Iron Fist, Velvet Glove: Obama and Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

07-20-2009 15:34
Iron Fist, Velvet Glove: Obama and Honduras
By Richard Collie

Back in April, at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, U.S. President Barack Obama was handed a copy of Eduardo Galleano's alternative history of the Americas: ``The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.''

The book vividly details the history of exploitation and meddling in Latin American affairs, firstly by the early European colonists, and eventually by the United States.

Indeed, it could be argued that no region or continent has suffered more than Latin America at the hands of U.S. imperialism over the years.

Just since World War II, the School of the Americas (SOA), founded in Panama but now based in Fort Benning, Ga., under the new guise of ``Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation'' (WHINSEC) has its grubby finger prints all over a long list of political assassinations, coups and human rights abuses in the region.

From its role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende and support for the dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile; through the training of the Contras death squads in Nicaragua; and more recently to the Bush administration's support of the failed attempt to dislodge Hugo Chavez in 2002.

The rise of the new left in Latin America is thanks in no small part to the painful memory of these events and a desire to carve out a new, different future free of foreign political manipulation. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the man who handed Obama the book in question at the summit in Trinidad, is a key proponent of this movement.

Who knows if Obama actually took the time to read the book, though judging be his current rhetoric, we can suspect that he did not.

When pressed recently by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet about the CIA's role in the establishment of the 17-year Pinochet regime, Obama responded that although he acknowledged that the U.S. had ``made mistakes,'' he was ``interested in going forward, not looking backward.''

More:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2009/07/137_48741.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Translated from Spanish: "They knew and they helped a little"

July 20, 2009
They knew and they helped a little
By Juan Gelman
July 16, 2009
{Spanish original}
Translated by Scott Campbell

The White House knew for months that a coup was being prepared in Honduras, even though now State Department spokespersons feign a surprised innocence. The U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens, knew it very well: on September 12, 2008, he arrived in the Central American country and, nine days later, the current coupist general Romeo Vásquez declared on the radio station HRN that they had sought “to overthrow the government of president Manuel Zelaya Rosales” (www.proceso.hn, 9/12/08). He added: “We are a serious and respectful institution, which is why we respect Mr. President as our Commander-in-Chief and we subordinate ourselves as dictated by law.” Just like Pinochet before rising against Salvador Allende. Any resemblance is just the work of reality.

On June 2 of this year, Hillary Clinton went to Honduras to participate in a meeting of the Organization of American States. She spoke with Zelaya and shared with him her discomfort with the referendum that the leader planned to hold at the same time as the next presidential elections. U.S. officials indicated that “they didn’t believe that the plebiscite was constitutional” (The New York Times, 6/30/09). Six days before the coup, the Honduran paper La Prensa reported that Ambassador Llorens had met with influential politicians and military chiefs “in order to find a solution to the crisis” caused by the referendum (www.laprensahn.com, 6/22/09). The “solution” they found is obvious.

It’s difficult to assume that the military leaders of Honduras, armed by the Pentagon and educated at the School of the Americas, where many Latin American dictators were trained, would have made a move without the approval of their mentors. Aside from that, the coupists did not hide the reasons for their actions: Zelaya was getting too close to the “communism” of Chávez, the Venezuelan most-hated by the White House: in July 2008, under his mandate, Honduras joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), the new “axis of evil” in Latin America. Too much, right?

Too much, yes, because Honduras is strategic territory for the Pentagon, which from its base in Soto Cano, where it stations troops from the U.S. air force and infantry, doesn’t only dominate Central America: this bona fide enclave is fundamental in the U.S. military’s scheme for a region rich in natural resources. Although he never touched the interests of foreign corporations or the local owners of economic power, Zelaya constituted a danger of “destabilization.” It’s fitting to mention that the referendum about holding a Constituent Assembly that could have permitted the reelection of Zelaya was non-binding. No one was bothered in Washington by the constitutional reform in Colombia that allowed for the re-election of Alvaro Uribe, the great ally of the U.S., which was not even a plebiscite. It’s that one thing is one thing and another is another.

The Honduran coupists are not very presentable. General Romero Vásquez Velásquez, thrown out by Zelaya, came back with the coup and authored the kidnapping and expulsion of the president, was sent to the national penitentiary in 1993, together with ten other members of a gang accused of robbing 200 luxury automobiles (www.elheraldo.hn, 2/2/93). He was then a major in the army; as a general, he devoted himself to robbing a government elected at the polls. Another unpresentable one is Advising Minister Billy Joya, who doesn’t do justice to his last name (or does, depending on how you look at it): he was head of the tactical division of Battalion B3-16, the Honduran death squad that tortured and “disappeared” numerous individuals in the 1980s. “Lawyer Arrazola” - one of his aliases - is an expert in such activities: he studied the methods of the Argentinean and Chilean dictatorships (www.michelcollon.info, 7/7/09). These are well-known facts, in spite of which, or because of which, he was chosen to form a part of the so very democratic coupist regime.

More:
http://angrywhitekid.blogs.com/weblog/

[dipsydoodle]

2. Amazing really

that its always the wrongdoers who use the expression "going forward, not looking backward"

[Judi Lynn]

3. That sounds very George W. Bush-like. Odd coming from a Democrat.

It seems so foolish considering the hideous history the U.S. has regarding all of Latin America.

He can be sure THEY are looking backwards in order to keep it from happening to them all over again.

[dipsydoodle]

4. It's called

Animal Farm - nothing ever really changes.

[zeemike]

5. The reason n they can do this and get away with it

Is because for the most part people in the US know so little about South America. And so they tend to believe anything the media tells them. Chavez is bad, Uribe is good.
But I thank you for your attempt to educate us.

[Daveparts]

6. Uribe has been thrown

out of office twice for corruption, son of a drug trafficer he was pals with Pablo Escobar yet we send him a billion dollars a year and wonder why the supply is up!

[peacetalksforall]

7. With each post it is starting to appear that Obama and Clinton sanctioned this coup.

With each day of delay, Obama and Clinton and Gates (Clinton with the Blackwater she inherited) and Gates with the troops can move in support for the Hondurian military to attack and fight the people. It's the only conclusion if it's true that both of them sanctioned the coup.

The Gelman article and others before it explain the reasons. Honduras - central to the takeover of earth resources.

take a look at this if you missed it over the weekend - an extract and source:

PLEASE READ:

"Financial backing for the coup is identified by some as coming from the pharmaceutical industry, which fears Mr Zelaya's plans to produce generic drugs and distribute them cheaply to the impoverished majority in Honduras, who lack all but the most primitive health facilities. Others point to big companies in the telecommunications industry opposed to Hondutel, Honduras's state-owned provider. Parallels are being made with ITT, the US telecommunications company that offered the Nixon government funds for the successful overthrow of President Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973.

A key figure is Robert Carmona-Borjas, a Venezuelan active against Mr Chavez in 2002, who later fled to the US. He runs the Washington-based Arcadia, which calls itself "an innovative 'next generation' anti-corruption organisation". Its website carries three video clips alleging, without evidence, that Mr Zelaya, his associates and Hondutel are deeply corrupt. Behind Arcadia are the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), the well-funded overseas arm of the Republican Party. Currently active among the Uighurs of western China, the NED has this year funnelled $1.2m (£740,000) for "political activity" in Honduras.

The focus of attention in the campaign against Mr Zelaya is now on the office of Senator John McCain, the defeated US presidential candidate, who is chairman of the IRI, takes an interest in telecoms affairs in the US Congress and has benefited handsomely from campaign contributions from US telecoms companies – which are said to have funded the abortive 2002 coup against Mr Chavez.

Mr McCain's former legislative counsel, John Timmons, arranged the visit of Micheletti supporters to Washington on 7 July where they met journalists at the National Press Club "to clarify any misunderstandings about Honduras's constitutional process and ... the preservation of the country's democratic institutions".

Meanwhile, within the US administration, difficulties in co-ordination have emerged between the State Department and the White House, with the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, issuing a low-key condemnation of the coup which was quickly superseded by stronger words from Mr Obama. The President called for Mr Zelaya's reinstatement, which Mrs Clinton had failed to demand.

The conservative-minded Mrs Clinton retains John Negroponte, an ambassador to Honduras under Ronald Reagan, as an adviser. He also represented George W Bush at the UN and in Baghdad. Democratic Senator Chris Dodd attacked Mr Negroponte in 2001 for drawing a veil over atrocities committed in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, by military forces trained by the US. Mr Dodd claimed that the forces had been "linked to death squad activities such as killings, disappearances and other human rights abuses"."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/democr...

[Judi Lynn]

8. Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

July 20, 2009

Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America
Honduras and the Big Stick
By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

Liberals who have idealized Obama don’t want to believe that their President is capable of bullish behavior towards Latin America. It was Bush, they say, who epitomized arrogant U.S.-style imperialism and not the new resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Recent events in Central America however force us to look at the Obama administration in a sobering new light. While it’s unclear whether Obama had advance warning of an imminent military coup d’etat in Honduras the White House has not emerged from the Zelaya affair unsullied.

In December, 2008, even before his inauguration, Obama received an irate letter from Honduran president Manuel Zelaya demanding an end to arrogant and interventionist U.S. ambassadors in Tegucigalpa. Just eight months earlier American ambassador Hugo Llorens had taken on the government by making inflammatory remarks. During a press conference the diplomat declared that Zelaya’s move to rewrite the constitution was “a Honduran matter and it’s a delicate matter to comment on as a foreign diplomat.” But then, contradicting himself and inserting himself into the volatile political milieu, Llorens remarked that “one can’t violate the constitution to create a constitution, because if you don’t have a constitution the law of the jungle reigns.”

If Obama was serious about restoring U.S. moral credibility world-wide he might have cleaned house by removing Bush appointees such as Llorens. An émigré from Castro’s Cuba, Llorens worked as an Assistant Treasurer at Chase Manhattan Bank before entering the Foreign Service. As Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Policy and Summit Coordination in the State Department during Clinton-time, he played an important role in spearheading the corporately-friendly Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA. But it was chiefly during the Bush years that Llorens distinguished himself, serving as the Director of Andean Affairs at the National Security Council. At the NSC, Llorens was the most important advisor to Bush and Condoleezza Rice on matters pertaining to Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.

While Zelaya’s move to rewrite the Honduran constitution antagonized Llorens it also inflamed the local business elite and no doubt the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Perhaps these groups feared a Honduran repeat of the South American “Pink Tide”: across the region leftist leaders from Hugo Chávez to Rafael Correa have mobilized civil society in an effort to rewrite their respective nations’ constitutions.

Chávez’s 1999 constitution provides for some of the most comprehensive human rights provisions of any constitution in the world while also including special protection for women, indigenous peoples and the environment. The constitution moreover allows for broad citizen participation in national life. The preamble states that one of the Constitution’s goals is to establish a participatory democracy achieved through elected representatives, popular votes by referendum and, perhaps most importantly, popular mobilization. In Venezuela, it was Chávez’s constitution which helped to solidify his alliance with traditionally marginalized sectors of the population.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff07202009.html

[timeforpeace]

9. A country in which we are not going to meddle? That approach was praised re Iran. Why not Honduras?

[Judi Lynn]

11. I don't get it. This country has done nothing BUT meddle in Latin America.

Why wouldn't you know about that?

[Joanne98]

10. Did u read this article?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/democracy-hangs-by-a-thread-in-honduras-1752315.html

[Judi Lynn]

12. It's excellent, written by a truly great pro, someone whose writing a DU'er, rabs, has read

for 30 years. He's a superior Latin American expert, very well regarded.

Hope many people will go out of their way to look at your article. Far better than almost anything they could ever read on the subject at the moment.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Over 55 Organizations and Scholars Call on Obama Administration to Warn Honduran Regime Against Furt

July 20, 2009
9:18 AM

Over 55 Organizations and Scholars Call on Obama Administration to Warn Honduran Regime Against Further Violence

WASHINGTON - July 20 - 56 representatives of organizations and academic experts on Latin America and scholars issued the following statement today:

The Obama administration's recent statements are endangering the lives of Hondurans, including the president Manuel Zelaya. From the Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2009:

"A senior U.S. official said Friday the Obama administration continues to stress to Mr. Zelaya its opposition to him trying to return. The official said Washington fears another attempt by Mr. Zelaya could reignite political tensions while undercutting efforts to find a negotiated settlement. 'Zelaya is well aware of our position," the official said.'"

Such statements are very disturbing, especially combined with the fact that the administration has not issued a single warning to the coup government, which has already shot and killed peaceful demonstrators, that such human rights abuses are unacceptable.

In fact, there has not been a single statement from the Obama administration since President Zelaya was overthrown on June 28, condemning the violations of human rights and civil liberties committed by the coup government. These violations include shootings and beatings; arrests, intimidation and deportation of journalists; and the closing of independent radio and TV stations. These abuses have been documented and condemned by the Inter American Commission for Human Rights, by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and a report from the Honduran Committee for the Relatives of the Disappeared Detainees.

President Zelaya is, as President Obama has pointed out, the legitimate president of Honduras. He is also a Honduran citizen, and has the right to return to his country. The United States government should be defending democracy in Honduras, and the civil and human rights of its citizens - not trying to make it look as though those who defend these rights are doing something wrong.

The Obama administration's position puts it outside the consensus of the hemisphere and the world, which has called - through the OAS and the UN General Assembly -- for the "immediate and unconditional" reinstatement of President Zelaya. The repeated refusals of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when asked by the press, to say that the United States government also seeks Zelaya's reinstatement have further muddied the waters about where the administration stands. Such ambiguity feeds the resolve of the dictatorship to try and run out the clock on President Zelaya's remaining months in office.

The United States has trained and funded the Honduran army; the generals who led the coup were trained at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia; the Obama administration by its own admission was in discussions with the Honduran military up to the day before the coup. All of this places greater responsibility on the administration to help reverse this coup. Yet the administration has refused to take even modest steps such as freezing the bank accounts of the perpetrators, despite appeals from the legitimate government of Honduras and from civil society.

We call on President Obama to condemn the human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship, and to make it clear that violence against the civilian population is a crime that will not be tolerated by the international community; and to make it clear to his own State Department that the United States government stands with the Honduran people and all other governments, for the immediate and unconditional return of the elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya.

(Names follow statement)

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/07/20