Consolidating the Coup in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

February 5 - 7, 2010

Pepe Lobo, Imperialism and the Resistance
Consolidating the Coup in Honduras
By TODD GORDON and JEFFREY R. WEBBER

A country of sharp inequality and class polarization, Honduras recently returned to the frontlines in the battle for Latin America’s soul. The terrain of struggle has shifted on multiple occasions over the last seven months, following the military coup against the democratically-elected President, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya. The battle entered its latest phase last week with the ascension to power of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo. Lobo was inaugurated on January 27, following his victory in the fraudulent November 29 election last year. Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans greeted the inauguration with a spirited march through the capital, Tegucigalpa, against the coup and his presidency.

Zelaya, a member of the broad tent Liberal Party who defeated Lobo in the 2005 Presidential campaign, was removed from power and forced into exile in the middle of the night on June 28, 2009. This was the first successful coup d’état in Latin America – following unsuccessful attempts against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in April 2002 and Bolivian President Evo Morales in 2008 – since Alberto Fujimori’s auto-golpe in Peru in 1992. Roberto Micheletti, a member of the Liberal Party’s right-wing faction, was quickly installed as the coupist President.

The Error of His Ways

Zelaya’s mistake was the adoption of moderately progressive measures designed to improve the lives of the poor Honduran majority. Among other things, the minimum wage was raised by 60%, mining exploration restricted, free school enrolment introduced, and subsidized gas was purchased from Venezuela. Zelaya also led Honduras into the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). While Zelaya’s progressive credentials and proximity to Chávez – the Honduran elite like to claim that he had become a puppet of the Venezuelan leader – shouldn’t be overstated, these measures angered the Honduran elite, an obscenely privileged and tiny fraction of the country’s population, uninterested in even a modest redistribution of wealth. It was, however, Zelaya’s efforts, supported by the social movements, to initiate constitutional reform – misleadingly presented by the elite and regurgitated unquestioningly by the North America mainstream press as a power grab – that constituted the final straw.

The new Lobo regime and the golpista press are presenting the transfer of power as a return to democracy and thus an end to the coup. Lobo, they claim, marks a new beginning for a democratic Honduras under a new government of national reconciliation. Unsurprisingly, this position is being echoed by U.S. and Canadian imperialism. These same powers supported the coup, their claims to the contrary nothwithstanding. They have consistently ignored the documented repression of the anti-coup movement, and have helped circumvent Zelaya’s efforts to return to power at every turn (for backgrounder on Canadian and American support for the coup see T. Gordon, http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon06302009.html, press releases by Canadian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs on Honduras, Peter Kent at www.international.gc.ca/ministers-ministres/kent_news-communiques.aspx, and Greg Grandin’s articles at www.thenation.com).

Political Repression and Mock Election

According to the Committee of Family Members of the Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH), a human rights organization founded in the 1980s, at least 36 anti-coup activists have been assassinated, almost certainly a low estimate they acknowledge, as many families of those killed are too afraid to come forward for fear of reprisal. Many political murders are covered up, COFADEH argues, as gang killings. El Frente, the national resistance front, puts the number of assassinations at more than 130. COFADEH has also documented at least 95 cases of torture and the illegal detention of hundreds more.

This reign of terror cast its long shadow over voting day on November 29. An atmosphere of military repression and intimidation prevailed. Little more than bad theatre, the election was boycotted by the anti-coup resistance movement, offered no candidates opposing the coup, and has not been recognized by most Latin American governments. The official voter turnout figure of over 60% provided by the Honduran Electoral Tribunal is almost certainly inflated. One official with the Tribunal, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, told the Real News that the figure was pure invention. Hagamos Democracia, an NGO contracted by the Tribunal to provide early reporting, put the turnout at 47.6%. Drawing on grassroots reports from across the country, leaders of the Resistance suggest that turnout was probably closer to 30%.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/webber02052010.html