Honduras: The People in Their Labyrinth

The June 29 coup in Honduras did not surprise me.

The day before I read in the morning newspaper that General Romeo Vasquez said a coup d’état was “not certain.” He said “we (the military) are seeking the use of reason and not force in order to resolve the conflicts by dialogue.”

As soon as I saw the words, “not certain,” I said to myself immediately that it was one of the options the general was considering. I also felt he was not talking about dialogue but about a monologue that the opposition would present to President Manuel Zelaya.

I was not surprised when I learned that General Vasquez attended the School of the Americas and that a good part of the Honduran military were trained there and in its successor, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

I was not surprised when the immediate response from Washington was tepid and non-committal. In spite of the information that the U.S. government had to have had, Dan Restrepo, the presidential advisor for Latin American affairs, said the administration was waiting to see how things would play out. (The response has been stronger since then, but still seems to lack the strength other America nations have put forward in their demands.)

I was not surprised when I saw the repression of the people demonstrating near the presidential palace.

I was not surprised when I read that the U.S. has a military base in Honduras, gives the Honduran military a few million dollars each year, and that most of the military equipment used against the people was from the U.S.

I was not surprised when I learned that a group that openly supported the coup, “Paz and Democracia” (Peace and Democracy), received money from the USAID. (Eva Golinger reported that the USAID pumps more than 50 million dollars into the country each year.)

I was not surprised to know that members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and clergy were among Micheletti’s supporters.

I was not surprised when I listened to Telesur’s reporter saying to a soldier, who was pointing an armament at her, that she would not give up her cellular phone. Then the transmission was cut off. (Soon after, she was back on the air for a few moments as she was being told that she was under arrest. Later she was released.) It brought back memories of November 1992 when I heard the same type of reporting in Caracas. On that occasion, the government was saying on television that everything was normal in Venezuela, but on the radio a reporter was shouting that the police were breaking into the radio studio. Then there was silence.

What I couldn’t believe was listening to the man who wants to be the president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, reading a letter of resignation from President Zelaya—a letter that Zelaya never wrote. The whole world, outside of Honduras, knew that Zelaya had been abducted and whisked out of the country. (If Zelaya resigned for reasons of health as Micheletti said, why is he now threatening to arrest him if he returns to Honduras?)

Micheletti could have given as many reasons as he would have wanted to give. But to begin taking control of the government by openly lying to the people he said he wanted to represent seemed to me to be absolutely stupid. The people, who were able to see him reading the letter through their television sets, will learn someday that there was no such letter.

When President Hugo Chávez was toppled in 2002 the people were also told that he had resigned. Fortunately a soldier told him to write a note saying he hadn’t resigned and to leave it in a waste basket. The soldier later picked up the basket and was able to get the note to his commanding officer. This short letter was an important element in Chávez’s return to power.

I wonder today how the majority of people in Honduras will react when they realize that Micheletti lied to them. If what happened here in Venezuela is any harbinger of what will happen, there will people who won’t care an iota: they simply hate Zelaya. But it may matter a lot to honest Hondurans who know what a Wyoming rancher said to me years ago: “We judge people in Wyoming by their words. If we can’t trust what a man says, then we don’t deal with him.”

In his book, The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes about Simon Bolivar waiting for a letter of love from Manuela Saenz. However, her letters are never delivered to him. I don’t know how much information the people in Honduras are receiving about what is happening within and outside their country. But almost two hundred years after the death of Bolivar, I would guess that the little people of Honduras are waiting for a letter from someone who loves them, too. Hopefully this time it will be delivered.

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