Honduran Coup: The U.S. Connection

[Judi Lynn]

Honduran Coup: The U.S. Connection
Written by Conn Hallinan
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
Source: Foreign Policy in Focus


While the Obama administration was careful to distance itself from the recent coup in Honduras — condemning the expulsion of President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica, revoking Honduran officials' visas, and shutting off aid — that doesn't mean influential Americans aren't involved, and that both sides of the aisle don't have some explaining to do.

The story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup is that Zelaya — an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.

That story is a massive distortion of the facts. All Zelaya was trying to do is to put a non-binding referendum on the ballot calling for a constitutional convention, a move that trade unions, indigenous groups, and social activist organizations had long been lobbying for. The current constitution was written by the Honduran military in 1982, and the one-term limit allows the brass-hats to dominate the politics of the country. Since the convention would have been held in November, the same month as the upcoming presidential elections, there was no way Zelaya could have remained in office in any case. The most he could have done was to run four years from now.

And while Zelaya is indeed friendly with Chavez, he is at best a liberal reformer whose major accomplishment was raising the minimum wage. "What Zelaya has done has been little reforms," Rafael Alegria, a leader of Via Campesina, told the Mexican daily La Jornada. "He isn't a socialist or a revolutionary, but these reforms, which didn't harm the oligarchy at all, have been enough for them to attack him furiously."

One of those "little reforms" was aimed at ensuring public control of the Honduran telecommunications industry, which may well have been the trip-wire that triggered the coup.

More:
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1639/1/

[peacetalksforall]

1. I'm off to read this article. It starts out perfectly. Thank you, Judi Lynn, for this find.

Honduras is an ugly mark on our international relations. I thought we were finished with ugly.

We are dealing with some persistent destroyers.

I hope this explains why Sec. Clinton hired Negroponte as a consultant.

[formercia]

2. Negroponte has good connections in Honduras

with the Death Squads.

[peacetalksforall]

3. Exactly - dropping them out of U.S. government aircraft or dumping their bodies in mass graves.

[CRH]

4. I've been wondering, ... thanks for the post.

Same Games different administrations.


~ snip ~ (from posted article)

"If you want to understand who is the real power behind the coup, you need to find out who is paying Lanny Davis," says Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and current president of the Center for International Policy. Davis, best known as the lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial, has been lobbying members of Congress and testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in support of the coup.

~ snip ~

otra vez

~ snip ~

The United States is also involved in the coup through a network of agencies that funnel money and training to anti-government groups. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contribute to right-wing organizations that supported the coup, including the Peace and Democracy Movement and the Civil Democratic Union. Many of the officers that bundled Zelaya off to San Jose were trained at the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, the former "School for the Americas" that has seen torturers and coup leaders from all over Latin America pass through its doors.

~ snip ~

The NGO's formed after the CIA cowboys were corralled during the Carter administration's investigations. The NGO's simply give and extra layer of government and/or CIA (corporate) deniability.

That government funding often flows through the balance sheets of these organizations is undeniable, but it often remains a question if actions were sanctioned by an elected political foreign policy that is accountable, at very least, by blow back of public opinion. The successful masking of the smoking guns give pause to hope, that political progress or failing that, public outrage, will ever instill consequence to actions.