U.S. SENDS BULLETS TO STARVING CHILDREN

	  Between 1979 and 1985, U.S. military and economic aid	to Honduras
     jumped from $31 to	$282 million yearly. The largest increase was in
     military aid which	jumped to 28 times the 1979 level. In exchange,
     Honduras agreed to	become a base for some 15,000 Nicaraguan "contras,"
     to	join the U.S. military in joint	maneuvers, and to provide
     logistical	and intelligence support to the	Salvadoran military in its
     war against the guerrillas.
	  During the same time period, U.S. aid	designated for development
     assistance	dropped	from 80	percent	to six percent.
	  To make matters even worse, floods washed away 60 percent of the
     corn crop in southern Honduras in May 1986.  A severe summer drought
     followed the flood, destroying all	that remained of the corn and
     wiping out	60 percent of the area's sorghum.
	  Bishop Raul Corriveau, the archbishop	of Choluteca, said,
     "We've seen scenes of misery like never before. Children with swollen
     bellies, old people looking like corpses, women and children begging
     for food, men roaming the streets searching for work."
	  Due to airstrips and bases built by the U.S. and the presence	of
     contras and American troops (80,000 troops	in 1987), Hondurans living
     in	the southern region and	along the eastern border have been
     displaced.	 The livelihoods of 2,000 Honduran coffee growers have been
     destroyed and 16,000 Hondurans have been forced to	leave their homes.
	  Orphanages and temporary shelters have been filled with "economic
     orphans" -- children who have been	abandoned by parents who can no
     longer afford to raise them ... parents who have seen their coffee
     bean fields turned	into battlefields.
	  It has been estimated	that 70	percent	of the children	are
     malnourished. Among those brought to the capital's hospital for
     treatment,	10 to 15 percent die due to a lack of vitamins.
	  Dr. Juan Almendares, a physician conducting research on
     malnutrition at the National University in	Tegucigalpa, "When the
     government	says there is no money available to help the hungry, we
     must remember that	Honduras receives more than $200 million a year
     from the U.S. government. We Hondurans ask	why isn't any of this money
     going to help the poor?"
	  Ann M. Kelly,	editor of FOOD FIRST NEWS, a quarterly published by
     the Institute for Food and	Development Policy, wrote the following
     lead to Medea Benjamin's article about the Honduran situation:
	  "While working on a new Food First book in Honduras, Medea
     Benjamin -- Food First's Central American analyst -- uncovered a food
     crisis of frightening proportions in the southern part of the country.
     We	alerted	national media in the United States but	the story went
     uncovered."

	  SOURCES: FOOD	FIRST NEWS, Vol. 9, No.	28, Spring 1987, "Hunger in
     Southern Honduras," p 2, and  FOOD	FIRST ACTION ALERT, 1987,
     "Honduras:	The Real Loser in U.S. War Games," pp 1-4, both	by Medea
     Benjamin; MOTHER JONES, January 1987, "The Pentagon Republic of
     Honduras, by Fred Setterberg, pp 21-24, 51-54.