Background to the Honduran coup: Poverty, exploitation and imperialist domination

[IndianaGreen]

Background to the Honduran coup: Poverty, exploitation and imperialist domination

By Rafael Azul
9 July 2009

On June 28, a US-trained army with close links to the US Southern Command removed President Manuel Zelaya from office, kidnapped him and expelled him from Honduras. Given the close relationship between the Honduran army and the Pentagon, it is not credible that the coup took place without Washington’s knowledge and tacit approval.

Behind the coup, which installed a new president, Roberto Micheletti, is one of the most exploitative and oppressive political and economic systems in the world upon which the wealthy landowning and businesses elites, the military and the church depend for their wealth. These forces are now threatened by the escalation of the class struggle.

Social tensions that are being fueled by the global economic crisis find their expression in deep divisions within the country’s ruling elite. Zelaya’s pragmatic turn to the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez for cheap oil and loans combined with his populist rhetoric and his government’s raising the minimum wage by 60 percent have all been aimed at containing the explosive social struggles in Honduras.

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Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the American hemisphere. By most indexes that measure living standards, it lags behind its Central American neighbors, Guatemala and Nicaragua, nations that are also extremely poor. In the Americas, only Haiti is poorer than Honduras.

Honduras is also in transition from a rural, largely agricultural economy dominated by a feudal social structure—giant estates rule over peasant-owned mini-farms—to an urban economy with a significant industrial sector. It has a young and growing urban working class.

The old plantation economy, based largely on the production of bananas for export to the United States, is being transformed. Larger capital investments have resulted in redundancies among agricultural workers, increasing poverty and pushing agricultural workers into the cities, despite chronic high levels of urban unemployment. This urban reserve army of labor now depends on the export-oriented manufacturing industries, commonly known as “maquiladoras.” Sweatshop working conditions at these plants are considered to be among the worst in the world.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/hond-j09.shtml

[DCKit]

1. The Great Red Scare to Our South.

Jeebus, what is this, the 1950's? The article sure explains a lot.

[SharonAnn]

2. Very good article. I lived there for a year, investigated what I saw while working, and

this article is an excellent summary and explanation.

When I was working in the urban area not far from the banana plantations, and traveled to the banana planation areas on weekends, I was shocked to see what the American fruit companies had done to the people in the area. Herded into small pueblos with no roads, no running water, no sewers, no schools, no medical services, and often no electricity. After 100 years of domination of the area, this is what American presence meant to them. Grinding poverty, and no hope for anything better.

In the urban areas the military was ever present this was in 1980-1981 during the military dictatorship). Walking the streets, driving the roads, stationed outside stores, vegetable markets, movie theaters, banks, restaurants, etc. A very heavy presence of armed military everywhere. It was very oppressive.

Young men were rounded up and forced into the military, often their family did not know what had happened to them for months or years. A favorite trick was for the military to show up, with a large truck, outside a movie theater as it was letting out and to grab all the young men.

If the people wanted Zelaya to be removed from office, there were legal ways to do it. But it wasn't "the people" who wanted him removed. It was the upper-class, who were angry about having to pay higher wages and having to pay taxes, it was the military who no longer had unbridled control of the country who wanted Zelaya removed.

Any "mediation" that doesn't put Zelaya back in office acquiesces to the military coup. Either he's put back in office or the coup has won.