US suspends aid to Honduras police cleanup
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog. The views expressed are the author's own.
Monday, the United States suspended all aid it was giving the Honduran Dirección de Investigación y Evaluación de la Carrera Policial (DIECP).
The DIECP is responsible for carrying out the confidence testing of Honduran police, part of a process to weed out those who should not be police.
A US embassy employee who did not want to be named told El Tiempo:
Hondurans have expressed their frustration with the slow progress of the confidence testing of the police....it's a frustration that we share and as a result, we have suspended the aid from the United States to the DIECP.
The funds, among other things used to pay for foreign lie detector contractors to assist the DIECP, come from the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI).
It's been apparent for a while that the DIECP wasn't working well.
Earlier this year Porfirio Lobo Sosa "accepted" (after requesting) the resignations of Eduardo Villanueva, the DIECP director, and his deputy. However, both continue to serve because Porfirio Lobo Sosa has made no effort to appoint replacements.
As of Tuesday, Villanueva told El Tiempo that he had received no notice from the US Embassy of the funding cuts.
– Russell Sheptak, the co-author of the blog Honduras Culture and Politics, specializes in the study of colonial history and economic anthropology in this little-reported corner of Central America.
