The interim foreign minister for Honduras apologized after the U.S. envoy there expressed “deep outrage” over his “disrespectful and racially insensitive comments.”
Ortez Colindres called President Obama a “negrito,” or “little black man,” several times last week. Colindres is a minister for Roberto Micheletti, Honduras’s leader since Manuel Zelaya was overthrown.
After the ambassador, Hugo Llorens, responded angrily, Colindres issued an apology.
“Please accept my profound apologies and my sincere expressions of friendship directed at this great nation that is the United States of America, which allows me to contribute in the best way to a happy understanding between that great country and the democracy that is the republic of Honduras,” he said.
A Daily Kos diarist translated another quote from Colindres, reported in Spanish in El Tiempo, as even a little worse:
I have negotiated with queers, prostitutes, leftists, blacks, whites. This is my job, I studied for it. I am not racially prejudiced. I like the little black sugar plantation worker who is president of the United States.
Here’s the original quote from El Tiempo, which includes the caveat that Colindres was speaking both jokingly and seriously:
“He negociado con maricones, prostitutas, con ñángaras (izquierdistas), negros, blancos. Ese es mi trabajo, yo estudié eso. No tengo prejuicios raciales, me gusta el negrito del batey que está presidiendo los Estados Unidos”, dijo Colindres en broma y en serio.
