Bernstein writes: "I've heard it said more than once, since the close-range
murder of indigenous leader Berta Caceres, that it's time for Hillary
Clinton to apologize to the people of Honduras for supporting and sustaining
an anti-democratic process that has turned that country into the murder
capital of the world."
Berta Caceres, a indigenous environmental activist, who was murdered in
Honduras. (photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
A Machete for Your Thoughts: Free Trade, Hillary Style
By Dennis J Bernstein, Reader Supported News
21 April 16
An interview with Beverly Bell, founder of Other Worlds
I've heard it said more than once, since the close-range murder of
indigenous leader Berta Cáceres, that it's time for Hillary Clinton to
apologize to the people of Honduras for supporting and sustaining an
anti-democratic process that has turned that country into the murder capital
of the world. Meanwhile, as Clinton campaigns, touting her expansive foreign
policy record, the violence in Honduras continues unabated.
In the following interview with Beverly Bell, founder of Other Worlds and a
close friend and associate of the murdered Cáceres, we learn that anyone on
the ground in Honduras who opposes the 10-plus US military bases there, and
who is standing against turning the country into one big free-trade zone, is
putting himself in grave danger. That point was made very clear with the
murder of Nelson Garcia, a second environmental leader from the same
organization as Cáceres.
Bell herself, who has been in Honduras for the last two weeks, says she was
inches away from being killed by machete during an anti-government protest
last Friday in Honduras, when her potential killers realized she was an
American and lowered their machetes. I went to get a bottle of water and I
somehow ended up on the wrong side of enemy lines, Bell said. Everything
shifted very fast, and two different men within moments came up to me,
machetes raised sharply over my head, just started to bring them down, and
then I guess seeing that I was a gringa, thought better of it and stopped.
Dennis Bernstein: Good to hear your voice, Bev
Where exactly are you?
Beverly Bell: Im speaking with you, Dennis, from the town of La Esperanza,
in Honduras. La Esperanza is where Berta Cáceres, the global movement leader
who was slain on March 2nd of this year, was born, where she lived, and
where she died. It is also the headquarters of the organization that she
founded, The Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras
(COPINH). I am here because my organization, Other Worlds, and the Center
for Economic Justice that I ran prior to that, have worked closely with
Berta, and with COPINH, for 18 years now, in quest of sovereignty and rights
for indigenous peoples of Honduras and elsewhere. We have been working for
the protection of their lands and waters, their rights to control those
riches of nature, and also for a very profound global transformation of
economics, politics, and society.
DB: When did you arrive there, and why did you decide to go down at this
time?
Bell: I came down here a week ago at the request of COPINH to help out
because they lost their leader, Berta Cáceres, who not only was a moral and
political powerhouse, but also was like a 100-woman work operation. So the
organization is in need of a lot of support, mainly to mobilize
international people to get at the root cause of their problems, many of
which lie with an unelected and dictatorial government here with the backing
of the U.S. military and also the backing of international institutions,
including even possibly U.S.A.I.D. in dams and other operations that are
taking place on Lenka land here. COPINH is an organization of Lenka
indigenous people. But the most immediate reason for my arriving when I did
was to attend a magnificent international gathering called the Convergence
of the Berta Viva People, and that is the peoples of the world, indigenous
and otherwise, who identify so profoundly with this extraordinary leader.
There were approximately 1,500 people from 22 nations at this 3-day
gathering.
DB: Two other things that relate to the murder of Berta unfolded before you
arrived. One is that her friend, the eyewitness to the murder, was by grace
and a lot of organizing gotten out of the country, escaping the death squads
in Honduras, and in the same context, there was another murder.
Bell: Thats right. Gustavo Castro is to the environment and its defense, in
Mexico, what Berta Cáceres was, and I will say is, even though she is dead
in the body. And he was at her home the night of her murder. He said that
the hit men thought that she was alone, and were very surprised to see him.
They did shoot him twice. One of the bullets went very, very close to his
skull, but fortunately hit his ear instead. The other hit his hand. He then
went through the most horrific experience of 26 days of either being
directly held by the Honduran government, supposedly for questioning, but
through the entire days he was horribly psychologically tortured, and to
some degree physically tortured. And then the remainder of the time he was
in the Mexican Embassy, he being a Mexican citizen, for his own protection,
because the Honduran government refused to allow him to leave.
However, his departure, and the fact that he is now back in Mexico, is a
rare moment when people united actually get to see immediate results of our
work. And what happened is that people around the world who know Gustavo or
who care about the struggle, mobilized, and we got responses from 62
congressmen in the U.S. House of Representatives, denouncing this to
Secretary of State Kerry, and asking him to cut military aid. We got the
Vatican to pronounce itself against what was happening to Gustavo. There
were calls from everybody, from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and so many other
well-known people. And in Latin America alone, over 100,000 people sent
letters calling for Gustavos release.
So he is back home. However, I am sorry to say that he is not at all safe
because a hit man could easily be dispatched from Honduras, and go into
Mexico. And we are at a moment when this sort of thing is happening quite
regularly here in Honduras. Gustavo is, unfortunately, extremely
inconvenient to the Honduran government and to the dam company that Berta
and her group had been opposing, who we are quite sure paid the hit men who
killed her.
And incidentally I was with Bertas brother, also named Gustavo, a couple of
days ago, and he said that two weeks before her death, Berta called him and
said that they had already contracted and paid for the death squads who were
to shoot her. This was a long anticipated event.
DB: The name of the company.
Bell: The company is DESA, which means energy development in Spanish. It
claims to be a Honduran company however, it is underwritten by funds from
the Dutch Development Bank, the Finnish Development Bank, and the Central
American Bank for Economic Integration, which basically the U.S. runs. In
the past it was also underwritten by the World Bank, although very strong
pressure from the indigenous organization here, COPINH, caused the World
Bank to pull out, and it also caused the largest dam company in the world,
Sinohydro, which is owned by the Chinese government, to pull out.
And this makes me think all of a sudden of a wonderful expression I once
heard, If you think youre too small to make a difference, youve never
spent the night in bed with a mosquito. So these unarmed and
under-resourced people are indigenous folks, without so much as a cell
phone, but they were actually able to get the World Bank and the largest dam
company in the world to stop. But the dam itself and the company behind it
continue under construction.
DB: What about the second murder? Please remind us what the situation is
there.
Bell: Yeah. So, one might think that all of the condemnation that has been
brought down on the Honduran governments head after it killed Berta
Cáceres, its best-known international figure, would have stopped it. But
that is not the case. Since her death the government has attacked I think
something like eight other COPINH members, arresting them, beating them, or
threatening them. And it did kill Nelson Garcia, who is another of the
leaders of COPINH, The Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of
Honduras, which Berta Cáceres started at the ripe age of 20 years old.
Nelson was coming back from helping some people whose land were being
illegally seized by the military, and so the government, in a very clear
message to all Hondurans who attempt to stand up and speak out and fight
back, killed him as well. Then this past Friday, April 15th, numerous other
people came quite close to losing their lives, including me. Yes, the
government is continuing on its path.
DB: What happened to you? And where did the danger come from, in terms of
the work youre doing on the ground now.
Bell: Well, I wasnt targeted, in my case, Im sure. Although it was
targeting in the case of some of the others who were attacked. But the third
day of this international gathering of people from all over Europe and the
Americas, to honor the life of Berta and to recommit to her struggle,
involved a trip to the site of the dam construction, which was the final
reason for which the infuriated Honduran government and the dam company
killed her, after so many threats on her life for so many years. This was
the final straw for them, that she and COPINH had been able to stop
construction of the dam for about a year and a half.
So the dam company had actually moved from the village of Rio Blanco, which
is organized as a COPINH Lenka indigenous community, which had stopped the
construction to the other side of the river, the northern edge of the river
where there is a town of people who are not organized, who do not identify
as indigenous. Although, of course, they are all the same people.
And so now the dam construction is continuing on the northern bank of the
river. So there was a delegation of many hundreds of us, no one knows for
sure, maybe 500 who went to that village and were to make the trek down, way
down the dirt road to the river itself, both to hold a ceremony, given by
Mayan Guatemalan healers, and also to take a swim in the sacred river.
Well, what happened ... first we were stopped several times along the way by
police, but the COPINH members whose fierceness I could never overstate,
its extraordinary, their bravery got out of the vehicles, and basically
harassed the police until they let us go. But when we got to the village
where we were to on foot after we had gotten out of the buses where we
were to go to the river, there were about 20 paid thugs. They were paid by
the company. Some of them were known hit men, who had threatened Berta and
others in prior times. And they were waving machetes and shrieking like
crazy people, shouting horrible racist remarks, and holding rocks and some
of them holding guns. And they even said, one of the chants was, We killed
the fly, and yet her plague remains, referring to the beautiful Berta
Cáceres
And they, in turn, were protected by about the same number, about 20 police
who held them back, clearly stood there, wanted nothing to do with us. So we
went down to the river anyway, and did what we came to do, and as we were
turning these thugs, these goons, by now many of whom were quite drunk, were
let loose by the police. The police just stepped aside and then watched,
without any intervention, as the goons started attacking people with
machetes, and rocks, and sticks.
And there were between 8 and 10 people wounded, none very seriously.
However, there was one man who almost lost his hand. One of these goons was
bringing his machete down on the mans arm when someone else, one of us, one
of our team, grabbed a machete away from him.
And then in my case, two different men
I went to get a bottle of water and
I somehow ended up on the wrong side of enemy lines. Everything shifted very
fast, and two different men within moments came up to me machetes, raised
them sharply over my head, just started to bring them down, and then I guess
seeing that I was a gringa, thought better of it and stopped.
So it was horrible, and then the police continued harassing people. And in
fact they themselves got more violent, and really jumped into the action,
and started physically pushing us back toward the buses. Some of the police
got in their vehicles and were pushing, literally, almost literally pushing
some of the walkers who were retreating at that point, to our vehicles, with
their trucks. If someone had tripped the police car could have easily run
over that person. Shouting at us, cursing at us, and waving their rifles at
us.
DB: Wow. We have repeated announcements from the U.S. government, official
announcements from the State Department that they are cooperating with what
the government is doing. Is this about right? Is there any response to this,
what happened in this attack by these thugs? You say the police let them go.
What is the government thinking? What can we think about the governments
policy?
Bell: Well, the Honduran government is very much a part of this. And they
have worked hand in hand with the paid death squads of this dam company,
DESA. Which, again, has been the target of opposition of this wonderful,
radical, militant, passionate, committed, justice minded, indigenous group,
COPINH.
The government, as you mentioned Dennis, is a completely illegitimate
government. There was a coup, your listeners may know, in 2009 that the U.S.
was very behind. Hillary Clinton herself has taken pride, and publicly
bragged at having consolidated it. As we have spoken about before on this
show, in her last book, Hard Choices, she even said that, speaking of the
deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, she said, We rendered Zelaya moot. Which
is an extraordinary statement about a sovereign government of another
country.
But, of course, Honduras is not sovereign. It has been the main U.S. client
state for the whole region of Central America ever since it was used as a
base for the contra, who were, of course, fighting against the revolutionary
Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and also as a base for death squads used in
Guatemala. And now, I have clearer figures on the number of Honduran
military bases that the U.S. is behind. The U.S. says it has zero military
bases. But I consulted with some human rights observers who have been here
for years and the U.S. is known to be involved in 12 to 13 military bases in
this country, which is basically the size of Virginia.
So after the coup in 2009, there was then a false election later that year,
and another false election in 2013, which I believe that only the U.S. and
Canadian governments certified as legitimate, where the U.S. basically
imposed its puppets, so though it is not widely recognized as such in the
U.S., your listeners and everybody needs to know that this is a completely
illegitimate government here to prop up the U.S. military presence, again
thats used all over Central America. And also Canadian investments in
mines, which is happening here to an extraordinary degree, that extraction.
DB: Just to have you reiterate: How would you characterize the things that
happen in Honduras in terms of the Clinton legacy as Secretary of State?
Because that is touted as one of her strongest strengths.
Bell: Yes, well I also work in Haiti, and she has played a very similar
role in Haiti with disaster capitalism. And, here, not only did she help to
put in this horrendous government that is fully neo-liberal and that has run
or that has operated under the explicit banner of Honduras is open for
business, and incidentally in Haiti the exact same expression, Haiti is
open for business. But English is used, in both cases, in a non-English
speaking country. But Hillary Clinton here is very much seen as the person
who facilitated for the U.S. government this ongoing regime of a government
that has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and that has
presided over the nation that has the highest level of killing of
environmental activists, according to the research of the group Global
Witness. And Berta Cáceres, a few months before her death, singled out
Hillary Clinton as having the blood on her hands of having destroyed that
democracy, and then through the coup, as having responsibility for so many
people who have been killed since. Hundreds and hundreds of environmental
defenders have killed since.
DB: Finally, youre there. There are days of resistance, people are still
fighting, putting their lives on the line, as you have. And youre there to
witness that and to support that. What are the people seeing next? What do
you see as the plan? Do you see, given this extraordinary amount of
intimidation, just what you faced this week, do you see a slowing down? A
sense by the people, that the people are tired and frightened?
Bell: On the contrary, Dennis. People here are so angry at Bertas murder,
and they are not going to stop. And those who have taken up the leadership
behind her know that they walk with their coffins under their arm, but
nobody cares about that. People are working hard for justice, and that is
their single determination. They do have a very strong call for us in the
U.S. We have a unique opportunity to impact what is happening in Honduras by
the grossly applied power that our government has over what happens in this
country.
The demands are for the U.S. to cut all security assistance to Honduras, and
also to pressure the U.S. government to work with, well, the Central
American Bank for economic integration, and others whose finances the U.S.
does have influence over, and to stop the dam on this sacred river for which
Berta died, and four other members of COPINH died. So I hope that all of
your listeners will get in touch with their Congress people, will get in
touch with their senators, even if they have already, and will again ask for
all security assistance to Honduras be cut, and that the U.S. work to
disengage itself from any capital that is involved in this dam.
________________________________________
Dennis J Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on
Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as
a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed:
Voices from a Hidden Classroom.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Berta Caceres, a indigenous environmental activist, who was murdered in
Honduras. (photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
A Machete for Your Thoughts: Free Trade, Hillary Style
By Dennis J Bernstein, Reader Supported News
21 April 16
An interview with Beverly Bell, founder of Other Worlds
've heard it said more than once, since the close-range murder of
indigenous leader Berta Cáceres, that it's time for Hillary Clinton to
apologize to the people of Honduras for supporting and sustaining an
anti-democratic process that has turned that country into the murder capital
of the world. Meanwhile, as Clinton campaigns, touting her expansive foreign
policy record, the violence in Honduras continues unabated.
In the following interview with Beverly Bell, founder of Other Worlds and a
close friend and associate of the murdered Cáceres, we learn that anyone on
the ground in Honduras who opposes the 10-plus US military bases there, and
who is standing against turning the country into one big free-trade zone, is
putting himself in grave danger. That point was made very clear with the
murder of Nelson Garcia, a second environmental leader from the same
organization as Cáceres.
Bell herself, who has been in Honduras for the last two weeks, says she was
inches away from being killed by machete during an anti-government protest
last Friday in Honduras, when her potential killers realized she was an
American and lowered their machetes. I went to get a bottle of water and I
somehow ended up on the wrong side of enemy lines, Bell said. Everything
shifted very fast, and two different men within moments came up to me,
machetes raised sharply over my head, just started to bring them down, and
then I guess seeing that I was a gringa, thought better of it and stopped.
Dennis Bernstein: Good to hear your voice, Bev
Where exactly are you?
Beverly Bell: Im speaking with you, Dennis, from the town of La Esperanza,
in Honduras. La Esperanza is where Berta Cáceres, the global movement leader
who was slain on March 2nd of this year, was born, where she lived, and
where she died. It is also the headquarters of the organization that she
founded, The Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras
(COPINH). I am here because my organization, Other Worlds, and the Center
for Economic Justice that I ran prior to that, have worked closely with
Berta, and with COPINH, for 18 years now, in quest of sovereignty and rights
for indigenous peoples of Honduras and elsewhere. We have been working for
the protection of their lands and waters, their rights to control those
riches of nature, and also for a very profound global transformation of
economics, politics, and society.
DB: When did you arrive there, and why did you decide to go down at this
time?
Bell: I came down here a week ago at the request of COPINH to help out
because they lost their leader, Berta Cáceres, who not only was a moral and
political powerhouse, but also was like a 100-woman work operation. So the
organization is in need of a lot of support, mainly to mobilize
international people to get at the root cause of their problems, many of
which lie with an unelected and dictatorial government here with the backing
of the U.S. military and also the backing of international institutions,
including even possibly U.S.A.I.D. in dams and other operations that are
taking place on Lenka land here. COPINH is an organization of Lenka
indigenous people. But the most immediate reason for my arriving when I did
was to attend a magnificent international gathering called the Convergence
of the Berta Viva People, and that is the peoples of the world, indigenous
and otherwise, who identify so profoundly with this extraordinary leader.
There were approximately 1,500 people from 22 nations at this 3-day
gathering.
DB: Two other things that relate to the murder of Berta unfolded before you
arrived. One is that her friend, the eyewitness to the murder, was by grace
and a lot of organizing gotten out of the country, escaping the death squads
in Honduras, and in the same context, there was another murder.
Bell: Thats right. Gustavo Castro is to the environment and its defense, in
Mexico, what Berta Cáceres was, and I will say is, even though she is dead
in the body. And he was at her home the night of her murder. He said that
the hit men thought that she was alone, and were very surprised to see him.
They did shoot him twice. One of the bullets went very, very close to his
skull, but fortunately hit his ear instead. The other hit his hand. He then
went through the most horrific experience of 26 days of either being
directly held by the Honduran government, supposedly for questioning, but
through the entire days he was horribly psychologically tortured, and to
some degree physically tortured. And then the remainder of the time he was
in the Mexican Embassy, he being a Mexican citizen, for his own protection,
because the Honduran government refused to allow him to leave.
However, his departure, and the fact that he is now back in Mexico, is a
rare moment when people united actually get to see immediate results of our
work. And what happened is that people around the world who know Gustavo or
who care about the struggle, mobilized, and we got responses from 62
congressmen in the U.S. House of Representatives, denouncing this to
Secretary of State Kerry, and asking him to cut military aid. We got the
Vatican to pronounce itself against what was happening to Gustavo. There
were calls from everybody, from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and so many other
well-known people. And in Latin America alone, over 100,000 people sent
letters calling for Gustavos release.
So he is back home. However, I am sorry to say that he is not at all safe
because a hit man could easily be dispatched from Honduras, and go into
Mexico. And we are at a moment when this sort of thing is happening quite
regularly here in Honduras. Gustavo is, unfortunately, extremely
inconvenient to the Honduran government and to the dam company that Berta
and her group had been opposing, who we are quite sure paid the hit men who
killed her.
And incidentally I was with Bertas brother, also named Gustavo, a couple of
days ago, and he said that two weeks before her death, Berta called him and
said that they had already contracted and paid for the death squads who were
to shoot her. This was a long anticipated event.
DB: The name of the company.
Bell: The company is DESA, which means energy development in Spanish. It
claims to be a Honduran company however, it is underwritten by funds from
the Dutch Development Bank, the Finnish Development Bank, and the Central
American Bank for Economic Integration, which basically the U.S. runs. In
the past it was also underwritten by the World Bank, although very strong
pressure from the indigenous organization here, COPINH, caused the World
Bank to pull out, and it also caused the largest dam company in the world,
Sinohydro, which is owned by the Chinese government, to pull out.
And this makes me think all of a sudden of a wonderful expression I once
heard, If you think youre too small to make a difference, youve never
spent the night in bed with a mosquito. So these unarmed and
under-resourced people are indigenous folks, without so much as a cell
phone, but they were actually able to get the World Bank and the largest dam
company in the world to stop. But the dam itself and the company behind it
continue under construction.
DB: What about the second murder? Please remind us what the situation is
there.
Bell: Yeah. So, one might think that all of the condemnation that has been
brought down on the Honduran governments head after it killed Berta
Cáceres, its best-known international figure, would have stopped it. But
that is not the case. Since her death the government has attacked I think
something like eight other COPINH members, arresting them, beating them, or
threatening them. And it did kill Nelson Garcia, who is another of the
leaders of COPINH, The Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of
Honduras, which Berta Cáceres started at the ripe age of 20 years old.
Nelson was coming back from helping some people whose land were being
illegally seized by the military, and so the government, in a very clear
message to all Hondurans who attempt to stand up and speak out and fight
back, killed him as well. Then this past Friday, April 15th, numerous other
people came quite close to losing their lives, including me. Yes, the
government is continuing on its path.
DB: What happened to you? And where did the danger come from, in terms of
the work youre doing on the ground now.
Bell: Well, I wasnt targeted, in my case, Im sure. Although it was
targeting in the case of some of the others who were attacked. But the third
day of this international gathering of people from all over Europe and the
Americas, to honor the life of Berta and to recommit to her struggle,
involved a trip to the site of the dam construction, which was the final
reason for which the infuriated Honduran government and the dam company
killed her, after so many threats on her life for so many years. This was
the final straw for them, that she and COPINH had been able to stop
construction of the dam for about a year and a half.
So the dam company had actually moved from the village of Rio Blanco, which
is organized as a COPINH Lenka indigenous community, which had stopped the
construction to the other side of the river, the northern edge of the river
where there is a town of people who are not organized, who do not identify
as indigenous. Although, of course, they are all the same people.
And so now the dam construction is continuing on the northern bank of the
river. So there was a delegation of many hundreds of us, no one knows for
sure, maybe 500 who went to that village and were to make the trek down, way
down the dirt road to the river itself, both to hold a ceremony, given by
Mayan Guatemalan healers, and also to take a swim in the sacred river.
Well, what happened ... first we were stopped several times along the way by
police, but the COPINH members whose fierceness I could never overstate,
its extraordinary, their bravery got out of the vehicles, and basically
harassed the police until they let us go. But when we got to the village
where we were to on foot after we had gotten out of the buses where we
were to go to the river, there were about 20 paid thugs. They were paid by
the company. Some of them were known hit men, who had threatened Berta and
others in prior times. And they were waving machetes and shrieking like
crazy people, shouting horrible racist remarks, and holding rocks and some
of them holding guns. And they even said, one of the chants was, We killed
the fly, and yet her plague remains, referring to the beautiful Berta
Cáceres
And they, in turn, were protected by about the same number, about 20 police
who held them back, clearly stood there, wanted nothing to do with us. So we
went down to the river anyway, and did what we came to do, and as we were
turning these thugs, these goons, by now many of whom were quite drunk, were
let loose by the police. The police just stepped aside and then watched,
without any intervention, as the goons started attacking people with
machetes, and rocks, and sticks.
And there were between 8 and 10 people wounded, none very seriously.
However, there was one man who almost lost his hand. One of these goons was
bringing his machete down on the mans arm when someone else, one of us, one
of our team, grabbed a machete away from him.
And then in my case, two different men
I went to get a bottle of water and
I somehow ended up on the wrong side of enemy lines. Everything shifted very
fast, and two different men within moments came up to me machetes, raised
them sharply over my head, just started to bring them down, and then I guess
seeing that I was a gringa, thought better of it and stopped.
So it was horrible, and then the police continued harassing people. And in
fact they themselves got more violent, and really jumped into the action,
and started physically pushing us back toward the buses. Some of the police
got in their vehicles and were pushing, literally, almost literally pushing
some of the walkers who were retreating at that point, to our vehicles, with
their trucks. If someone had tripped the police car could have easily run
over that person. Shouting at us, cursing at us, and waving their rifles at
us.
DB: Wow. We have repeated announcements from the U.S. government, official
announcements from the State Department that they are cooperating with what
the government is doing. Is this about right? Is there any response to this,
what happened in this attack by these thugs? You say the police let them go.
What is the government thinking? What can we think about the governments
policy?
Bell: Well, the Honduran government is very much a part of this. And they
have worked hand in hand with the paid death squads of this dam company,
DESA. Which, again, has been the target of opposition of this wonderful,
radical, militant, passionate, committed, justice minded, indigenous group,
COPINH.
The government, as you mentioned Dennis, is a completely illegitimate
government. There was a coup, your listeners may know, in 2009 that the U.S.
was very behind. Hillary Clinton herself has taken pride, and publicly
bragged at having consolidated it. As we have spoken about before on this
show, in her last book, Hard Choices, she even said that, speaking of the
deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, she said, We rendered Zelaya moot. Which
is an extraordinary statement about a sovereign government of another
country.
But, of course, Honduras is not sovereign. It has been the main U.S. client
state for the whole region of Central America ever since it was used as a
base for the contra, who were, of course, fighting against the revolutionary
Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and also as a base for death squads used in
Guatemala. And now, I have clearer figures on the number of Honduran
military bases that the U.S. is behind. The U.S. says it has zero military
bases. But I consulted with some human rights observers who have been here
for years and the U.S. is known to be involved in 12 to 13 military bases in
this country, which is basically the size of Virginia.
So after the coup in 2009, there was then a false election later that year,
and another false election in 2013, which I believe that only the U.S. and
Canadian governments certified as legitimate, where the U.S. basically
imposed its puppets, so though it is not widely recognized as such in the
U.S., your listeners and everybody needs to know that this is a completely
illegitimate government here to prop up the U.S. military presence, again
thats used all over Central America. And also Canadian investments in
mines, which is happening here to an extraordinary degree, that extraction.
DB: Just to have you reiterate: How would you characterize the things that
happen in Honduras in terms of the Clinton legacy as Secretary of State?
Because that is touted as one of her strongest strengths.
Bell: Yes, well I also work in Haiti, and she has played a very similar role
in Haiti with disaster capitalism. And, here, not only did she help to put
in this horrendous government that is fully neo-liberal and that has run or
that has operated under the explicit banner of Honduras is open for
business, and incidentally in Haiti the exact same expression, Haiti is
open for business. But English is used, in both cases, in a non-English
speaking country. But Hillary Clinton here is very much seen as the person
who facilitated for the U.S. government this ongoing regime of a government
that has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and that has
presided over the nation that has the highest level of killing of
environmental activists, according to the research of the group Global
Witness. And Berta Cáceres, a few months before her death, singled out
Hillary Clinton as having the blood on her hands of having destroyed that
democracy, and then through the coup, as having responsibility for so many
people who have been killed since. Hundreds and hundreds of environmental
defenders have killed since.
DB: Finally, youre there. There are days of resistance, people are still
fighting, putting their lives on the line, as you have. And youre there to
witness that and to support that. What are the people seeing next? What do
you see as the plan? Do you see, given this extraordinary amount of
intimidation, just what you faced this week, do you see a slowing down? A
sense by the people, that the people are tired and frightened?
Bell: On the contrary, Dennis. People here are so angry at Bertas murder,
and they are not going to stop. And those who have taken up the leadership
behind her know that they walk with their coffins under their arm, but
nobody cares about that. People are working hard for justice, and that is
their single determination. They do have a very strong call for us in the
U.S. We have a unique opportunity to impact what is happening in Honduras by
the grossly applied power that our government has over what happens in this
country.
The demands are for the U.S. to cut all security assistance to Honduras, and
also to pressure the U.S. government to work with, well, the Central
American Bank for economic integration, and others whose finances the U.S.
does have influence over, and to stop the dam on this sacred river for which
Berta died, and four other members of COPINH died. So I hope that all of
your listeners will get in touch with their Congress people, will get in
touch with their senators, even if they have already, and will again ask for
all security assistance to Honduras be cut, and that the U.S. work to
disengage itself from any capital that is involved in this dam.
Dennis J Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on
Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as
a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed:
Voices from a Hidden Classroom.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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