Honduran coup: U.S. claim of neutrality false

[Billy Burnett]

Honduran coup: U.S. claim of neutrality false
http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12503&news_iv_ctrl=1261

Plotting against Zelaya's unconditional return

On Sunday, June 28, in the early morning hours of a day when the people of Honduras were preparing to vote in a non-binding referendum on whether there should be an assembly to make changes to the constitution, dozens of military troops forcibly detained President Manuel Zelaya and exiled him to Costa Rica.


San Francisco protest, July 4, 2009
Photo: Gloria La Riva

The coup plot was brewing for several days, with full U.S. government knowledge, by its own admission in a telephone press conference call with two unnamed U.S. State Department “officials Number One and Number Two.”

Although the coup leaders claim to be following the constitution and legal norms, the tales of who gave the order for the ousting of Zelaya are unraveling, due to worldwide condemnation of the coup.

To date no government recognizes the coup’s militarily installed “president,” Roberto Micheletti. The coup plotters trip over themselves giving different explanations to try to justify the legality of the coup.

On July 3, the Miami Herald interviewed pro-coup Honduran military lawyer Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza. He admitted in chilling words the brutal intentions of the military. On the military’s decision to expel Zelaya instead of arresting him, Inestroza said, 'What was more beneficial, remove this gentleman from Honduras or present him to prosecutors and have a mob assault and burn and destroy and for us to have to shoot?

“If we had left him here, right now we would be burying a pile of people.”
That threat became true when at least 200,000 peaceful protesters were fired upon on July 5 by the military as they gathered at Toncontín International Airport to await Zelaya’s plane. The plane was forced to divert to El Salvador.

U.S. government wants to turn back the clock

The fear of Washington and its subordinates in Honduras is that the people of Honduras could follow in the footsteps of the people of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, which have adopted new constitutions much more in line with the needs of the people and asserting control of their country’s natural resources.

No matter how much it tries to hide its role and claim neutrality in the current crisis, the United States imperialists are at least tacitly behind the Honduran ruling class’s coup. Certainly it has not acted to cut off military aid nor withdraw its ambassador as have several Latin American governments.

After all, the historic role of the United States in all of Central America has been the direct setting up of governments, building and arming their military and national guards, in order to repress the people and maximize U.S. corporations’ profits.

There is no better example of this than U.S.-Honduran history. From the time of U.S. direct military expansion in 1898 with the war against Spain, and takeover of Cuba, Puerto Rico and in Asia, the Philippines—regarded as the beginning of U.S. imperialism—there was a parallel policy of direct intervention in Central America that continued for decades.

First ‘banana republic’

It was in 1899, that a banana empire was established in Honduras, with three major U.S. banana-exporting companies.

These companies operated with a free hand, taking control of the vast majority of the best lands, building railroads that transported the fruit to the Caribbean coast for export to the United States. This is where the term “banana republic” first came into being, to signify governments identified with U.S. interests, coups and brutal repression.

Three banana companies and the U.S. government dominated Honduran politics. Because of the conflicts among the companies, there were also constant coups among their corresponding political candidates, and struggles between the Honduran Liberal Party and the Honduran National Party.

By 1929, the notorious United Fruit Company bought out its largest rival and more fully dominated the country’s politics. Honduras became the largest exporter of bananas in the world, with 80 percent of its revenues coming from this crop. However, the greatest beneficiaries were the companies themselves.

But the early decades of the 20th century also saw the corresponding development of Honduras’s proletariat, the labor movement and struggles against their exploitation.

The worldwide capitalist economic crisis of 1929-33 severely affected the banana workers. There were strikes and militant protests against massive layoffs and cuts in wages.

Current developments in Honduras are bound to have an effect on the rest of the surrounding Central American countries. Honduras’ strategic placement, with Guatemala to the north, El Salvador to the west and south, and Nicaragua to the south, means that the United States has always interfered to keep control in any of those countries, against any revolutionary uprisings.

For example, in 1922 the U.S. government brought the presidents of Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador onto a warship off the Atlantic coast. There it engineered an agreement that pledged support among those governments against any revolutions that could take place in the region. This was due to the rise of popular movements against oligarchy and U.S. imperialism.

Of course, this U.S. agreement didn’t keep Washington from engineering military coups or outright invasions.

One of the most critical interventions by the U.S. to quell progress in the region was in 1954, when Guatemala’s President Jacobo Arbenz instituted major progressive changes: expropriation of United Fruit Company’s lands that were not being used, the encouragement of labor unions, and so on.

The United States shipped massive amounts of weapons into Honduras, and Honduran troops and reactionary Guatemalan exiles invaded to help overthrow Arbenz. What followed was 40 years of terror against the Guatemalan masses, mostly Indigenous people.

A potentially revolutionary situation in Guatemala was stopped cold, again by the United States.

Another major period of U.S. maneuvering, militarization of the region, and using one country as a base against the other, was in the early 1980s.

What was the situation in Central America?

In Nicaragua, the Sandinista National Liberation Front had taken power July 19, 1979, to overthrow the decades-long, U.S.-backed Somoza regime. That was to Honduras’s south.

To the west and south was El Salvador, where the five revolutionary forces that comprised the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), were battling the fully U.S.-backed regime. The most intense period of that war was 1979 to 1984.

The United States used Honduras as a base for counter-insurgency against the FMLN, the guerrilla movement in Guatemala and the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The fascist Nicaragua Contras established their bases in Honduras to attack the people of Nicaragua.

Honduras became increasingly strategic for U.S. counter-insurgency against its bordering neighbors. Consequently, U.S. military dollars flooded the country. In 1980, U.S. military aid to Honduras was 3.3 million, it jumped 10-fold to 31.3 million in 1983, and skyrocketed to $77.4 in 1984. From 1981 to 1985 U.S. military aid was $169 million. According to the U.S. Library of Congress Countries Studies, “… the percentage of the military budget coming directly or indirectly from the United States increased from 7 percent in 1980 to 76 percent in 1985.”

Under the command of General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, the army’s notorious Battalion 316 engaged in internal repression against Honduran worker, student and religious activists. A creation of the CIA, this unit’s objective was the systematic rounding up, torture and murder of dozens. By some accounts, 184 people were murdered in the early 1980s.

In a June 1995, a groundbreaking series of articles in the Baltimore Sun brought to light the CIA’s direct role in creating, training and arming Battalion 316. .

In San Francisco, it was revealed in the early 1990s that a San Francisco police, Dan Gerard, was involved in the setting up of those death squads. He was also part of a surveillance operation of San Francisco progressive organizations in the 1980s.

Although the big-business media today states that civilian rule was restored in Honduras in 1982, clearly the role of the government was still one of subservience to the military and the United States.


Plotting against Zelaya’s unconditional return

In the meantime, the U.S. government and the Organization of American States worked to delay the plans of Zelaya to return to Honduras. At first Zelaya said he would go back on Thursday, July 2. Several leaders, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colóm, and U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto of Nicaragua announced that they would accompany him on his return.

Then Organization of American States Secretary General José Miguel Insulza asked Zelaya to wait until Saturday, July 4, since an OAS resolution demanded that the coup plotters give up by then. Zelaya subsequently flew to Honduras on Sunday, July 5, but the Honduran military blocked the airport runway preventing the plane from landing.

Washington then advised Zelaya to negotiate with the coup-plotters and arranged for Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to mediate the conflict. Arias met separately with Zelaya and Micheletti, but no agreement was reached.

Micheletti has warned repeatedly that Zelaya would be arrested on his return.

While the imperialists and their Latin American accomplices are trying to find a way to return Zelaya greatly compromised or otherwise rendered ineffective, the ALBA alliance (Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas—Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), which Honduras joined in August 2008, has demanded Zelaya’s return with no conditions.

According to a July 10 Reuters dispatch, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez pronounced the Costa Rica talks "dead before they started" and called for a total trade embargo on Honduras. Reuters quoted Zelaya as saying that he is working on "peaceful, non-violent methods" to return to office.

What is taking place in Honduras shows the sharpening of the class struggle in Latin America and the continued interventionist policy of the U.S. government towards the continent under the Obama administration.

For those popular movements in Latin America anxious to see what the new Obama government would mean for the region, this should make clear the need to keep building the people’s struggles to defend their gains and maintain solidarity against U.S. imperialism’s strategy.

[magbana]

1. Thanks for posting this article from PSL. Gloria La Riva, as always, knows of what she speaks. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

2. That's very blunt: they know they are acting AGAINST the interests of the vast majority.

They KNOW what they did was illegal. They acted contrary to the wishes of the vast majority, they know it, and don't care. They ultimately have NO RESPECT FOR DEMOCRACY.

Here's the guy quoted in the article you posted, with a link to his earlier interview with the Herald:

http://media.miamiherald.com.nyud.net:8090/smedia/2009/07/03/09/780-inestrozaMUG.embedded.prod_affiliate.56.jpg

Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza

Top Honduran military lawyer: We broke the law
BY FRANCES ROBLES
[e-mail]
TEGUCIGALPA -- The military officers who rushed deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya out of the country Sunday committed a crime but will be exonerated for saving the country from mob violence, the army's top lawyer said.

In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador's elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya -- and they circumvented laws when they did it.

It was the first time any participant in Sunday's overthrow admitted committing an offense and the first time a Honduran authority revealed who made the decision that has been denounced worldwide.

''We know there was a crime there,'' said Inestroza, the top legal advisor for the Honduran armed forces. ``In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.''

~snip~
Inestroza acknowledged that after 34 years in the military, he and many other longtime soldiers found Zelaya's allegiance to Chávez difficult to stomach. Although he calls Zelaya a ''leftist of lies'' for his bourgeoisie upbringing, he admits he'd have a hard time taking orders from a leftist.

~snip~
''We fought the subversive movements here and we were the only country that did not have a fratricidal war like the others,'' he said. ``It would be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That's impossible. I personally would have retired, because my thinking, my principles, would not have allowed me to participate in that.''

And if Zelaya comes back, he'll have to retire anyway.

''I will resign and leave the country, and so would most of the military,'' Inestroza said. ``They would come after us and the other political leaders who were involved in this.''

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/1506/story/1125872.html

[AlphaCentauri]

3. At least by now we know who is giving instructions to the golpistas n/t

[Peace Patriot]

4. I think it's part of a Bushwhack war plan to grab Venezuela's oil, but it is also

a sign of the desperation by the same forces (Exxon Mobil & brethren--global corporate predators and war profiteers). Their corpo-fascist schemes in Latin America have so colossally failed that they couldn't even keep hold of Paraguay, which last year elected its first leftist president ever, after 61 years of corrupt rightwing rule including a long period of brutal dictatorship. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay--all gone leftist. Then it started moving north--first with a leftist win in Mexico (undone by election fraud). Guatemala elected a leftist president. Nicaragua elected the Sandinistas. Then El Salvador elected the FMLN! What next? Manuel Zelaya, a member of the Oligarchy and elected as a "conservative," starts doing things like raising the minimum wage, and joining ALBA! The Dark Lords must have been tearing their hair out with angst to turn back the leftist tide by any means necessary--this outrageous coup perpetrated by blatant racists, liars and greedbags, using the US-bought-and-paid-for Honduran military to shoot up the presidential palace, drag the elected president out of his bed at gunpoint, whisk him away to another country, declare martial law and shut down civil rights and the media.

In the face of the unanimous revulsion of the entire world! How desperate could they get?

There are a couple of recent precedents--but they all failed, primarily because of the unity of South America's leadership. They were all in South America--the white separatists' bloody effort to secede from Evo Morales' national government, in Bolivia, with the fascists funded and organized right out of the US/Bushwhack embassy--in September of last year; the effort to instigate a war between Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela, earlier in 2008, with the US/Colombia bombing/raid on Ecuador's territory, to kill the leftist Colombian guerilla hostage negotiator and peace advocate, Raul Reyes and 24 other people in their sleep; and the three-country scheme, that Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has described, to foment secessionist violence in the resource-rich provinces of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela; and various other plots over the last two years to assassinate and/or topple Chavez in Venezuela. The leftist leadership of South America grew stronger and more unified with each dastardly plot. But Central America is a less politically developed region, as to social justice and independence, and, above all, as to unified economic action to counter fascist plots. In the Bolivian crisis, Brazil and Argentina played a key role, as the chief customers for Bolivia's gas. They made it very clear to the fascist coupsters that they would not recognize or trade with a fascist secessionist state. This, added to UNASUR''s unanimous support for Evo Morales--and also probably the Bushwhacks' exit from direct power in the US--tipped the balance, and the white separatists were prevented from tearing Bolivia to pieces. The other plots were largely foiled, I think, by dramatically improved intelligence coordination among South American countries. And a final key factor has been President Lula da Silva, in Brazil, who has adamantly supported democracy in the more leftist countries.

Although Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador all closed their borders with Honduras, immediately after the coup, I don't think they have the economic clout of Brazil/Argentina vis a vis Bolivia, to undo the coup in Honduras (and I'm not sure if the borders are still closed). The US/Honduras "free trade" agreement means that much of Honduran trade is with the US. Indeed, that's what US "free trade" agreements are for--so that the US can dictate fascist policies in these countries. By raising the minimum wage, for instance, Zelaya was "betraying" the US and our corpo/fascists' preference for sweatshop (slave) labor. How dare he? In any case, the Honduran people themselves, and the other peoples and leaders of the region, have not had time to develop a strong and fully unified strategy to throw off corporate power and its US enforcers. Venezuela has been working at social justice, independence and regional unity for ten years. It has the leadership of several large economies on its side on most important issues--Brazil, Argentina, Chile. And Ecuador, with its vast oil reserves, and Bolivia, with its gas, oil and lithium, have the potential to be economic powerhouses, if, as Venezuela has done, the profits from their natural resources are used for development--education, medical care, local infrastructure (all the things that the fascists oppose and neglect--as they do here). And the alliances among all of these leftist countries in South America are very strong, after years of work on new institutions like UNASUR (South American "common market") and the Bank of the South (regionally controlled development funds).

Central America--except for Mexico--does not have oil, and has little else by way of resources. The vast majority of people are dirt poor. The only way they can advance is through alliance with the social justice-minded governments to the south. They will never, ever, ever advance in alliance with the US which is controlled by heinous exploiters and war profiteers. This must be part of what Manual Zelaya realized, when he initiated policies to help Honduras' vast poor majority and joined ALBA (a barter trade group started by Venezuela and Nicaragua). Unless there is a revolution here--or, at least, rebellion against the corporate-controlled 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines--the US will never support social justice in Honduras, nor true democracy. Our corpo/fascists use their rich elite to exploit Honduran workers, and, further, to ensconce the US military in Honduras and fund their military, in order to use Honduras as one of the launching pads for planned aggression. Colombia is the other. Our Dark Lords want to turn Honduras into Colombia--where union leaders have short lives, and where the military and its death squads sit poised like vultures to descend upon their leftist neighbors.

The Honduran coup could be the spark that ignites the leftist revolution in Central America. It has certainly galvanized the leftist groups in Honduras! That revolution began in Mexico, and failed there, but then succeeded in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. But it is not yet all that steady on its feet. It needed a spark--much like the attempted rightwing coup in Venezuela in 2002 sparked a huge wave of leftist electoral successes throughout South America. The Honduran coup is such a crude fiasco that it may not succeed in keeping the coup government in place. With US help, the Oligarchy may hang on and retard progressive development for a while. But the trend in Latin America is so overwhelmingly leftist and democratic that it is difficult to imagine how the Oligarchy in Honduras can hold out against it for long. That is why is looks desperate to me--a desperate attempt to hold back the tide. The forces supporting it--including our own government, which continues to fund the oppressive military and the coup government in Honduras--the Honduran elite, and various pockets of fascists in other countries, and here--as well as the "hands" behind it all (multinational corporations and war profiteers)--may well have plans for Oil War II: South America. In fact, I'm sure they do. And they may think that Honduras is the beginning of it (hanging onto this "lily pad" country). But I think there is a good argument--and reason to hope--for Honduras being the end of it, or the beginning of the end. We will see, as events unfold. But there has been a great rallying of unity against the coup, mobilization of protest movements within Honduras and kinship movements throughout Latin America, and a sort of reaction that I would call a "wake up" call--both as to the leftist leaders in South America feeling overly-secure, and the leftist leaders in Central America pulling together and listening to, and helping to empower, the vast poor majority. It was the People, after all, who saved Hugo Chavez and got him re-instated to his rightful office.