Honduras Matters
Central America has suffered some of the worst abuses of imperialist arrogance and brutality. Its economy was distorted to satisfy the interests of redneck colonialism, and every attempt at attaining a political breathing space to develop normal economic policies has been met by U.S. invasions, proxy armies, bombings, mercenaries, overthrows, and genocides. Hundreds of thousands have died to satisfy the thirst for profit of corporations from United Fruit Company to Coca Cola.
In the past few years, important changes had been taking place in Central America. Popular movements that had been severely repressed in the past began to organize again. On the wave of those movements, reformers came to power and began to take steps, in some cases timid steps such as Alvaro Colom’s UNE Party in Guatemala, to redistribute wealth and even to give voice to the population’s radical thirst for democratic participation in the cultural, political, and economic life of their nations.
The election of Mel Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras almost four years ago was expressive of this thirst for democracy. Zelaya’s social democratic credentials were clear in his public pronouncements for the redistribution of wealth both as a matter of political and ethical responsibility, and to stimulate economic demand. This led to a violent reaction by the most entrenched powers in Honduras: The wealthy, the media, and the Church, often intimately connected, often the same mysterious trinity-in-one, and their military agents.
The immediate cause for the overthrow of Zelaya was a referendum that he called for and which represented a threat to the traditional mechanisms of legitimacy for the civil-secular sectors of the oligarchy. The Church and the Army, that is, the violence of the cross and the peace of the grave, had become parasitical on neoliberal legitimacy. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, however, the de facto government has made use of chauvinist fear-mongering against neighboring countries to legitimate violence against the anti-coup popular movement. (Chauvinism has always been a useful parasite for the ruling classes. Mercenaries feed on chauvinism: from the death squad member in Central America to the Lockheed employee, their motivation has always been an obsessive disgust for the foreigner at home or abroad. A salary makes their obsession digestible. The obsession gives the wages-for-killing a good conscience.)
The referendum was not binding, a fact that has conveniently escaped the notice of the news networks of the empire. If a majority of people had voted for it, then a binding referendum could have taken place in December of this year, the day of Presidential elections when Zelaya could not and would not be a candidate. The constitution of Honduras, not 30 years old, does allow for referenda, and what Zelaya was doing was not prohibited by law. It is important to be aware that Zelaya’s referendum was not for his reelection (although the same ones who misinform the global public about this were conveniently silent when the narcotics paramilitary president of Colombia changed the Constitution so that he could get re-elected). The referendum was to express a nonbinding desire for a Constituent Assembly. A Constituent Assembly in the future could have allowed for re-election of a president, for instance, or it could have created other forms of legislative power. The formation of a constituent assembly is permitted by the Honduran Constitution. If it did not, then we would have an awfully bad Constitution.
This bears repeating: Zelaya is ideologically a social democrat, nothing dangerous, except for those who cannot stand any distribution of wealth, especially in a country with 70 % of the people living in poverty or extreme poverty. The removal of Zelaya was a military coup, which even the lawyer for the armed forces of Honduras recognized as such in a recent interview for the Miami Herald. It is paradoxical that people who claim to believe in the rule of law violate it so blatantly.
Should people in Honduras accept the coup because it took place? Not more so than we would tolerate a crime because it took place in the past. Furthermore, this coup undermines the possibility of democratization in Honduras while it imprisons and kills those who call for a return to democracy in the streets and the airwaves. All radio stations, all newspapers, all TV stations that reported the presence of pro-democracy forces in the streets, that interviewed people in opposition to the coup, or that criticized the coup have been closed. The so-called free press of the Americas, including that of the U.S., have barely registered their concern about the silencing of any media that do not toe the dictatorship’s line.
Another real danger about the coup is that Latin American fascists will perceive it as carte blanche for future coups if this one succeeds in Honduras: Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala have all experienced the brutality of military dictatorships that have suppressed popular movements. Honduras, a country of seven million, serves as a laboratory for proto-fascist forces, immediately so in Central America, during the current crisis of neoliberalism.
March 12th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Do you really think the referendum of Zelaya was not for his own reelection, a copy paste of chavez plan, and now we see Zelaya is a employee of chavez. with his new job.