Honduras: Washington moves to legitimise the coup

The US volte-face on its earlier pledge not to recognise the results of the election organised by a Honduran regime which came into power as a result of a military coup is a shameless betrayal of the people of this Central American state.

Benjamin Dangl

Issue No. 231/232 (Nov/Dec 2009)

MONTHS after being overthrown by a violent military coup on 28 June, Honduran president Manuel Zelaya returned to Honduras on 21 September. 'I am here in Tegucigalpa. I am here for the restoration of democracy, to call for dialogue,' he told reporters. But all negotiations with the coup government broke down, and Zelaya remains in the Brazilian embassy, where he took refuge upon arriving back in the country. The embattled road to his return tested regional diplomacy, challenged Washington and galvanised Honduran social movements.

Elections took place in the country on 29 November, resulting in the election of Porfirio Lobo of the right-wing National Party. The vote was marred by widespread repression of anti-coup activists, and crackdowns on civil liberties and press freedom. 

The Washington-based Center for Justice and International Law reported that 'there were a number of incidents that confirmed the climate of repression in which the electoral process took place, which represented the consolidation of the coup d'etat of June 28th.' Election day was marked by 'a climate of harassment, violence, and violation of the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly'.

Honduran human rights activist Bertha Oliva told the Real News of the election environment: '[W]e face a militarised state with a defined and systematic practice against those who oppose the coup and anyone who takes a position other than that human rights means singing songs, while at the same time torturing and detaining people and raping women. They have a clear objective, which is to silence and intimidate.'

'Today is a dark day in the history of our country, because we are setting a bad example for the entire world.by justifying a coup against the president of the nation, which is not a good thing,' congressman Oscar MejĦa of the leftist Democratic Unification party said to IPS News.

'First, you need to restore democracy, human rights, and civil liberties, which were violated throughout the campaign period,' said political analyst Mark Weisbrot in a release from the Center for Economic Policy and Research. 'Then there can be a legitimate election with official international observer delegations. You can't have free elections under a dictatorship.'

A statement from the presidents of Latin America, Spain and Portugal explained their position on 2 December: 'The reinstatement of President Manuel Zelaya to the position that he was democratically elected for, until his term ends, is a fundamental step for a return to constitutional normality in Honduras.'

The United States was one of the few countries in the world to officially recognise the election results. One senior US official, who wished to remain anonymous, told reporters of his administration's position regarding the Honduran elections: 'What are we going to do, sit for four years and just condemn the coup?'

On 4 November, just a few days after the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton initially said the US helped broker a deal to return Zelaya to power, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon announced on CNN that the US would recognise the 29 November elections regardless of whether or not Zelaya was reinstated. Everything went downhill from there.

According to Laura Carlsen of the Americas Program in Mexico City, leading up to this drastic turn of events, Florida Republican Senator Jim DeMint had been blocking Shannon's nomination as the ambassador to Brazil and Arturo Valenzuela as the replacement for Shannon. DeMint said he would lift the hold if Shannon established a deal for the US to recognise elections in Honduras without Zelaya's return to power. DeMint had travelled to Honduras in October to meet with the coup regime. When Shannon changed the Honduran deal to fit DeMint's request, the Florida Senator went ahead with his nomination of Shannon and Valenzuela to their new posts.

In the diplomatic roller-coaster ride that has characterised the US's positions on Honduras, it appears that in the end, all it took was pressure from a Republican Senator to change the US stance on the 29 November elections. And this was enough to change the course of history for Honduras.

On 2 December, the Honduran Congress voted on whether or not to reinstate Zelaya as president until the end of his official term in January. The vote was part of the deal brokered by the US government. But congressmen voted against the reinstatement by 111 to 14.

Valenzuela, now the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, spoke with reporters about the congressional vote: 'We're disappointed by this decision since the United States had hoped that Congress would have approved his return.'

However, as the Los Angeles Times pointed out, in its brokering of the reinstatement deal, 'Washington backed away from its demands that Zelaya be reinstated and instead agreed that the Congress could be left to decide, even though the legislative body endorsed the coup early on.'

Therefore, it's not surprising that the Honduran Congress, which allowed the coup to continue in the first place, would vote against Zelaya's return - otherwise, it would make them look like they were admitting to their original mistakes.

After the congressional vote, Zelaya told Radio Globo in Honduras, 'The good thing is that the people have seen who the coup-mongers are, because they finally took off their masks in Congress.'

A bloody road to the elections

During a beachside interview in September, with tropical breezes blowing along a sandy shore in the background, Honduran coup leader Roberto Micheletti told a Fox News reporter, 'This is a quiet country, and a happy country.' However, since Micheletti took over on 28 June, Honduras has been anything but quiet and content.

Micheletti's de facto regime has ruled the country with an iron fist while popular movements for democracy have gained steam with nearly constant strikes, road blockades and massive street protests. The coup inspired a movement that is now seeking not just the reinstatement of Zelaya, but the transformation of the country through a new constitution. A number of anti-coup activists have been killed since Zelaya was ousted, and over a thousand jailed. Numerous cases of rape of female activists by police officers have been documented. Repression has characterised the coup government from the very start.

Though Zelaya was a relatively moderate president, his policies challenged the elite enough to inspire a right-wing coup. While in office, he passed a 60% increase in the minimum wage, bringing income up from around $6 a day to $9.60 a day. Zelaya also gave subsidies to small farmers, cut bank interest rates and reduced poverty. Salvador Zuniga, a leader of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH), told the Americas Program, 'One of the things that provoked the coup d'etat was that the president accepted a petition from the feminist movement regarding the day-after pill. Opus Dei mobilised, the fundamentalist evangelical churches mobilised, along with all the reactionary groups.'

'Maybe he made mistakes,' Honduran school teacher Hedme Castro said of Zelaya to the New York Times, 'but he always erred on the side of the poor. That is why they will fight to the end for him.' She continued, 'This is not about President Zelaya. This is about my country. Many people gave their lives so that we could have a democracy. And we cannot let a group of elites take that away.'

While repression of anti-coup activists increases, so does the movement for democracy in Honduras. This broad coalition of activists has the support of many of the governments in the hemisphere, and has the backing of the country's 1982 constitution, which explains, 'No one owes obedience to a government which usurps power nor those who assume public functions or employment through the use of arms.... The people [of this country] have the right to recur to insurrection in defence of constitutional order.' This insurrection is taking place right now.

Protests, strikes and road blockades have been going on in the country almost daily since Zelaya was ousted. Many of the interviews with activists participating in these protests offer an insight into the relationship between Zelaya and the movement, and what might lie ahead for the country.

'This struggle is peaceful, organised, and is not getting desperate. The coup leaders are getting desperate - they haven't been able to govern a single day in tranquility and we will defeat them,' said Israel Salinas, a leader of the National Front Against the Coup in Honduras and member of the Unified Confederation of Honduran Workers, as reported by the Americas Program.

Bertha C ceres, a leader of COPINH, the Front Against the Coup, and a mother of four children, spoke of the importance of the constituent assembly to rewrite the country's constitution. It was partly this push for constitutional reform, which Zelaya backed along with broad support from the Honduran people, that led to the coup. When speaking of the assembly, C ceres said to the Americas Program, 'For the first time we would be able to establish a precedent for the emancipation of women, to begin to break these forms of domination. The current constitution never mentions women, not once, so to establish our human rights, our reproductive, sexual, political, social, and economic rights as women would be to really confront this system of domination.'

Gilberto Rios, from the Front Against the Coup, spoke to Green Left Weekly of how the coup has galvanised a broad movement in the country. 'In the past, when we called for people to protest in the streets, they came out, but not in the same numbers as what is happening now. In recent days, we have had protests that start in the morning and stay in the streets all day. At night, there are convoys of cars in major cities. It shows that the workers are participating, and the middle class is also coming out.' He also affirmed that the movement is entirely grassroots. 'The leftist political parties recognise they do not control any part of the popular movement.'

Leticia Salom˘n, the Director of Scientific Research for the National Autonomous University of Honduras, told journalist Jennifer Moore, 'It doesn't matter who wins the elections in November, the next government will have to deal with this important social force if it hopes to even minimally govern the country.'

Just as the coup may change the geopolitical landscape of the region, the grassroots fervour in Honduras will likely alter the country forever. And that might be Micheletti's legacy - that in ousting a moderate president, he inspired a revolution.

The coup will have far-reaching effects throughout the hemisphere. Not only does it send a strong message to right-wing coup plotters - that such actions will be tolerated to a significant extent by the US - but it also brings the region back decades, to a time when such coups were typical and military dictatorships spanned the continent. Many people, from dogged human rights activists to popular presidents, have pledged to prevent such coups from happening again. But events in Honduras show the limits of international solidarity and regional diplomacy, particularly when the US is on the coup government's side.

The democratic facade of the 29 November elections is intended to distract the world from the reality in Honduras under this dictatorship. With President Obama's 1 December speech on the troop surge in Afghanistan, he made the Afghanistan war his own. Now, with Washington's support for the elections in Honduras, this has become Obama's coup.

But the people of Honduras keep fighting, and are planning to continue their long struggle for real democracy in the country. As Santiago Reyes of the Front Against the Coup wrote ahead of the elections, 'The Honduran people's refusal to participate in what will be an electoral circus on November 29 is fully justified after getting to know the manoeuvrings of the coup regime led by Roberto Micheletti. [The elections] undermine the dignity of the Honduran people. It would be unjust and dishonourable to give them legitimacy.'               

Benjamin Dangl is the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events, and UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on activism and politics in Latin America. He is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press) and the forthcoming book Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press).

*Third World Resurgence No. 231/232, November-December 2009, pp 53-55