2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThe Clinton-Backed Honduran Regime Is Picking Off Indigenous Leaders--And More
The Clinton-Backed Honduran Regime Is Picking Off Indigenous LeadersCáceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, made possible.
In The Nation, Dana Frank and I covered that coup as it unfolded. Later, as Clintons emails were released, others, such as Robert Naiman, Mark Weisbrot, and Alex Main, revealed the central role she played in undercutting Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and undercutting the opposition movement demanding his restoration. In so doing, Clinton allied with the worst sectors of Honduran society.
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After Zelayas ouster, Hondurass coup congressthe one legitimated by Hillary Clintonpassed an absolute ban on emergency contraception, criminalizing the sale, distribution, and use of the morning-after pillimposing punishment for offenders equal to that of obtaining or performing an abortion, which in Honduras is completely restricted.
He supported gay and transgender rights.
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Zelaya apologized for a policy of social cleansingthat is, the murder and disappearance of street children and gang membersexecuted by his predecessors. And he backed rural peasant and indigenous movements, such as the one Cáceres led, in the fight against land dispossession, mining, and biofuels. Zelaya, as president, was by no means perfect. But he was slowly trying to use the power of the state on behalf of the best people in Honduras, including Berta Cáceres.
Since Zelayas ouster, theres been an all-out assault on these decent peopletorture, murder, militarization of the countryside, repressive laws, such as the absolute ban on the morning-after pill, the rise of paramilitary security forces, and the wholesale deliverance of the countrys land and resources to transnational pillagers.
Thats not to mention libertarian fantasies, promoted by billionaires such as PayPals Peter Thiel and Milton Friedmans grandson (cant make this shit up), of turning the country into some kind of Year-Zero stateless utopia.
Such is the nature of the unity government Clinton helped institutionalize. In her book, Hard Choices, Clinton holds up her Honduran settlement as a proud example of her trademark clear-eyed, pragmatic foreign policy approach.
http://www.thenation.com/article/the-clinton-backed-honduran-regime-is-picking-off-indigenous-leaders/
Avalux
(35,015 posts)Hillary Lost My Vote in Honduras
I am one of the many young women who to the consternation of so many pundits is just not Ready for Hillary in 2016. And its not because I am a bad feminist, its because I am judging Hillary Clinton, just as she has asked to be judged, on her record and her foreign policy credentials. I spent nearly five years in Central America working as a cross-border solidarity activist and I now work with immigrants in Massachusetts who have fled the violence in that region. So, I might have been moved by Clintons recent pledge to campaign for human rights and take on immigration reform. But I have seen first-hand how Clinton failed on that front when top military commanders in Honduras (all men, of course) overthrew its democratically elected president Manual Zelaya in 2009.
Since that military takeover, nearly all sectors of Honduran societyunion organizers, farmers and teachers, women and young people, gays, journalists, political activists, anyone who resisted the couphave faced systematic repression. Honduras has become one the most violent countries in the world not formally engaged in a civil war, and its now a leading source of forced migration to the U.S.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/02/hillary-lost-my-vote-in-honduras/
AzDar
(14,023 posts)msongs
(67,394 posts)RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Bananas is what this is about. Honduras has lots of banana groves. Bananas mean easy money and if someone gets in their way, well, they get slaughtered.