GIORDANO: Zelaya Heads Home on Anniversary of Bolivar's Birth

[magbana]

Zelaya Heads Home to Honduras on the Anniversary of Bolívar's Birth
Posted by Al Giordano - July 23, 2009 at 9:26 am

By Al Giordano

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/zelaya-heads-home-honduras-anniversary-bol%C3%ADvar%E2%80%99s-birth

Honduras' legitimate President Manuel Zelaya yesterday told reporters that he will cross back to the country that elected him on Friday, July 24, via land, a date that also marks 215 years from the birth of the Great Liberator, Simon Bolívar:

“I leave (Managua, Nicaragua) for Estelí, then Somoto and through Ocotal, and the next day (Friday) cross the border,” Zelaya told reporters yesterday. Members of his family and many, many journalists will accompany him on that voyage.

The announcement could be a “head fake” to throw the regime off his path and allow him to more easily enter by another route, but if President Zelaya does choose that location to cross, the Las Manos border crossing, in the Honduran state of El Paraiso, is open from six a.m. to six p.m. and, on a normal day, staffed by the National Police and the Honduras Immigration Service. The border crossing is about 144 kilometers (89 miles) from the capital city of Tegucigalpa.

“President Zelaya will come through here, of this I have no doubt,” Mayor Carlos Ovidio Seguro, of El Paraiso, Honduras told the Argentine daily El Clarin, which reported some other notable quotes:

“All of Honduras will be in El Paraiso awaiting the President,” announced the newsman on Channel 20, the regional TV station.

“We have no order to arrest him,” Lieutenant Colonel Gavilán Soto told the newspaper. “We’re not here for that. We’re only here for public safety and to avoid disturbances… May God shine and he not pass through here!”

Presuming that thousands of Hondureños and Hondureñas will flock to the border to accompany their President, a land crossing like this presents various dilemmas to the coup regime, which claims to have 18 criminal charges lined up to imprison Zelaya, but blinked from the opportunity to arrest him on July 5, when it blocked a runway to prevent his airplane from landing. To arrest him, the regime would have to violently break through a multitude of its country's own citizens. If it does arrest Zelaya, he will become an even more powerful symbol from prison inspiring greater resistance to the coup.

Meanwhile, yesterday in Costa Rica, President Oscar Arias made his final mediation proposal – one in which Zelaya would return on Friday but with weakened presidential powers – and told the coup regime that it would be his last effort. If the regime wants more negotiations, it will have to go to the Organization of American States (OAS) to mediate them, he said.

The evident refusal of the coup regime to treat the talks seriously will likely have blowback against those – most importantly, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – who had gambled the most on them. Secretary Clinton may not be a trustworthy friend to democracy in the hemisphere, but as anyone who closely observed her 2008 presidential campaign saw, her ego isn’t set up in a way as to forgive the kind of public insult that the coup regime offered to talks that she had set up for its very benefit. If she had illusions before that she or anyone could do business with the unstable criminal gang behind the coup, those illusions have shattered on the rocks of reality.

Meanwhile, the social movements of Honduras have never been better organized than they are today, 26 days after the June 28 coup d’etat. Today begins another round of highway blockades and strikes by workers and farmers throughout Honduras in protest of the coup. A week ago, these same movements demonstrated their organizational and tactical ability to successfully shut down commerce and transport throughout the country. A week later, their capacity to mobilize is even greater.

Two hundred and fifteen years ago tomorrow, the man known as “El Libertador” – the Great Liberator – Simon Bolívar was born, the George Washington of Latin America. He was the general that helped to free Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panamá, Perú and Venezuela from colonial rule. It is his sentence – Nuestra Patria se llama América - “The name of our country is América” – that has been the motto of this online newspaper since its own birth nine years ago.

What’s that sound you hear in the distance? It is the gallop of Bolívar’s horse, alive and well and today heading toward the Honduras border.

[flamingdem]

1. They say that Honduras lacks a major historical figure like

Sandino or Farabundo Marti, etc. Something tells me Zelaya will be that figure.

[rabs]

2. General José Francisco Morazán Quezada, Honduras' George Washington

General José Francisco Morazán Quezada was a Central American statesman, lawyer, orator, and general born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in 1792; he died in San Jose, Costa Rica, 15 September 1842. He was also the leader of the Liberal Party: President of the Federal Republic of Central America (1830–1834; 1835–1839); Head of state of Honduras (1827–1830), Guatemala (1829), El Salvador (1839–1840) and Costa Rica (1842).

General Francisco Morazán is considered one of the most important military leaders in the history of Central America. From his overwhelming victory, against the forces of president Arce, directed by colonel Justo Milla in 1827, to the liberation of Costa Rica in 1842, Morazán proved himself to be an excellent military strategist.

For more than a decade, Morazán dominated the political and military scene of Central America. Recognized as a great visionary, thinker, and politician, Francisco Morazán tried to transform Central America into a progressive nation by means of his liberal reforms. But the boldness of these changes for the times led to 1837 a revolution in Guatemala that culminated in the fall of the Federal Republic of Central America.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Thanks for the info. I'll bet he didn't give himself 5 stars, too! n/t