[HNA] A video and two articles re Honduras

[Tom Loudon]

Sofia Jarrin has added subtitles to a powerful video documenting 
repression in Honduras produced by Cesar Silva.  The video is available 
at: http://quixote.org/repression-honduras
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*
Honduran Coup d’état, a ‘win’ for the U.S.?*
 
January 27, 2010
 
Today, Pepe Lobo will be inaugurated as the new President of Honduras in 
what many consider to be an institutionalization of the coup d’état 
which took place seven months ago.  Lobo comes to the Presidency as a 
result of a highly disputed election process carried out by the coup 
regime. The elections, which have been widely condemned as illegitimate 
were boycotted by a large percentage of the Honduran population.  
 
U.S. Undersecretary Thomas Shannon, in a maneuver that totally subverted 
an extended negotiation process, announced that the U.S. would recognize 
the election, even if there was not a prior return to constitutional 
order.  The U.S. celebrates today’s inauguration as the ‘way forward’ 
for Honduras and has aggressively pressured other Latin American 
countries to recognize Lobo’s government. 
 
While the United States is eager normalize the situation and to get on 
with business as usual, the June 28^th coup d’état has yielded 
unexpected consequences for Washington, both inside and outside of 
Honduras.  Unforeseen by the coup plotters and the United States, the 
military takeover of Honduras unleashed a broad based, sustained 
resistance movement inside the country.  A spirit long dormant in 
Honduras was awakened, transforming the country into a hub of political 
activity previously unimaginable.
 
The resistance movement has brought together people from many sectors of 
Honduran society, including large numbers of disaffected Liberal Party 
members.  The unifying theme is that they no longer accept the status 
quo for their country.  Events of the last seven months have accelerated 
and deepened a process demanding deep structural change.  Organizations 
such as “Los Necios”, a small, left wing organization of students and 
young people struggled to maintain a membership of around 100.   In 
these few months, their membership has swelled to over 1000. 
 
Currently 57 local expressions of the national resistance organization 
operate in cities and towns around Honduras.  Confounding the coup 
leader’s strategy, the movement is gaining strength despite brutal 
repression, state terror and the attempt to institutionalize the coup 
via elections.  The resistance movement is holding large protest marches 
today and is working to implement a four-year plan for movement building 
in preparation for the next national elections.
 
In Latin America, the coup in Honduras is widely understood to be a test 
case for U.S. policy towards Latin America.  By attacking the weakest 
and most vulnerable of the ALBA countries, the U.S. hoped to strike a 
blow to this alternative economic block which the U.S. counts as 
enemy.   However, in the wake of the coup, the U.S. found itself in a 
historically unprecedented position at the OAS.  Viewed by Latin 
American governments from both the right and the left as a potential 
direct threat to each of them, the OAS took a unanimous position 
denouncing the coup and ejecting Honduras from the OAS.  The U.S. was 
forced to accept this decision.  Most countries in Latin America 
continue to refuse to recognize the results of the coup regime sponsored 
“elections” on November 29^th despite heavy pressure and arm twisting on 
the part of the Unites States to do so.  
 
Disappointment stemming from the contradiction between statements of a 
recently inaugurated President Obama to Latin American heads of state at 
the Summit of the Americas in April of 2009, and a virtually unchanged 
U.S. policy has been articulated by leaders throughout Latin America.  
Three recent ‘moments’ have contributed to a rapid readjustment of 
expectations.  First was the coup in Honduras and refusal of the U.S. to 
take proactive policy measures against it.  Second was the announcement 
of seven new U.S. military bases in Colombia.  And the third was 
Secretary of State Clinton’s declaration that Latin America countries 
should “think twice about flirting with Iran.”
 
The willingness of Latin American countries to challenge U.S. positions 
indicates a slowly changing balance of power in the Hemisphere.  Soon 
after Arturo Valenzuela was confirmed as Assistant Secretary of State 
for the Western Hemisphere he paid a visit to the Mercosur Countries.  
Far from the diplomatic protocol to which the U.S. is accustomed, in 
Brazil and Argentina, the first two countries which he visited, Mr. 
Valenzuela was not received by the President or the Foreign Minister in 
either country.  In a press statement near the time of Valenzuela’s 
visit, Brazil’s Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim criticized the US for 
being “extremely tolerant” of the coup and the de facto regime. 
 
What seems most clear is that the U.S.  State Department remains mired 
in an outdated cold war mentality, failing to recognize and adapt to the 
profound and complex changes that have occurred in Latin America during 
the last decade.  Unfortunately, there seem to be few signs that this 
will change anytime soon. 
 
Today’s inauguration in Honduras is happening in a context in which the 
old ghosts from the worst decades of U.S. policy toward Latin America 
have been conjured in an attempt to silence opposition.   The sharp 
escalation of human rights violations and use of state terror in an 
attempt to destroy the resistance movement has now entered a phase which 
human rights defenders describe as “silent, selective and systematic.”  
Death squads and paramilitaries relentlessly pursue those resisting the 
coup.  Many have been executed, and others have fled in order to save 
their lives.  
 
The repression continues in the context of a people who are empowered, 
determined and who are not afraid.  The resistance movement has declared 
that it will not recognize Porfirio Lobo as President, but rather 
consider him to be the continuation of the dictatorship imposed though 
the June 28^th military coup.  Their non-violent struggle for deep 
structural change via a constituent assembly will continue.   What has 
happened in Honduras serves as a marker for change in Latin America.  It 
signals that attempts by the United States to rule the hemisphere 
through coercion and force will be met with new and unexpected 
challenges and forms of resistance.

Tom Loudon
Quixote Center
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Honduras’ Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo: Another Disaster for Central American 
Democracy Waiting in the Wing*

by COHA Senior Research Fellow Adrienne Pine

Tomorrow, January 27th, as the world’s eyes continue to be riveted on 
the unfolding disaster in Haiti, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo will be installed 
as Honduras’ president, succeeding de facto president Roberto 
Micheletti. Lobo, a supporter of the June 28th military coup that ousted 
President Manuel Zelaya, was chosen in a November election held under 
conditions of qualified state terror. As the majority of Hondurans 
boycotted the elections, and dozens of candidates for lower offices 
withdrew, the vast majority of countries around the world classified the 
ballot as illegitimate.

In the hours and days following the election, the illegally-appointed 
Supreme Electoral Tribunal committed fraud by announcing a voter turnout 
that was indisputably more than 12 percentage points higher than its own 
officially-published numbers. The doctored higher figure was cited 
repeatedly by Lobo, Secretary of State Clinton, and other friendly faces 
to legitimize the disputed ballot. Many Honduran and foreign observers 
argue that later international support for the Lobo Administration will 
eventually ensure the invalidation of Zelaya’s most important reforms. 
This support will guarantee long-term repression and a growing degree of 
tight-fisted control in the country, as well as endangering democratic 
institutions and social justice reforms throughout the hemisphere as the 
result of an echo effect.

Though State Department officials insist that the Honduras election 
process was transparent, in fact, no international observers were 
present to confirm the tally because—as announced by U.N. Secretary 
General Ban Ki-Moon on September 23rd—the conditions for a free and fair 
election were not present. A scathing 147-page report released 
Wednesday, January 20th, by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission 
corroborates this, citing a litany of well-documented human rights 
abuses, including numerous political assassinations committed prior to, 
and following the election. The report describes a militarized 
environment in which dissonant or critical opinions have been officially 
prohibited in “an egregious, arbitrary, unnecessary and disproportionate 
restriction, in violation of international law, of the right of every 
Honduran to express himself or herself freely, and to receive 
information from a plurality and diversity of sources.”

While no official international observers were on the ground election 
day, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International 
Republican Institute (IRI) sent “monitors” to oversee the Honduran 
election that the OAS and Carter Center had refused to legitimize with 
their presence. Both the NDI and IRI are funded by the U.S. Congress 
through a highly conservative Reagan-era umbrella organization, the 
National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The archly conservative IRI has 
supported efforts implicated in the ousting of democratically-elected 
presidents in Haiti and Venezuela in recent years. The day of the 
election, the NDI had its monitors caught on tape refusing to discuss 
police violence, which they had witnessed outside the polls in Honduras’ 
industrial city of San Pedro Sula.

The parallels between Honduras and Haiti are striking; each country has 
been saddled by a history of undeserved debt—an enduring legacy of 
colonialism—and in each country’s case (after over a century of often 
U.S.-installed dictatorships) an elected president who was responsibly 
engaged with bringing social justice to its citizens, was evicted from 
office. The vehicle for this was a military coup at least tacitly backed 
by Washington. By aiding the foes of Manual Zelaya in Honduras and 
Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Washington indirectly or directly ousted 
from power those who had been prepared to protect public resources from 
the pressing demands of the IMF for privatization, and shrink the public 
sector infrastructure of both countries. The skewed development of these 
countries, as well as guidance from private entities and the U.S. 
government, subjected the national interests of Haiti and Honduras to be 
hostage to the view of these outsiders. This is a situation that could 
turn the smallest windstorm into a hurricane, when it comes to a natural 
disaster’s impacts on the average resident and outside political 
manipulations.

Although President Obama initially joined the international community in 
condemning the Honduran coup and calling for the restoration of 
democratic order as a precondition for recognition of elections in that 
country, Washington in fact has been aggressively lobbying other Latin 
American presidents to recognize the incoming Lobo government. Despite 
the de facto government’s refusal to reinstate Zelaya or follow the time 
line and process laid out by the Guaymuras Accords, the Obama 
Administration has signaled its intention to recognize a “unity” 
government representing only the coup leaders, and to support the 
Honduran Congress’ decision to give amnesty to those responsible for the 
military coup and the thousands of human rights abuses that followed. In 
a recent interview with COHA, independent Honduran journalist and 
filmmaker Oscar Estrada expressed some of the opposition’s apprehensions 
about Lobo:

“With the entrance on the scene of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, there begins a 
new phase in the project of domination begun by the June 28th coup 
d’état. [Lobo’s] recent reconciliation agreement is nothing more than an 
attempt to whitewash the coup and demobilize the popular resistance.”

Lobo, the man who speaks today of dialogue and peace, has offered safe 
conduct for Mel Zelaya to leave the country. But, just days ago, he 
proposed a neoliberal “national plan” for the next 28 years. By means of 
his own legislative bloc, he seeks to approve an amnesty that 
principally favors the country’s violators of human rights, and plans to 
govern with the backing and protection of the paramilitary structures 
that have terrorized the people during the past six months.

Honduran opponents of the coup, who since June 28th have organized 
almost daily protest actions, including numerous marches numbering in 
the hundreds of thousands, similarly plan to protest Lobo’s inauguration.

The Obama Administration has so profoundly bungled the situation in 
Honduras that it has destroyed hope among many of its citizens as well 
as Latin Americans that a ‘new era’ of relations with the United States 
is in the making. Add to that the multiplication of U.S. military bases 
in Colombia, the mistakes being made in response to the tragedy in 
Haiti, and the missed opportunities in Cuba, and one cannot claim with 
any degree of optimism that Obama is off to a robust start to implement 
an energized and enlightened new Latin American policy.

COHA Senior Research Fellow Adrienne Pine, Ph.D, also serves an 
Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University. Dr. Pine 
recently authored the book /Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and 
Survival in Honduras/ (University of California Press).

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