Powered by RedCircle
Summary:
August 9, 2019 is a day to remember. It was the final day of an entire week of action and struggle to demand the freedom of all Honduran political prisoners.
Dr. Adrienne Pine joins Karen Spring to co-host a discussion that recaps the struggle to free two Honduran political prisoners – Karen’s partner, Edwin Espinal and Raúl Alvarez. Both were imprisoned for 19 months in a maximum-security prison after being arrested for protesting the 2017 electoral fraud in Honduras.
With audio clips from the week of action that led to Edwin and Raul’s freedom, Adrienne and Karen give you a taste of what freedom and victory sounds and feels like in Honduras.
Transcript:
Karen Spring: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Honduras Now podcast. This podcast shares human rights stories from Honduras and connects them with global issues and North American policy. I am your host Karen Spring, a longtime researcher and human rights activist that has lived in Honduras for over a decade. Welcome, and thanks so much for listening.
So today, I’m co-hosting the episode with Adrienne Pine. Adrienne is a close friend with a long history with Honduras. So I’ll let you, Adrienne, introduce yourself.
Adrienne Pine: Thank you, Karen. So I’m a medical anthropologist. I’ve been working in Honduras for over 20 years. I’m a professor of anthropology at American University and glad to be here.
Why is August 2019 a Memorable Month?
Karen Spring: Great. So I think before we get started, I’m going to give a little bit of a background of what we’re going to talk about today because there’s a lot of general information that I think people will want to know. So today Adrienne and I are going to look back to August 2019, a little over one year ago.
And on August 9, 2019, my partner Edwin Espinal, who was held as a political prisoner in a maximum security prison for a year and a half, was finally released from prison. Edwin was released with another political prisoner, Raúl Álvarez, who was also held on trumped-up charges stemming from protesting the 2017 general elections and the electoral fraud.
2017 Electoral Crisis & Political Prisoners
Both Edwin and Raúl were charged with different counts of property damage. There were hundreds of people in prison in the context of the months following the 2017 elections. And of all the people that were put in prison, there were about 23 political prisoners that remained in prison for a significant period of time, some for three months, some right up to two years. And one of those 23 political prisoners actually was forced into exile, and he still hasn’t been able to come back to Honduras.
And then the 22 of the 23 political prisoners were put in different prisons around the country. The majority were held in US-style military-run maximum security prisons.
Edwin and Raúl were held in a prison called La Tolva prison, which is located about an hour and a half from Tegucigalpa, which is the capital city. And I along with the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners in Honduras, and several Honduran organizations, international groups, all fought non-stop for the freedom of all the political prisoners.
For me, Edwin’s freedom meant never having to go back to La Tolva ever again. I spent every single day for a year and a half filing human rights complaints, following up with Honduran government institutions, denouncing the conditions inside the prison, driving three to four times a week to La Tolva prison, and on the weekends visiting Edwin and sometimes Raúl when Raúl was allowed to. And that was all in that horrible place La Tolva. The week leading up to Edwin and Raúl’s freedom was a week of constant and collective struggle and protests.
Together, Adrienne and I are going to chat about the whole experience. And maybe you should mention why you’ve joined me to co-host this episode today. I don’t know if you want to talk a little bit about what you did the week leading up to August 9 and your whole experience.
A Week of Successful Actions & Protest
Adrienne Pine: Sure. So I had gone to Honduras for three weeks. It was a trip I had planned in advance, and happened to coincide with the week of fasts and protests in the name of releasing all of the political prisoners. So I had planned to stay in San Pedro, but in early August, the papers came out naming the president Juan Orlando Hernandez as a collaborator in his brother Tony’s drug trafficking case. Things started to really heat up in the capital. And then, also, I had spoken to you and found out that there was this week of action. And so I really wanted to be there and support however I could. And I’m an anthropologist, and what we do is, the ethnographic method basically involves being there with people and recording, whether through field notes or video or audio, what’s going on. And that turned out for me to be not just a tool of the trade, but also a way for me to feel useful at all because, you know, you were going through such incredible stress that particular week, and I was jumping into a situation that I hadn’t been closely involved in since I’d been living in Washington, DC.
And so, you know, at least it felt like something to do and something useful. So I was just documenting everything, and so a lot of the audio that folks will be hearing today is from the video recordings and audio recordings that I took. And I also was observing things pretty deeply and thickly, in a way that that maybe you weren’t able to, because you were so immersed in the really frightening, hard work of getting Edwin and Raúl out of jail. I was more of an observer. So I’m so excited to add that angle to things.
Karen Spring: I mean, that week was really, really stressful for me, because the weekend before they were released, it was my last visit to La Tolva as a family member, and they were under so much stress because they were being held in, like, a punishment room. They called it “the little kitchen,” and it had no air ventilation, and they were going to the bathroom in bottles, and they just couldn’t tolerate the smell and the lack of air circulation any longer.
So they were like, well, if there’s all these activities and protests going on in the capital, we’re gonna do something as well, and we are are going to basically join the actions, but sitting here in this horrible little kitchen, this punishment cell, and we’re going to go on hunger strike. So this is political prisoner Raúl Álvarez talking about the conditions inside La Tolva, and also the reasons why they decided to go on hunger strike.
Conditions in Prison & Deciding to Go on Hunger Strike
Raúl Álvarez: The conditions inside the cocineta, or the “little kitchen” punishment cell where we were being imprisoned, were the following: There was no ventilation. It was a completely enclosed room without any air circulation or movement of air.
There wasn’t any running water. All the other prisoners had running water, but we didn’t, because the police said we were being punished.
There wasn’t a bathroom inside the little kitchen or anywhere to use the bathroom. And so if we had to use the bathroom, we had to hold it. Personally I suffered a lot from this because I had a colon operation when I was younger, which makes me need to use the restroom more frequently than normal.
Inside the little kitchen, there was an electrical room that generated a noise for 24 hours every single day.
The prison authorities wouldn’t let us out for our one hour of sun. They would only let us out of the little kitchen for 10 minutes a day, to bathe and to use the bathroom. They would rush us and hurry us.
We suffered from a lot of harassment from one of the directors, who we believed had given other prisoners the order to have us killed.
The decision to go on hunger strike was made because we never received any response from prison authorities when we repeatedly told them that our lives were in danger, and that we were receiving serious death threats.
The decision was also made because of the conditions we were being held in. They didn’t want to listen to us. They continued torturing us and exposing us to the criminal structures that control La Tolva. We resisted and withstood the repression from the first day that we got to the maximum torture prison.
So the hunger strike was our last opportunity to be heard, and to demand better imprisonment conditions in La Tolva. Together with the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners in Honduras, we organized a fast together with different social movements and even political parties. Coordinating together, we created a media impact. This is how we were able to save our lives.
Karen Spring: That was the reality of the situation inside the prison for the political prisoners. They told me about the situation, but it’s totally different actually living it, like Edwin, Raúl and Rommel were. So Adrienne, I was traveling back and forth that entire week of action to and from Tegucigalpa and La Tolva. But you joined the action and you got to see it firsthand. What was it like? Can you describe a bit about what was going on? And as you’re doing that, I’m going to share some of the audio that you took while you were there?
Solidarity and Unity
Adrienne Pine: Sure. So the protests outside of the public prosecutor’s office every day were really animated. They were well organized by the sort of central Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners, which, obviously, as you know, is a very dedicated group of people from around the country, and really colorful characters, and each day was sponsored by a different organization or a different group of organizations.
So like one day, the political party Libre, the main resistance party, sponsored, and then on another day you had COPINH and OFRANEH, the Lenca and Garifuna organizations, the grassroots organizations, sponsoring the fast and having their members fast to demand the freedom of the political prisoners. And then every other day was a different group or set of groups, and it was really such an incredible cross section of the Honduran left. They all really came together to forcefully demand the freedom of these political prisoners.
[Recording from the protests]
Adrienne Pine: And then, you know, in terms of the colorful characters, I mean, Hondurans are so good at protests, despite the real seriousness of the topic. There was a lot of really effective theatrics. You had a coffin and somebody walking around with handcuffs to sort of symbolize the violence of the imprisonment. So you had all of these different colorful figures, and a lot of press as well, coming there every single day to interview the celebrities who were there each day from each respective group. And it really made for, I think, powerful media impact in Honduras on an issue that doesn’t necessarily get into the Honduran right-wing mainstream media in the way that of course it should, precisely because they’re aligned with the dictatorship.
International Solidarity to Demand Freedom for Political Prisoners
Karen Spring: And while that was going on, there was an international solidarity campaign going on that the Honduras Solidarity Network and the European solidarity groups were involved in. And also the three political prisoners that were in La Tolva were on hunger strike, and every single day we were reporting on what little news we had from what was going on in La Tolva, because Priscilla Alvarado, who’s this amazing Honduran lawyer who went into the prison seeing how they were doing, and I mean, they [inaudible], but they were super excited to hear everything that was going on, and hear how successful the actions were in front of the Attorney General’s Office in Tegucigalpa. So it really was quite an amazing week.
[Recording from the protests]
Adrienne Pine: So midway through the week of action was when the word came down that they were actually going to have the hearing to see if they could be conditionally released pending trial. The Friday which was scheduled to be the sort of grand finale of of that week of action….
Karen Spring: So Adrienne, before we get to describing the last day, the Friday, I want to share an audio from Raúl Álvarez, about what was going on in La Tolva, or what we had achieved four days into the fast and the hunger strike and how they were feeling.
Inside La Tolva prison: The Achievements of the Hunger Strike
Raúl Álvarez: Our expectations were achieved. We actually achieved more than we expected we would by going on the hunger strike, because on the fourth day, the Thursday, the day before we were released, which we had no idea at the time, we were relocated inside the prison and taken out of the little kitchen. They sent us to a better place inside the prison. I was with both political prisoners, Edwin and Rommel. It was a Thursday when we got out of the little kitchen.
But that night in the new detention location, I couldn’t sleep even though we were in a better place, and my comrades were able to sleep like they never had before. I was worried a bit about the new place we were being held because we were still in close proximity to two of the largest criminal structures in the country.
From the new detention space where we were being held, there was a door. From afar you could see the highway in front of the prison. It was like a taste of the freedom that I wanted so much. And I said to myself, I have been in the bottom and deep inside this pit, the prison, but bit by bit, I am being moved towards the entrance. It was like I was able to see my freedom.
Karen Spring: That was Raúl Álvarez describing what was going on in La Tolva. Sorry, Adrienne, continue, you were talking about what was going to happen on the Friday. So the very last day of the week of action.
The Bail Hearing
Adrienne Pine: So what was going to be that last day and, you know, we had a concert scheduled at the end and everything. We ended up going, as you remember, to the court early in the morning.
You were a nervous wreck. Of course I wasn’t allowed to take any video or audio or pictures inside the courtroom. And it lasted, I don’t know how long it lasted, like an hour or two, but it felt like an eternity. And there were so many people there who were there to support you and to support Edwin and Raúl. I remember there was somebody from the Canadian Embassy, there were plenty of journalists who we knew quite well, other friends from the activist world and, of course, the various lawyers for each side.
And so there was this kind of camaraderie but at the same time, like a very incredible seriousness. And I’ve spent a lot of time in US courts because I do a lot of asylum cases. But this felt more serious and more charged and more terrifying than any court I have been in. And I mean, long story short, as we know, ultimately, the judges agreed that it was a travesty. They had been kept in these conditions for this long on such flimsy charges. And so when their decision came down that they should be released, everybody was super excited, people were hugging each other and just celebrating. Everyone except for you.
Karen Spring: The courtroom broke out into an applause. Applauding because, finally, you know, they had ruled against all of the stuff that the prosecutor was arguing to basically keep them in prison and not let them out, and that they were dangerous, and they were a criminal organization and…
Adrienne Pine: I mean, there was such joy at that moment, and it just felt unbelievable. Because even two days earlier, nobody had even thought that there was going to be a hearing that day. I mean, we were so, I think you in particular, the horrors of that prison system and the injustice and the arbitrary measures just keeping them there for so long and the illegality of it all. I think you had adopted a very sort of wise cynical perspective. And so for something to go right for the first time and, what was it, 19 months?
So I remember, you know, after that everybody was hugging everybody else. Even some of the lawyers just wanted to go out and have drinks, and you were like, what are we talking about? Like they’re sitting there in prison. I don’t want them to spend another second in prison. And so we got the hell out, right then and there, and started driving to La Tolva.
Karen Spring: I was so excited to get to La Tolva and give Edwin and Raúl the news. But actually, we didn’t know this at the time, but they knew that we were on our way. Here is Raúl describing how he received the news about the court’s decision to free them.
Getting the News of Their Freedom
Raúl Álvarez: Life and destiny gave me a huge surprise that day, Friday, August 9, when around noon the prison director came looking for Edwin and myself to tell us that our hearing had taken place, and that we had been conditionally released, and that before 4:00 p.m. that same afternoon, we would be released. To be honest, I couldn’t believe it. There have been so many violations of due process in our case, but I was so happy, so joyful. My heart kind of broke because my friend Rommel, another political prisoner, had to remain in prison, and we would be leaving him there in La Tolva.
It was a huge victory being able to get out of La Tolva, through the achievements from our hunger strike. We knew we were leaving Rommel in better detention conditions, and that he wasn’t in the little kitchen.
The hunger strike was a huge success, and it ended with a big protest in Tegucigalpa to celebrate our freedom. Thanks to the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners and the international solidarity community for helping us achieve this small victory. And my freedom.
Karen Spring: That was Raúl Álvarez getting the news that they were going to be released from La Tolva. But like in most cases in Honduras, the release isn’t automatic. We had to get to the prison and insist they’d be released that same day, and we had to wait several hours.
U.S.-Style, Military-run Prisons in Honduras
Adrienne Pine: So we got to La Tolva. It was obviously, you know, the first time for me, so everything just was wild seeing this place that you had been going to, you know, several times a week for the past year and a half.
It was expansive, it really looked much more like something that would be built by the United States than by Honduras. It was kind of a big, fancy prison complex. And by fancy, I mean, like, industrial, not just ramshackle like a lot of Honduran prisons are, but very imposing, built with expensive materials and built to ensure that nobody could ever get out. And, of course, this is the new model of maximum security prison that hadn’t been the norm for Honduras. And so for me, it was really imposing and terrifying to see this place that Raúl and Edwin had been in for so long.
We got to the gates, and then what we did, of course, was wait. And as I learned from you, a large part of what you had to do every time you went was simply wait at the gates outside of the prison. Of course this time was different because you weren’t just waiting to see them but [inaudible].
The Moment The Political Prisoners Were Freed
And I remember we were in good spirits, there was a group of us, relatives and me and you. And eventually they let you in to go see Edwin. It took a long time. And then, so the rest of us were watching and trying to get a peek into the sort of, there’s the entry way, the foyer or whatever it is, where you I guess have to go through the screening and stuff, and we could barely see it, because it was pretty far from the main entrance. And so I’m sort of clandestine, taking pictures that I’m not supposed to be, because the prison guards are yelling at me every so often. But they also knew that I was doing it and didn’t protest that loudly. You came out and I filmed everybody coming out and there was such joy.
[Recording from the protests]
Karen Spring: That was such an amazing moment. Watching the footage you took takes me right back. So after they got out of the front gate of La Tolva and were officially free, we jumped in the car and drove back to Tegucigalpa. And we obviously went to eat something because they were starving. And, of course, we had to get to the concert that was planned, and that was waiting for us.
The Concert: Ending the Week of Action
Adrienne Pine: By the time we drove up, we were at the tail end of the concert.
[Recording from the protests]
Adrienne Pine: Edwin was just like a deer in the headlights. You know, he had been in prison for so long. And then all of the sudden, you know, coming out, at the end of the concert, so most people had left, but really the diehard folks were still all there. And it’s right in the center of the central square of Tegucigalpa, and there’s a stage there for concerts and stuff.
And he climbed up, I mean, he just looked like he was in a daze, and everybody was just so ecstatic, people couldn’t believe it. Many of them hadn’t even heard the news yet. And he was just sort of mobbed by everybody who was just so thrilled to see him.
Karen Spring: He was so pale and so skinny, you know, he’d been on a hunger strike. I was worried he was going to faint, and he couldn’t really talk very well, because he was so disoriented. And so it was such an amazing end to a week of actions, to a year and a half of fighting to get him out of prison.
I’m going to play a clip from Prisila, who’s the lawyer that was with me through the whole process, and that I would never have been able to do any of the work that I did without her. So she sent a clip as well, that I’m going to play that describes the week of activities, and then the concert as well.
A Week of Victory and Freedom
Prisila Alvarado: I remember the week of August 5 to August 9, 2019 as the week of victory. Friday, August 9 was a decisive day for the freedom of these two political prisoners. On the big day when Edwin was eventually freed, there was a protest march planned in Tegucigalpa. It ended in the central park where a concert took place.
While Karen waited outside La Tolva for her partner in struggle and in life, Edwin was conditionally released and would later join the big concert where all of his people, the Honduran people, waited to celebrate his freedom.
August 9, 2019 was a day of victory, a day of freedom. That day we defeated the dictator. In one voice, people yelled “Long live freedom!”, while Edwin was drowned in hugs.
But it wasn’t an easy 19 months. It was 19 months of torture. It was 19 months of struggle by people that came together to fight for freedom, not just for political prisoners Edwin and Raúl, but also other political prisoners that were being held in different jails.
Long live the freedom of Edwin Espinal and all political prisoners! August 9, 2019 is the day I won’t forget. It was a day of victory.
The Struggle Isn’t Over: The Pending Trial
Karen Spring: So it’s been a year since they were released, and they still have to go and sign every week before a judge.
And their trial was scheduled for May 2020, but then COVID-19 pandemic hit. And all of these cases, including Edwin and Raúl’s, were pushed back.
And there’s a whole bunch of political prisoners, not just Edwin and Raúl, that were supposed to have trials. There’s actually still a political prisoner, Rommel, who was in La Tolva with Edwin and Raúl, who we haven’t really talked very much about, but that is a whole separate case. He is still actually in prison. He’s in a psychiatric hospital, and his trial got pushed back as well. And just like a lot of the political prisoners, so their status is sort of in limbo, you know, Edwin can’t leave the country, Raúl can’t leave the country either.
And so we’re just waiting for this trial to take place, and the closer it gets to next year, which is an election year in Honduras, the scarier it gets. Because things become so politicized. The courts are already very politicized. But because the elections become the main topic, it’s concerning that there’s still people that are being accused on trumped-up charges from the last elections and still haven’t gone to trial, on charges that were lodged against them in the previous elections.
It’s not over in any way. It’s kind of scary because Edwin and Raúl could still be sent back. They face 15 to 30 years in prison if they’re found guilty of all of the charges that they are accused of. So we still have a huge legal battle ahead of us, but their freedom was one of the most important things. It’s such a relief knowing that they got out before the pandemic hit, because the prisons in Honduras are just really brutally hit with the COVID-19 infections and just all the violence that’s taken place inside Honduran prisons since they were released.
The Importance of International Solidarity
So it’s not over yet, but I don’t think we could have ever gotten them out – and Adrienne, you played a huge role in this with all the international solidarity that, basically, I think is one of the main reasons that they were released in the first place.
Adrienne Pine: Well, yeah, and I think that so much of that is because it’s such a compelling case. I mean, everybody knew Edwin, everybody who had been involved in solidarity work, and it wasn’t through you. It’s because, of course, on his own right, he’s been such a steadfast solid, social justice defender, social justice warrior, human rights defender, whatever you want to call it, but he has been fighting for justice since the coup without rest.
We have followed from the time that he was arrested for sitting in his car in 2010, and tortured overnight by the police, and all the other times that he has been illegally detained, the time that, you know, 2013, in the first election of Juan Orlando Hernández, when his house was raided by the newly minted military police, which were, of course created as an election tactic by Juan Orlando Hernández when he was president of Congress.
I mean, all of the persecution of Edwin had made him such a public but also beloved figure, because he really went into everything that he did out of, I think, a place of love.
And so I mean, I didn’t know Raúl prior to his arrest and I don’t think he was a very well known figure. And in many ways I’m glad for him that given the horrible circumstances, that he and Edwin were together, I’m glad that they had each other in these horrible circumstances. And I’m so grateful to know Raúl now, because he is just just such a brilliant social justice fighter as well. And a lot of people who have been through political imprisonment really end up just sort of isolating, or just wanting not to think about it or having anything to do with prisoner political activism afterwards, at least that’s what we’ve seen in Honduras. And I certainly can’t blame them for that. But Raúl has become one of the most vocal, eloquent spokespeople, I think, for that struggle. And it’s really just been a joy.
The New Strategy of the Dictatorship: Sending Opponents to Prison
And today, not only as their case continues, but also, as you mentioned, we see all of these different and new political prisoner cases that have happened since the past year, the Guapinol case in particular, it’s just so important that we keep this international component of the struggle up.
Because Honduras, just as these struggles are erased from the Honduran coup-supporting golpista media, it’s even further erased from the international media. So it really depends on those of us in the international solidarity community to work hand in hand with the Hondurans who are leading the struggle to put a stop to this.
Karen Spring: Adrienne, I don’t think there’s a better way to end.
Thank you so much for that amazing description and reminder that this is not over by any means for any of the political prisoners, and people keep being sent to prison, anybody that speaks out. It’s sort of the new strategy of the dictatorship that started with the imprisonment of the political prisoners from the 2017 electoral fraud.
Thank you so much for joining me. And thanks so much for letting me share all the footage that you took.
Adrienne Pine: Thank you for letting me be a part of this whole experience. Thank Edwin and thank Raúl. And I just am so glad to know you all.
Karen Spring: That’s the episode for today. The show notes will be posted at HondurasNow.org.
As always, get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. Consider donating to the work. And thank you so much for listening. I’m your host Karen Spring, saying bye for now, and until next time.