Reply #55: He said so himself

[IndianaGreen]

and this was posted in DU at the time.

You can google it yourself, or do DU search in LBN or Latin America forum. A lot of the sources were the press either in Latin America, or El Pais in Spain, which had reporters on the ground in Honduras, and independent media such as Narco News.

Honduras: "They knew and they helped a little"

By Juan Gelman. Translated by Scott Campbell.
Axis of Logic
(Spanish) Desde Abajo. (English) Axis of Logic
Monday, Jul 20, 2009

The White House knew for months that a coup was being prepared in Honduras, even though now State Department spokespersons feign a surprised innocence. The U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens, knew it very well: on September 12, 2008, he arrived in the Central American country and, nine days later, the current coupist general Romeo Vásquez declared on the radio station HRN that they had sought “to overthrow the government of president Manuel Zelaya Rosales” (9/12/08). He added: “We are a serious and respectful institution, which is why we respect Mr. President as our Commander-in-Chief and we subordinate ourselves as dictated by law.” Just like Pinochet before rising against Salvador Allende. Any resemblance is just the work of reality.

On June 2 of this year, Hillary Clinton went to Honduras to participate in a meeting of the Organization of American States. She spoke with Zelaya and shared with him her discomfort with the referendum that the leader planned to hold at the same time as the next presidential elections. U.S. officials indicated that “they didn’t believe that the plebiscite was constitutional” (The New York Times, 6/30/09). Six days before the coup, the Honduran paper La Prensa reported that Ambassador Llorens had met with influential politicians and military chiefs “in order to find a solution to the crisis” caused by the referendum (6/22/09). The “solution” they found is obvious.

It’s difficult to assume that the military leaders of Honduras, armed by the Pentagon and educated at the School of the Americas, where many Latin American dictators were trained, would have made a move without the approval of their mentors. Aside from that, the coupists did not hide the reasons for their actions: Zelaya was getting too close to the “communism” of Chávez, the Venezuelan most-hated by the White House: in July 2008, under his mandate, Honduras joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), the new “axis of evil” in Latin America. Too much, right?

Too much, yes, because Honduras is strategic territory for the Pentagon, which from its base in Soto Cano, where it stations troops from the U.S. air force and infantry, doesn’t only dominate Central America: this bona fide enclave is fundamental in the U.S. military’s scheme for a region rich in natural resources. Although he never touched the interests of foreign corporations or the local owners of economic power, Zelaya constituted a danger of “destabilization.” It’s fitting to mention that the referendum about holding a Constituent Assembly that could have permitted the reelection of Zelaya was non-binding. No one was bothered in Washington by the constitutional reform in Colombia that allowed for the re-election of Alvaro Uribe, the great ally of the U.S., which was not even a plebiscite. It’s that one thing is one thing and another is another.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_56370.shtml