to hold a survey regarding the interest of Honduran citizens to hold a referendum to create Constitutional Assembly. If the survey showed majority support, Hondurans would be able to vote on Election Day (Nov. 29th) in a fourth ballot create a Constitutional Assembly to reform their constitution. Mariana Reyes, a middle school teacher in the capital says, “Micheletti, and other coup leaders were scared of the results. Throwing a coup d’état – and on that day was an insult to the Honduran democracy.” In a country where the average unemployment is higher than Detroit, where citizens watch 10% of all government taxes embezzled each year, and where running water is still considered an amenity, many people see the constitution in its present state as inherently weak.
Photo taken by Mirian Huezo Emanuelsson at the Honduras protest outside of the presidential inauguration.
For the people I interviewed who participated in the march, the coup d’état in June and the following internationally unrecognized elections in November have signified the immediate failure the Constitutional Assembly, and disillusionment with Honduran politics. “Why should I vote, if the person I vote for can just be thrown out of office when the powerful elite of the county disagrees with his policy,” a statement echoed in many forms by participants in resistance efforts. In a country where multi-million dollar fast food chains like McDonalds and Pizza Hut, are protected from paying domestic taxes to the Honduras government, small Honduran business owners (who have to pay taxes) tell me that they had hoped that a reformed constitutional would make more equitable tax laws. Elementary school teachers say they wish this potential tax money could go to schools, where the average K-6 class size is 45 students.
Since the coup, Honduras has lost $405 million (to add to its 2.86 billion dollar debt); thirty-two activists have been reported assassinated, and the multimillion-dollar U.S. and Venezuelan infrastructure grants have been withheld or canceled. Inside the stadium, Porfirio Lobo announces his commitment to give amnesty for all individuals involved in throwing or resisting the coup in order to create a unity government and to build Honduras. Luis Gutierrez, a cable technician who participated in the march protesting the new presidency responds sarcastically, “Amnesty for all. It’s as if as of January 28th, nothing ever happened.”
Outside the enclosed stadium, over the past six months youth have written on street walls, VIVA LA DEMOCRACIA (May democracy live) and other democratic slogans. Each day, construction workers are paid to paint over the political graffiti. Today, Porfirio Lobo has been inaugurated president; Manuel Zelaya has left to the Dominican Republic, and most international media sources have now lost interest in Honduras’s political situation. As people return from their final resistance march against the coup d’état, both pensive and excited they ask each other – what’s next? To some, the inauguration is the end – to others the beginning. It appears that the desire for democracy is not as easy to erase as the paint on the walls.
Political graffiti covers city walls in Honduras