Progreso Weekly: "Honduras: The Futility of the Coup"

[magbana]

"Honduras: The Futility of the Coup
Coup d’état in Honduras reenacts the one staged in Venezuela.
Hondurans demand Zelaya’s return to the Presidency. Photo: Archive.
Atilio A. Borón

It just took President Zelaya to call upon the people for consultations, supported by the signature of more than 400,000 citizens, on a future announcement of a Constituent Assembly for the various institutional State devices to rally against him, thereby denying its alleged democratic nature: Congress ordered the President’s removal and a Supreme Court ruling validated the coup d’état.

History repeats itself; and very likely, it will end the same way. The coup d’état in Honduras is a reenactment of the one staged in April 2002 in Venezuela and the one that was aborted in Bolivia last year due to the crushing reaction by some governments in the region.

A President that was violently kidnapped in the small hours of the morning by hooded military officers, following to the letter the instructions contained in the CIA and the School of the Americas Handbook of Operations for the death squads; a counterfeit letter of resignation released with the intent to deceive and demobilize the population and which was immediately broadcast to the whole world by CNN without first confirming the veracity of the news; the reaction by the people, which aware of the scheme, took to the streets to stop the tanks and the Army vehicles with their bare hands and to demand the return of Zelaya to the Presidency; the power cuts to prevent the radio and television networks from working and to sow confusion and discouragement.

As in the case of Venezuela, no sooner had Hugo Chávez been imprisoned than the pro-coup faction installed a new President: Pedro Francisco Carmona, who was christened by people’s imagination as the “short-lived.” Honduras is now being run by the Speaker of the country’s one-house Congress, Roberto Micheletti, who was sworn in last Sunday as temporary Head of State; and only a miracle would keep him from having the same fate as his Venezuelan predecessor.

What has happened in Honduras reveals the resistance in the traditional structures of power to any attempt at enhancing democratic life. It just took President Zelaya to call upon the people for consultations, supported by the signature of more than 400,000 citizens, on a future announcement of a Constituent Assembly for the various institutional State devices to rally against him, thereby denying its alleged democratic nature: Congress ordered the President’s removal and a Supreme Court ruling validated the coup d’état. And it was this same Court that issued the warrant for the kidnapping and expulsion of President Zelaya from the country, adopting, as done throughout the week, the seditious conduct of the Armed Forces.

Zelaya has not resigned, nor has he sought political asylum in Costa Rica. He was kidnapped and expatriated, and the people have taken to the streets to defend their government. The statements that manage to find their way out of Honduras are very clear in that regard, particularly that by the world leader of Vía Campesina, Rafael Alegría. The governments of the region have repudiated the pro-coup factions and, along the same lines, Barack Obama said that Zelaya “is the only President of Honduras that I recognize and I want to make it very clear.” The OAS spoke in the same terms, and from Argentina, President Cristina Fernández said that “we’re going to foster a UNASUR meeting, even though Honduras is not part of the grouping, and we’re going to demand from the OAS respect for institutionality and for Zelaya’s reinstatement, in addition to guarantees for his life, his physical integrity and that of his family, because that’s fundamental, as it is an act of respect for democracy and for every citizen.”

The brutality of the operation carries the indelible mark of the CIA and the School of the Americas: from the kidnapping of the President, sent to Costa Rica in his pajamas, and the unheard-of kidnapping of and beating to three Ambassadors of friendly countries: Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, who had gone to the Residence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Honduras, Patricia Rodas, to express their countries’ solidarity, going through the lavish show of force by the military in the country’s main cities with the clear purpose of terrorizing the population. Late in the evening, they installed a curfew and there is still strict media and press censorship, despite which there is no knowledge of any statement by the Inter-American Press Society (always so alert to the situation of the media in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador) condemning this assault on the freedom of speech.

It is also fitting to recall that the Armed Forces of Honduras were completely restructured and “re-educated” in the 80s when the US Ambassador to Honduras was none other than John Negroponte, whose “diplomatic” career led him to cover destinations as distinct as Vietnam, Honduras, Mexico and Iraq, subsequently becoming the head of his country’s super intelligence body called National Security Agency.

From Tegucigalpa, he personally monitored the terrorist operations conducted against the Sandinista government and promoted the creation of the death squad, better known as Battalion 316, which kidnapped, tortured and murdered hundreds of people inside Honduras, while his reports to Washington denied any human rights violations in that country.

Back then, US Senator John Kerry proved that the State Department had paid US$ 800,000 to four cargo aircraft companies belonging to large Colombian drug lords to carry weapons for the groups that Negroponte was organizing and supporting in Honduras. These pilots testified under oath, confirming Kerry’s statements. The US media informed that Negroponte was connected with arms and drug trafficking between 1981 and 1985 with a view to arming the death squads, but nothing came between him and his career. Those armed forces are the ones that deposed Zelaya now. But the balance of powers at the domestic and international levels is so unfavorable that the defeat of the pro-coup faction is just a matter of (very little) time.

*Translated by Angel Ramón Milán Dobson
July 6, 2009, 9:30 am"
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