Many have lost their roots, hope, and love for you. I don’t blame them:

• Today, 1 of every 3 children between 3 and 17 years of age is excluded from the educational system. An unfulfilled promise. On top of that, ¼ of teenagers and young adults are neither studying nor working. Another unfulfilled promise.
• Currently, for every 1000 births, 18 children under the age of 5 die. And in every 100,000 births, 129 mothers die.
  
• It is estimated that about 12.5% of GDP is lost to corruption (around $2.5 billion), stealing Hondurans’ work and their lives.
• Impunity in the country was 87% in 2018. Too many wrongdoers go unpunished. A homicide rate persists that greatly affects the young, women, the LGBT community, and defenders of the environment and human rights. You have even been called a ‘narco-state’, for the latent collaboration between organized crime and the elite.
• A large part of the population does not have a job in the formal sector and earns 3,635 Lempiras ($150) a month.
• About 35% of the country’s energy is stolen, and this provokes a great financial impact on the country while leaving us with low quality service.

It seems that you have failed us, but in reality we have only been lied to. You are not completely free, yet. You are trapped by some people with interests against the promises you once made to us. People who are keen to compete for the power to control you, only to pursue their own self-interest and reckless greed.

Your potential is immense, your beauty is great, and your promises are good ones. Although in the last 15 years I have realized that parades and celebrations, like other things, can become only an illusion of a yet unknown reality; I still believe in a future in which your promises—the things I was taught you were and could be—become a reality.

I accept my part and understand the challenge. We must not sit with just pom-poms or hopelessness. We must not lose our trust and love for you. We must contribute—all of us— in creating the future we grew up hoping for. It’s all of our responsibility to work so that you fulfill your promise; it’s not a done deed from the past like I was taught. It’s a process, in which we contribute to your continued liberation.