My grandfather, Charles Burrows, was the United States Ambassador to Honduras from 1960 to 1965. My father spent holidays and summers there during that time and my aunt spent some of those years there full time, attending school with other children of influential families. One of these children was Ricardo Maduro, who was friends with my dad and dated my aunt for a while. He went on to become the President of Honduras from 2002 to 2006. My aunt and parents tracked down some names and numbers for me to call when I got to Honduras, but I felt awkward making these calls, saying "hi, i´m the grandson of the american ambassador from 50 years ago, can you meet me and talk about the good ol´days." I made a few calls though and for various reasons I couldn´t get in touch with anybody. I gave up and decided to continue on, havng enjoyed Tegucigalpa anyway, seeing the massive residence of the American Ambassador high up on a mountain top, surrounded by high security walls. I was content with that.

As fate has it though, I befriended a pretty girl in town, Ailin Diaz, and we took an excursion to the breezey, old, colonial village of Valle de Angeles on a Sunday afternoon. As we were walking the old village square we noticed many people posing for photos and shaking the hand of a certain man. Surprised, Ailin told me that was the former President of Honduras, Ricard Maduro. I couldn´t believe it. Here I am in a little town in Honduras, I have a family contact with the former President - with whom I failed at getting in touch - and I end up running into him on the street. So I approached him and explained that he knew my father, aunt and grandparents a long time ago. He paused to think and finally realized who I was talking about and I think he was just as surprised to meet me as I was to meet him. He was with his girlfriend, Melissa, and invited Ailin and me to have lunch with them. It was pretty neat, the local Hondurans must have been thinking "who the hell is this gringo that Maduro is taking to lunch?" We sat on the outdoor terrace of a nice restaurant, had some parilla-style, tipica meat and talked about his presidency, his current affairs, his memories of my dad, aunt and grandfather and my life.

He told me about how his son was kidnapped and killed and this was one of the reasons he ran for president with a platform to be tough on crime. However the constitution banned him from running because he was born in Panama. But having held such influential positions in Honduras such as being president of the Bank of Honduras and leader of the National Party of Honduras (PNH), he took his case to the International Court in Brazil to prove he had Honduran blood and he won. He won the elections on his promise to be tough on crime and the "maras" (gangs) and put national troops on the streets of major cities along side police. He had his inauguration in Còpan to encourage tourism. He told me how he reformed the Honduran Supreme court, how overnight he got small businesses to start paying taxes by threatening to close them down if they didn´t. My friend Ailin, a school teacher of Mesquite blood, was also interested to pick his brain a little on education and the conversation turned to how he wanted to make it mandatory to have a university degree in order to be a teacher. But the strong teacher´s union demanded a 69% pay increase if this were to be implemented and he explained his frustrations with the union, claiming the government did not have to money to increase pay by this much and the union didn´t budge. He talked about the difficulties of teaching the remote Mesquite indians; how the union demanded all schools be taught in Spanish and that this required flying in teachers from around the country, even though there were able Mesquite teachers willing to teach in the Mesquite language.

He explained how he went to Lawernceville highschool in New Jersey and then to Stanford, how he speaks English with his brothers and sisters, Spanish with his kids, how his daughter just moved to Costa Rica, that he was going to visit her soon and that maybe I could run into him there too. He joked that the "Ticos" never showed up to his regional meetings. Somehow we began talking about cars, he has a auto distribution company, he has a ´86 Porsche Carrera in his garage (my dad had the same car once) and he just bought a new Honda Civic SI - which he loves and that he rode motorcycles at one point in his life too.

At one point he whipped out his blackberry, asked for my dad´s phone number and called him right there at the table. "Jim, it´s Ricardo Maduro here. I´m having lunch with your son." My dad was shocked of course. He encourage my dad to come visit and my dad encouraged him to visit New England. Ricardo´s son goes to Notre Dame, so he´s on the Board of Trustees there, and he makes frequent trips to the states, so maybe it´s a possibility we´ll have him as a guest someday soon.

As we were leaving the restaurant, the table next to us introduced themselves. They were Americans, the mom worked at the embassy, and she recognized Ricardo. She found out who I was and invited me to come to the embassy and meet Ambassador Ford, that he would be happy to show me around.

It was definitely the best experience of my trip so far. It was a really special afternoon and I am so happy to have met Ricardo. Fate is crazy that way. I was ready to leave Tegucigalpa, but then I met Ailin and decided to stay a couple more days. She encouraged me to visit Valle de Angeles and if it weren´t for her I wouldn´t have recognized Ricardo. I might have walked right by him, not knowing who he was.

Here I am introducing myself to Ricardo. Notice the surprised, happy onlookers in the background.

Here is Ricardo about to call my father from the restaurant. Notice the beautiful mountain views in the background.

Here we are after lunch walking through the picturesque, central parque of Valle de Angeles, Ricardo doing his best to shake everyone´s hand.

Here we all are, Ricardo, Melissa, Ailin and me, in front of my motorcycle.