[HNA] Open Letter to Obama, from Manti@ Migrante

[Simon Rios]

Letter from Manit@ Migrante to President Barack Obama
leader of the mightiest nation on earth
November 29th
Day of the Farce Elections in Honduras
Concerning your complicity in said elections
And your General Designs for our America

Dear President Obama,
Today is a blurry day for those of us with eyes on Central America, mister
president. It’s blurry because we’ve watched herman at s suffering day and
night over the last four months in that small country in the waist of
America, Honduras, and now, after all the blood and toil, you throw salt in
their wounds.
    Though it is a mighty responsibility to take on, I dare say that I’m
writing this evening on behalf of millions of people around the world, yes,
people around the world, but most of all in the countries that form Latin
America. I dare say that I speak for hundreds of millions when I say that we
expected better of you.
    We rejoiced when you declared your opposition to the coup that overthrew
that gentle, mustachioed man, the president of Honduras and your
counterpart, Mel Zelaya. You stated wisely that we could not allow this to
set a precedent for the would-be coup-plotters of the world. Hearing this,
from the mouth of the leader of the country that has overturned 42
goverments in Latin America, was uncanny yet strangely beautiful, like
hearing the Star Spangled Banner from the stratocaster of Jimi Hendrix.
    But it seemed you were alone in your lament for Honduran democracy,
brother president, for every time one of your people mentioned Honduras, it
seemed they were capitulating to the golpistas. In spite of thousands of
documented human rights violations—rapes, targeted assasinations, illegal
detentions, the shutting down of opposition media outlets, curfews, the
suspension of constitutional rights, the maiming of a presidential
candidate—your people said not a word. In spite of the tear-gassing of
peaceful demonstrations, in spite of the use of high-powered water cannons
against non-violent resistors, the same weapons of repression used against
the movement that paved the way for your ascendency to the throne of the
land, your people said nothing. So, Mr. Community Organizer, Mr. Agent of
Change, Mr. Mixed Race Immigrant Halfie Identity—which side are you on? The
side of your roots, the truth, the ideal that brought you to power? Or that
side’s antithesis?
    We knew the Pentagon supported the coup, and we knew the Republicans
supported the coup, and we knew that most Democrats were indifferent at
best. But we had the suspicion, quixotic now it seems to have been, that you
would hold your own against the Jim DeMints of the nation. You’re a swell
guy, Barack, we all know that. So of course you’d side with the underdog!
But when you sent Tommy Shannon to make the final negotiation in
Tegucigalpa, and when it became clear that Zelaya had been duped and would
not be restored to the presidency, and went Shannon assured DeMint that you
would recognize today’s elections in spite of thousands of human rights
violations, and when we heard DeMint say that he would lift his hold on
Shannon’s aspirations to the ambassadorship of Brazil, and when you wrote
the Brazilian president to, among other things, reaffirm your decision to
recognize these farce elections, we realized we were wrong.
    But that wasn’t the worst of it. Your rubber-stamping of the coup in
Honduras has established a new model for the anti-democratic forces of Latin
America—that’s the worst of it. Have you heard of the rumors of a coup in
Paraguay? Have you caught wind of the statements of the ARENA death-squad
party in El Salvador? Did they tell you when your fellow nobel laureate
Rigoberta Menchu warned of a coup in Guatemala? Have they briefed you on the
“separatist movements” in Venezuela and Bolivia and Ecuador? Now these
rumors, which until today have been nothing more than that, become grave
threats to the soverignty of our continent, and it’s because you’ve shown
them that you won’t interfere. Pin that one in your hat!
    We wonder how this bodes for your own future, Mr. President, or if it
bodes at all. Not that you pose any threat to the oligarchs who control this
country, but the cynic in us wishes Beck & Boehner would hijack the four
branches, order them to invade the whitehouse with guns blazing, kidnap you
in your peejays then whisk you off to Newfoundland. Let Murdoch and Cheney
decide your fate. Something tells me you wouldn’t have the gaul to sneak
back into the capital like Zelaya did, a move that your OAS rep
characterized as “irresponsible and foolish.” This is the same guy, Lewis
Anselem, who would go on to degrade the solidarity of the Latin American
countries with Honduras as “magical realism,” simultaneously degrading that
great contribution to the history of world literature. Quite frankly, the
implications of that comment outdo anything the Bush folks ever said with
regards to our America.
    Speaking of literature, I wonder if you ever got around to reading
Galeano’s The Open Veins of Latin America, the book Hugo Chavez gave you. I
know you shrugged off the reporters by saying that just because someone
gives you a book doesn’t mean you have to read it. That was quite the witty
remark, but you should keep in mind that this is a book that many of us hold
very dearly to our hearts, as it captures poetically the five-century
exploitation by the western powers of our continent, and the tremendous
resistance our people have expressed. The coup in Honduras is certainly
worthy of an addendum to Galeano’s great work, though I’m afraid you will
end up on the wrong side of the history.
    For many of us this is the coup in Honduras is the coup de grace for our
hopes that you would improve the Latin America policy of the empire. At
first we had hopes,
but failure after failure led us to the biggest failure of all. Let’s
connect the dots:
•    When you were campaigning for the presidency you spoke of the failure
of the Cuban embargo and how you’d put an end to it. But you flopped, and
now you support the embargo, saying that you can use it as “leverage” to
push democratic reforms on the island. (For all its flaws, let it be known
that Cuba will not bow to such leverage.)
•    Then you quicky appointed Eric Holder as the Attorney General, the very
lawyer who represented Chiquita’s financing of the paramilitaries who
slaughtered thousands in Uraba, the department home to the company’s
plantations.
•    And then you kept silent when several hundred indigenous people were
killed by the Peruvian government. They’d risen up to protest plans to
extract minerals from their ancestral land, in Amazonia, and this plan was
prompted by the US/Peru free trade agreement that you voted for. I recall
your indignation at the death of the brave protestors in Iran, but with the
massacre of Peruvian Indians you didn’t seem to care; this in spite of that
fact that your country is largely responsible.
•    And then your people in the Pentagon introduced plans to build/occupy
seven military bases in Colombia. We were assured that the bases were to
fight terrorists and narcos, but our doubts were confirmed with the release
of an Air Force document explaining that this “provides a unique opportunity
for full spectrum operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere…”
Exactly as Chavez had warned, it was admitted in this document that the
bases would allow the US to combat “anti-US governments” in the region! Did
you know that Colombia has the highest rate of assasinated unionists in the
world? The highest rate of internal displacement outside of Sudan? A state
controlled in large part by paramilitaries, certified terrorists per your
State Department’s own list? Are these things considered when deciding to
send hundreds of millions in military aid to the country with the worst
human rights abuses in the hemisphere?
•    Finally, today, you and Colombia and the extreme right of Latin
America, recognize the farce elections in Honduras.
    As we connect the dots—keeping in mind that your predecessor reactivated
the Navy’s Fourth Fleet and that the full realization of this will take
place under your watch—we being to see the outline of what the empire has in
store for Latin America. Will you recede from Central Asia and the Middle
East and refocus your weapons on the vast resources of the Andes, Amazonia,
and the Orinoco Basin? Are there more coups in store for the progressive
governments of the region? More attempts to fragment the nations trying to
unite in favor of deeper democracy and social justice? Some say Honduras was
the testing ground for a fresh wave of fascism in Latin America, attacking
the ALBA countries at the weakest link. We ask respectfully and in deference
to the Knight’s Code of Chivalry, which has it that you must at all times
speak the truth—Is it so?
    Regardless or whether you’re aware of these shiftings, for us they are
as real as death. Regardless of your seemingly good intentions, with every
handshake, lyrical flourish, and glance of your reigtous eyes you are
tampering with our destiny. Indeed, today a tyranny was vindicated in
Honduras. But lest your handlers become too optimistic, in that other little
Latin American republic that held elections on the same day, one more
leftist was elected to the presidency of Uruguay. Like Manuel Zelaya, Pepe
Mujica has a mustache. But unlike his Honduran counterpart, who was a
wealthy logger before coming to power, el Pepe was a founder of the Tupamaro
guerilla movement. We hope that this sets more of a precedent than your coup
in Honduras, Brother Barack, and we shall fight to the death to ensure this
is so.

En la Resistencia,
Manit@ Migrante
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