Thomas D. Hansis Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Robert Klein
Interviewee(s): Thomas D. Hansis

Robert Klein: Today is July 30, 2005. This is Bob Klein. I'm interviewing Tom Hansis, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in 1969 to '71 in Honduras in community development. So let's go back maybe a year before you joined and talk about what was going on.

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I was in college and, uh, at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. My major was Latin American Studies. And so a year before, it was my first part of my senior year, since I had three semesters of senior year.

Robert Klein: What was, at that point, what was, did you have a career goal?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I don't think I had a definite career goal. I thought I wanted to obviously work at associated with things from Latin America. It was my major. And so I was aware of the Peace Corps all, since high school.

Robert Klein: How had you become aware?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I was a sophomore in high school when the Peace Corps started in '61.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: I kept up on the news at that time. I read the newspaper and was very aware of what's going on. So it was something that was of interest to me and I'd already taken Spanish in high school.

Robert Klein: And during college, did you travel? What did you do with your summers?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, I worked in the summers, usually away from home. I worked in a camp for handicapped children, and I worked in California one summer. And that's the summer I had seven different summer jobs. Some lasted a day and some lasted a week. The last one I was in a cannery, canning factory, but they kept me on because all the other students had gone back to college.

Robert Klein: This was up in Wisconsin?

Thomas D. Hansis: In Wisconsin.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Any international travel up to that point?

Thomas D. Hansis: The only international travel I did was to Mexico, where I spent the summer of 1965. And then I think I was there on a spring break.

Robert Klein: And that was just tourism or?

Thomas D. Hansis: That was tourism, yeah. So I didn't have, that was my international experience at that time.

Robert Klein: You grew up in Wisconsin?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes, I grew up in Wisconsin.

Robert Klein: Siblings?

Thomas D. Hansis: Two brothers and a sister. And my brother was also a Latin American, a Latin Americanist, I guess you could use that word.

Robert Klein: Sure.

Thomas D. Hansis: So it was a little interest there in the family. So that was what my major was. And then when I applied for the Peace Corps, then I asked for Latin America.

Robert Klein: As you, now you're going into your senior year. Do you remember, you recall the application process?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, probably it would be more overwhelming now than it was back then, because you used to do a lot of paperwork and doing some papers. And so it was just another thing to get ready.

Robert Klein: Do you recall indicating an area preference? I think that's one of the things.

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh yes, of course. They probably had preference for community development, and I did indicate a preference for Latin America.

Robert Klein: And how was your Spanish at that point, I mean?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, my Spanish was, um, well back then it was the FSI. And when I went into the Peace Corps, I tested as a three. So I guess I was good.

Robert Klein: Oh, yeah, yeah. And that was all just from college and?

Thomas D. Hansis: And having spent a summer in Mexico.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Okay. And as the application process went on, did you have any alternatives in mind?

Thomas D. Hansis: Uh, avoid the draft.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. I was going to ask about that.

Thomas D. Hansis: Vietnam. So I also was considering teaching because the teaching was still a deferment at the time, although I didn't have any teaching credentials there were programs to get them.

Robert Klein: Right. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And of course, that was up to each of the individual draft boards.

Robert Klein: And were you associated with a board that was tended to give deferments for Peace Corps service?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes, yes.

Robert Klein: Because it wasn't true of all of them.

Thomas D. Hansis: That's correct. Even people in our training that had problems.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: In fact, I think one of them was actually called out of training.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm. So application goes in, you move toward graduation. What was, what happened next?

Thomas D. Hansis: So I would be graduating at mid-year in January, and I think I must have received the notice from the Peace Corps, uh. I would graduate at the end of January, I should say, probably around Christmas. I can't remember if it was right before Christmas or right after. But, uh, I, it wasn't a long time in between when I was graduating and when the Peace Corps training started. And I think I graduated and within two weeks I was at Peace Corps training.

Robert Klein: What was family's reaction to you joining and friends and?

Thomas D. Hansis: I would say pretty supportive.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: I was, uh, I wasn't engaged yet but I was, I had met my wife.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. And did she approve of your going off for two years or?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, she was going back to her Argentina.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: She actually spent a second year teaching in the United States, probably because of our relationship.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: So then. In general, yes, supportive.

Robert Klein: And had you known anyone who'd been in the Peace Corps?

Thomas D. Hansis: Let's see.

Robert Klein: I mean, Madison, there must have been.

Thomas D. Hansis: I must have met some Peace Corps volunteers, yes. I just don't recall if I did. I must have. There must have been students or graduate students there at math. I can't recall right now.

Robert Klein: Sure.

Thomas D. Hansis: I don't remember seeing recruiters, though. I might have talked to one, but because I did all the process, you know.

Robert Klein: All on your own.

Thomas D. Hansis: Asking for an application and mailing it off.

Robert Klein: I don't know. They may have cut back on recruiting because of the draft question around that time.

Thomas D. Hansis: Of course, later on I knew that there were college representatives for the Peace Corps at the larger universities and that they had one in Madison in later years.

Robert Klein: But not at the time.

Thomas D. Hansis: I wasn't aware of that, so I assume there was not.

Robert Klein: So where do you report for training?

Thomas D. Hansis: I reported for training in, um, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Robert Klein: So it was direct from Madison to San Juan?

Thomas D. Hansis: Right.

Robert Klein: The invitation had said, what? That you were being invited to train for Honduras?

Thomas D. Hansis: Honduras, the program, Honduras, whatever. I think 14? I forgot my number already. In community development. And of course, community development is a little bit of a nebulous term.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: But I believe at that time they were saying that a number of the volunteers would be assigned to work with co-ops and credit unions.

Robert Klein: Uh, and where did you report in Puerto Rico? How did?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I think today it's a Radisson hotel, but it was an independent hotel at the time. But a hotel.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. And that was, was that the training site?

Thomas D. Hansis: That was not the training. The three day orientation and then I can't remember if they started getting shots. As we discussed, they were probably, the psychologists were probably doing their job trying to shrink our heads at that time already.

Robert Klein: Approximately how many were in the training group?

Thomas D. Hansis: Around 80. It was a large program.

Robert Klein: And was it overwhelmingly male?

Thomas D. Hansis: It was overwhelmingly male. There was a nursing component there, around 15 or 20 nurses, some of whom were spouses of the volunteers who were going to be in our program or in others. Several of them were engineers.

Robert Klein: But everyone was scheduled for Honduras?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes, the program was for Honduras.

Robert Klein: And do you recall your impression of the others? I mean, now you're in the midst of other Peace Corps volunteers or trainees.

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, yes, I remember. Well, it's just, of course I didn't know any of them. Um. I almost went in with my brother, by the way. My brother was offered the same program.

Robert Klein: Oh, really?

Thomas D. Hansis: He had graduated mid-year, graduated mid-year with his master's degree in geography, and he was offered the program, but he had lined up a teaching job in college, so he took that.

Robert Klein: He's a little older?

Thomas D. Hansis: He was two years older.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: But chronologically, he was offered it before I was. They might have gone through him and got to me next, but that was that.

Robert Klein: Or maybe they thought you were both the same person. Three day staging?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes.

Robert Klein: Shots and a psychiatrist or a psychologist begin to look at you?

Thomas D. Hansis: And then they also sent us off to look at some of the barrios, the poor areas there in San Juan.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: I remember one, La Perla, which they at that time said was the worst area, it was a collection of shacks right on the, in old San Juan, right on the beach. You can see it once you have gone off the road. So that was a bit of a shocker to see that, of course. [phone rings]

Robert Klein: Here you go. So you had this exposure.

Thomas D. Hansis: So anyway, they started us off right away seeing.

Robert Klein: What was the training staff at that point, I mean?

Thomas D. Hansis: Who the training staff, uh. They'd come down from the mountain from the camp.

Robert Klein: They were Americans?

Thomas D. Hansis: They were Americans.

Robert Klein: Former volunteers?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes. The psychologists I don't think were.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: But the others were, I believe were all former volunteers.

Robert Klein: And even in taking you or sending you into the first slum, did anyone make a point of why?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes. This will be similar to what you're going to be working in.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: Although most of you will be in small towns in rural Honduras, there will be a number of you in the cities and you'll see this and you'll see worse.

Robert Klein: Did the group have a feeling they were playing head games with you?

Thomas D. Hansis: Not yet.

Robert Klein: Okay. After the three days?

Thomas D. Hansis: So then we hopped onto a bus and they took us up to the camp, which is about an hour and a half drive probably. It's not very far. But by the time you get there, hour and a half from San Juan, the capital. Camp Crozier and Camp?

Robert Klein: Radley.

Thomas D. Hansis: Radley. We went to Camp Crozier.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: And so that was, uh, you know, assigned to our cabins and find a bunk and put yourself, put your stuff into a footlocker and start the program of more shots and more orientation and language and.

Robert Klein: How did language play out for you since you had, had you tested out?

Thomas D. Hansis: They tested us and probably they did that in San Juan, now that I think about it.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And they of course assigned us by groups. Actually, I was the top person in the second to the highest Spanish group.

Robert Klein: All right.

Thomas D. Hansis: And then within a week, they put me into the other group, which was made up of one Puerto Rican native speaker and another woman who had lived in Puerto Rico for seven or eight years or who was [inaudible] some teenagers there. So her Spanish was basically native level and her husband was close. And then the guy who had been in Ecuador for a year as a Fulbright and then me.

Robert Klein: But the Spanish may must have been different, I mean.

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, it was Puerto Rican Spanish. Mexican American Spanish. Mexican and Ecuadorian.

Robert Klein: But you still did, so part of your training program was continued language training?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes. Really that was what I viewed as, uh, after a while, it got to be a waste of time. And you sat around and talked. There should have been some way we could have increased, we increased our skills, but very little technical training was taking place anyway.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And the group of five or six of us should have been acquiring more technical training.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And in the end, they let us go into town much more often than the others could go into town and.

Robert Klein: And they didn't try to recruit you to be part of the language training staff?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, no, I would not. I wasn't that good at it.

Robert Klein: Well, you were better.

Thomas D. Hansis: I could have helped the very beginners, but they hadn't asked me to be language staff.

Robert Klein: So there was language. Was there area studies?

Thomas D. Hansis: Area studies, yeah. Cross-cultural studies.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: Code word, don't we. So that we spent a lot of time with that.

Robert Klein: And who was conducting that? Were they Hondurans or?

Thomas D. Hansis: Um, no. Those were the staff that were former volunteers.

Robert Klein: And history and culture and that sort of thing. Was some of it, must have been familiar to you? Some of it anyway.

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I'd been exposed to it, but not in the same manner of cross-cultural studies. I had all the background of history and geography and the economics of Latin America. Geology. But not the emphasis on the cross-cultural studies.

Robert Klein: At that time, were they still giving what used to be called American history and world communism?

Thomas D. Hansis: No.

Robert Klein: Okay. Any American history components of training?

Thomas D. Hansis: I don't remember any at all, other than bringing it as comparative. The history of Honduras is this compared to the history the United States, which I already knew that.

Robert Klein: How about technical studies?

Thomas D. Hansis: Technical was I think one of our things I look back at what we complained about was the lack of technical training, that we're going to be working with co-ops for the majority of our part of the program. They could have done more, go over simple accounting and getting the books that you might set up at a credit union.

Robert Klein: And you had none of those skills, I mean?

Thomas D. Hansis: I had none of those skills. Well, I'd taken accounting, but that doesn't mean that I know how to do the practical stuff. And again, it wasn't, it's not going to be a high level. But on the other hand, two years later, when I was a trainer for the same type of programs, I made sure that we did more of it.

Robert Klein: Right, right.

Thomas D. Hansis: So that was, that was one of our biggest complaints.

Robert Klein: So at the time, you had the feeling there was a vagueness about the technical studies.

Thomas D. Hansis: We kept thinking, when were we going to get the training of what we're going to be doing in our jobs when we.

Robert Klein: And nobody was answering that.

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, they were. It's kind of hard to recall. But we kept thinking we would get more. We never got much at all.

Robert Klein: Two other components of training would be some medical training and then some physical training. I don't know if you recall either of those.

Thomas D. Hansis: Physical training?

Robert Klein: Yeah. I mean, it's legendary.

Thomas D. Hansis: Physical training. But there was nothing that was required.

Robert Klein: None of the drownproofing, throwing you off a cliff to see if you bounce?

Thomas D. Hansis: No.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: That apparently it had its day already. But as I mentioned, I probably was in one of the best shapes of my life because there was plenty of, well, we were in the camp, so we were isolated. They could keep us going 16 hours a day.

Robert Klein: Don't cover the mike. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And so we, I did exercise three times a day and in the night.

Robert Klein: And of course, the other aspect of training is the selection process. How was that organized?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, that was the strengths I guess, is what we.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: Called it. And this apparently was past its peak as far as weeding people out because. Although there was probably the desire of a number of males like myself to avoid the draft.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: They weren't, it didn't seem like the biggest part of the job, of the activity, was to weed us out. They were there. There were psychologists on staff. And they'd kind of give you a good idea of what they expected. You're going to have to be able to adapt and what kind of conditions you'll be living under. And you have to make some advancement in your language studies. And a lot of, they were already saying you had to make your own job to a certain extent because the structure, the infrastructure might not be there.

Robert Klein: Was there small group meetings? You know, you'd meet in a small group and discuss an issue?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes, there was that. And sometimes I, I kind of recall some kind of psychological games were a part of that, but I just can't be specific at this point.

Robert Klein: How would you, how did you feel mid-point in the training about your own prospects?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I guess apprehensive about having some kind of skills to be able to use and what kind of specific job I would be doing.

Robert Klein: But you didn't have any hesitation? You assumed that you were going to be selected.

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes.

Robert Klein: And part of the group.

Thomas D. Hansis: Some of the, by the middle of the training, people who were not making progress in Spanish were given, while they weren't given ultimatums, but were told that you need to be able to function at a certain level.

Robert Klein: By the end of training, how many people had dropped out or been kicked out?

Thomas D. Hansis: It seemed like around ten.

Robert Klein: Not many.

Thomas D. Hansis: The only one I remember at this particular time was the guy who made it all the way through. And he already had some college Spanish, so he probably was, his Spanish language was alright. And the facial hair was a big deal. And apparently the Peace Corps director, it finally came down that they were not going to allow beards in Honduras. And so this guy transferred to a program for Panama where they allowed it.

Robert Klein: How did, what was the justification? Do you recall?

Thomas D. Hansis: The justification was how you'd be looked at by the Hondurans. I think it was, communists had beards.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: And things like that.

Robert Klein: Honduras was a politically sensitive area at this time, wasn't it?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I would say all of Latin America was just because of the fear of communism.

Robert Klein: Right. Right. Were there any civil wars in or near Honduras?

Thomas D. Hansis: Guatemala had their civil war in 1953 or '54, when the elected government was kicked out by a military that was later found to be financed by the CIA.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: Jacobo Arbenz was the president. And of course, we had a war when I was there.

Robert Klein: Now, was there any, uh, in training was there any discussion of the role you should play or the sensitivity?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, yeah, all the time.

Robert Klein: How was it defined, if you recall?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, it's again, since I've had a lot of Latin American experience since this, it's kind of hard to remember. But nevertheless, the emphasis that you would be the center of attention wherever you were, which of course turned out to be true. And a tall, fair-complected person like me is even more so probably than others. Um, that you are representing the United States although you were not an embassy, you're not going to be an embassy person, and people would tend to confuse you with what the United States government was doing. Perhaps you would always say that your personal views might be something different. But this is the government view and we were urged not to express our private opinions about things.

Robert Klein: Were there any discussions at all about either taking a position or not taking a position on the Vietnam War?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes, that was, that was the referring to number one, was what the U.S. government position was. Your own private position was, to be careful with that because they would view your opinions as those of the government then.

Robert Klein: But you have a group of people just off, most of them just off college campuses.

Thomas D. Hansis: Right.

Robert Klein: And did they all keep their mouth shut about Vietnam?

Thomas D. Hansis: Of course not.

Robert Klein: But at least in front of the selection board, they would, they did.

Thomas D. Hansis: Correct. And there was, there was in the training camp. But I think it was actually by the time we got in country, there was, I don't know, was the bombing of Laos or, I can't recall. One of the times when they stopped the bombing. When they restarted it, write your congressman, send a telegram and all that was, we discussed it pretty openly.

Robert Klein: You were clear with your own draft board, you had gotten the deferment? Or it was in the works?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I had a student deferment and I had to then request another deferment for the Peace Corps service.

Robert Klein: But expectation was it would come through, obviously.

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes.

Robert Klein: Yeah. What happened after training? Did you have a chance to come back to the U.S.?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, no. No, we, um. Well, I shouldn't say that. We had three days between the time we were leaving Puerto Rico and the time we had to be on a plane from a specific plane? Yeah, a specific flight from Miami to Tegucigalpa.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And so as it turned out, I was not on that flight. I had to stay another week or two for medical reasons. I had some open sores so they couldn't give the last smallpox shot. And so they waited for that to clear up. And then they gave me a shot and then they, they sent me. So I didn't have much, as much time as the other people did.

Robert Klein: Yeah. And where did you spend that week, back home?

Thomas D. Hansis: No, no, it was just, I think it was like three days. I think I got like two days.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. Yeah. So now, did you come into Honduras alone, the group having already arrived?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes. In fact, then I. I believe I got on the bus right away. Like, let's see. I think I spent one night in the capital, and then they put me out. I got on a bus and went down to the south coast. Choluteca was where the, it was an agricultural extension or training center, and that's where the in- country training was taking place at the time.

Robert Klein: So, and how long had been the Puerto Rican phase?

Thomas D. Hansis: Puerto Rican phase I believe was two months.

Robert Klein: And the phase in Honduras?

Thomas D. Hansis: In country was about a month. So I probably was.

Robert Klein: At what point, at what point in the process did you know where you're going to be assigned?

Thomas D. Hansis: Um. Well, I got in country, I think they'd started to make the assignments. Then there might have been a little bit more attrition and they were firming up the assignments. When I got there, they said, well, we think we're gonna send you to, when they told me too.

Robert Klein: Did they solicit your feelings, you know, like to be assigned alone, didn't want to be assigned with X, I'd prefer to be assigned?

Thomas D. Hansis: Really they did not. Maybe because I got there late. I think it was pretty well set in stone.

Robert Klein: Okay, so you were familiar being in a setting and using your Spanish.

Thomas D. Hansis: Right.

Robert Klein: So was the adjustment easy to?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, it was easier to understand the Spanish in Honduras than it was in Puerto Rico. They'd speak much more clearly.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: To my ear.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Well, you know.

Thomas D. Hansis: They don't cut off their letters, like the S for instance, like Puerto Ricans do.

Robert Klein: At the, in the in-country phase, did you begin to get the technical training you felt?

Thomas D. Hansis: We got some more technical training, especially the agricultural part.

Robert Klein: From whom?

Thomas D. Hansis: General agricultural training.

Robert Klein: Again, from whom?

Thomas D. Hansis: From a mixture of the Peace Corps in-country staff, some of national people, I guess, the hotchpotch of Hondurans and Americans that were there.

Robert Klein: Okay. Did you begin to get any clear sense of what it was that you were going to be doing and with whom and where?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, um, I was not specifically assigned to the cooperative program, the co-ops, on the community development part. And then I found out it would be an agricultural colony, they called it, that the land reform agency had in this part of the country, Olancho, where I was going to be assigned.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: And within that, I found out fairly soon that there was a consumer co-op as part of it, but that wasn't necessarily the assigning. It was community development that I would be assigned to be a counterpart there also.

Robert Klein: Had Peace Corps volunteers been in that particular town before?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes. In a matter of fact, when I got there, there was a, I think they must have left within a day or two of when I actually got there, I didn't. The other Peace Corps volunteer, I actually replaced him. So I think he might have got to the site a day or two before me. So it was replacing the man. There was a couple.

Robert Klein: Mm hmm.

Thomas D. Hansis: And my position was new.

Robert Klein: Okay. So describe the town and distance from other towns and the, your living circumstance. And then we'll talk about how you settled into the job. [tape break] Okay. We're talking about the assignment, the area you were in.

Thomas D. Hansis: So I was assigned to the wild east of Honduras, Olancho province, or department I guess they're called in Honduras.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And I think I went out, was actually driven out there by the agriculturist. I mean, yeah, an extensionist who worked with the ag co-ops, ag co-op federation, a Honduran.

Robert Klein: A Honduran?

Thomas D. Hansis: Right. It was in a way the counterpart of my Peace Corps colleague. He was going out there. So that I, yeah, that means my colleague was already there. I had been there for a couple of days.

Robert Klein: Yeah. And how large a place was it?

Thomas D. Hansis: It's Catacamas, a community of around 5,000 people altogether. There's the city and county in one.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: And the town itself might have had 3,000 of those people.

Robert Klein: And most people are agriculturalists?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes. In the rest of the town there were shopkeepers and doctors. I don't know if there were any lawyers, there was a dentist. Actually, there was an Austrian dentist lady who was, you might recall this. Recall her daughter was buried alive in Georgia somewhere for a week or two in the 1960s?

Robert Klein: No, I don't recall at all.

Thomas D. Hansis: A year or two before I got there. After I left Catacamas, this dentist was murdered.

Robert Klein: Oh!

Thomas D. Hansis: Some petty thievery, and she was there and discovered the thief.

Robert Klein: Had housing been arranged for you?

Thomas D. Hansis: Um, not specifically.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: Um. The couple was leaving. I think they must have left the day after I got there because I remember sleeping in the living room and I just, we took over their house. The other Peace Corps volunteer and I took over their house.

Robert Klein: And you were paying rent to somebody?

Thomas D. Hansis: To somebody, yes. Actually, it was the, I'm sorry, now I recall a little better. It was the agricultural co-op's building. And so we were the caretakers at the same time as being, my colleague was working.

Robert Klein: Your colleague being another Peace Corps volunteer?

Thomas D. Hansis: Peace Corps volunteer.

Robert Klein: What were your domestic arrangements? I mean, how did you get food and get laundry done? And mundane stuff like that.

Thomas D. Hansis: The mundane stuff like that. There were stores where you'd go and buy things. There was a, some of the little stores had fresh produce if it were the season. In the dry season, there would be tomatoes and onions and cabbage and occasionally they would bring in other vegetables from Tegucigalpa, the capital, and you could buy a little more fresh things. But some of the year there was very little fresh.

Robert Klein: Were there small restaurants you could eat at?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes, there were two or three small restaurants you could eat at. There were, um, there was fresh meat because there was a packing plant. So cattle was one of the big industries there. We could always get fresh meat.

Robert Klein: But unlike some other areas, or did you hire a personal servant of some sort?

Thomas D. Hansis: No, we did not. We had, the laundry, we had people do our laundry for us.

Robert Klein: Yeah. And again, you were not living with a family, you were living on your own with your Peace Corps brother.

Thomas D. Hansis: Right.

Robert Klein: Describe your initial, you know, meeting with your counterpart and your job setting and how it played out over the first month.

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, the counterpart lived in town and I can't remember what his title was. I think he saw his job as just riding this horse around the agricultural colony, which was about five miles from town where it started and extended out another five miles. The plots were, um, I think ten hectares, 25 acres or something, that the people had been given. Later on, later on I found out that they were foot soldiers for the political party in power at the time that it was given. But I was so.

Robert Klein: At the time.

Thomas D. Hansis: I still was wet behind the ears when I got there, but I found out later on.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And some of them had lived in the, but had worked in the banana plantations on the north coast of Honduras. Or they had some on the south coast earlier. [tape break] That, uh, those jobs that maybe there was disease in some of the plantations or something, but I know there was a number of them had worked in the plantations.

Robert Klein: Right. And what did you do on day one on the job?

Thomas D. Hansis: Okay, so I met my counterpart that, you know, took me out and introduced me to some of the, uh, the farmers and then the people that were running the consumer co-op that was out in this agricultural colony that was next door to a school. It was kind of the community land there and there was probably a lot of square. So it might have been four or five or eight of these lots. Or 25 acre plots.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And there was, one corner had a small building that wasn't used and theoretically I could have used as a home. That wasn't being used for anything. And then there was the school and then the ag consumer co-op. So that's where it was kind of the center of where I would gravitate to do my job of community development. And then within several days, I would have met then the officers of the co-op.

Robert Klein: Now, this is a consumer co-op?

Thomas D. Hansis: A consumer co-op.

Robert Klein: So the idea was that they would buy consumer goods and at lower price.

Thomas D. Hansis: Lower price, correct.

Robert Klein: Okay. Didn't it require having some kind of central store?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes, there was a store.

Robert Klein: Right. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: There was a store much like stores that you found in town.

Robert Klein: But cooperatively owned.

Thomas D. Hansis: Cooperatively owned.

Robert Klein: Well, what were you there for? At what point did you say that to yourselves?

Thomas D. Hansis: As we started to sarcastically say, here I am, I've come to save the world, and now I got to start saving the world.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And so that was, I guess, the classical case of making your own job. There was a manager for the consumer co-op. So what my job was not to run the consumer co-op.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: As I said, I gravitated toward that to, you know, give them advice and find out when they had inventory and talk about the supplies and how the system worked out, where you would go to the capital city to buy supplies once a month, I guess.

Robert Klein: Yeah. What was their perception of who in the world you were?

Thomas D. Hansis: Uh, I think it varied between bringing money, because I was from the United States. Bringing a road, that's what they wanted. The roads were really just artificially measured, probably 50 feet wide that they didn't belong to the.

Robert Klein: Well, did they see you as a link, a link to their own government or to U.S aid?

Thomas D. Hansis: More of the U.S. aid. I was assigned to the, it was called INA, Instituto Nacional Agrario. The National Agrarian Institute was the land reform agency. So they were given land or bought land or when there was.

Robert Klein: Ah, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: There were some times when there were heavy pressures of land invasions, which did not take place in my area when I was there. They did. [phone rings]

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: They would mediate that with the military police. As I say, later on, I think even when I was in country, they had land invasion. In fact, that was an interesting story. I mentioned the agricultural co-op where I live next door to.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: That was made up, those directors were more the big landowners of the area. So I wouldn't say it was subverted, but to think, well, it's for the small farmers, you can do an agricultural co-op. But the officers, including one of the officers and I don't know if he was present at the time or had been or was going to be, was an American missionary who had started, I think, in 1946. He said he went out there as a younger man and started an orphanage farm. And that particular one, they had, I don't know, a couple hundred acres, and they lost about a half of it to land invasions.

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Thomas D. Hansis: We found out that the large landowners, his colleagues on the board of directors, had their little spies among the campesinos that were going to do the invading.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: And they said, let's go after the Americans. All they got, all the rich Americans have this land and they're taking advantage of the hungering free laborer. And this and that and the other thing.

Robert Klein: And this is just in the instance of the missionary?

Thomas D. Hansis: And so the missionary, the mission kind of lost half the land.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And I didn't see but I didn't see any whips when I went out to the mission, the mission orphanage. And they were working in the fields and they would be in the school half a day and working the land half the day.

Robert Klein: And your involvement was just incidental.

Thomas D. Hansis: That was just incidental. Again, seeing how things work.

Robert Klein: And the guy you were living with was involved with?

Thomas D. Hansis: With the agricultural co-op.

Robert Klein: With that, the one we're talking about here?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes. [inaudible]

Robert Klein: Well, it's okay. What, if you had a counterpart, I mean?

Thomas D. Hansis: So the counterpart, um, supervisor. He was just basically, I think he saw his job was just to ride around and make sure that the people on the land were on the land. There were not any land, anybody, any strange families that were or they were selling out. I don't think they could sell their lands.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: Had to revert back to the government. And that's all he did. He didn't see his job as working with the co-op or. The first kind of project I got involved with is measuring for a road. So I got another, there was another volunteer assigned to the capital as engineer to the land reform agency. So I got him to come out and measure for a road. And of course, that's all that happened. He measured for a road.

Robert Klein: At what point in your Peace Corps career did that happen?

Thomas D. Hansis: That happened about a month after I got there.

Robert Klein: Okay. Did, in the first three or four months, did things begin to gel or did you still have the kind of question of why I am here?

Thomas D. Hansis: My, I was only, I was there for a year.

Robert Klein: Right. okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: And after that, I went to the capital city. So things really never did gel. This measuring during the survey work for the road was, I help, I helped out my, the Peace Corps volunteer that came out to do the survey.

Robert Klein: So it's really your first year. Go, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Thomas D. Hansis: So then I worked with the co-op.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And then about two months after I got there, there was the war with El Salvador. So that put a break on things for about two months.

Robert Klein: How did you hear about that?

Thomas D. Hansis: It was probably the biggest incident, the biggest thing that really actually happened in the country. This was the run up to the 1970 World Cup and Honduras and El Salvador were playing best two out of three to, I think was actually to go to the World Cup in Mexico. And so the Hondurans, they went to El Salvador for the, I'm trying to remember now how it worked. The first game was in Tegucigalpa. Nothing happened. And then the Hondurans went over and they were, the fans were treated badly. And then that night they had riots in Tegucigalpa. And then the next night, other parts of the country, anti Salvadorian riots. There were a lot of Salvadorians had immigrated to Honduras because of El Salvador being overpopulated.

Robert Klein: Uh huh. But there was no civil war going on there at the time?

Thomas D. Hansis: There was no civil war going on. But that was, I think it had a direct results of why there was a civil war later on.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: Of 3 million people in Honduras, I think 300,000 must have been Salvadorians. So this took place. There were some riots. In my town, there weren't riots, but there were identifiable Salvadorians. I got, I couldn't tell people apart. But the big, the biggest difference is they eat black beans, the Hondurans eat red beans.

Robert Klein: So before you can beat somebody up, you have to sit down and have a meal with them.

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, they could, they could tell the difference. They spoke, I guess. I couldn't. Anyway, um.

Robert Klein: So you went to work one day. You became aware that?

Thomas D. Hansis: No. I started out, heard this. I heard that on the radio and actually I was in Tegucigalpa a couple of days later. I had to go back in for something.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: But then what would happen. What happened in my town, Catacamas, was all of a sudden you started seeing a banner across the main street that said, to die for the country is to be a good Honduran. So someone, the military, I think the military was themselves trying to build up patriotic fervor to kick out the Salvadorians and, I don't know, even to bait them.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: So then every day after that, it seemed like you would see a truckload of people, you know, a truck that's a big truck, not a pickup truck. There'd be people in them, loaded up their belongings and standing there, and then they'd take off. And that went on for several weeks.

Robert Klein: And your impression was that, who was in the truck?

Thomas D. Hansis: These were Salvadorians leaving, because they knew something was going to happen.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: I guess when they saw the banner and all the hate that was on the radio. I didn't, I didn't catch it all, but I think there were all of a sudden teaching the people to hate the Salvadorians.

Robert Klein: Did you try to communicate with the Peace Corps headquarters and say, what's going on?

Thomas D. Hansis: No, I didn't.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: It was pretty hard to communicate via telegrams, I mean, we had franking, I told them. I'll tell you that story. We had franking privileges on the telegrams so we could send them for free.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: Um, so at that time, there was a captain and, you know, maybe five soldiers in our little town, and I met. In fact, he drove me out to the agricultural colony one time. This is before the incident, but he was called to the front or whatever. I never saw him again. So that was a lesson in instant hate, at least in my mind, was instant hate. And I'd find, then I could go, what happened to so-and-so? Oh, he was Salvadorian. He left.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: So they, the Salvadorians got the word somehow.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: They found out they were not.

Robert Klein: And among them were people you had been working with?

Thomas D. Hansis: Right.

Robert Klein: Okay, so there were huge sort of gaps.

Thomas D. Hansis: And this is, the war started in July, so I had only known them for two months by the time the war started. But this started a month before.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And then one fine day I was out, um. Where was I? No, I was out in the site, you know, five miles from town. I heard a plane circling around, around dusk, actually I could see it. And, um, it was very unusual. We had an airstrip that was serviced by a DC-3 three times a week, but it came at 10:00 in the morning and it came back through at 2:00 going back. All the stops on the way and on the way back. So it was unusual to see a plane. It wasn't the biggest surprise. Well, it turned out that that plane had dropped two bombs in my town, one about two blocks from my house and another about six blocks. In fact, it was in the patio of the biggest store, because it could have killed a lot of people but didn't. It was just material damages right in the courtyards. And the other was in the yard of a kind of a medium corporate house.

Robert Klein: And the assumption was it was the Salvadoran plane or?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, we found out later, we didn't even know it out there.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: But this is how. I was showing, uh, I had got a movie. Was that at the same time? Yeah, it was. That particular time I had gotten someone to come into town with an oxcart and I had a projector and, um, a portable electric generated, gasoline powered one. And I showed movies that evening in this little house.

Robert Klein: I hope, not war movies I hope.

Thomas D. Hansis: No. They were, you know, it was the agricultural ones and then I had some cartoons.

Robert Klein: Yeah, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: And in some cases, these kids have never seen movies.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: You know, these people could go into town. There was a movie house.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: Was it two or one? It was one movie house. And, uh, but a lot of these kids have never been in the movies. And anyway, we finished up pretty, pretty early there, it was. But I fell asleep in the school. I was going to sleep in the schoolhouse on the floor on this. And so then next door was the co-op and I, during the night, I thought I heard, I thought I was dreaming. But they were talking a lot, guerra, war, war. I got up real early because I still heard people talking. It was unusual to hear people all the middle of the night and then still. There was a lot of people there, like the co-op, the store didn't open until 7:00, an hour after the sun came up or something. So I got up and the people said, we're at war. And I said, who against? And they give the whole story, that there had been bombs dropped in town and the Salvadorian troops were, crossed over the border, and they had all kinds of rumors were flying by then, but most of the rumors would be the rumors that were spread by the radio.

Robert Klein: How far were you from the Salvadoran border?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, I was 200 miles away.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: Other Peace Corps volunteers were in town where they were invaded, and they were actually captured, I guess.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: But no one was hurt. So I decided then a couple of hours later, I guess I'd better go back to town. And there already had sentries out, because they were figuring paratroopers and everything like this. But the, the plane was unlike the type you take a bomb and throw it out like that. It wasn't, they were 250 pound bombs but.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: That's, uh, that was our picture of it. And so I went back to town and then, I can't remember if I got the, I don't think I got any word from the Peace Corps because they had, the military had taken over the telegraph lines and everything. I don't think I heard anything for. Basically they said stay put, which was what we're going to do anyway, cause I think the bus transportation had stopped anyway, because they have the bus in the capital city. And, um.

Robert Klein: Did you suddenly feel cut off, I mean?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, a bit. And then the next day there was, I think it was the next day. Or was that, was that the same day? I can't remember of it was the next day or not. At the agriculture co-op didn't open. Usually my colleague, my Peace Corps colleague, was working there and doing something with the manager. Didn't open. But then all of a sudden, there was a long line of people at the door of the co-op banging on it. And my colleague didn't understand what they wanted, and they wanted machetes because the Salvadorian paratroopers had landed in San Pedro, which was a little crossroads about five miles out of town.

Robert Klein: Yeah. And people were literally fired up to do this?

Thomas D. Hansis: Fired up, yeah. They didn't have, they had machetes at home, but they knew there were machetes there. And he said, well, what are we going to do? I said, well, I think they're going to tear down the door if we close it. So what we did is, rather than let them in, is there was like two or three boxes of machetes and we just gave one to each person who was there. And I remember this guy with a, who was always running around barefooted, like old man, sorry, but I don't know old he was at the time. I'm sure he was that much. He was the last one in line. He was almost going to look back at us like we knew he really wasn't going to run down there or jump on a truck or a horse to fight the Salvadorans. Of course, no one ever returned the machete. But no, they were panicking. They were panicking.

Robert Klein: How?

Thomas D. Hansis: Of course, the large landowners would have their own guns. And I don't know if they went down there.

Robert Klein: Yeah. And were there, were there actually people leaving town to go to some central point to fight or?

Thomas D. Hansis: No.

Robert Klein: They just, they were prepared to defend the area.

Thomas D. Hansis: Yeah. This is the only time that I heard that. That was a real live rumor.

Robert Klein: How long the situation go on?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well.

Robert Klein: Without any U.S. intervention in your?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, of course, then the Hondurans would blame the U.S. for it. And I found out later the Salvadorians blamed the U.S. for it. I believe the OAS, of course there was a lot of behind the scenes U.S. involvement. Salvador, El Salvador was able to, um, the land troops. They had got into Honduras between, I guess up to ten or 12 miles, and captured towns, captured territory. Hondurans, I guess, started to control the air. And I believe the Hondurans bombed an oil refinery. And it was starting to affect things. And then I think that's what El Salvador finally realized that they were going to get. They might be able to advance further on the land, but they weren't going to have enough provisions to - this is all, I don't know this for sure - pursue them any further into Honduras. And so then the good offices of the OAS were able, then they had a cease fire. And then I think, I can't remember how long it took before all the Salvadoran troops went back to the existing, preexisting border.

Robert Klein: And at the time in the village, how were you being informed of these developments?

Thomas D. Hansis: Radio, because we would listen to the Voice of America or BBC.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: To try to get really what was going on. Because you could get shortwave radio stations from Honduras and El Salvador.

Robert Klein: And nobody in town came to you and said, you know, this is all your fault or?

Thomas D. Hansis: No, not really. But then when they talked about this, like they said, it must have been that the Salvadorans were given the green light and given this and given that to do this.

Robert Klein: But there's no animosity toward you?

Thomas D. Hansis: No. I think they were, they were looking for reasons why this had happened. But of course, they also realized that all their neighbors were Salvadoran and left the country.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: In the last six weeks before that, or a month before that, and something was going on.

Robert Klein: How did the rest of the year play out then, you were?

Thomas D. Hansis: As I said, during that time, by the way, that was when man landed on the moon. So what, July 20th, 1969?

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: I said, oh, did you hear today that the man landed on the moon? Oh, really? They didn't know, but there were people glued to the radios.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: It must have been said once or twice on the radio. But it was.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: As far as a world event, that was what was going on in the world at the time.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: So things didn't. I didn't do anything really for a week or two.

Robert Klein: When you attempted to.

Thomas D. Hansis: Because there were, as I said, they had posted sentries and everything. So I guess everybody knew who I was by then. I think I went out to my site once during that, like the first two weeks. Then I came in and I think I didn't go out there for a five or ten.

Robert Klein: You weren't tempted to try to find your way to the capital?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, we were, I don't think the busses were running. And we were, we figured, well, we're, we got bombed. And they, the theory was they, at the other end of the long valley was the departmental capital, which was just double the size and had a military barracks.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: We think that they made a mistake because that was not bombed and just got disoriented.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And they saw. And I could see why because it was, looking for a town and they probably came and they were further west and, no, further east than they thought they were.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: So, uh.

Robert Klein: So how did?

Thomas D. Hansis: I don't recall trying to get to.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: I think it might have been a week or so before we got any word from Peace Corps and they probably sent a telegram that was a week old that said, stay put unless your life is in danger, etc., etc.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: As it turned out, even those volunteers who were along the Salvadoran border, they were captured but they were basically, they stayed in their homes.

Robert Klein: Okay. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And I think in some cases they actually weren't, they were sent to this, sent to the capital of Honduras, of El Salvador. And then they went to Guatemala and then came back, I believe.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah. Well.

Thomas D. Hansis: They were just there. Apparently there weren't any civilian atrocities.

Robert Klein: Now with your story then, you still have another eight, nine months in the village.

Thomas D. Hansis: Yeah, I still have eight or nine months that I stayed in this village. Yes.

Robert Klein: And kind of what happened?

Thomas D. Hansis: I tried to, this counterpart, to see what he could do. And but he was, uh, didn't want to make any waves, didn't want to make any request of the, of the agency where we were. He was just happy to get a paycheck and ride his horse out there two or three times a week.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: Yeah, that.

Robert Klein: Well, I mean, weren't you discouraged?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes.

Robert Klein: And saying, you know, let me get the hell out of here?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, as I said, I attached myself to the consumer co-op. Um, I, there was a local high school. I volunteered to be a PE teacher twice a week. And but when I find myself having gone through the Peace Corps book locker, then I knew there was, I had to do something there or. So I asked for a transfer.

Robert Klein: Okay. And during that whole year, had you been out of the?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, yeah, I was. I'd probably gone out every three months or more often.

Robert Klein: So to the capital?

Thomas D. Hansis: The capital every three months probably. And I think the Peace Corps had a meeting after three months or six months of all the volunteers.

Robert Klein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And after a year. I think we did it twice.

Robert Klein: It varied.

Thomas D. Hansis: After three months.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: Um. We were discouraged, highly discouraged from coming in. In fact, they would send out a notice that we've seen these volunteers who are closer in who would go there much more often. And they were called on the carpet. So we were discouraged from going into the capital.

Robert Klein: That wasn't for political reasons, it was just?

Thomas D. Hansis: Because you were expected to be in your site.

Robert Klein: Okay. All right.

Thomas D. Hansis: It turned out, my daughter was a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay here in '95 and '97. They were almost required to come in to the capital city to get their paycheck.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: But I had worked out in Honduras 30 years before that.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: To write a check because they were deposited in a checking account in a private bank, the state owned bank, which had a branch in the town where I lived. And after the first time they let, had it clear. It took, you know, ten days to clear.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And after that they would honor the check right there.

Robert Klein: So when you, when you, to whom did you request the transfer?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I made it, it was really a dual transfer request because I discussed it with the Peace Corps or what were they called, program directors or area directors? Program director, like I say, over my area.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And that was basically the answer is, well, working it out with your agency. If they're willing, then we'll be willing. So I did.

Robert Klein: Oh interesting.

Thomas D. Hansis: Then they said, oh, would you come in here and we'll have you work in the office and then we'll send you out.

Robert Klein: Who said that?

Thomas D. Hansis: The Honduran agency that I was assigned to.

Robert Klein: Which is?

Thomas D. Hansis: It's the National Agrarian Institute.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: So I did that for about a month and nothing was happening. I moved into the capital city. Nothing happened. And then the cooperative agency for the country, they had, they knew about me because I was, they supervised this consumer co-op where I worked. And so they invited me to come to work for them. And they were looking for people like me.

Robert Klein: And what were people like you?

Thomas D. Hansis: Extensionists, people who knew how to read and write.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: Or Peace Corps volunteers, they'd had Peace Corps volunteers before. At that time, they didn't have any other ones.

Robert Klein: Now, again, which agency picked you up at that point?

Thomas D. Hansis: The National Cooperative, uh.

Robert Klein: But it's a national.

Thomas D. Hansis: Development. Cooperative Development Agency.

Robert Klein: And you had made contact with them or they heard about you that you were a loose end?

Thomas D. Hansis: We knew about each other. They would audit the.

Robert Klein: And Peace Corps played.

Thomas D. Hansis: Actually they audited the co-op where I was. That was my first contact.

Robert Klein: And Peace Corps had no role in this whole thing?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, they did. They had to get permission, but they didn't actively. They knew that our, like a lot of other agencies probably, that it was hard to get a real job. I mean, even though the agency had asked for you, it was.

Robert Klein: How many of the volunteers did the same thing, from the group you were with?

Thomas D. Hansis: The ones that were assigned to the cooperative program, which would have made majority. Not very many at all. I don't, I don't know of any that actually changed.

Robert Klein: Okay, so it wasn't common.

Thomas D. Hansis: Within my agency, there were the engineer. He might have. There was another one that was community development. He lasted with him, but he got, actually he found a job. He got aligned himself with the union of banana workers who were pretty involved with social activism.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: It was a different part of the country. So he didn't really work with the, he did officially, but I think he got to where he was working with the union.

Robert Klein: Because if half the volunteers were, you know, coming in and saying.

Thomas D. Hansis: In my agency, there's three or four of us.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: So then I moved into the capital city and then within a month I go over to this, the National Co-operative Development Agency, to work as an extensionist. Basically there I went to visit co-ops and help them out.

Robert Klein: Throughout the country?

Thomas D. Hansis: Throughout the country.

Robert Klein: You base being?

Thomas D. Hansis: Tegucigalpa, the capital.

Robert Klein: Who arranged your living and everything?

Thomas D. Hansis: I arranged my own.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. And then you finally said to the Peace Corps, this is my new assignment. I'll be doing this.

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I had to get permission to the Peace Corps to be able to do this transfer. And they were very willing because they knew what was going on. And they probably had a volunteer in this agency before.

Robert Klein: Well, in a sense then, what was the justification of your leaving where you were?

Thomas D. Hansis: Leaving the countryside?

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: No real job, no real support from the agency.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay. Okay. So there was no thought of your being replaced?

Thomas D. Hansis: No.

Robert Klein: And how about the ag co-op friend?

Thomas D. Hansis: No, he stayed.

Robert Klein: He stayed. Okay. Yeah. So you have a new job now, and it gets you traveling all over the country.

Thomas D. Hansis: Right.

Robert Klein: By foot, by horse, by?

Thomas D. Hansis: Jeep. There wasn't enough money to do it more than once a month. I ended up going out twice a month in a jeep. And then I would occasionally go by bus. But it was basically within a day's drive. And sometimes I would park the jeep and get on a burro and go to the small villages.

Robert Klein: Were the visits arranged in advance?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes.

Robert Klein: And what would, what was the occasion of your coming to a place and what did you do when you were there?

Thomas D. Hansis: The occasion usually was there would be a co-op that requested help. Of course, they're always requesting help.

Robert Klein: Yes.

Thomas D. Hansis: And how often could the agency afford to send them out there to help them.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: With their budget. Well, at least to have another city like mine could have it and a certain extent that was, they would access the.

Robert Klein: Who approved your itinerary or where you were going?

Well, the meeting boss and his boss and the director.

And they were all Honduran?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yeah. There were three levels of.

Robert Klein: Yeah, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: I was the fourth level down, I guess.

Robert Klein: And what was your feeling about the work you did during the second year?

Thomas D. Hansis: Much more rewarding. I felt I was being, doing something valuable and being kept busy at something a little more specific.

Robert Klein: So when there was a co-op with a problem, you felt your showing up?

Thomas D. Hansis: Helped, yeah. Took some time to show them, reiterate that this is how you figure out simple interest.

Robert Klein: Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: You know, paper and pencil. You're dealing with people that have three, third and fourth. Maybe the person who was elected treasurer of the co-op had a fifth grade education. [phone rings]

Robert Klein: Did you do any other travel during your, well, more in your second year?

Thomas D. Hansis: Of course.

Robert Klein: You did have leave time coming.

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, after, um, let's see, I got sworn in as a volunteer in May. So in November I went to Argentina to get married.

Robert Klein: Ah, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: And that was another.

Robert Klein: This is during your first year?

Thomas D. Hansis: This is my first year.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: So actually I got a whole month off which theoretically I couldn't get that till after the first year, but I got permission for that. And that was a little bit of a, um, navigating through the Peace Corps bureaucracy. Because, you know, marrying a host country national was, all right, how are you going to support yourself? And usually that was pretty self-evident to somebody.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: But marrying another American, of course, would be, they discouraged that highly. And I think they got a little looser on it as time went on. But they did ask legitimate questions. How are you going to support, I mean, you're given $100, started out at $125 a month. And I think in the capital city it was $150. How are you going to support your wife? Well, so the director of the school, of the high school there in the small town, said that they're always looking for an English teacher because the lady that taught English didn't want to continue doing it. We became friends with her.

Robert Klein: Now, what small town is this, where you were living?

Thomas D. Hansis: Where I was living the first year.

Robert Klein: Oh, the first year. Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: November.

Robert Klein: Got it.

Thomas D. Hansis: This was seven months into my first year. And so my wife had a job lined up teaching English. So that was. [tape break]

Robert Klein: Okay. You're talking about your marriage.

Thomas D. Hansis: So I got married, and my wife taught at the school. [tape break]

Robert Klein: My apologies. We're okay. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: My wife taught English then for, what, five or six months? I mean, she had to, I think she had to do the same thing, prove that we were able to support ourselves in the capital. And she actually called the, uh, the binational center.

Robert Klein: Uh huh.

Thomas D. Hansis: She started off teaching that. And then she got a job at a bilingual elementary school and made twice as much as I did, at least.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Your second year, you pretty much described. As you came, you know, within three months of time to terminate, did you have any sense of you need to accomplish X to have some feeling of closure about what your?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, actually, I did not because it was like the closure was, usually it was a day at a time.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: In some cases it was working with groups and formation.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: For co-ops in the Tegucigalpa area. So in some of those cases, you would want to try to terminate something. But in general, in general, uh, there was a British volunteer that had come to work there probably six months after I did, and he was going to continue. So I thought he going to take over some of the projects anyway.

Robert Klein: And were you able to recommend that you be replaced with another volunteer, or did they ask you?

Thomas D. Hansis: I think, I don't think I was more than once asked that, but I probably said yes, it was something legitimate to do.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: And I can't recall if I was replaced. I was not immediately replaced. There was no program coming in right away.

Robert Klein: And during the second year, there were no further political problems or were there?

Thomas D. Hansis: No, there were not. The border with El Salvador was still closed to Hondurans. But, I don't know, two or three months after the war they reopened the border for third country nationals to travel. Of course, this was the end of the, they had started the Central American Common Market and the war was the, I think they formally just stopped being a central common market on the 1st of January 1970. I know that they changed some things because. So anyway. That was one of the nails in the coffin of that kind of market.

Robert Klein: As you came to the end, now you're a married man, which you hadn't been going in. What were your plans, I mean?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, um.

Robert Klein: The draft was clearly less of a concern.

Thomas D. Hansis: Yeah, I had found out in November on my honeymoon I found that I had a fairly high number in the draft.

Robert Klein: In the lottery.

Thomas D. Hansis: The lottery, the draft lottery. It wasn't clear whether or not they would get to 277 or not, but it became clear that I wasn't going to be drafted. And so that was a weight off my shoulder. And then what we were going to do, and I guess mainly what I wanted to do was to get a job. Well, I was interested in being a Peace Corps trainer, and I pursued that and begun a job as a Peace Corps trainer in Puerto Rico.

Robert Klein: Were you hired from the field or did you go back to Washington and have to go through a round of?

Thomas D. Hansis: I was hired from the field.

Robert Klein: Oh, yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: I think I knew about it fairly close to, I extended a month past the May to June so my wife finished the school year.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: Which was no big deal for me to extend.

Robert Klein: Did your group have a termination conference in country? Do you recall the whole group coming together maybe a month before you were leaving?

Thomas D. Hansis: I believe we did. I think we met after a year and I don't remember meeting again.

Robert Klein: Yeah. It could be.

Thomas D. Hansis: And I know there were interviews because I went by the Peace Corps office once or twice a week. My office was a five minute walk away or a ten minute walk away from the Peace Corps office. I was there pretty often, so it was probably just a formality to have an exit conference, whereas other volunteers, of course, would come in from their sites and pass through for two or three days. I guess I did that, but.

Robert Klein: So as you were leaving after two years, what was your sense of what you had accomplished or what did it, you know, what it all meant?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I guess that I accomplished something that had been, the second year. The first year was, it was too bad that it took that long, the time to realize I wasn't going to accomplish anything. And with the years have gone by and having seen what other Peace Corps volunteers have done in we'll say similar circumstances, some did a lot more, a lot more in circumstances like that. I wasn't in this for site work.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: That's my personality. And I felt good about what I had done with it the second year.

Robert Klein: Right. And your Spanish must have been quite good.

Thomas D. Hansis: Yeah, I was three plus or four minus, I think.

Robert Klein: Did they test you again toward the end? Sometimes they do.

Thomas D. Hansis: They tested us I think at the year.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: They tested us and I was three plus, four minus? I was better.

Robert Klein: Why did they seek you out for a trainer job?

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, I don't know. I sought it out.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: Or I heard about it. I don't recall on that.

Robert Klein: So you went, did you have a chance to come back or to the U.S.?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes, I had a car the last six months I was there, and my brothers had driven down in December of, uh, about five, six months before I was to end. About six months because I knew I could get a permit for six months. The problem, it just turned out I got a month extension, I think. And so especially the car was my wife's because the Peace Corps volunteer wasn't supposed to have a car, but.

Robert Klein: Of course not. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: But we could afford it. We used the car usually on the weekends.

Robert Klein: Now, I know you didn't drive to Puerto Rico.

Thomas D. Hansis: Correct.

Robert Klein: You came back up to the U.S. and?

Thomas D. Hansis: We drove up from Honduras to Wisconsin.

Robert Klein: Oh, great. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: I guess about two weeks to do it. And obviously flew back to Puerto Rico.

Robert Klein: Now in going down to Puerto Rico, you and your wife went?

Thomas D. Hansis: Yes, actually, I went ahead by a few weeks.

Robert Klein: Okay. Did you live at the camp?

Thomas D. Hansis: No, the Peace Corps trainers had stopped being at the camp, I don't know, a year before that, the year after I left the camp, and was in Ponce, the second city of Puerto Rico. And the Catholic University there had the contract and I think it was their old campus or their high school that was used, a couple of buildings.

Robert Klein: And who was, how long were you there?

Thomas D. Hansis: We were there six months. So two different three-month contracts.

Robert Klein: And what groups were coming through?

Thomas D. Hansis: There was a Honduras group similar to what I've done. Nicaragua. Um. I know I worked with Central American groups.

Robert Klein: And what was your role in training?

Thomas D. Hansis: My role was to be, well, what I would call the trainer. It was the technical part.

Robert Klein: Oh.

Thomas D. Hansis: So I got to do something about the complaints that our group had.

Robert Klein: Right.

Thomas D. Hansis: I got involved in cross-cultural stuff also. Cross-cultural training, technical training, and language training. And of course, we got the language teachers when we could involved in the cross-cultural stuff also.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And that speaks to how I viewed it, they might have called it something different. So, uh. And actually in a way, two different groups, it wasn't a full three months. Preparing for them and preparing for the next group.

Robert Klein: And after the six months back to the U.S.?

Thomas D. Hansis: After six months, we, uh, my daughter was born there in Puerto Rico as my service was ending. And then we went to Argentina from there.

Robert Klein: Oh, and how long did you live in Argentina?

Thomas D. Hansis: Five months.

Robert Klein: And we're now in San Antonio.

Thomas D. Hansis: So we came back and we lived in, uh, got a job in California and worked there for six months, then went to Florida for 13 years.

Robert Klein: Oh, okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: And been here since 1986.

Robert Klein: Have you particularly tried to be in touch with or recontact people you worked with in Honduras?

Thomas D. Hansis: Uh, some. But there's one person I maintain contact with that, uh, I guess I'll see him in November.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: And he was in my general area of the country. He'd some and see us once or twice, once a month maybe. He was single, so he'd visit more often than other volunteers who were married. It turned out that he extended the third year in Colombia, and then we visited him on the way to Argentina from Puerto Rico. Then six months or eight months after we left from each of our country. And then his roommate, his Peace Corps roommate there in Colombia, came to Miami where we were living by then. And we became best friends. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia and became a best friend.

Robert Klein: Yeah. How would you assess, you know, the effect of Peace Corps on your life and the things you've done?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, I would say it was pretty important in my life and it affected me in what I wanted to do. I enjoyed working with people. I worked for the YMCA for 17 years. I worked in another nonprofit for a while and now I'm a business consultant, so I'm helping people with businesses. So yeah, I guess people-oriented businesses.

Robert Klein: You never went into teaching?

Thomas D. Hansis: No. I teach workshops now, but it's not really teaching.

Robert Klein: Well, yeah, it's special. Anything else you'd like to add to the story?

Thomas D. Hansis: Oh, my, my war story.

Robert Klein: Okay.

Thomas D. Hansis: I was in a war, which I related already. A real war, around it. But my favorite story in Honduras was, I mentioned earlier that we had franking privileges. I call it franking privileges.

Robert Klein: Right. Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: We could send free telegrams, but we had to do it in Spanish. They would charge us if they had foreign words and then they'd charge you double whatever the rate was.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: Well, near the end of my time in Catacamas in the rural area, one day the telegraph boy knocked on my door and said, you have a phone call. I said, I do? Where? He says, oh, it's at the telegraph office. Because usually they would deliver a telegram to you. You don't have to go to the telegraph office. And I said, okay, what do I need? Oh, we have to go there. All right. So I went there and I saw that they had a telephone, actually, and it was a sign that there was a phone. So then they rang up, I don't know. I said, who called me? And they said, well, it was from down the road at the departmental capital, which was about 30 miles away. The Peace Corps volunteers down there were calling.

And so I said, well, wait, we'll call. And they lived fairly close to the telegraph office also. So about five or 10 minutes later they got on the phone and we talked. I think we talked for 3 minutes, and they had up a sign that said 3 minutes, $1 or one lempira. And then I said, well, one lempira will it be? And they said, no, it's two because you spoke in English. And I said, what? I went like that. What do you mean? They just started laughing.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Just to mention, your daughter became a Peace Corps volunteer.

Thomas D. Hansis: Yeah, my daughter became a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay.

Robert Klein: Was it, did it surprise you or is it part of the family tradition that it happened or?

Thomas D. Hansis: It did not surprise us.

Robert Klein: Yeah.

Thomas D. Hansis: I think it surprised us how tough she turned out to be in a situation similar to what I had. And she did a lot more than I did in the less than two years there.

Robert Klein: I'd love, there'll be an interview with her.

Thomas D. Hansis: So we're proud of her.

Robert Klein: And your grandchildren of course, you look forward to, perhaps.

Thomas D. Hansis: Perhaps we'll join up when my grandson goes in the Peace Corps.

Robert Klein: Yeah. Anything else?

Thomas D. Hansis: That's all.

Robert Klein: Good.

Thomas D. Hansis: Thank you.