This article examines how teachers in post-coup Honduras approached implementing neoliberal school finance reforms with which they disagreed. The laws in question decentralize national public education and demand that teachers secure funding for basic school infrastructure and academic programs from private businesses. I show how teachers reluctantly engaged aspects of this legislation, but for their own reasons, and suggest that their partial compliance is illuminative of how teachers in other contexts may approach policy implementation.Este artículo examina cómo los maestros en la Honduras pos-golpe implementaron reformas educativas neoliberales con las cuales estaban en desacuerdo. Las leyes intentan descentralizar el sistema de educación pública, exigiendo que los maestros gestionen fondos del sector privado para mantener sus centros educativos. Demuestro cómo los maestros manejaron esta legislación de manera renuente y con fines propios. Argumento que su cumplimiento revela cómo los maestros llegan a implementar políticas con las cuales estén en desacuerdo.

R e s u m e n Este artículo examina el trabajo de los maestros en la Honduras pos-golpe mientras navegan a través del primer año de reformas al sector educativo, el cual intenta privatizar y descentralizar el sistema de educación pública del país. Desde el golpe de estado de junio de 2009, los maestros hondureños han sido líderes del movimiento de resistencia contra el golpe que ahora desafía el actual estatus quo y propone 'refundar' el estado. A pesar de que los maestros hondureños están en desacuerdo con estas reformas y otros aspectos de la práctica gubernamental pos-golpe, en el fondo ellos son los agentes del estado responsables por implementar estas nuevas políticas educativas. Basándome en mi investigación etnográfica en el Departamento de Valle, ubicado en el sur, yo exploro la naturaleza contradictoria del trabajo de agentes del estado vista desde la perspectiva de las políticas educativas y de cómo la legislación realmente se pone en práctica. [antropología social educación Honduras política] A b s t r a c tThis article examines the work of schoolteachers in postcoup Honduras as they navigate through the first year of reforms to the education sector. The aim of the reforms is to privatize and decentralize the country's national public education system. Since the June 2009 coup, Honduran schoolteachers have been leaders of the anti-coup resistance movement that now challenges the current status quo and proposes to "refound" the state. Although Honduran schoolteachers disagree with the reforms and other aspects of post-coup governance, they are ultimately the state agents responsible for implementing these new education policies. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the southern Department of Valle, this research explores the contradictory nature of

This article examines how teachers in post‐coup Honduras reluctantly complied with legislation with which they disagreed. New laws passed after the June 2009 military coup decentralized and privatized government funding by requiring that teachers solicit money for school infrastructure projects from municipal governments and private companies instead of from the Ministry of Education. This article demonstrates how teachers drew on their situated knowledge of state procedures and reluctantly engaged in clientelist relations with coup‐supporting politicians, who most teachers despised given their own involvement in the anti‐coup resistance movement. Anthropologists and others often emphasize the “top‐down” nature of how neoliberalism gets imposed and how state policies get implemented. In the case of public education policies in post‐coup Honduras, however, the same individuals responsible for implementing neoliberal legislation also actively protested against neoliberalism and the patronage of rich politicians in general. The analysis of teachers’ simultaneous critique of and engagement with clientelism is illuminative of how state agents in other contexts may end up implementing legislation with which they disagree. While not denying the global scope of neoliberal policies, this article advances scholarly knowledge of how frontline state agents implement state policies.

In this article, I explore some challenges and strategies for anthropologist expert witnesses working on cases where home‐country governments depict an overall more positive situation than what the applicants claim. Drawing upon an anonymized Honduran asylum case, I discuss the utility of state theory for debunking fallacious home‐government sources that downplay dangerous situations while exaggerating state achievements, suggesting ways to illuminate the inherent political motivations of government reports. Honduran asylum applicants flee from gang violence, political violence, and gendered violence, now more than a decade after the June 2009 military coup that ruptured already fragile public institutions. While official Honduran government reports claim that the state is alleviating such problems by creating new programs and laws, ethnographic evidence from anthropologists working with anticoup social movements suggests that the state's security apparatus often exacerbates violence, and that the mere act of passing legislation does little in practice to protect vulnerable Hondurans.