Honduran Activists Need Our Support

[Judi Lynn]

by Jeff Abbott

February 19, 2018

When I first visited Honduras in February 2009, the government of Manuel Zelaya was carrying out programs to improve the massive inequalities in the country, and seeking a popular constitutional convention to re-found the Honduran state. This came to an end when Zelaya was ousted that year, the first Central American military coup since the end of the Cold War.

The efforts of his administration to include the poor were scrapped, and the country was declared “open for business.” Those in the country who resisted faced a systematic campaign of state repression and criminalization.

. . .

I recently traveled back to Honduras, where I witnessed the turmoil created by the contested Nov. 26 presidential elections. The country was in revolt. Tires burned in the streets in protest of the allegedly fraudulent re-election of Juan Orlando Hernández. I saw the military fire teargas at protesters as if it were nothing.

On January 19, well-known activist Edwin Espinal was arrested on charges of terrorism for his actions in the years following the 2009 coup d’état against the democratically elected Zelaya. A haze of secrecy hangs over the case. Following his arrest, Espinal was taken before a military tribunal where human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, were barred from entering. (For more information on Espinal’s case, see freeedwinespinallibertad.blogspot.com.)

More:
http://progressive.org/op-eds/honduran-activists-deserve-our-support-180219/

[GatoGordo]

1. The vast majority of "activists" causing a ruckus in Honduras are not Honduran

Most are imported from Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador and Venezuela. A good number of these 'activists' are Marxists from the UK, the United States and Canada seeking revolution. They screwed up and have written off their pet project in Venezuela and have decided that NOW is the time for Honduras.

The vast, vast majority of Hondurans are looking to get on with their lives. I know, because I speak weekly with friends who live and work there. I have a daughter I adopted from Honduras. I have been to Honduras many times... as opposed to those who I doubt have been south of the US border.

Most Hondurans are tired of this nonsense (iREVOLUCION!) and are looking forward to the day when all these foreign troublemakers go home.

[Judi Lynn]

2. "Marxists from the UK, the United States and Canada seeking revolution.."

Amazing!

Have never heard this claim. Mind-boggling!

The "Cold War" went that way <- <- <- . It's gone, pal, except for leftover right-wing "commie" hating nutballs.

Have NEVER even heard that whopperino by one human being regarding the men and women who have been tortured, and murdered in Honduras since the filthy racist, greedy dirtballs organized their vicious overthrow of President Zelaya in 2009, and throughout the bloodbath which followed, as soon as they instantly shut down the country and wouldn't allow people out of their houses at night, cut their phone service, and electricity, and bodies of activists started showing up in ditches and fields in the capital and San Pedro Sula and everywhere else, and as they shut down the independent radio and tv stations, even sending in soldiers to take away their equipment.

Ab-####ing-solutely astonishing. People from the UK, US, and Canada are seeking revolution in Honduras? Really? They are needed back at home, getting the filth out of office here, aren't they?

[GatoGordo]

3. Amazing?

Last edited Tue Feb 20, 2018, 12:43 PM - Edit history (1)

The source you offered as "proof" and the authors? What are they doing there in Honduras? They certainly aren't there to "help", but instead to foment iREVOLUCION!. The people I talk to WEEKLY in Honduras are Hondurans... yet you offer as your only proof the rantings of far leftists revolutionaries in some obscure leftist newspaper. The people on the ground who see this every day are people who live there. They know who is Honduran and who is American or European. Cubans try like the devil to hide their accent (ahem... Delcy Rodriguez from VZ) but they stand out like a VERY sore thumb.

More name calling? Everyone who disagrees with the Marxist Leninist agenda is a right wing fascist/racist?

FWIW, your authors (and yourself) are cherry picking the virtues of Zelaya... shall we delve into his shenanigans and the truth behind his departure from power?

Hmm?

1. "...men and women who have been tortured and murdered in Honduras since 2009"? Source
2. "...vicious overthrow of President Zelaya in 2009"? Source?
3. "...the bloodbath which followed"? Source?
4. "...bodies of activists started showing up in ditches and fields"? Source?
5. "...shut down the independent radio and tv stations, even sending in soldiers to take away their equipment." Source?

[GatoGordo]

4. The truth about Zelaya and why he was removed from office

The 2009 Honduran coup d'état, part of the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis, occurred when the Honduran Army on June 28, 2009 followed orders from the Honduran Supreme Court to oust President Manuel Zelaya and send him into exile. The crisis was prompted when Zelaya attempted to schedule a non-binding poll on holding a referendum on the subject of convening a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. After Zelaya refused to comply with court orders to cease, the Honduran Supreme Court issued a warrant for his arrest dated 26 June. Two days later, Honduran soldiers stormed the president's house in the middle of the night and detained him, forestalling the poll. Instead of bringing him to trial, the army put him on a military airplane, which flew him to Costa Rica. Later that day, after the reading of a resignation letter of disputed authenticity, the Honduran Congress voted to remove Zelaya from office, and appointed Speaker of Congress Roberto Micheletti, his constitutional successor, to replace him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

So, the truth about Zelaya is much less sinister than the UI's would have the uninformed reader to believe! (Funny thing, omitting facts) Zelaya was the lapdog to the Cubans, and wanted to do what Chavez had done and more recently, what Evo Morales just did... usurp the authority given to him to re-write the rules in mid game. Because when you are an authoritarian lapdog to the Cubans, laws and Constitutions don't apply to you!

What a shame that they decided to put him on a plane and into exile and didn't make him stand trial. At least he got the benefits that Chavez got... not that Chavez/Maduro would return the favor for their political enemies.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Trip down memory lane from DU re: the Honduran coup, 2009:

John Perkins (.... Economic Hitman) - Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?


Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?

By John Perkins

August 07, 2009
"Information Clearing House"

-- I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.

Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc. (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras’s minimum wage, claiming that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.

Memories are short in the US, but not in Central America. I kept hearing people who claimed that it was a matter of record that Chiquita (United Fruit) and the CIA had toppled Guatemala’s democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973. These people were certain that Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed a minimum wage increase, like Zelaya’s.

I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president, “Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom line for minimum wages. The big companies are determined to stop what they call a ‘leftist revolt’ in this hemisphere. In throwing out Zelaya they are sending frightening messages to all the other presidents who are trying to raise the living standards of their people.”

More:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x24245

(Useful sources, comments on this thread.)


LBN thread:
Obama: Ouster of Honduran president Zelaya was coup
https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4009097

Excellent, informative comments with sources, and links.


. . .




A teacher was shot to death this morning at his home.



He is the fourth that I know of who have been slain because they were activists in the resistance.

Radio Globo reported that a note had been found on his body saying that the same fate awaited other teachers. Globo said teachers who support the golpistas are pointing out those in the resistance to the killers.

So yes, there is a death squad after teachers.





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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-02-09 08:58 PM
Response to Reply #9
11. Earlier this week, two journalists were tortured with cigarettes
and dumped on the highway as a "message" to the resistance and two other ones from Guatemala were stomped when the thugs shut down Radio Globo's studio.

Add journalists to the list.
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rabs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-02-09 09:41 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. Add a Lenca campesino activist to the list



He was killed either yesterday or today, according to Radio Globo. He had been with Zelaya on the Nicaraguan side when Mel tried to enter the country a few weeks ago.
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L. Coyote Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-03-09 08:39 AM
Response to Reply #9
17. A political candidate was murdered.
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Vidar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-02-09 08:48 PM
Response to Original message
10. Viva Zelaya!


https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4088208


President Zelaya -100 assassinated by Micheletti dictatorship

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x380290


For anyone interested in the tons of conversations we had at DU during that time, they are available to anyone who has the time to do a search for them, checking for entries in 2009, and discussed the following years, over and over again.

Don't let someone tell you his/her yarns are the truth because he/she knows them to be true. Put yourself in the driver's seat and invest your time in doing your own homework, just the way people who want to learn about these things must do. Do NOT simply take anyone's word for it.

There are tons of conversations completed right here, involving so many great DU'ers, and some conspicuous trolls.

You will never regret taking the time to look for the truth. It's far more valuable than its substitute, and it's the only thing worth seeking.

[GatoGordo]

6. So anyone who DARES contradict your Marxist-Leninist worldview is a "troll"?

Have you even been to Honduras? Even ONCE?

I get my information either first hand, or from people actually living in Honduras. Not visiting Marxist agitators who are there to foment revolution.

I don't get my information from Sputnik, RussiaToday, CounterPunch or the most ridiculous of all "news sources", TeleSur. And my sources certainly don't include DU forum opinion pieces.

FWIW, weren't you among the UI's who was insisting that FARC candidates were being killed off by Colombian "right wingers", when FARC spokesmen said these attacks were coming from former FARC members who had joined the Marxist-Leninist ELN?

That it was unsafe for FARC candidates to appear in public due to "violent attacks from right wingers", when the reality was the rural poor folk who had been subjugated to FARC terrorism and murders for over 30 years were throwing rotten fruits and vegetables at these candidates? The very people that FARC supposes to represent?

Indeed... lets dig for the truth. And the truth is that the forum UI's only offer one sided analysis of what is really going on in Honduras... and NOTHING of what is really going on in Venezuela.