The Honduran government maquiladora industry to manufacture medical materials at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but maquila staff may simply not use public transport. A police attack on a personal bus carrying more than 30 employees of a textile factory forced the government to admit that the police had not followed legal protocols.
Photo: Deiby Yones / Countercurrent
This article is an adaptation of a survey published in Spanish and is a collaborative assignment of El Intercambio, Contracorriente, Gato Encerrado, Desinforming and Nicaragua Investiga, in alliance with Other Looks and with investment from the Central American Women’s Fund and Oxfam.
“Dwarf” (“Shorty”) began arguing with the policeman. He was driving a ramshackle old bus and had just attempted an illegal turn in the main shopping park of Choloma, a lively and deficient city on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, just over 6am on 12 August, transporting 31 women and nine men. to his paintings in the maquiladora Jerzees Nuevo Dona, one of the seven Honduran corporations that make clothes for Fruit of the Loom. The officer stopped the bus for a few minutes and then let it go.
Cindy, a textile worker, observed the incident from her seat on the bus, saw Dwarf several times, noticing for herself that she was overweight, she had no idea how safe she would get home at the end of the day. It caused him a lot of anxiety recently. Cindy heard Dwarf say to the cop, “Dude, why do you let all the other buses through and I don’t?”
Driver’s staff entrance through the gates of Zip Choloma Industrial Park where social distance is applied Photo: Deiby Yones / Countercurrent
Cindy’s first idea when she was hit on the bus the next day to ask if there would be any other incidents with the police. “Hi, let’s see how today goes,” he tells Dwarf before becoming accommodated in a seat in the middle. Indy lives in the Lupez Arellano region of Choloma, Cortés, the branch with the highest instances of COVID-19 in the country, so she prefers to wear a mask and a plastic face shield when she leaves home.
The bus takes part in Lupez Arellano, about seven kilometers from the city center of Choloma, and takes the main avenues of the metropolitan area of the Sula Valley, where 80% of the country’s production and textile corporations are located. the speakers of the old yellow bus as he speeded down the busy avenue.
Honduran export clothing factories, known as maquilas or maquiladoras, briefly closed from March 10 to April 22 due to the pandemic and temporarily re-opened when the government designated them as essential businesses, including supermarkets, pharmacies, banks and fuels. Some of the maquilas have obtained contracts for the manufacture of non-public protective devices and other fitness products, and have operated frequently since then.
One of the maquilas hired to make Jerzees Nuevo Da masks. Its main visitor is Fruit of the Loom, a member of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Group, a conglomerate of companies of 270,000 employees.
President Juan Orlando Hernandez promised to hand over a mask to each and every Honduran, about nine million people, then 122 textile maquilas were hired through the government to make masks (US$128,000 according to contract) or surgical gowns (US$443,944 according to contract). ).
In Choloma alone there are 78 maquilas, so there is a strong call for the sending of staff, but when public transport closed, many maquilas rented personal buses. Jerzees had negotiated a bus service contract with the boat union before the pandemic. 160,000 transport employees after the closure proved complicated.
The unforeseen curfew order in March began to be replenished weekly. At the beginning of the pandemic, there were more than 54,000 arrests through police of allegations of non-compliance with curfew and a hundred court cases through citizens for abuse of force through police.
Cindy will later say that her lovely greeting to Dwarf will prove prophetic.
The yellow bus five minutes from the textile factory when two National Police officers arrested him at 6. 30am on August 13, were waiting for Dwarf at the last chimney in front of the commercial park, two passengers on the bus later declared that authorities had accused Dwarf of making an attempt to attack a police officer the day before.
One of the officers announced that the vehicle was seized, Cindy recalls that he then asked Enano for his driver’s license, but Dwarf refused to give it to him, then Dwarf warned him to join him to leave the passengers in his place. Police said no and the passengers protested, they didn’t need to get off the bus. One recorded a video with his cell phone.
Then the stage got worse. ” Listen, everybody, I’m going to spray tear fuel if no one comes down,” one of the officials threatened. Some passengers shouted, “Go ahead, do it!” Cindy heard a loud crackle and the bus began to fill with smoke. The 40 passengers to scream.
Some other people jumped out the windows, but Maximum took a desperate leap to the door, crying and swearing to go out. Cindy saw an employee being kicked through her friends while trying to get off the bus. Someone else fell out of a window over the vehicle.
Within minutes of the tear-fuel attack, Jerzees’ staff arrived to care for the victims; 16 staff members suffered some trauma, 4 were transferred to the hospital of the Honduran Institute of Social Security (IHSS) and 12 were temporarily incapacitated by tear fuel. While trying to get away from tear fuel, he heard the cries of a dwindling on the floor of the bus. She tried not to step on her friend, then jumped off the bus and sprained her left ankle, which she put out of the paintings for 21 days. On the same day, a report on the tear fuel incident went viral in Honduras, but many soon forgot.
A police officer on trial
Every political crisis in Honduras is accompanied by police and military brutality. During the 2009 coup, police and military forces brutally dispersed the protests, resulting in 20 homicides. Two years later, a series of murders committed through the police and links Crime plunged the national police into a crisis. A police purge was initiated and structural disorders were revealed at the establishment.
In the 2017 elections, national police and the army suppressed widespread demonstrations of voter fraud. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras (OHCHR) has seen a non-unusual link between the 22 deaths caused by members of the police and army. The culprits have not yet been brought to justice. In January 2020, a senior police official, Leonel Sauceda, imprisoned after being held accountable for the disappearance of 14 million lempiras ($560,000) from public coffers.
A day after police gassed the Dwarf bus, the National Police admitted that the two officials had not followed the “appropriate” protocol when arguing with the passengers and then sprayed them with tear gas. Bad, but not excessive. He issued a regrettable incident and temporarily assigned the two officials to work in the workplace.
The police officer involved in the case is escorted to a hearing in the judicial building, at the end of the hearing escorted through the back door to avoid the photographers Photo: Deiby Yones / Contracorriente
Jair Meza, the spokesman for the National Police, informed Contracorriente a few weeks later that the incident with Dwarf was due to the previous day’s altercation and that police were suffering from “paint stress. “Meza downplayed the incident and gave the impression to justify the police actions. “A lot of other people don’t know [the police],” he said, rejecting the fact that maquila painters were on their way to painting and didn’t know anyone.
After a two-month investigation, the Police Disciplinary Affairs Directorate (DIDAPOL) of the disciplinary police fired the worker who had fired the tear gas canister, but acquitted the other worker, claiming that he had not actively participated in the incident. This advice has been presented to the Department of Public Safety, which will make the final decision.
The matter is now before the courts. The Attorney General accused the police officer of depriving bus passengers of their fundamental human rights. Constitutionally guaranteed human rights violations through government officials are a criminal offense. The accused officials will be tried, but are released on bail until then.
“We will investigate this incident and take appropriate action to prevent them from falling again,” Jerzees Nuevo said in a statement related to the bus attack. We were unable to touch Jerzees Nuevo Daa on a subject that police sprayed tear gas on the personal bus they had rented to send their workers to work.
On the day of the accident, there were about 815 painters from Jerzees who were to paint on thirteen personal buses; get the monthly minimum wage of 8,226 lempiras (US$370). To maintain their task and earn a bonus, they will have to exceed one hundred percent of the daily production goal. Jerzees considers this professional functionality to be maximum productivity.
Every day Cindy leaves home to board one of those buses, she’s got this bonus in mind. On August 13, she sought success in the 110% goal because she saved to help her 17-year-old daughter with her education.
Many maquiladoras like Jerzees forced their painters to repaint after closing without offering transportation to and from factories. Cindy walks down the steep street every day at 6:10 a. m. to the preventive bus where the Dwarf bus waits at the Jerzees factory.
The passenger on the bus
Cindy has been running in maquilas since she was 18, a 34-year-old métis with big eyes, straight hair and a loud voice, recalling her desperation, she spoke solemnly about how she had escaped from her seat in the middle. of the bus.
Cindy at home in the domain of López Arellano where she lives the maximum of the maquila. Photo: Deiby Yánes / Countercurrent
Cindy lives in the Lupez Arellano region, which has almost a part of the town of Choloma, is one of the most densely populated areas of the country, where most of Jerzees’ staff live on the Bus of Dwarf, the district is named after Oswaldo López Arellano, a general who ruled Honduras for 8 years after the 1963 coup.
According to government data, about 132,000 more people live in the 40 neighborhoods of Lupez Arellano. It is considered a “hot zone” for its maximum crime rate, which ranks third in the country Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.
A band called La Rumba is at war with the band Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) for this territory. They fight for the sale of drugs and extort big corporations in this field. Residents basically paint in maquilas, occasional jobs or make a living from outside remittances.
Cindy is in a nut words. Lately he lives in a small room that rents for 1,200 lempiras (US$48) per month, part of the space is used as a small shop that sells rice, beans, sugar and soft drinks, lives in this small room with his two daughters The eldest will soon turn 17 and finish high school. “She needs to be a psychologist or a lawyer, which she loves,” Cindy says enthusiastically. Her youngest daughter is nine years old and in elementary school.
Cindy prefers to give her full call for this interview because she’s afraid, doesn’t say what she’s afraid of, reprisals for paintings or being worried about an incident with the national police, screaming in pain as we speak. Fifteen days later, his ankle is still swollen after jumping off the bus full of tear gas.
Cindy swollen, advanced to strides to escape tear gas. Photo: Deiby Yones / Countercurrent
“We thought we were going to suffocate,” says Cindy, wrapped in a black cloud, desperately tried not to breathe the smoke. He heard a guy yell at other people to avoid kicking her. Trying to do it, he jumped off the bus. He took a few steps and vomited, disoriented, sat on the side of the road, tried to get up but could not, his ankle had swelled and he had turned purple, he also hurt his hand.
Someone took her to the IHSS hospital, where she was told she had a sprained ankle and was granted 21 days of disability leave, she learned that she would only get 25% of her Jerzees salary that 3 weeks. your drug out of your own pocket, adding an injectable painkiller that charges US$8 according to dosage. Cindy took more than 10 doses. When he got back to work, he still had back pain. “At least I didn’t get hospital visits for coronavirus,” he said.
According to IHSS data, six maquiladoras (four men and two women) died from coronavirus and another 151 caught fire in factories.
Maria Medina, union leader of the Jerzees plant, told us that some of her colleagues were inflamed and that two had died from COVID-19, she was not sure they were inflamed at work, but that did not close the factory, she said. . Medina is known for effectively negotiating the reopening of Jerzees Honduras in September 2009, after its owners closed it to endanger trade union organizers. In January 2008, 1,300 employees were laid off from the plant.
As the top factory, Array Jerzees staff were forced to take compulsory leave when the government shut down the economy’s maximum. Employers were asked to negotiate the return with their for this loose time. The truth is, they’ve been forced to take a vacation.
Government officials met with employers’ and employers’ organizations to negotiate suspension aid bills and accepted a one-time payment of 6,000 lempiras (US$240) each; the government contributed some of that amount.
The government has handed over $23 million for relief bills to maquila staff. Jerzees Nuevo Da earned 5. 3 million lempiras (US$218,000) in his own right for 892 employees, representing $122 for each employee in the two months of rest. the maquiladora industry to avoid spending gigantic sums to pay the salaries of its licensed staff, but staff had to settle for a significant source of income cuts.
The maquila still works. Near the site of the maquila workers’ bus attack, dozens of other people, entire families, are asking for cash on the main road. The long containment of the pandemic has turned thousands of people into beggars. For now, Cindy and Maria are grateful to have jobs, grateful to be to keep working.
The Dwarf bus remains seized by Choloma police regarding the investigation of the case. Photo: Deithrough Yones / Countercurrent