Spinning the Honduran Coup
Latin America’s Media Battle Continues
by Nikolas Kozloff

In Latin America, the media have become a powerful force to be reckoned with in the confrontation between the western-leaning capitalist class and the tide of people’s movements which have swung into power. Unsurprisingly, the crackdown in Honduras against progressive media such as Telesur came right on cue, in a situation analogous to that of the April 2002 coup in Venezuela when the short-lived right-wing government swiftly muzzled all dissident voices. Should Zelaya return to power in Honduras, one of his major challenges will be to tackle the powerful privately-owned TV and radio networks, which have come to the fore as cheerleaders and apologists for the coup government and the interests it represents.

Read or listen to the mainstream media these days and you get the impression that Sunday’s coup in Honduras was all about a simple disagreement over the constitutionality of presidential term limits. But as the coup unfolds it’s becoming clear that the authorities want something more: the restoration of Honduras’s conservative political order and an end to President Manuel Zelaya’s independent foreign policy which had reached out to leftist countries like Cuba and Venezuela.

As part of their effort to consolidate power officials have moved quickly to restrain the free flow of information, in particular by cracking down on progressive leaning media. Only TV stations sympathetic to the newly installed coup regime have been left alone while others have been shut down. The climate of repression is similar to what we have seen elsewhere in Latin America in recent years. Specifically, there are eerie parallels to the April, 2002 coup in Venezuela when the briefly installed right wing government imposed a media blackout to further its own political ends.

Perhaps somewhat tellingly, the Honduran army cut off local broadcasts of the Telesur news network which is sponsored by leftist governments including Venezuela, Uruguay, Argentina and Cuba. Adriana Sivori, Telesur’s correspondent in Tegucigalpa, was in her hotel room speaking on the telephone to her network when ten soldiers arrived with rifles drawn. The men unplugged Telesur’s editing equipment in an effort to halt the network’s coverage of protests in support of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

When a soldier lightly slapped Sivori’s hand so she would hang up, the journalist grew alarmed. “They’re taking us prisoner at gunpoint,” she remarked. Sivori along with producer María José Díaz and cameraman Larry Sánchez were taken to an immigration office in a military caravan. There, the authorities beat them and demanded to see their Honduran visas. Shortly later, the journalists were released. However, the authorities have warned Telesur journalists to cease transmitting images in support of Zelaya or face further detention.

What is so important about Telesur in particular? In my latest book, Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008) I devote considerable attention to the rise of the new station, itself a product of South America’s stormy political battles and contested media landscape. First launched in 2005, Telesur represents Venezuela’s effort to counteract the power of the right wing media establishment which played a role in the short-lived April coup of 2002 against the Chávez government. Seen as South Ameica’s answer to Al Jazeera and CNN, the station has been spearheaded by Andrés Izarra, up until recently the station’s president. A rising star in the Chávez administration, Izarra got his start as a journalist at NBC and CNN. Disgusted by right wing media coverage of the 2002 coup, he started to work for Telesur.

Since its launch, Telesur has given CNN en Español a run for its money and now has slick production values. Station Director Aram Aharonian says the news industry has gone through a dumbing down since the Gulf War. Journalism, Aharonian remarked to me during our interview in Caracas, had become instantaneous but also devoid of any investigation, analysis or debate. Telesur, by contrast, was “rescuing” journalistic ethics by providing context and opinions about goings-on. While you can expect to see more critical coverage of the Iraq War on Telesur than most mainstream U.S. media outlets, Aharonian says Telesur is independent and doesn’t have any particular political axe to grind.

Such assurances aside, the conservative establishment views Telesur as a threat. When the station announced a content-sharing agreement with Al Jazeera in 2006, Connie Mack, a right-wing Republican congressman from Florida, remarked that the decision was designed to create a “global television network for terrorists.” In light of Sivori’s recent detention, one may surmise that the Honduran coup regime agrees with Mack’s hysterical views.

In Latin America, media has become a crucial fault line in the battle between the pro-U.S. elite and the incipient left “Pink Tide” which has been sweeping into power. In Honduras, the coup regime has not only gone after Telesur but also Channel 8, the official broadcaster of the Zelaya government. The moves prompted Venezuela’s official Bolivarian News Agency as well as Cuba’s Granma newspaper to issue formal letters of protest. Meanwhile a climate of fear and intimidation reigns throughout the capital, with networks providing scant coverage of political protest. Soldiers are reportedly guarding local television and radio stations.

In recent years Zelaya had been embroiled in a war with the conservative private media in the country. Now that the President is gone, these outlets have rallied in defense of the coup regime. Honduras’ two leading radio networks, Radio América and Radio HRN, have urged Hondurans to resume their normal routine and not to protest. Even as hundreds of protesters rallied at the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa to demand Zelaya’s reinstatement, radio and TV stations made little reference to the demonstrations. Instead of reporting on political goings-on, the Honduran media outlets played tropical music or aired soap operas and cooking shows.

It’s reminiscent of the April, 2002 coup against Chávez when conservative media station Venevisión refused to cover pro-Chávez demonstrations and preempted its normal news coverage with a day-long marathon of American films such as Lorenzo’s Oil, Nell, and Pretty Woman. Venevisión, which substituted nonstop vitriolic anti-Chávez propaganda for its regular programming in the days leading up to the coup, was owned by billionaire media magnate Gustavo Cisneros, himself a leading figure in the Chávez opposition who reportedly bankrolled the opposition’s takeover of government.

In Venezuela, conservative coup leaders misjudged the popular mood. Amidst street protests, Chávez was reinstated in two days. In the wake of the coup Venevisión began to moderate its strident tone and the Venezuelan President went on the political offensive by spurring the creation of Telesur as well as other media outlets. If you flip the TV dial today you can still watch rabidly anti-Chávez stations like Globovisión, though the playing field has been leveled considerably. In addition to Telesur Venezuelans can also watch Venezolana de Televisión, a government channel, as well as state sponsored Vive which provides discussion on Venezuelan culture and politics. Chávez has his own TV talk show, Aló, Presidente, and there are dozens of pro-government papers including a tabloid called VEA.

The antagonistic media environment in Venezuela is echoed in other left-leaning countries in South America. Indeed, the newly elected Pink Tide regimes have taken on the private media with a vengeance: in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa has proposed that the constitution disallow bankers from financing media outlets. According to him, Ecuadoran television is controlled by powerful interests and the Association of Television Channels is nothing more than a “bankers club.” In Bolivia, indigenous President Evo Morales launched a weekly radio show called The People Are News. The show airs for two hours each week on the Patria Nueva (New Fatherland) state network.

If Zelaya returns to power in Honduras, which seems likely, then we could see the government take on the power of private TV, radio and the like more significantly, perhaps by emphasizing more state media. It will be merely the latest chapter in the ongoing information war between the conservative, globalizing elite and more left-leaning leaders who are coming to power throughout the region.

Update from Tegucigalpa, SOA Watch 7 in Honduras!

escrito por Lisa Sullivan, SOA Watch Latin America Coordinator
Tuesday, 07 de July de 2009

Greetings from the quiet of the curfew here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The curfew has just begun, and the normal rattle of traffic outside this one-star hotel in the heart of the city is silenced.

Three of the seven of our delegation are tapping away at our computers, trying to put down some first impressions of this country that pulled our heart strings and brought us to Honduras, in spite of rather difficult odds of getting here. It took me 3 days from my home in Venezuela via Miami, San Salvador and lots of bus and taxi rides in the wee hours. Laura Slattery, former West Point graduate and SOA Watch prisoner of conscience bought her ticket to Honduras 2 hours after reading my email in California. Like all of us, she got stuck on Sunday when Honduras closed all its airports, as the president attempted, unsuccessfully, to return to his country. Never one to sit still for long, Laura then jumped on another plane to El Salvador to join me in coming over by land.

Kent Spriggs, human rights lawyer and SOAW activist from Florida made a similar quick decision to join us, and traveled from Atlanta together with Roy Bourgeois and Dan Kovalik of the United Steel Workers. They waited 2 days for the airport in Tegucigalpa to open, finally opted to fly to San Pedro Sula and go by land to the capital. Joe Mulligan, a Jesuit priest in Nicaragua and Tom Loudon of the Quixote Center, also gave us waiting for an air route, and left Managua at 4 a.m. to get here by bus this afternoon.

The 6-hour bus trip from that Laura and I took from San Salvador turned into 10+, due to military road checks and back ups at the entrance to this mountainous capital caused by blocked roads and marches. We got a flavor of the city with our first taxi ride from the bus station. Our driver, a gregarious and enterprising guy, piled several of us in to take us to 3 distant destinations. We got a good glimpse of the city and the massive amounts of graffiti on the walls:" fuera golpistas!" "no mas Pinochilettis" ."Mel te esperamos". As soon as the middle class lady who told us she was grateful to the new president for saving them from communism disembarked, the taxi driver turned to us to say that she was probably mad since Zelaya had raised minimum wages by 60 percent. Welcome to Honduras, a country divided, wounded, stunned and defiant.

After converging in our little hotel, the seven of us headed to the Committee of Family Members of the Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH) to meet with their director, Bertha Oliva, who has been keeping us in the loop by cell phone reports during this week. Her first words during our dinner were "This is a coup not only to Honduras, but to all of Latin America". Bertha narrated to us the days before the coup. It was becoming clear that winds of change were sweeping through the country, and many of those in power felt threatened.

Joe and I had sensed this only a month earlier, when we visited Honduras and met with Zelaya on an SOAW visit . We were invited to participate in what was, without a doubt, the most fascinating meeting of my 32 years in Latin America. It was a 6 hour frank and open dialogue between the president, several of his ministers and some 30 leaders of the social movement - peasants, workers, indigenous, human rights, women, in which deep issues such as whether to close the Palmarola base, to continue with the free trade agreement, to send troops to the SOA, etc.The president listened, debated, asked questions. I had never witnessed such frank dialogue between such a collection of high government officials and social movement leaders. When I returned to the states, I shared that - while most people were looking elsewhere - such as El Salvador, that Honduras was the most fascinating country in Latin America at the moment. Little did I know...

However, people like Bertha DID know that something was coming. On the night of June 25th, many leaders of the social movements gathered with the president. He was called to meet with four generals. Upon exiting the meeting, Zelaya told the close group of supporters, with a grave face, that he was going to announce the resignation of the Defense Minister, the destitution of the head of the armed forced (SOA grad Romeo Vasquez) and the cancellation of the consultative vote on the constitutional assembly, to be held on June 28th. The group insisted that he could not eliminate this consultation, that it belonged to the people. Betha said that she was one of them. While she said that as a human rights leader, it wasn't in her position to support or oppose a president, the consultation was something that had elevated the self esteem of the people. There was a sense, for the first time, that they were being taken into account in shaping the direction of their nation. The president agreed, and that night many knew that the coup was sealed. These powerful figures could not allow the consultation to win, as was clear would happen on June 28

And, there are so many other stories, but bed calls us. Tomorrow we hope to meet with leaders of the social movements, participate in a scheduled march, try to meet with someone from the U.S.embassy and do some interviews. But mostly, we hope to get a better sense of what Hondurans are experiencing at this moment, and to ask how we can help.

I"ll keep you posted, abrazos from Tegucigalpa, Lisa

Manuel "Mel" Zelaya is a rancher and business owner who wears large cowboy hats and, in November 2005, was elected president of Honduras, an impoverished Central American country with a population of 7.5 million. On June 28 of this year the Honduran military, backed by the country's elite, removed Zelaya from power. He instantly became a focus of attention for the U.S. media -- his statements were examined, and his appearances at the United Nations and regional meetings were dutifully covered. Most media depicted him as a major "leftist strongman" seeking to extend his term of office in the style of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

U.S. journalists generally present world events as the actions of a few important individuals, a sort of Greek drama without the chorus. Latin American politics especially are viewed as a parade of good guys and bad guys -- Fidel Castro, August Pinochet, Hugo Chávez, Alvaro Uribe. Which is good and which is bad depends on your perspective.

The current Honduras coverage is no exception. Most working people in this country, pressed by the worst economic crisis of their lifetime, understandably change the channel or click on another website. If you want celebrity news, the death of Michael Jackson is far more gripping than the overthrow of Mel Zelaya.

"No Revolutionary"

But was this coup really about a leftist strongman?

"What Zelaya has done has just been little reforms," Rafael Alegría, the leader of the local branch of the international group Vía Campesina ("Campesino Way"), explained to the Mexican daily La Jornada on June 29. "He isn't a socialist or a revolutionary, but these reforms, which didn't harm the oligarchy at all, have been enough for them to attack him furiously."

The local elite and the U.S. media insist that the nonbinding referendum Zelaya wanted to hold on June 28 was a power grab. In reality Hondurans would simply have been asked whether they wanted to vote in the November general elections on a constituent assembly to rewrite the 1982 Constitution. If this actually came about, the new Constitution might well allow presidential reelection, but it's not easy to see how any constituent assembly could finish its work in time to keep Zelaya in office after his term expires on January 27, 2010.

A more likely motive for the coup lies in the Honduran oligarchy's fear of what would happen if the people got a chance to write their own Constitution.

Not many people in the United States are aware that over the past few decades Hondurans have created, under very adverse circumstances, a vibrant grassroots movement: campesino organizations like Vía Campesina; three labor confederations, often competing, sometimes cooperating; a strong indigenous movement; Afro-Honduran groups like the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH);human rights monitoring groups like the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH); environmental groups; community radio stations; an anti-militarization movement; women's groups; student groups; and a nascent LGBT movement.

Early this year, Honduran teachers went on strike for back pay and held a sit-in at the education ministry. In February the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) organized a 12-day mobilization to protest the destruction of forests. In April hundreds of indigenous Chortí blocked access to the Copán archeological park, probably Honduras' most important ancient Mayan site, to press demands for land.

None of these were one-time protests -- they continued long-term struggles, some going back for years. And these same groups, which frequently support each other and coordinate their actions, are the ones that have confronted the coup and the subsequent repression with massive and spirited protests throughout the country.

The Chorus Takes the Stage

The growth of social movements in Honduras reflects a pattern. Everywhere you look in the hemisphere, the protagonists of the drama are increasingly "the people from below" -- los de abajo, as Mariano Azuela called the subjects of his novel of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

In the first months of 2009, general strikes by virtually the whole population of the "French overseas departments" of Guadeloupe and Martinique forced President Nicolas Sarkozy to agree to an increase in the minimum wage -- and inspired workers' struggles in European France. Starting in April, militant protests by indigenous Peruvians in the Amazon region, backed by urban unionists, shook the pro-U.S. government of President Alan García. In June students battled United Nations troops in Haiti, the only country in the Americas more impoverished than Honduras, in support of workers' demands for a higher minimum wage.

These struggles get little media attention here, but they have a direct bearing on los de abajo of our own country. Working people in the United States understand the effects of outsourcing industrial work to other countries, and they know about the pressure undocumented workers put on the wages of the native born. What they don't know is how these phenomena are linked to U.S. foreign policy.

Some 100,000 Hondurans now work in their country's maquiladora sector, which assembles apparel and automotive parts largely for the U.S. market. About 300,000 Hondurans live and work in the United States itself, according to the 2000 census. Hondurans don't actually want to do backbreaking labor for minuscule pay in maquilas in San Pedro Sula, much less risk their lives crossing the border to work in the sweatshops of Los Angeles and New York. It is repression by the U.S.-backed military and oligarchy and the hardships resulting from US-promoted economic policies and U.S.-dominated trade deals like the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that have forced Hondurans into these jobs.

It doesn't do U.S. workers any good to rail against foreign countries and "illegal" immigrants. If people here are serious about defending their standard of living, they have no choice but to oppose their government's foreign policies and to support their counterparts in countries like Honduras. Unions like United Electrical Workers (UE) and organizations like the National Labor Committee, US LEAP, Students Against Sweatshops, and the Maquila Solidarity Network are already active in this work. We need to back them -- and maybe learn some lessons from Latin America about how to fight for our rights.

The following statement was hastily translated and provided by Carlos Marentes, a US citizen and member of Via Campesina, who is in Honduras to accompany the Honduran people as they resist the military coup.

TESTIMONY OF WENDY CRUZ OF THE HONDURAN PEASANT MOVEMENT

Sisters and brothers of the World,

I write this testimony with my eyes full of tears and a sadden heart after an intensive day of struggle with my sisters and brothers of Honduras.

I am a woman from a humble family. I am a peasant. I have gained my militancy and class consciousness along with the peasants who work every day under the hot sun, and who see no future for their sons and daughters who have to migrate to other countries seeking better living conditions because in our country, Honduras, the bipartisan political system (Liberals and Nationalists have shared the power for more than 100 years) the majority live in extreme poverty, neglected, without access to health, to a dignified home, without access to a piece of land because the national oligarchy owns the whole country and have pushed 90 per cent of the population into extreme poverty and social exclusion.

Today, Sunday July 5, we have completed eight days of peaceful resistance. Today we marched, more than 500 thousand persons in the city of Tegucigalpa towards the airport of Toncontín, with the expectation of welcoming president Manuel Zelaya Rosales. While us where waiting the arrival of our president, the army started to shoot us with tear gases and real bullets. Three Honduran were killed only because they were demanding peace and the right to live in a country with real civic participation, and not the false democracy we have been living for 100 years. The dead persons included 21 year old, Isis Oveth, from the village "Alde de Santa Cruz", Guayape, municipality of Olancho and another young man, Alexis Zavala is among the many persons who were badly injured by the army’ repression.

Alter the violent attack I was afraid to be arrested by the police because we have a curfew and by the time we escaped the repression it was already night, past the curfew hours. But despite the repression, my spirit is stronger, because I have the dream that one day my son (15 years old) and my daughter (10 years old) and all the future generations will enjoy a country with equality, equity and more than that, a day when all of us will be the actors of our destiny.

I would like to tell all the men and women of the World who have expressed solidarity with our struggle, that all of us in Honduras are determined to achieve VICTORY and to restore the legitimate government of our president Manuel Zelaya in the memory of the martyrs of this Sunday July 5, 2009.

Long live the martyrs for the defense of our rights to be actors of our own destiny!

Long live ISIS OVETH and all the brothers killed today!

WE ARE HONDURAN PEOPLE AND WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIVE IN PEACE IN A TRUE DEMOCRACY!

GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE, GLOBALIZE HOPE!

THANKS TO THE WORLD FOR THEIR GREAT SOLIDARITY... THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES BECAUSE AS EMILIANO ZAPATA SAID: "IT’S BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET THAN TO LIVE ON YOUR KNEES!"

Tegucigalpa, MDC. Honduras, C.A., July 5, 2009.

To The American People On Independence Day, 4th July

On the 4th of July of each year, you celebrate your independence day, which you consider America’s most precious day, as it represents your freedom and true independence that you achieved by resisting British Occupation. You sacrificed for this day and fought for eight years to achieve your just aim, by simply refusing any kind of occupation and loss of true sovereignty.

Your country became the strongest nation in the world. But instead of spreading peace and freedom between mankind, your governments started to enslave nations economically in your name; punishment for anyone who does not want to be under your sphere of influence became the name of the game. This attitude was clearly crystallised when your government decided to break international law by invading Iraq under the disguise of weapons of mass destruction. But the whole world knows now the fallacy of this claim, and it has become crystal clear for all that the true aim is to have hands on control on the natural resources of Iraq. Your government believes that it has achieved this aim by imposing an ideologically polarized political system and constitution, and embedding wide spread corruption in the system, in order to reap the reward of controlling oil fields and other natural resources through false and orchestrated auctions.

But let me tell you what your country has achieved for you. Your government has committee the most evil act against humanity for the sake of controlling the resources of another nation in your name, in the name of your humanity and your civilisation. It tried to legalise this evil crime by initiating a so called treaty with the so called government of Iraq. History will Judge those Iraqis who signed, voted and who are quite about it as having committed high treason against the people of Iraq; it is simply an attempt to legalise the most evil act committed in the history of humanity. I do not mean the millions of orphans, or the millions of widows, or the millions of displaced people, or the crimes committed by your military army against detainees, or the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure. I mean the use of the American military of at least 2000 tons of depleted uranium in the war against Iraq, which has polluted more or less all aspects of the environment in my beloved Iraq.

Depleted uranium is the true weapon of mass destruction, especially the way its pollution affects all aspects of normal life, land and water. To find out the true effect of this weapon, go and visit what ever is left of Iraqi hospitals; to see with your own eyes the crimes of your government and military. This inhumane weapon has caused wide spread cancer especially in women and children, and even unborn foetuses and genes. Yes it will affect genes for ten and probably hundred of years to come. An if you can not visit Iraqi hospitals, visit the hundred of thousands of your own veterans who are suffering from long term illnesses caused by depleted uranium according to the reports of your own institutions. That is correct; your government has even committed hideous crimes against your own soldiers.

You need to stop this hypocrisy of yours. On your independence day, I would like to remind you that resisting occupation is the right of all free people in the world, and it is the right of the people of Iraq to resist your occupation and hijacking their true sovereignty. You are not aware of the true losses Iraqi resistance has inflected on your military. The findings of your own academics and research institution indicate that the causalities are as high as half a million dead and disabled veterans with terminal illnesses. This is what your government has achieved in this unjust war on the people of Iraq as a result of the actions of the heroic Iraqi resistance. As to the so called withdrawal of the US military from Iraqi cities and towns and the charade of handing over sovereignty, I can assure you that free Iraqis are all too aware of this deception and will not be deceived by it. Free Iraqis will continue their resistance until all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq, and gain true independence and sovereignty. Just like their grandfathers in the last century who fought British rule until they gained independence. In order to know the willpower and tenacity of free Iraqis, read about the twenties revolution, as your future generations will read about the war of the twenty first century.

You must understand that the people of Iraq will not forgive you until you apologies and compensate justly for all the crimes and damages your government and military have committed again the people of Iraq and their environment. You can rest assure that if you do not, Iraqi people including future generations will hold you legally accountable for these crimes to gain a just compensation even after independence.

Lastly, I say to you that your country is less than two hundred and fifty years old. But the cradle of civilisation in Mesopotamia is thousands years old. This free land went through trials and tribulation from time to time over the centuries, but it has always regained its freedom and independence at the hands of its free sons.

Professor Mohammad Al-Ani
Chairman, Iraqi Consultants Council
4th July 2009

Policy Shown Again In Honduras

Hugo Morliz Mercado

UNTIL Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is returned to Tegucigalpa with all of the powers established in that Central American nation’s Constitution, we must be wary of the "twin-track" policy. There is too much experience in "Our America" of clever "diplomatic" moves by the White House and the ability of its intelligence agencies to generate confusion and get away with it in the end.

The "twin-track policy" was developed by the United States in the 1980s to be used against the Nicaraguan revolution. Two different tactics with one single strategy (defeating the Sandinista movement) were translated into a combination of war, whose military base was in Honduras, and the promotion of dialogue demanded by sectors opposed to military intervention but also opposed to the then-president Daniel Ortega. Both the organization and financing of the "Contras" and the creation of spaces for dialogue served to wear down the revolutionary government. In 1989, the FSLN lost the power it had won militarily in 1979.

But if the above example could be disqualified because of the time gone by or justified on account of having occurred in the middle of the Cold War, the Haiti case is quite demonstrative of the double standards used by the imperialist bourgeoisie. On Sunday, February 29, 2004, a coup d’état deposed President Jean Bertrand Aristide. The United States and the OAS harshly condemned that interruption of democratic institutionalism. A resignation letter from the Haitian president was later released without any previous confirmation. The expectations of those who thought — as a result of the U.S. position — that they would witness the deposed president’s return to Port-au-Prince began to evaporate as the days went by and as the empire worked to open up a transition that would take into account the sectors in conflict.

The statement this past June 28 of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would seem to confirm the data of historical experience. "When I talk about supporting the work of the OAS, it is a question of working with the parties in Honduras, so that all of the parties involved take a step back and look at how their democratic institutions should be working," the high-ranking U.S. official said. What could Clinton have meant when she said: "It should be understood that there is a lot at stake for maintaining democracy; we don’t want to go backwards, and we want all parties to play a responsible role in that aspect." Hopefully the "not go backwards" does not mean backing the removal from office of Zelaya, who does not have the support of parties in the National Congress — including the Liberal Party, with which he won the 2005 presidential election — because he has taken Latin Americanist positions, or making a fresh start in such a way that the organizers of the coup d’état — the first in the Obama era — are not tried and sentenced.

Neither Dan Restrepo nor Clinton condemned the kidnapping of Zelaya or the coup d’état in terms that one would expect from an administration that claims to be interested in rebuilding its links with Latin America. Moreover, it is striking that Marcia Villeda, vice president of the Honduran Congress, told CNN that a solution was being sought for more than a week to prevent the referendum going ahead, and it is also striking that Hugo Llorens, the U.S. ambassador to that country, participated in those talks.

Other interpretations of the Honduras events, such as that of researcher Eva Golinger, lead one to think about the participation of the Pentagon and the CIA, which, in any case, raises many questions as to the real information available to the Obama administration before and during the military coup, although it may seem exaggerated to suggest that the cause of the coup could have been the expulsion of U.S. soldiers from Honduras.

The United States — which in the early 20th century had the United Fruit Company and Rosario Mining controlling almost 100% of banana and mineral exports — now has a military base in Soto Cano, 97 km from the capital, and the Honduran military does little or virtually nothing without the consent of its U.S. counterpart. In fact, it is unlikely that the Honduran military would have carried out the coup without the consent of high-ranking U.S. officials based in the country, or without the U.S. intelligence services, very active in that Central American country, having been aware of the anti-democratic plot.

One thing that is unquestionable is that the reaction of the White House gradually changed as the Honduran and international scenario reflected overwhelming condemnation of the cowardly coup perpetrated by the country’s bourgeoisie, strongly tied to U.S. companies, and supported by the media silence against democracy and the legitimately constituted government. Initially Obama, in the voice of Dan Restrepo, expressed his concern (he did not use the word condemnation) over events, and urged that "the Honduran people should solve their problems without the participation of any foreign interference." In the afternoon, the Latin America advisor to the Democratic administration reiterated virtually the same words.

The United States has ended up yielding to the international condemnation led by the member countries of the ALBA-TCP. It couldn’t have done otherwise; the cost would have been too high. But that does not mean that the imperial bourgeoisie is not going to replay its "twin-track policy." Renouncing subversion and counterinsurgency would be to deny its very nature.

"Our America" is not the same as it was in the 1970s. The rapid reaction of progressive and revolutionary governments has been — despite the conduct of the transnational corporate media — decisive in terms of preventing the consolidation of the de facto regime. Moreover, with respect to the media, Telesur has demonstrated, as if there was any doubt, how correct it was to create that network.

That is why, in order for Honduras not to become the Nicaragua of the 1980s and the Haiti of 2004, it is necessary for the peoples and governments of "Our America" to increase the pressure and to maintain their guard as to what the United States is going to do. Honduras could be a trial balloon. (Taken from Rebelión)

Translated by Granma International

July 4, 2009
Immigration News

The military coup in Honduras is providing an unexpected test of Mexico’ immigration and refugee policies. On Friday, July 3, dozens of Honduran nationals arrived at a church-run migrant shelter in the southern state of Oaxaca seeking refugee status because of the political situation in their country.

Alejandro Solaline Guerra, spokesman for the Mexican Episcopal Conference, said a group of Hondurans sought assistance at the House of Mercy in Ciudad Ixtepec on the Tehuantepec Peninsula. The migrant advocate said the bishops’ organization will contact the National Migration Institute to request refugee status for the Hondurans under international law.

“Migrants from a country in a state of war should not be denied refugee status,” Solaline declared.

The Honduran political crisis could aggravate an already-conflictive situation in Mexico’s southern border region. Despite the international economic crisis, thousands of Central Americans and other Latin migrants continue crossing the country’s southern border en route to the United States. Along the way, migrants remain a favorite target of corrupt Mexican officials and bands of organized criminals.

A report from Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) last month documented the kidnappings in Mexico of nearly 10,000 Latin American migrants, mainly from Central America, from September 2008 to February 2009. At least 157 women were among the victims; two women were murdered and others raped, according to the CNDH.

In the latest case to the hit the national press, the Mexican Army and law enforcement officials from Tabasco and Chiapas states detained 8 alleged kidnappers last week. A Honduran national, Francisco Handall Polanco, was among the group of alleged Zetas gang members arrested. Accused of holding 51 migrants against their will at a ranch in Tabasco, the group reportedly demanded ransoms reaching $5,000 from family members in return for releasing loved ones.

Once in the hands of authorities, migrants from Honduras and other nations are usually quickly deported. Emilio Chavez, director of the pro-migrant Sin Fronteras organization, charged that Mexico maintains a “double standard” when it comes to migrant issues. While pressuring the United States to improve its treatment of Mexican migrants, Mexico fails to protect Central Americans within its own borders, Chavez contended.

If the Honduran crisis drags on, Mexico could see greater-than-expected numbers of migrants on its southern border. The Mexican Episcopal Conference’s Solaline said more Hondurans are reportedly on their way to Oaxaca. Identified only as “Janet,” an 18-year-old Honduran already in Ciudad Ixtepec described the situation in her country as grim.

“Schools are closed and the hospitals have no medicine,” she said, adding that electricity and propane gas shortages were also a problem.

Sources: La Jornada, July 4, 2009. Articles by Octavio Velez, Emir Olivares and Angeles Mariscal. El Universal, July 4, 2009. Article by Oscar Gutierrez. Cimacnoticias.com, July 3, 2009. Article by Alejandra Gonzalez. CNDH.org.mx

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

Imperial Culture and Moral Absurdity in the Age of Obama: From Teheran and Bala Boluk to New York, Bagua, and Tegucigalpa

By Paul Street

During a concert at Chicago's United Center last May 12th, Bruce Springsteen observed that "sometimes it seems like the more things change the more they stay the same." He was talking about the persistence and indeed the deepening of poverty and inequality in the United States, where financial parasites and perpetrators receive untold billions of taxpayer dollars while millions are pushed further into destitution, their fate worsened by a regressive welfare "reform" (elimination) that "progressive" President Barack Obama has repeatedly praised as a great bipartisan policy triumph.

WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS

Among numerous other examples of "things stay[ing] the same," the Boss (Springsteen, that is) might also have mentioned the deeply ingrained tendency of top U.S. politicians and dominant U.S. media to make unstated but easily discernible distinctions between "worthy" and "unworthy victims" in world affairs.

"Worthy victims" are killed by officially designated enemies of the inherently virtuous United States. Their deaths are reported in ways meant to elicit sympathy and to encourage outrage against their murderers. Some of them can become martyrs.

"Unworthy victims" perish at the hands of the intrinsically honorable United States and/or its officially designated allies and clients. They die anonymously and without fanfare, passing down the memory hole devoid of sympathy in dominant U.S. media and political culture, where their deaths often register little more than those of ants crushed beneath the wheels of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle or (to mention another great weapon of empire) a CNN camera truck.

Pop quiz question #1, fellow American: who is Neda Soltan? Who killed her?

Yes, that's right. She's the beautiful 26 year-old woman who was murdered on June 20th by (the story goes) a government sniper engaged in the repression of protests against a rigged election in Iran.

You knew that right away. Of course you did. Neda was all over U.S. television as a global democracy symbol for days - a ubiquitous and potent media image until she was knocked off center stage by the ongoing death drama of the mysterious American pop icon Michael Jackson (the coverage of which most Americans find "excessive"). Neda was murdered by an officially designated U.S. enemy state.

No less an American than President Obama said he had watched the graphic Internet video of Neda's death. "While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful, we also know this: those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history," Obama said. The president called the video "heartbreaking."

"I think that anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust about that," he claimed.

"No iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness," Obama added.

Pop quiz question # 2: name a single person among the more than ten dozen who died in the western Afghanistan village of Grani in Bala Boluk district in the province of Farah in the first week of last May. Ninety-three of the people killed were children, many blown literally to bits. Angry and grieving villagers put some of the victims' body parts in pickup trucks and wagons and hauled them for public viewing to provincial headquarters. On May 4th, Dr Atiqullah, a Grani resident, told Pajhwok Afghan News that "bombardment destroyed the whole village and some of the mutilated bodies were beyond recognition. He said they had so far retrieved 123 dead bodies from beneath the debris of the destroyed homes by using tractors."

Can't come up with a name? Of course you can't. The civilians in question were slaughtered from the sky by the world's only Superpower - the United States. They did not merit meaningful identification and personalization by U.S. communication authorities.

TOO "GOOD" TO APOLOGIZE

They and the many thousands of Afghans (and Iraqis and Pakistanis) that "we") have butchered in recent years are unworthy victims. They died tragically - "regrettably" but inescapably - as "collateral damage" in the military campaigns of a morally splendid nation that seeks to do noble things - to spread freedom, peace, prosperity, and democracy - in the world. As President Barack Obama told CNN's Candy Crowley last July, the U.S. should never apologize for any its actions - even for its sporadic "mistakes" (Obama has always refused to apply the word "crime" to any of Uncle Sam's many past transgressions) - on the global stage. This, he explained, is because America is "a force for good" in the world.

As Barack Obama's "loved" philosopher, the establishment theologian Reinhold Niebhur, told the U.S. imperial class after World War Two: "the paradox of grace" means that U.S. policymakers cannot fulfill their sacred purpose of advancing goodness on Earth if they shirk from their intimately related duty to commit sin. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

If America's overflowing uprightness leads its benevolent tanks, helicopters, bombers, unmanned aerial vehicles to "occasionally" squash civilian insects abroad, that's a shame. But "collateral damage" is unavoidable when you are a Superpower working for peace, freedom, and the material and spiritual betterment of humanity. As War Democrat Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright explained in the fall of 1999, seven months after the U.S. initiated deadly bombing runs over Belgrade, "The United States is good. We try to do our best everywhere." When asked about the death of more than half a million Iraqi children due to U.S.-led "economic sanctions," Albright told CBS television that "we think the price is worth paying" to advance the United States' fundamentally honorable policy goals.

Consistent with his repeatedly stated "American exceptionalist" faith in the unmatched moral purity of U.S. foreign policy and national character, Barack Obama has consistently (as candidate and as president) proclaimed the United States' criminal assault on Afghanistan (October 2001 to ????) to be a "good," "just" and "proper" war. The dominant U.S. corporate war and entertainment media has not seen fit to question this judgment even as hundreds of innocent civilian Afghans and Pakistanis perish in the face of Obama's expanded and re-branded "global war on terror," replete with a stepping up of "targeted assassinations," the appointment of a notorious death squad ("special ops") leader (Stanley A. McChrystal) to the head of the newly merged "Af-Pak" war theater, and the escalation of provocative drone attacks (executed by distant technicians in air-conditioned command centers in California) in South Asia

Neither Obama nor his "mainstream" media allies were about to "bear witness" to the "unfortunate" massacre of civilian creatures in remote Afghan villages.

Shit" like the aerial dismemberment of dozens of Pashtun children "Happens" when you are on a global mission from God and/or History.

Such is the "paradox of grace."

Meanwhile, Obama's Pentagon tried to pin the unspeakable carnage from the heavens in Bala Boluk on..."Taliban grenades."

SCARING NEW YORKERS V. KILLING AFGHANS

Around the same time that Grani's villagers collected the remains of their U.S.-pulverized children, Obama and his Republican Secretary of Defense Robert Gates apologized to the American people and fired a White House official. They did this because a late-April presidential photo shoot above Manhattan went terribly bad. The president's plane, "Air Force One," had flown far too low over the island with a fighter jet in tow, terrifying New York City residents and office-workers by reminding them of 9/11.

Scaring New Yorkers and stirring up the ghosts of 9/11 elicited an executive branch apology and the discharge of a staffer. Actually killing more than 100 Afghan civilians did not require public contrition or a single firing. The imperial gendarmes even got to make up childish tales about how so many civilians died in Grani ("the Taliban did it") - stories that were taken seriously by "mainstream" media.

Such are the ironies and burdens of imperial culture!

Of course, 9/11's U.S. dead are the ultimate worthy victims in reigning U.S. political/media culture. The New York Times ran a touching series of photos and biographies of every 9/11 victim they could over many months in 2002. No such personalization and respect has ever been or ever will be granted by U.S. media to any of the much larger number of Arabs and Pashtuns and others who have died prematurely because of U.S. actions, including more than 1 million Iraqis (killed by another illegal invasion Obama and his many fellow War Democrats are sustaining in the name of peace and "withdrawal") who have perished since March of 2003.

The unworthy victims of Superpower's rogue behavior die in mass anonymity, unlike Neda, whose name Obama knows. Apparently some kind of iron fist and/or velvet glove is powerful enough to "shut off" most U.S. citizens and the U.S. president from "bearing witness" to the huge number of Southwest and South Asians that "good" America has seen fit to liberate from existence since and before 9/11. There's "something fundamentally unjust about that" (to use Obama's words on the murder of Neda).

Such nationally narcissistic absence of concern is no small part of the richly bipartisan imperial-cultural matrix that did so much to cause the jetliner attacks of 2001. Until the perverse dichotomy between "worthy" and "unworthy victims" - along with much else in the imperial mindset and structure - is overcome, we can expect more and perhaps bigger attacks on the "homeland."

INVISIBLE VICTIMS IN PERU

Let us turn now to some recent events in Superpower's hemispheric "backyard." Pop Quiz # 3: Name any among the dozens of indigenous citizens and activists massacred by police while protesting oil and mining projects in the northern Peruvian Amazonian province of Bagua in the first week of June 2009. Find a Neda among the forty people, including three children, who died at the hands of police on June 6 and June 7. The indigenous Peruvians were trying to protect Amazonian ecology and their social and physical health from multinational corporations seeking to "move forward" under a series of Peruvian government decrees passed to implement a "Free Trade Agreement" with the U.S. The incident was only weakly covered in dominant U.S. media, which failed to report the predominantly state-inflicted nature of the violence and left out the underlying corporate-globalizationist and eco-cidal context behind the conflict. Also left out: presidential candidate Barack Obama's support for the anti-labor/anti-environment/anti-indigenous US-Peru Free Trade Agreement - the extension of the global investors' rights bill, the North American Free Trade Agreement to Peru - in the fall and winter of 2007. Candidate Obama falsely claimed that the bill contained important labor and environmental protections - a deception for which he was strongly criticized by the tragic John Edwards.

You'll have to do some research to get any names of the Bagua dead, fellow American. They died in the usual scornful anonymity conferred upon the unworthy victims who are liquidated by U.S. clients and on the wrong side of U.S. global policy.

A RECENT OPPORTUNITY TO BE GOOD IN SUPERPOWER'S OWN BACKYARD

Last week Obama got another chance to reject the childish notion that righteous Uncle Sam might express some contrition for the murder and mayhem he causes across the world. During a White House visit by Chile's president Michele Bachelet, a Chilean reporter asked Obama if he might tender a U.S. state apology for the American Empire's critical role in the September 11, 1973 coup that overthrew that country's elected government and installed the murderous right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Obama refused, explaining that "I'm interested in going forward, not looking backward" (sound familiar?). The president added that "the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world" even if "there have been times where we've made mistakes." The reporter did not follow up to press the president on the "enormous [U.S.] good[ness]" involved in (to mention a few key past and ongoing "mistakes" like murdering 3 million Indochinese during the 1960s and 1970s, killing a million Iraqis with "economic sanctions" during the 1990s, making a grossly outsized contribution to global warming and other forms of planetary pollution, incarcerating more then 2 million of its own citizens, sustaining dictatorships in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, accounting for nearly half the world's military spending, and sustaining an empire that includes more than 760 bases located across more than 130 countries in a planet where more than 2 billion people live and die on less than a dollar a day, thanks to a world capitalist system that the U.S. government has long sought to protect and expand with, well, an iron fist when "necessary."

Just this last week, events in Honduras have offered Obama a shining opportunity to "go forward" as "an enormous force for good in the world" by acting decisively against the military officials who executed a coup against Honduras' democratically elected, left-leaning president Manuel Zelaya. The coup was (quite naturally) carried out by U.S.-trained and U.S.-funded military forces and conducted with U.S.-supplied military equipment. Obama possesses the power to restore Zelaya to his rightful office in Honduras, a nation whose government and economy has long been exceedingly dependent on the U.S. More than that, there are disturbing questions about Washington's role leading up to the coup. As the incisive left journalist and author Jeremy Scahill noted Monday morning:

"It is impossible to imagine that the US was not aware that the coup was in the works. In fact, this was basically confirmed by The New York Times in Monday's paper...While the US has issued heavily-qualified statements critical of the coup—in the aftermath of the events in Honduras—the US could have flexed its tremendous economic muscle before the coup and told the military coup plotters to stand down. The US ties to the Honduran military and political establishment run far too deep for all of this to have gone down without at least tacit support or the turning of a blind eye by some US political or military official(s)."

"Here are some facts to consider: the US is the top trading partner for Honduras. The coup plotters/supporters in the Honduran Congress are supporters of the ‘free trade agreements' Washington has imposed on the region. The coup leaders view their actions, in part, as a rejection of Hugo Chavez's influence in Honduras and with Zelaya and an embrace of the United States and Washington's ‘vision' for the region. Obama and the US military could likely have halted this coup with a simple series of phone calls."

According to the noted Latin American historian Greg Gandin one day after the coup, "The Honduran military is effectively a subsidiary of the United States government. Honduras, as a whole, if any Latin American country is fully owned by the United States, it's Honduras. Its economy is wholly based on trade, foreign aid and remittances. So if the US is opposed to this coup going forward, it won't go forward. Zelaya will return, if the United States—if Obama and Hillary Clinton are sincere in their statements about returning Zelaya to power."

On Sunday, Obama expressed "deep concern" regarding "the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya" and called on "all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms" and the "the rule of law" so as to resolve "existing tensions and disputes... through dialogue free from any outside interference."

Still, the White House, which keeps more than 500 troops and a number of planes and helicopters at a Honduran base, has refused to officially/legally declare the removal of Zelaya "a coup." Making such a declaration would trigger (under the Foreign Assistance Act) a cutoff of tens of millions of dollars of U.S. aid to the Central American nation. According to Reuters, "The [U.S.] State Department has requested $68.2 million in aid for fiscal year 2010 [for Honduras], which begins on October 1, up from $43.2 million in the current fiscal year and $40.5 million a year earlier."

John Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras and a leading, blood-soaked figure in U.S. coordination of mass-murderous right-wing state terror across Central America under Ronald Reagan, told the Washington Post that the Obama administration's disinclination to fully acknowledge the reality of recent events "appeared to reflect reluctance to see Zelaya returned unconditionally to power."

Will the U.S. work seriously for Zelaya's return? Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "We haven't laid out any demands that we're insisting on, because we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives." In a Monday briefing with reporters, U.S. Statement spokesman Ian Kelly had an interesting exchange with the press:

MR. KELLY: I believe that [the coup] is illegal, yes. I mean, I don't think that there was - look.....As I say, I am not an international lawyer. But this was not a democratic solution to some of the conflicts that we saw leading up to yesterday's events. And I think that's - that's our real issue with this, and I think that's the issue with all of our colleagues in the Organization of American States

QUESTION: Is it fair to say that the Secretary said, look, as a practical matter, this is a coup, but we're not yet making that formal legal determination, which would, of course, then trigger the cutoff of most aid.

MR. KELLY: Yeah.

QUESTION: That you were essentially trying to create some space to try to reach a negotiated outcome?

MR. KELLY: I think that we - right now, we're calling on all parties to come to a negotiated solution

Superpower could have prevented the coup in advance with some phone calls and well-placed threats. With just a tiny portion of the military and political force it pours into sustaining illegal invasions and occupations (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine) and dictatorships in oil-rich Southwest Asia, it could (in line with majority Latin American and global opinion)quickly restore the democratically elected president to power in Honduras.

AGAINST INDEPENDENT DEVELOPMENT

Expect some sort of "negotiated solution." Confronting a changed, left-leaning balance of forces and opinion in Latin America, the White House will probably bring Zelaya back on a conditional basis (think Bill Clinton and Haiti's Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1994), re-installing him on more disciplined, U.S.-friendly terms. The intermediate resolution the White House is seeking certainly falls short of what would be expected from an actual "enormous force for good in the world" and fits nicely with the imperial mindset articulated in Obama's aforementioned (and deeply conservative) Audacity of Hope:

"Of course there are those who would argue with my starting premise - that any global system built in America's image can alleviate misery in poorer countries...Rather than conform to America's rules, the argument goes, other countries should resist America's efforts to expand its hegemony; instead, they should follow their own path to development, taking their lead from left-leaning populists like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, or turning to more traditional principles of social organization, like Islamic law...I believe [Chavez and other] critics [of the U.S. and neoliberalism] are wrong...The system of [so-called - P.S.] free markets and [so-called -P.S. ] liberal democracy... offer[s] people around the world their best chance at a better life" (Obama, Audacity of Hope, p. 315).

Global capitalism does no such thing, of course. Candidate Obama's reflections ended on a profoundly false judgment, properly rejected by Mel Zelaya, who came into office in early 2006 as a center-right politician but who subsequently moved left and shifted his desperately impoverished and U.S.-controlled nation into Hugo Chavez's socialist "Bolivarian Alternative for the America's" (ALBA).

Truth be told, the not-so "free market" and "liberal-democratic" system of state capitalism and corporate-managed democracy is ever-more obviously opposed to ordinary peoples' "chance at better life" inside the United States itself. But that's another if intimately related topic in the saga of American Empire and Inequality Incorporated.

AL GOLPE DE ESTADO EN HONDURAS

We say no to the coup d'etat in Honduras

Statement by the chapters of network of networks in defense of humanity

http://www.todosconhonduras.cult.cu/index.php?lang=2

US seeks deal between Honduran coup leaders and deposed president

By Barry Grey
2 July 2009

The standoff between deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the “interim government” installed by the military following Sunday’s coup intensified Wednesday, following unanimous resolutions passed by the United Nations General Assembly and the Organization of American States (OAS) condemning the coup and demanding Zelaya’s reinstatement.

The OAS, meeting in Washington on Wednesday, gave the new regime in Tegucigalpa three days to relinquish power and allow Zelaya to resume his presidency or face suspension from the body. On Tuesday, Zelaya addressed the UN General Assembly and obtained its official support.

He announced that he would postpone his return to Honduras, originally slated for Thursday, to Saturday, after the three-day OAS deadline expires. He said he would be accompanied by OAS head José Miguel Insulza, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, Ecuadorian leader Rafael Correa, and Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the Nicaraguan president of the UN General Assembly.

The show of support from the OAS and the UN was joined by a series of moves by governments in Latin America and Europe as well as international bodies aimed at isolating the new regime in Honduras and intensifying pressure on it. Ten Latin American countries have withdrawn their ambassadors, as well as Spain, France and Italy. The World Bank announced that it was suspending all loans to Honduras.

The country’s Central American neighbors—Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador—said they were cutting off all overland trade.

But the coup regime, headed by former parliamentary speaker Roberto Micheletti, maintained a public posture of defiance. Micheletti and other officials said they would arrest Zelaya the minute he entered Honduras and put him on trial for 18 crimes, including abuse of authority and treason. Officials also indicated that they would block Zelaya’s escorts from entering the country.

Micheletti declared that it would take a foreign invasion to restore Zelaya to power—a reference to threats by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to resort to force to undo the coup. On Tuesday, Chávez repeated those threats, warning that if the Honduran military or coup leaders respond aggressively to Zelaya’s return, “we won’t remain with our arms crossed.” He added, “If there is aggression against the [Zelaya] delegation, it would open another door that I don’t want to talk about.”

The Obama administration has officially joined in condemning the coup and calling for Zelaya’s reinstatement—US representatives participated in the votes at the OAS and the UN—but it has signaled its hostility to Zelaya. The 56-year-old land owner and logging baron, who was elected in 2005 as the candidate of the bourgeois establishment Liberal Party on a right-wing program, has won the enmity of Washington in recent years by adopting a populist posture and allying himself with Chávez.

The US has refrained from formally declaring Zelaya’s ouster a “coup,” a designation that would, under US laws, require Washington to cut off military aid to the country and impose sanctions. Nor has it recalled its ambassador.

Honduras is the only site in Central America where the US maintains a permanent military base. It has some 800 troops and personnel at an air base 60 miles from the country’s capital. Washington has for decades backed the most right-wing forces in the country, and utilized it as a base for counterrevolutionary operations throughout the region. The two officers who led Sunday’s coup, Army General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez and Air Force General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, were trained at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia.

In 1954, the CIA used Honduras as a base for the coup that overthrew Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, and in the 1980s the country was the base of operations for the US proxy war against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. These and other crimes of US imperialism have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands in Honduras and the surrounding region.

There is ample evidence that the Obama administration was deeply involved in plans by Zelaya’s opponents within the Honduran ruling elite—sections of business, the military, the political establishment and the Church—to destabilize or topple his government. The New York Times on Tuesday cited an unnamed US official as saying that US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon and US Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens spoke to “military officials and opposition leaders” in the days before the coup. He said, “There was talk of how they might remove the president from office, how he could be arrested, on whose authority they could do that.”

Both Shannon and Llorens served under the Bush administration as top advisers on Andean affairs—covering Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Their stints on the National Security Council and at the State Department coincided with the US-backed coup that briefly toppled Venezuela’s Chávez in 2002.

It appears that the Obama administration was seeking to effect a de facto coup, but without a direct use of the military and under the cover of constitutional legality. That would, it hoped, reverse Washington’s declining influence in Latin America and pave the way for an offensive against Chávez and his left nationalist allies in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and other countries aligned with Venezuela in the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.

Since Sunday’s coup, Washington has been working for a negotiated settlement between Zelaya and the new government, possibly involving restoring Zelaya to power, but on terms more favorable to the US and under conditions where Zelaya’s government would be politically crippled.

As Kevin Casas-Zamora, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former vice president of Costa Rica, told the Los Angeles Times, “We’re talking about a guy who is at odds with virtually every institution and political actor in the country. He won’t be able to govern.”

On Tuesday, following his speech before the UN, Zelaya made a concession to Washington, telling reporters that if returned to office he would abandon his plans for a constitutional assembly and declaring that he would not seek a second term when his tenure expires in January. He also thanked the Obama administration for its “support.”

The coup plotters had seized on Zelaya’s attempt to hold a non-binding referendum Sunday on such a constitutional assembly as the pretext for his removal. They claimed that he was seeking to change the constitution so as to allow him to remain in power for a second term, a charge which Zelaya denies.

The opposition of the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and military appears to have increased sharply after Zelaya raised the minimum wage by 50 percent, a move that incensed the most powerful business interests in the country.

While officially calling for Zelaya’s return to power, the Obama administration has taken no significant steps to force such a development. It has not cut off trade with Honduras, whose economy is totally dependent on the US, sending 70 percent of its exports—mainly bananas and sugar—to the United States. Emilio Alvarez, the former Nicaraguan minister of international relations, told the Christian Science Monitor, “The United States is not going to impose any economic blockade on Honduras.”

On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that it was suspending joint operations with the Honduran military, but made no suggestion that it would withdraw US forces from the country. The Southern Command, which oversees US military operations in Honduras, issued a statement indicating an even more limited step, declaring that it would “minimize contact” with the Honduran military.

No senior Obama administration officials met with Zelaya while he was in Washington. Instead, a meeting was held between the deposed president and Thomas Shannon and Daniel Restrepo, a leading adviser on Latin American affairs on Obama’s National Security Council.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that, as part of efforts to negotiate a settlement between Zelaya and the coup regime, OAS head Insulza was seeking a meeting in a third country with a delegation of Honduran coup leaders.

The Obama administration is attempting to maintain a façade of support for democracy in Honduras in part because of the political difficulties it would face were it to openly back a military coup there while conducting a propaganda war against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad based on allegations—unsubstantiated—that he stole that country’s June 12 election. Moreover, it wants to avoid a debacle for the US similar to that which the Bush administration suffered as a result of its open support for the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela.

The real attitude of US imperialism to democracy in Honduras and the rest of Latin America is revealed in the virtual silence of the US media on the events unfolding in the impoverished country. Virtually no coverage is being given to the repression being carried out by the coup regime, or the ongoing resistance of workers and other opponents of the coup.

The “interim government” has flooded Tegucigalpa and other cities with troops and police and is maintaining a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew. There are reports of at least two anti-coup demonstrators having been killed and hundreds wounded or arrested. Officials in the Zelaya government have been detained or deported, television and radio stations have been closed down, and both Honduran and foreign journalists have been arrested. CNN’s Spanish channel was shut down by the regime, without evoking any public protest by the US network.

The head of the United Workers Federation reported that soldiers fired live ammunition into a crowd of protesters. Despite this repression, there are reports of walkouts by teachers and health workers, and protests in the capital and other cities involving thousands of people.

None of this is deemed particularly newsworthy by the US media, which has conducted a massive propaganda campaign against the Iranian regime for allegedly carrying out an electoral “coup d’état.”

Another US destabilization operation
by Barry Grey and Rafael Azul

While publicly opposing the military coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday, the Obama administration on Monday indicated that it will not cut off aid to the Central American country or demand Zelaya’s reinstatement.

Following a White House meeting with Washington’s closest Latin American ally, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, President Obama reiterated the position that the ouster of Zelaya was illegal. However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters at a State Department briefing that the US government was refraining from formally declaring the removal of Zelaya a “coup.”

Under the Foreign Assistance Act, no US aid can be given to a country whose elected head of government is removed by a military coup. The US is providing Honduras with $43 million in aid this year and maintains a major military presence in the country, including a base staffed by 600 US troops located 50 miles from the capital, Tegucigalpa. The US has also refrained from recalling its ambassador to Honduras.

Earlier on Monday, Clinton was asked whether the stated US goal of “restoring democratic order in Honduras” included returning Zelaya to the presidency. “We haven’t laid out any demands that we’re insisting on,” Clinton replied.

The official US line is that it attempted unsuccessfully to convince the Honduran military not to proceed with the coup. However, this amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that Washington was well aware of the coup plans.

Given the intimate and long-standing ties between the US and the Honduran military, the record over many decades of US-backed coups and military dictatorships in the country and the region, and the ongoing efforts to destabilize the regime of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, it is not credible that the US played no role in the removal of one of Chavez’s allies in Latin America.

Sunday’s coup was the culmination of an escalating political crisis in the impoverished country. Zelaya, a wealthy rancher, was elected in 2005 as the candidate of the bourgeois establishment Liberal Party. He ran on a right-wing program, but shifted in the intervening years, adopting a populist and nationalist persona in order to appease growing popular discontent, and allying himself with Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, all of which are headed by regimes considered by Washington to be hostile to US interests in Latin America.

At the beginning of June, Zelaya hosted the meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) which provisionally removed the long-standing US-backed ban on Cuba. He was among the most strident advocates of allowing Cuba to join the organization, frustrating US efforts to maintain the political quarantine on the Castro regime.

Zelaya increasingly earned the enmity of dominant sections of the Honduran business elite, the military brass and the Church—the forces most closely allied to US imperialism. On June 12, a motorcade transporting Zelaya came under fire in Tegucigalpa. At least one bullet hit the President’s limousine, shattering the windshield.

Zelaya’s effort to hold a referendum on changing the constitution became the pretext for the coup. His opponents declared the referendum an attempt to override a constitutional limit on presidential tenure to one four-year term. The referendum proposed that a vote be held on November 29, the same day as national elections, to establish a constitutional convention.

Earlier this month the Honduran Supreme Court declared the referendum unconstitutional, and army chief General Romeo Vasquez refused to allow it to proceed. When Zelaya fired Vasquez, the Supreme Court overturned the action and reinstated the general. Last Thursday, Zelaya led a demonstration to seize referendum ballots that were being held by the military.

When Zelaya attempted on Sunday to hold the referendum, recast as a nonbinding opinion poll, the military broke into his home, arrested him and deported him to Costa Rica. The Honduran Congress, with the imprimatur of the Supreme Court, elected the parliamentary speaker, Roberto Micheletti, a member of Zelaya’s Liberal Party, as “interim president.”

The military imposed a de facto state of siege in Tegucigalpa, cutting off electricity, closing down pro-Zelaya media and reportedly arresting the foreign minister and other government officials. Cuba has charged that its ambassador to Honduras and the ambassadors from Nicaragua and Venezuela were beaten by troops carrying out the coup.

Since Sunday, a tense standoff has continued between the army and pro-Zelaya demonstrators outside the presidential palace. On Monday there were reports of tear gas attacks on demonstrators.

Zelaya has vowed to return to power, and the coup has been condemned by the US, the European Union, the OAS, the United Nations and the leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Colombia and other countries allied with the Zelaya regime, who met Sunday night in Managua.

Chavez has, justifiably, cast the coup as an overt threat to his regime. He has charged the US with complicity, alleging involvement by Otto Reich, a long-time anti-Castro operative and favorite of anti-Castro exiles in Miami. Reich played a key role as a Reagan administration State Department official in the Iran-Contra conspiracy, in which Reagan authorized secret funding for the anti-Sandinista Contras, in violation of the Boland amendment which had been passed by Congress banning US aid to the Contra death squads.

Reich was one of a number of Iran-Contra veterans who were appointed to government posts in the administration of George W. Bush, serving as assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs.

The US used southern Honduras as the base of operations for its proxy war in the 1980s against the left nationalist, Cuban-allied regime in neighboring Nicaragua.

There are parallels in the Honduran events to the abortive 2002 US-backed coup against Venezuela’s Chavez. The current US ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, undoubtedly played a significant role in that failed attempt to oust an elected Latin American president.

In 2002 and 2003, Llorens served as the director of Andean affairs on the Bush administration’s National Security Council (NSC). In that post, he was the principal adviser to the president and the NSC on issues relating to Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.

Otto Reich was also implicated in the 2002 coup attempt. He met with Venezuelan opposition figures in the run-up to the attempted ouster of Chavez.

Reich is currently a board member of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, better known as the School of the Americas, located in Fort Benning, Georgia. Among the tens of thousands of Latin American military officers—and death squad leaders—who have been trained at the School of the Americas are two of the leaders of Sunday’s coup in Honduras, Army General Romeo Vasquez and Air Force General Luis Javier Prince Suazo.

Another graduate of the School of the Americas was Policarpo Paz Garcia, who ruled Honduras in 1980-82. Paz Garcia launched Battalion 3-16, one of the most feared death squads in Latin America.

Commenting on the calculations of the Obama administration, behind the official disapproval of the Honduran coup and the pro-democracy rhetoric, the intelligence web site Statfor on Monday noted that the US could exert irresistible pressure on Honduras to restore Zelaya to power, since the US provides the market for 70 percent of the country’s exports. “However,’” Stratfor wrote, “the aim of economic pressure would be for [interim President] Micheletti to make moves to support democracy, and open elections—such as those already scheduled for November 29—would easily appease the United States.”

The Washington Post reported that John Negroponte, the long-time US State Department official, said that Clinton’s remarks “appeared to reflect US reluctance to see Zelaya returned unconditionally to power.” The newspaper quoted Negroponte as saying, “I think she wants to preserve some leverage to get Zelaya to back down from his insistence on a referendum.”

Negroponte knows whereof he speaks. He was US ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s and virtually ran the US proxy war against Nicaragua that was based in Honduras.

It appears that the Obama administration is involved in an operation aimed at either permanently removing Zelaya or negotiating a return to power under conditions where his government would be weakened and its policies shifted in favor of US interests. This, in turn, would further US efforts to destabilize Chavez in Venezuela and shift the balance of power throughout Latin America.

The Obama administration has, however, learned something from the disastrous failure of the Bush administration’s botched coup against Chavez seven years ago. It is seeking to conceal its real aims behind formal opposition to the coup in Honduras and a public posture of fidelity to democratic elections.

Moreover, the US is in no position to openly support a coup in Honduras or maintain a public stance of neutrality under conditions in which it is waging a propaganda war and destabilization campaign in Iran based on allegations that the regime headed by President Ahmadinejad stole the June 12 election.

An unmistakable indicator of the real attitude of the Obama administration to the events in Honduras is the response of the US media. The media, led by the New York Times, immediately embraced the claims of the Iranian opposition that the election had been rigged and a coup had been carried out, without presenting any concrete evidence to support the allegations. It provided nonstop coverage of antigovernment demonstrations, and proclaimed the dissident faction of the clerical regime to be heading a “green revolution” for democracy.

In contrast, the US media has provided only minimal coverage of a real coup in Honduras. It has barely reported the police-state measures, arrests and beatings carried out by the Honduran military, and treated the anti-coup protests with utter indifference. On Monday evening, the events in Honduras were relegated to a mere mention on all three network news broadcasts, well behind the death of Michael Jackson.

What accounts for this stark contrast? The simple fact that the US government opposes the victor in the Iranian election and supports those who ousted Zelaya in Honduras.

The media, in particular the New York Times, which supported the 2002 coup attempt against Chavez, provides a further indication of US involvement in the Honduran coup. One month ago, as the political crisis in Honduras was heating up, the Times published a provocative article entitled “Chavez Seeks Tighter Grip on the Military.” The article retailed, without substantiation, claims of a massive crackdown by Chavez against dissidents within the Venezuelan military. This article, undoubtedly written on assignment from the CIA, was a certain indicator that the US was preparing subversion in the region.