From José “Chencho” Alas, Tanenbaum Peacemaker in Action:
Two years ago, Honduras was in turmoil. The military gave a coup d’état under the orders of the Supreme Court and installed in the presidency Roberto Michelleti who was the head of the National Assembly. Since that, fourteen journalists have been murdered in the Central American country, and with them many more grassroots activists have disappeared, been murdered, or left the country due to the violence.
The dialectic principle works. The coup has served to make thousand and thousand of people aware that they need to be organized to find democracy in Honduras. Since 2009, people started becoming organized in the Front of Popular National Resistance (FPNR). Directly or indirectly, there are close to one million people participating in the task of building a free country.
I have been invited by the FPNR to facilitate a workshop about Appreciative Inquiry Methodology (AI) that I use for peace building and to help become organized as a national network. AI is a powerful tool to think positively, a key element for non-violence strategy.
I invited Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge to accompany me. Nozizwe participated in the anti-apartheid movement, was confined to a prison for a year, and when South Africa became a democracy she became deputy minister of defense and latter, deputy minister of health. Nozizwe and I received the Peacemakers in Action award from Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. She will help facilitate the workshop. Tanenbaum is sponsoring her participation. The workshop will be held on 3-6 of November.
Chencho Alas runs the Foundation for Sustainability and Peacemaking in Mesoamerica and blogs at Mesoamerican Peace Movement.