Listics

I’m going to Honduras and I’m afraid.  The center of my fear is probably not the international travel to a focal point of US Central American policy enforcement.  The news out of Guatemala, that we’re resuming military aid, that news doesn’t frighten me.  I’m sure that $3.4 million won’t go very far and, as I understand it, anyone with a contrary opinion to the Guatemalan government has already been killed, so they’re standing easy down there.  And Honduras isn’t the den of spys and thieves that it was in the glory days of Reagan and Negroponte.  The Nicaraguans have been pacified after all.  The Zapatistas are more a problem for Mexico and Guatemala… whoa, maybe that explains a little about the military aid. 

Indeed this trip is programmed as easy-in/easy-out, no scary travel near the Nicaraguan or Guatemalan borders, a simple celebration and a chance to meet my new daughter’s family.  The projected temperature and humidity (probably in the nineties with 100% humidity) will be uncomfortable but nothing to fear.  So why do I have this nagging anxiety?

Mayan culture was remarkably mellow compared to their twisted Aztec neighbors to the north and the strung out Incas to the south.  The only sacrificial victims appear to have been the occasional enemy warrior captured in battle.  Other than that, blood sacifice was more personal and probably not much weirder than you’d find today in an urban flat of Goth kiddies practicing body art and piercings.

So why the paranoia?   I think I may have pissed off the jaguar with my callous joking about the great Wisconsin Cat Hunt.