Several times a week the flights arrive and quietly drop off their cargo, often landing at night to avoid the public attention bestowed by daylight. While the flights mark an end to innumerable personal dreams, they also signify a deterioration in relations between the United States and what has long been its most faithful ally in the region. 
     In the first five months of this year, more than 2,100 Hondurans were deported from the U.S., arriving home on special charter flights. The deportation rate is running higher than last year, when 3,600 undocumented Hondurans were flown home. 
     As many as 200,000 Hondurans reside illegally in the U.S. Unlike other Central Americans granted special privileges because they come from Nicaragua, El Salvador, or Guatemala–countries which suffered U.S.-funded civil wars in the 80s–when Hondurans are captured they're considered simple economic refugees and sent back home. 
     The expulsion of so many fellow citizens from the U.S. has many Hondurans hopping mad. 
     During an April 15 dedication of territory along the Nicaraguan border where thousands of land mines had been successfully removed, President Carlos Flores lambasted the U.S. in front of Ambassador James Creagan. Following a speech in which Flores argued that "only injustice can deny that Hondurans were also direct victims of the Central American tragedy of the 80s," the president told Creagan that "Honduras is a poor but dignified country." As the U.S. ambassador tried unsuccessfully to interrupt Flores, the Honduran president–who is married to a U.S. citizen–complained, "It's a bad thing you're doing to our country. 
     Obviously chastised, Creagan later admitted to reporters that the conversation was "animated." 
     Creagan argued that most of those deported from the U.S. are Hondurans who arrived there in the last three years, and thus wouldn't be considered political refugees even if they came from elsewhere in the region. 
     That argument just doesn't play in Tegucigalpa. Several prominent leaders, from President Flores to Tegucigalpa Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Andres Rodriguez, have visited Hondurans fasting in the U.S. to pressure the Clinton administration to change its immigration policies. 
     Honduran attempts to dialogue with U.S. officials have not born fruit. A May meeting between National Congress President Rafael Pineda Ponce and the U.S. Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader was canceled at the last minute by the State Department. No new date was set. "They want to put the thing off while they continue with the deportations," said Octavio Pineda, the Honduran vice-consul in New York. 
     Honduran government officials are obviously worried about the impact of a massive migrant return. According to a study by the Central Bank, Hondurans living in the U.S. sent home $128.4 million in 1996. 
     Relations with the U.S. went from bad to worse on April 20 when the U.S. government removed preferential tariffs from Honduran cigars, watermelons, and cucumbers. U.S. officials said the action was punishment for the constant violation of intellectual property rights in Honduras, especially the rebroadcast of U.S. movies and television programs without permission. 
     Business leaders cried foul, and Flores termed the sanctions "incorrect and unjust." Honduras exports more than $200 million to the U.S. each year under a system of preferential tariffs, and U.S. officials warned that more products could be added to the list if the pirating continued. 
     The following day, lawyer Carlos Mejia Banegas filed legal papers in a Danli court demanding that the U.S. government pay compensation to victims of land mines along the border with Nicaragua. He suggested $8 billion as a reasonable settlement, and said if he won the suit and the U.S. refused to pay, he'd argue for his government to embargo the U.S. military base at Palmerola. 
     Then on April 22 penal authorities in Arizona put convicted murderer Roberto Villafuerte–a Honduran citizen–to death by lethal injection. A former member of the elite CIA-trained Battalion 3-16 death squad, Villafuerte had spent 15 years on death row. The pope and President Flores had appealed unsuccessfully for mercy, the later complaining that international treaties had been broken when Arizona authorities failed to inform Villafuerte that he had the right to consular access following his arrest. 
     When Hondurans protested Villafuerte's execution outside the U.S. embassy here, the State Department ordered embassy officials to stay home and urged other U.S. citizens in Honduras to lay low. Honduran penal officials moved several U.S. prisoners to isolated cells to prevent retaliation. 
     On May 20, the Supreme Court got a chance to stand up to the empire when its judges unanimously turned down a request by Haiti to extradite former police chief Joseph Michel Francois, who lives in San Pedro Sula and is wanted on drug charges in Miami. 
     The court had turned down a similar request last year made by the U.S. government, a decision that the court's president, Oscar Avila, says is what provoked the U.S. trade sanctions this year. He predicted that the latest extradition denial would result in Honduras being "decertified" by the U.S. Congress in next year's round of international drug politics.   
     Hondurans have few cards to play in this escalating game of political words. Yet many, reportedly including President Flores himself, have begun to ask how the U.S. can ship home Hondurans by the planeload and impose economic sanctions while at the same time be allowed to maintain a military base, and 700 soldiers, at Palmerola. According to Ramon Villeda, a Liberal deputy in the National Congress, the base "cannot continue operating for the benefit of countries which haven't been the best of friends."