El
Sol en Español 19 de
Julio, 2009
HONDURAN
COUP -- US Fingerprints behind the Scenes?
Supporters of deposed president Zelaya occupy an intersection near
Telucigalpa as a national guardsman looks on.
by Richard Johnson
It's a Latin American tradition. Helicopters
in the air, tanks in the streets, people throwing rocks at police armed
by the United States. Another central American leader arrested in a
military coup.
It happened to Manuel Noriega in
Panama, 1989. It happened to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in
2002. It happened to Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in 2004. They had
threatened the oligarchy and lost the support of Washington. They were
overthrown by a US invasion or their own military.
On the 28th of June this year in Obama's wonderful
epoch of believable change, a military coup was carried out by the
Honduran aristocracy, kidnapping the president and his family and
exiling them from their own country.
At the time, president Manuel "Mel" Zelaya was
organizing a voter initiative to call a convention to reform the
nation's backward Constitution, just as citizen groups in California
are calling for a new state constitution.
From the first days of the coup, hundreds of
thousands of youth, government employees and private sector workers
continue to fight police in the streets of Telucigalpa, occupying key
highways and crossroads that feed the capital from both coasts.
More than 100,000 were gathered at the airport on
July 12 to receive their president, but the junta sent tanks onto the
runway to block Zelaya's airplane from landing. The confrontation
was recorded by other Latin American officials and reporters in
following aircraft, and by observers on the ground.
The military fired against the unarmed crowd,
killing at least one and wounding many.
The country's three main labor unions called a
general strike.
With US support, Costa Rican president and Nobel
Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias invited both sides to a dialogue within
his country to "find a peaceful resolution" to the crisis.
Among his ideas were a "government of national
reconciliation" in which Zelaya would not participate. What's more the
elected president would have to abandon his project of a Constitutional
Convention. In return, charges against him would be dismissed.
On July 17, Zelaya rejected these proposals, and
repeated his intention to return to his country by "air, sea, land or
whatever" if the negotiations did not result in his restitution to
power. He reminded the people they had the "right of insurrection" if
the negotiations did not result in a decision in his favor.
Meanwhile, the head of the illegal Honduran junta
claiming power Roberto Michiletti announced that no solution that would
involve the return of Zelaya was acceptable in any form, and demanded
the international community butt out.
"We will not accept that any nation would impose
anything upon us whatever. We have a position, and we are firmly
decided and we will change nothing in any way, " he added.
Meanwhile, popular demonstrations continued in the
streets of Telucigalpa against repression and the so-called
reconciliation talks in Costa Rica. Thousands of supporters of the
president continue blocking various routes inside the capital and key
highways linking with both coasts as we go to press.
The demands of the Honduran youth and workers is an
end to the coup, that the armed forces cease the repression, the
re-establishment of all civil liberties, the return of the elected
president and the Constitutional Assembly the coup intended to halt.
In a public letter, the Civic Council of Popular and
Indigenous Organizations of Honduras denounced the presence of Army
tanks and helicopters around the presidential palace and in the streets
of Telucigalpa.
The hereditary oligarchy which has always ruled
Honduras in alliance with US companies enjoying low wages and little
regulation fears nothing more than a popular movement to rewrite the
outdated constitution as has happened in Venezuela to grant indigenous
pueblos home rule and guarantee environmental rights to natural
resources. Various government bodies resisted Zelaya's call for a
popular referendum and Constitutional Convention and labeled these
steps illegal. Finally they ordered his arrest and exile.
The coup happened directly after Zelaya had called for Cuba to be
admitted to the Organization of American States.
Chavez
Accuses Clinton
The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, remembering
that he was deposed for 47 hours in 2002 by a Bush administration
backed coup urged Zelaya's supporters to remain firm in their
support of the Bolivian Revolution and claimed that Zelaya would return
to Honduras within hours.
According to Chavez, the Revolution is based on the
ideology of Simon Bolivar and the doctrines of Simon Rodriquez who
proposed that Latin America re-invent itself in its own political
system, and in the writings of General Eziquiel Zamora who defended the
holding of land by farmworker cooperatives. The aim is to arrive at a
new socialism.
At the same time, Chavez warned other leftist
central and South American governments that the US was fomenting army
takeovers in their own countries.
On July 17, he declared the US state department was
behind the coup in Honduras and challenged president Obama to
forcefully denounce it, accusing the US president of "acting innocent."
He dared Obama to take US troops out of their base in Palmerola and
seize the assets of the coup leaders in the US.
For its part, the Obama administration has publicly
declared the coup illegal and demanded that Zelaya be returned to
power, calling him the "only president of Honduras," has ended military
aid to that country, and supported the Arias negotiations.
At the same time US secretary of state Hillary
Clinton denounced Chavez' "interference" in the Honduran situation
without naming him. At the same time, key lobbyists formerly in her and
her husband's employ went to work for the Honduran junta.
Universal Condemnation
In the whole continent, The CUT in Brazil, the CGT
in Peru, the PIT0-CNT of Uruguay, the CUT of Chile, all popular and
workers organizations of Latin America condemned and organized
demonstrations against the coup.
The COB central workers committee in Brazil has
called a national plenary in La Paz to declare solidarity with the
workers in Honduras. They call for a national march in defense of
democracy against the "fascist state coup of imperialist origin."
All Latin-American governments have denounced the
Honduran coup.
While Clinton announced the US would nor recognize
any goverment other than Zelaya's in Honduras, press reports revealed
that the US embassador met with the Army chiefs of staff three days
before the coup.
In an interview, Fidel Castro said it was incredible
the embassador had no advance notice of the coup.