Honduras: “They knew and they helped a little”

[Joanne98]

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” (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 (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 (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 (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

Continued>>>
http://fromthewilderness.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/honduras-they-knew-and-they-helped-a-little/

[bertman]

1. More corporate lackey bullshit from our new President's administration. It's beginning

to look more and more like this healthcare "reform" is the only bone the President is willing to throw us progresssives. Unfortunately, it's a bone made at corporate health insurance headquarters.

Military-Industrial-Corporate Complex

Recommended highly.

[DLnyc]

2. Doesn't appear to be too much in the way of actual evidence in this article.

As far as I read, the article seems to be basically saying "I think the US was behind the coup and the reason is it just seems to me like they probably were".

Statements like

"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 . . ."

don't really provide any evidence one way or the other. It is certainly true that a number of coups were both executed by graduates of the SOA and had the backing of the highest elements of the US government. However, it is not news that the leaders of this coup were SOA graduates, and that fact alone doesn't tell us anything about whether, and at what level, the current US foreign policy establishment was or was not backing this one.

If in fact the US was behind this coup, it certainly wouldn't be the first time. However, stubborn though I may be, I am still waiting for some tangible evidence one way or the other.

[tiny elvis]

3. Vásquez declared on the radio station HRN that they had sought

who is they? the declaration doesn't make sense unless vasquez meant llorens and the usa.
vasquez said in september that the usa asked him to overthrow his gov?
link at source does not go to quote.

[Joanne98]

4. Here's another article from the Independent......

The international group of right-wingers who staged the coup d'état against the democratic government of Honduras on 28 June are watching their plot fast unravel.


There is stiffening international opposition to their protégé, Roberto Micheletti, who, in his capacity as President of Congress, ordered President Manuel Zelaya to be expelled from the country by plane in his pyjamas.

Mr Zelaya gave negotiators meeting in Costa Rica until midnight yesterday to restore him to office, threatening to secretly return to Honduras and attempt to retake power on his own if no agreement is reached. At a news conference at the Honduran embassy in Nicaragua, he said: "I am going back to Honduras, but I am not going to give you the date, hour or place, or say if I'm going to enter through land, air or sea." But indications last night suggested the interim government would call his bluff.


As the Acting President's support shrinks at home, the plotters are lobbying to have Mr Micheletti shored up from abroad by means of a declaration of legitimacy from the US Congress. That scheme is not prospering. Enrique Ortez Colindres, the supremely undiplomatic octogenarian appointed foreign minister by Mr Micheletti, has had to resign, but not before he called Barack Obama "a negrito who knows nothing about anything", on Honduran television.

For some of the plotters it is their second attempt to overthrow an elected reformist government in Latin America: the group includes prominent figures involved in the 2002 ousting of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who was kidnapped for 48 hours and sent to a Caribbean island before being restored to office after widespread popular protest.

The temporary toppling of Mr Chavez was welcomed by the Bush administration, the Blair government and the International Monetary Fund. This weekend, the US seems destined for a replay of 2002's Operation Chaotic Coup. Amid a stream of contradictory messages it is clear that last month's putsch against Mr Zelaya was brewed up in Washington by a group of extreme conservatives from Venezuela, Honduras and the US. They appear to have hidden their plans from the White House, but hoped eventually to bounce President Obama into backing them and supporting the "interim president". They are making much of Mr Zelaya's alliance with Mr Chavez, whose sense of nationalism challenges US hegemony.

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".

During his time in Tegucigalpa, Mr Negroponte directed funds to the US-supported Contra terrorists seeking to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. He assured them of arms and supplies from the Palmerola airstrip, the main US base in Central America. As President Rafael Correa of Ecuador is in the final stages of closing the US base in his country, Mr Negroponte is conscious of what the US could lose if a Zelaya government banned its presence at Palmerola. For their part, Hondurans have noted that when Mr Zelaya tried to return on 6 July, and his plane was refused permission to land at Tegucigalpa airport, no room was found at Palmerola.

Since last July, the US ambassador in Tegucigalpa has been the Cuban-born Hugo Llorens. He was the principal National Security adviser to Mr Bush on Venezuela at the time of the failed 2002 coup, when he was working with two other well-known State Department hardliners, Otto Reich and Elliot Abrams.

Mr Reich, a former US ambassador to Venezuela, advised Mr McCain in his presidential bid and previously worked for AT&T, the US telecoms giant. As he goes into battle against Mr Zelaya, the website of his business consultancy, Otto Reich Associates, quotes Mr Reagan: "You understand the importance of fostering democracy and economic development among our closest neighbours."

Mr Abrams was also deep in the business of supplying the Contra terrorists. He tried to sabotage the Central American peace plans proposed by Oscar Arias, then the Costa Rican President, who later received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. In 1991 Mr Abrams, a neoconservative passionately supportive of Ehud Olmert and other leading Israeli hawks, was convicted of hiding information from the US Congress investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. The New York Times reported in 2006 that he had strong ties to then vice-president Dick Cheney.

In a divided Washington, Mrs Clinton seems in recent days to have regained some advantage. Now Washington's strategy is to minimise the role of the pan-continent Organisation of American States which, under the leadership of the independent-minded Chilean José Miguel Insulza, took a strong line against the "interim president".

Washington is now relying on Mr Arias, a firm friend in Central America, to soften the line against Mr Micheletti. He is trying to "mediate" between Mr Zelaya and the coup's appointee by putting them on the same footing. On Friday he called for a "government of national reconciliation" with ministers from both camps, a proposal which it appeared Mr Zelaya would countenance but that the interim government would not.

Yet the outcome of the crisis is not likely to be worked out in huddles of foreign politicians outside Honduras, but on the streets of Tegucigalpa and in the country's forests – perhaps even this weekend.

Honduran voters have traditionally – and ineffectually – been organised into two parties, the Nationals and the Liberals, whose politics are almost indistinguishable. But repudiation of Mr Micheletti is widespread. The principal roads have been blocked by Mr Zelaya's supporters brandishing banners calling for his return.

Mr Micheletti has been forced to re-establish the curfew he imposed just after the putsch. He has even offered to resign in order to prevent civil war – provided Mr Zelaya does not return. Another worrying development for Mr Micheletti came on Friday, when the armed forces delivered a solemn and urgent message that they were totally united in favour of democracy. In the world of Latin American politics, this is a sign that they are deeply divided.

At the festivities on Friday commemorating the 200th anniversary of Bolivia breaking free from Spanish rule, Mr Chavez joined Bolivia's President, Evo Morales, President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and President Correa in a declaration of support for the re-establishment of democracy in Honduras. All four leaders are strong supporters of demands for better treatment of Latin America's indigenous peoples.

Perhaps that's what is really worrying the plotters of Tegucigalpa.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/democracy-hangs-by-a-thread-in-honduras-1752315.html

[tiny elvis]

5. that's a better article

Mrs Clinton retains John Negroponte
so proud to be a roman citizen

[Joanne98]

6. What I found really interesting was the involvement of Big Pharma and the telecoms.

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.