You may feel like your heart is breaking after what has happened with the war and healthcare and unemployment. I do. I don't want any more bad news. But I felt impelled to read the following at http://direland.typepad.com:
Walter Trochez, 25 years old, a well-known LGBT activist in Honduras who was an active member of the National Resistance Front against the coup d'etat there, was assassinated on the evening of December 13, shot dead by drive-by killers. Trochez, who had already been arrested and beaten for his sexual orientation after participating in a march against the coup, had been very active recently in documenting and publicizing homophobic killings and crimes committed by the forces behind the coup, which is believed to have been the motive for his murder. He had been trailed for weeks before his murder by thugs believed to be members of the state security forces.
Again, I didn't want my heart to break, my blood pressure to rise, my rage to crest. But it has.
In an open letter documenting this wave of political assassinations of Honduran queers he'd written last month entitled "Increase in hate crimes and homophobia towards LGTB as a result of the civic-religious-military coup in Honduras," Trochez had written that "Once again we say it is NOT ACCEPTABLE that in these past 4 months, during such a short period, 9 transexual and gay friends were violently killed, 6 in San Pedro Sula and 3 in Tegucigalpa." At the end of this open letter, Trochez declared that "As a revolutionary, I will always defend my people, even if it takes my life". Sadly, that's what happened. (Full text in Spanish of Trochez's open letter is at the end of Doug Ireland's website).
Friends, the populists of Honduras were abandoned by our country. And as much as I tried to raise the issue of what is happening there on this site, it got swept away by the teabaggers or some other domestic nonsense.
I beg all of you: let Clinton and Obama hear your/my/our rage about this.
They hold the fate of all Hondurans in their busy and indifferent hands.