https://socialistaction.org/2019/04/25/before-venezuela-there-was-the-coup-in-honduras/
Before Venezuela, there was the coup in Honduras
/ 11 hours ago
April 2019 Honduras (Sandra Cuffe-Berk. Review)
Police attack protesters in July 2009, following the Honduran coup.
(Photo: Sandra Cuffe / Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies)
By LAZARO MONTEVERDE
???The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in
the Aftermath of the Coup,??? by Dana Frank. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018).
Activist and scholar Dana Frank has given us a useful book to help us
understand the present events in Honduras, at the U.S.-Mexico border,
and elsewhere in Latin America. The 2009 coup in Honduras that toppled a
democratically elected and mildly progressive government was engineered
and sponsored by the U.S. government under President Obama and Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton.
Frank gives us an analysis of the coup and subsequent resistance
movement, as well as a first-person account of the activists and events
since the coup. The book is readable and fact filled, but it is also
necessary to any understanding of events in the so-called backyard of
the United States.
Frank is a professor emerita of history at the University of California
at Santa Cruz. She is best known in academic and labor circles for her
insightful history of women workers in the banana industry, ???Bananeras:
Women transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America,??? published by
South End Press in 2005. She has extensive personal connections with
unions and feminist organizations in Honduras and has a strong grasp of
the scholarly research on Honduras in both Spanish and English.
The coup against the democratically elected president of Honduras Jose
Manuel Zelaya Rosales took place on Sunday, June 28, 2009. The Honduran
military, with the support of the Honduran Supreme Court and Congress,
arrested the president and flew him to Costa Rica. The book explores the
reasons for the coup and the popular struggle to restore democracy in
its aftermath.
The coup was orchestrated by the U.S. with the support of the Honduran
elite and military, both groups with close ties to Washington. When
Obama took office in January 2009, the administration turned its
attention to Latin America, an area that had been somewhat neglected
under the Bush administration, which was focused on the Middle East.
Noting the significant erosion of U.S. economic and political
domination, the U.S. sought to reassert imperialist control over the
empire???s traditional ???backyard,??? a pejorative expression in Latin America.
President Zelaya was a member of the traditional Honduras elite. Elected
in 2006, he started moving in a reformist direction. He joined the
Venezuelan and Cuban-led ALBA, supported a 50% increase in the minimum
wage, and blocked efforts by the wealthy to privatize publicly owned
ports, schools, and electrical systems.
These efforts at reform generated enormous resistance from the U.S. and
the Honduran elite. In response to this resistance, President Zelaya
proposed a non-binding survey question to be included on the ballot for
elections held on June 28. The survey asked if voters wanted to include
in the upcoming November ballot a question on authorizing a vote for
delegates to a constitutional convention, to be held at some unspecified
time in the future. Notice that this was not a vote to authorize a
constitutional convention, nor was it an election of delegates to such a
convention. All of this, by the way, was completely legal under the
Honduran Constitution.
This tepid exercise in democracy was clearly too much for the empire and
its clients. The U.S. and Honduran elite feared that the spread of
democracy would undermine neoliberal policies in Honduras and challenge
U.S. and elite control. The army, legally responsible for distributing
ballots, refused to do so. Instead, on the morning of the elections,
they grabbed President Zelaya and kicked him out of the country. The
president of the Honduran Congress, Roberto Micheletti, declared himself
president.
Now events unfolded following the typical U.S. script. The army seized
government buildings. Demonstrations against the coup started almost
immediately all over the country. In response, the government declared a
state of siege, imposed a curfew, and sent tanks and soldiers into the
streets. The resistance escalated in turn.
On July 2 (four days after the coup), hundreds of thousands demonstrated
in the streets of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, Honduras???s two largest
cities. World leaders around the world condemned the coup, except for Obama.
One week after the coup, Zelaya tried to fly into the Tegucigalpa
airport, along with the president of the United Nations General
Assembly, the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, and Paraguay, and the
Secretary General of the Organization of American States. The Honduran
military blocked the runway, preventing the plane from landing while
Honduran army snipers killed Hondurans who had come to welcome home
their president. Estimates of the crowd ranged from several hundred
thousand to one million.
Frank highlights the geopolitical reasons for the coup. Honduras was the
weakest link in the chain of regimes moving toward independence from
U.S. imperialism, or to use her metaphor, ???Honduras was the first domino
that the United States pushed over to counteract the new governments in
Latin America??? (p. 19).
Honduras is the home of the Soto Cano Air Base, one of the largest U.S.
Air Force bases in all of Latin America. Honduras is also the source of
super-profits for several major transnational corporations. For all of
these reasons, in addition to the fact that U.S. imperialism tolerates
no dissent no matter how mild, the U.S. wanted Zelaya overthrown.
Much of the book details the emergence and struggles of the popular
resistance to the post-coup government. Within weeks of the coup,
opposition groups coalesced into the Frente Nacional de Resistencia
Popular [National Front of Popular Resistance] or FNRP.?? The FNRP was
commonly called simply La Resistencia [the Resistance] and included a
broad range of groups, including the traditional Marxist groups, labor
unions, and peasant organizations, as well as feminist groups,
environmental groups, and LGBT groups. The FNRP organized non-violent
demonstrations and strikes while the government stepped up its crackdown
on all political dissent.
The U.S. played for time by manipulating negotiations between Zelaya and
Micheletti in Costa Rica. The negotiations paved the way for the Nov.
29, 2019, presidential elections while excluding Zelaya. The elections
were a textbook example of a ???demonstration election,??? an election in
form without the substance of any democratic participation. The election
of Porfirio Lopez, a coup supporter, was almost a forgone conclusion.
Weeks after the election, which the U.S. hailed as a triumph of
democracy, assassinations and early morning raids on political activists
increased. At the same time, the U.S. re-opened the aid spigots that had
been shut off during Zelaya???s presidency. President Lopez began to
privatize major government owned assets.
In spite of the slow and steady slaughter of Honduran political
activists, the Resistance continued until dealt a surprising body blow.
The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela (Juan Manuel Santos and Hugo
Chavez, respectively) had negotiated the Cartagena Accords between
Zelaya and the Honduran government. The accord included first, dropping
all charges against Zelaya and his ministers; second, a commitment on
the part of the Honduran government to human rights; and third, creating
a legal path for the FNRP to become a political party. This agreement
was negotiated behind the backs of the Resistance, who both called for a
constituent assembly to write a new constitution and opposed
participation in the corrupt and undemocratic election process.
The Cartagena Accords split the FNRP and paved the way for a new
U.S.-backed dictator to emerge. Part of the Resistance formed LIBRE, a
political party based on Zelaya???s supporters. LIBRE ran Xiomara Castro,
President Zelaya???s wife and a popular figure in the country, in the
November 2013 elections. The final results, unsurprisingly, gave the
election to Juan Orlando Hernandez, the U.S.???s man in Tegucigalpa.
Hernandez proceeded to increase political repression and purge the
Honduran judiciary and police, especially of those who opposed
corruption or Hernandez???s rule (Hernandez and segments of the Honduran
ruling class have strong connections to the drug trade).
The U.S. appointed General James Nealon, a former head of SOUTHCOM, as
ambassador to Honduras. And so it goes: the U.S. and the Honduran ruling
class are back in control while the Honduran people face repression,
crime, and brutal capitalist exploitation in a seemingly never ending
long Honduran night. Is it any wonder that Hondurans seek a better life
in the center of the capitalist system?
For more information, contact the Honduras Solidarity Network, at
http://www.hondurassolidarity.org.
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April 25, 2019 in Latin America. Tags: Honduras
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