Iron Fist, Velvet Glove: Obama and Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

07-20-2009 15:34
Iron Fist, Velvet Glove: Obama and Honduras
By Richard Collie

Back in April, at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, U.S. President Barack Obama was handed a copy of Eduardo Galleano's alternative history of the Americas: ``The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.''

The book vividly details the history of exploitation and meddling in Latin American affairs, firstly by the early European colonists, and eventually by the United States.

Indeed, it could be argued that no region or continent has suffered more than Latin America at the hands of U.S. imperialism over the years.

Just since World War II, the School of the Americas (SOA), founded in Panama but now based in Fort Benning, Ga., under the new guise of ``Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation'' (WHINSEC) has its grubby finger prints all over a long list of political assassinations, coups and human rights abuses in the region.

From its role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende and support for the dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile; through the training of the Contras death squads in Nicaragua; and more recently to the Bush administration's support of the failed attempt to dislodge Hugo Chavez in 2002.

The rise of the new left in Latin America is thanks in no small part to the painful memory of these events and a desire to carve out a new, different future free of foreign political manipulation. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the man who handed Obama the book in question at the summit in Trinidad, is a key proponent of this movement.

Who knows if Obama actually took the time to read the book, though judging be his current rhetoric, we can suspect that he did not.

When pressed recently by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet about the CIA's role in the establishment of the 17-year Pinochet regime, Obama responded that although he acknowledged that the U.S. had ``made mistakes,'' he was ``interested in going forward, not looking backward.''

More:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2009/07/137_48741.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Translated from Spanish: They knew and they helped a little

July 20, 2009
They knew and they helped a little
By Juan Gelman
July 16, 2009
{Spanish original}
Translated by Scott Campbell

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” (www.proceso.hn, 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 (www.laprensahn.com, 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.

The Honduran coupists are not very presentable. General Romero Vásquez Velásquez, thrown out by Zelaya, came back with the coup and authored the kidnapping and expulsion of the president, was sent to the national penitentiary in 1993, together with ten other members of a gang accused of robbing 200 luxury automobiles (www.elheraldo.hn, 2/2/93). He was then a major in the army; as a general, he devoted himself to robbing a government elected at the polls. Another unpresentable one is Advising Minister Billy Joya, who doesn’t do justice to his last name (or does, depending on how you look at it): he was head of the tactical division of Battalion B3-16, the Honduran death squad that tortured and “disappeared” numerous individuals in the 1980s. “Lawyer Arrazola” - one of his aliases - is an expert in such activities: he studied the methods of the Argentinean and Chilean dictatorships (www.michelcollon.info, 7/7/09). These are well-known facts, in spite of which, or because of which, he was chosen to form a part of the so very democratic coupist regime.

More:
http://angrywhitekid.blogs.com/weblog/

[Judi Lynn]

2. Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America

July 20, 2009

Obama's Bullish Behavoir in Latin America
Honduras and the Big Stick
By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

Liberals who have idealized Obama don’t want to believe that their President is capable of bullish behavior towards Latin America. It was Bush, they say, who epitomized arrogant U.S.-style imperialism and not the new resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Recent events in Central America however force us to look at the Obama administration in a sobering new light. While it’s unclear whether Obama had advance warning of an imminent military coup d’etat in Honduras the White House has not emerged from the Zelaya affair unsullied.

In December, 2008, even before his inauguration, Obama received an irate letter from Honduran president Manuel Zelaya demanding an end to arrogant and interventionist U.S. ambassadors in Tegucigalpa. Just eight months earlier American ambassador Hugo Llorens had taken on the government by making inflammatory remarks. During a press conference the diplomat declared that Zelaya’s move to rewrite the constitution was “a Honduran matter and it’s a delicate matter to comment on as a foreign diplomat.” But then, contradicting himself and inserting himself into the volatile political milieu, Llorens remarked that “one can’t violate the constitution to create a constitution, because if you don’t have a constitution the law of the jungle reigns.”

If Obama was serious about restoring U.S. moral credibility world-wide he might have cleaned house by removing Bush appointees such as Llorens. An émigré from Castro’s Cuba, Llorens worked as an Assistant Treasurer at Chase Manhattan Bank before entering the Foreign Service. As Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Policy and Summit Coordination in the State Department during Clinton-time, he played an important role in spearheading the corporately-friendly Free Trade Area of the Americas or FTAA. But it was chiefly during the Bush years that Llorens distinguished himself, serving as the Director of Andean Affairs at the National Security Council. At the NSC, Llorens was the most important advisor to Bush and Condoleezza Rice on matters pertaining to Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.

While Zelaya’s move to rewrite the Honduran constitution antagonized Llorens it also inflamed the local business elite and no doubt the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Perhaps these groups feared a Honduran repeat of the South American “Pink Tide”: across the region leftist leaders from Hugo Chávez to Rafael Correa have mobilized civil society in an effort to rewrite their respective nations’ constitutions.

Chávez’s 1999 constitution provides for some of the most comprehensive human rights provisions of any constitution in the world while also including special protection for women, indigenous peoples and the environment. The constitution moreover allows for broad citizen participation in national life. The preamble states that one of the Constitution’s goals is to establish a participatory democracy achieved through elected representatives, popular votes by referendum and, perhaps most importantly, popular mobilization. In Venezuela, it was Chávez’s constitution which helped to solidify his alliance with traditionally marginalized sectors of the population.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff07202009.html