Greg Grandin: Waiting for Zelaya

[Judi Lynn]

Waiting for Zelaya
By Greg Grandin

July 28, 2009

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

The push to restore Honduran president Manuel Zelaya-- dragged out of bed a month ago by soldiers and bundled onto a plane to Costa Rica--has reached a tense deadlock. After negotiations between coup leaders and Zelaya's representatives brokered by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias broke down last week, the deposed leader vowed to return to his country over land, setting out from Managua, Nicaragua, in a jeep. He arrived at the border on Friday, symbolically stepping foot on Honduran soil before returning to Nicaragua, where he remains camped just a few feet from Honduras.

For his part, Roberto Micheletti, Honduras's de facto president, has vowed to arrest Zelaya if he tries to enter the country again. Soldiers have set up a cordon on roads leading to Nicaragua and have aggressively sought to contain Zelaya supporters, launching tear gas into gathering crowds and detaining hundreds. On Saturday a protester captured by troops the day before turned up dead. A twenty-four-hour curfew for southern Honduras remains in effect. About 500 Zelaya supporters have avoided the main roads, however, entering Nicaragua over mountainous paths to join the ousted president.

It's a dramatic showdown, a fight for which Zelaya, who goes by the name Mel and likes to dress in a white shirt, black leather vest and white cowboy hat, seems perfectly cast. No one knows how it will end--rumors are swirling in Tegucigalpa that the military is pressuring Micheletti to agree to Arias's proposal to allow Zelaya to return as president, as head of a reconciliation government--but it does feel that the monthlong fight to win over public opinion is coming to a head.

Honduras's new regime has gone to great lengths to present itself to the world as democratic and constitutional, in line with the values of an open society. Micheletti and his backers claim to have acted procedurally, intervening on behalf of the courts to stop Zelaya's Hugo Chávez-like lunge for power. The coup's business backers even hired Lanny Davis, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, to lobby his old boss to recognize the new regime. "This is about the rule of law. That is the only message we have," Davis said.

But in Honduras, paranoia reigns, redolent of a time when death squads ruled and anticommunism justified widespread murder. Then the perceived threat was Moscow. Today it is Caracas. "I'm against the way Zelaya was forced out of the country," said one prominent television host the other night, "but I'm also against Hugo Chávez coming here and conscripting my son to serve for six years in his army."

Then there's Fernando--a k a Billy--Joya, a former member of Honduras's infamous Battalion 316, a paramilitary unit responsible for the deaths of hundreds in the 1980s. Joya had previously fled the country on charges of, among other atrocities, having kidnapped and tortured six university students in 1982. But he's resurfaced as "special security adviser" to Micheletti's government. He's been seen walking side by side with Micheletti in a pro-coup "March for Peace and Democracy," and he's appeared on local talk-shows as an "international analyst," justifying the overthrow of Zelaya by invoking his admiration of Augusto Pinochet (lucky for Lanny Davis, Joya stays off CNN). And none other than Pinochet's daughter Lucia has endorsed the coup, praising Micheletti for continuing her father's legacy, fittingly so since the International Observation Mission--made up of representatives from fifteen European and Latin American human rights organizations--has warned of ongoing "grave and systematic" political persecution.

At least nine people have been assassinated or disappeared in the past month, with one body dumped in an area used by death squads in the 1980s as a clandestine cemetery. Among the executed, disappeared and threatened are trade unionists, peasant activists and independent journalists. They include Gabriel Fino Noriega, a reporter for Radio Estelar, in the department of Atlantida, shot dead leaving his work, and Roger Ivan Bados, a former union leader turned reformist politician, pulled off a bus following a pro-Zelaya demonstration and killed. Progressive Catholic priests have likewise been targeted, including Father José André s Tamayo Cortez, a prominent advocate of environmental and social justice, who went into hiding after receiving death threats following his participation in an anti-coup protest, in the department of Olancho. The Jesuit Ismael Moreno, director of the independent provincial Radio Progreso, has also been harassed by the military.

A member of the International Observation Mission told me that the number of killings and disappearances are likely higher than documented, as security forces reign with impunity in some remote, rural areas, making it nearly impossible to report such crimes. The army has also taken advantage of the crisis to conduct "forced conscriptions," kidnapping the teenage sons of peasant families--a practice that was commonplace throughout Central America through the 1980s, during the dark days of oligarchic rule, and only recently abandoned in Honduras.

More:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090803/grandin

[Peace Patriot]

1. Interesting that they took him to Costa Rica, where Arias had prepared digs for

the exiled president, and then Arias is appointed by Clinton to produce an agreement that neither the OAS, nor the UN General Assembly, nor virtually the entire leadership of Latin America would have tolerated--immunity for the coupsters, hard limits on Zelaya as president for the remainder of his term, and--most importantly--foreclosure of any reform (badly needed in Honduras). With martial law, the media shut down, many leftist political activists in prison, some dead, some in hiding, and with the infusion of US taxpayer dollars to Honduran rightwing groups, through John McCain's "International Republican Institute," via the USAID, and other budgets, how can the left nominate a presidential candidate, and other candidates, and run successful campaigns? The Arias agreement also moves the November elections to October, further shortening the time that the left has to organize campaigns, if they can. Most leftists are poor. Against $43 million from McCain--and who knows how much else--still pouring into rightwing groups, the shutdown of opposition and neutral media, and all the repression, it will be a political miracle if the left and the people of Honduras pull it off. It is virtually impossible.

When I first heard that Zelaya had been flown at gunpoint to Costa Rica, I thought maybe Obama/Clinton had saved his life. The head of the military, Vazquez, whom Zelaya had fired--and the coup Supreme Court restored (overriding civilian authority--President Zelaya)--likely would not have hesitated to put a bullet in his head (he is much like Colombia's Defense Minister Santos--Latin America's 'Donald Rumsfeld'). But soon I began to wonder, and now I think a deeper plot was in motion--possibly dependent on Latin American and world reaction--to restore a president whose power has been crippled, to stem the tide of leftist democracy in Honduras, and the region, while still looking like good guys, and to retain the US military base in Honduras (which Zelaya proposed be made into a commercial airport) for the Bushwhacks' planned oil war. It's still possible that Obama saved his life (winked at the coup, but said something like, 'not too bloody'). Then Clinton had the "problem of Zelaya" and worldwide backing for restoring him as president. What do do? Ah! Avoid the OAS--and the overwhelming democratic leftist majority there--and have "Noble prize winner" Oscar Arias enforce US foreign policy from Costa Rica, treating the coupsters as equals--as if they had a right to make demands--tell the coupsters to hold fast until the last minute, and then arm-twist Zelaya--exiled from his country at gunpoint--to agree to these terms.

It is also interesting that, a day or two ago, Clinton invited Zelaya to Washington, and he refused to go, saying that his absence would imperil his supporters gathered at the border. Was the plan to further decimate the ranks of leftist activists prior to this moved-up election, by enticing Zelaya and the media away from the border region? Can Clinton be that bad? Well, she didn't blink at the slaughter of a hundred thousand innocent Iraqis to steal their oil. And guess who is advising her--none other than John "death squad" Negroponte! It is not unthinkable. It could be another instance of the fascist pals she hangs out with sabotaging her ability to implement Obama policy. But we don't have a lot of reason--and we have overwhelming evidence to the contrary--to believe that Clinton has good intentions in South America, or respects and is following Obama policy. My doubts about Clinton are well-founded. I followed Obama's statements on Latin America closely, during the campaign and afterward, and was frankly appalled at some of the things he said. He seemed very ill informed, and wasn't quite as echoey of fascist "talking points" as Clinton was, but damn near. I saw only a slight chance that he would be any different than the Bushwhacks, and that was based mostly on his personality and personal history.

Has he willingly or unwillingly tolerated this fascist Bushwhack war planning against South America's oil rich countries--Venezuela and Ecuador? How come he's left someone like Brownfield as 'ambassador' (war planner) in Colombia, and left other Bushwhacks in place (including in Honduras)? What of this dreadful Bushwhack plan to place five US military bases in Colombia, which borders both Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil provinces? Does he agree with these policies, or is that he simply doesn't have the power to counter this Bushwhack/DLC cabal? He had to make certain deals to not be Diebolded in 2008, and this was one of them?

I don't know.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thanks for mentioning Zelaya's invitation, and his response, which I didn't catch until now.

Thank god so far he has been very capable of seeing "the bigger picture."

Thanks for your comments.