The Honduran Miltary Coup

Here's a translation of Carlos Fazio's hard hitting analysis of the Honduran Coup. The original, in Spanish of course, is at http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/07/27/index.php?section=opinion&article=019a1pol. It was in the July 27, 2009 issue of La Jornada, p.19. The translation is by William S. Stone wstoneoax@yahoo.com, former director of the Oaxaca program of the School for International Training. William wrote, for those of us fixated on Oaxaca,

Although I realize [this] article ... is not directly related to Oaxaca, I still feel that it is of critical importance.  The same issues that the people of Honduras are facing with the present coup, were those which Oaxacans faced in the 2006 conflagration. The power struggle that is going on there is all too similar to the power struggle that Oaxaca faced in 2006 and continues to face to this day.  In both cases, the people's wishes were shunted aside by the neo liberals in control. In both cases, raw military/police power was used to squelch the will of the people. Finally, in both cases, against considerable odds, the people continue to fight. So, I definitely think that the Honduran situation is relevant to the Oaxacan reality.
Sincerely,
William Stone

Obama and the Cunning Micheletti

The oligarchical-military coup in Honduras represents an Obama-Clinton Administration strategy which is designed to push back the advances of democratically elected governments so that its imperial power can be maintained and consolidated in some “hot zones” of the planet. Such a strategy operates from a several prong political base, combining direct military intervention (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Irak) with clandestine and destabilizing operations (Venezuela, Iran, Honduras, Bolivia, Ecuador) and a two way diplomacy, that seeks to utilize the instruments and initiatives inherited by Barack Obama from the Bush Administration.

The classist attack on the weakest Latin American link was undertaken to turn back the democratic government of Manuel Zelaya so that a new de facto client regime could be imposed in the empire´s back yard. The coup hopes to reinforce the conservative militarized pole of the Plan Puebla Panama/Merida Initiative, led by Mexico and Colombia. The progressive advances in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador complicated Washington´s geopolitical plans, that sought to bring an interventionist platform in South America into line focusing upon hydrocarbons in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and the immense Amazon and the Guarani water resources. In that sense, it was also a blow against ALBA, the Bolivian Alternative for the Americas (la Alternativa Boliviana para las Americas).

To carry out the conspiracy, the State Department and Pentagon used the Honduran military high command that has been structurally penetrated by US security and intelligence organisms. The coup´s general, Romero Vázquez, its cunning adviser Roberto Micheletti and the founder of the 1980´s squadrons of death Billy Joya Améndola, were “exemplary students” in the US School of the Americas (la Escuela de las Américas). The military coup participants acted like an occupying army in their own country. But Honduras is also occupied by the United States which controls the Soto Cano (or Palmerola) military base where the force of the Tarea Conjunta Bravo can be found, consisting of half a thousand military personnel with advance espionage and interventionist equipment including air combat equipment such as the HU-60, the Black Hawk and the CH-47 Chinook.

That base is part of a network of Advanced Operating Posts (FOL) of the Pentagon, integrated by Comalapa in El Salvador, Guantánamo in Cuba, Arruba, Curazo and Manta, in the Ecuadorian Pacific. Similar to Ecuador´s president´s decision about the Manta base, Zelaya had told the White House of his intention to convert Soto Cano into an international commercial airport which would be financed by Alba and Petro-Caribe. In substitution for Manta, the Pentagon succeeded in convincing Álvaro Uribe to put (Colombian) military bases at its disposal in Palanquera (Cundinamarca) Apiay (Meta) and Malambo (Atlántico) which will convert Colombia into the Israel of Latin America.

The hawks in the Department of State and the Pentagon also fell back upon their old connections with the primitive Honduran oligarchy which controls Congress and the Supreme Court and they (also) counted upon the legitimization of Cardenal Oscar Rodríguez Madariaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa. What we witnessed, then, was a civic-military coup of US design, with the consensus of the fascist powers..

But, the other evil coup which got support in Honduras was the media war. (The coup) sought its legitimacy via the media which is under private monopolistic control. In particular, the Honduran newspapers La Prensa de San Pedro Sula and El Heraldo of Tegucigalpa, whose proprietor is Jorge Anahuati, a dealer of State arms and drugs and director of the Inter-American Press Society (SIP) an old arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ever since the cold war days; the daily La Tribuna of San Pedro Sula, run by the conservative businessman Carlos Roberto Facussé, ex-president of Honduras (1988-2002), the daily Tiempo of Tegucigalpa which belongs to Jaime Rosenthal Oliva, businessman, banker and Secretary General of the Liberal Party (Partido Liberal); the network of television channels of José Rafael Ferrari, and with involvement in the HRN radio chain. Likewise, the coup counted upon the support of US CNN which, from the first moment, looked for a way of legalizing the putchistas and incriminating Zelaya as well as upon the other large Latin American media tied to SIP.

The backward strategy of the Clinton clan and the institutional apparatus at the service of the energy military industrial complex, that ends up with a policy of events that would be endorsed by Obama, owes much to the key role played by the current ambassador in Tegucigalpa, the Cuban-US citizen Hugo Llorens. Connected to the ex intelligence czar John Dimitri Negroponte and the ultra conservative Otto Reich, protector of the Cuban-US mafia in Miami, Llorens coordinated the expulsion of Manuel Zeylaya. He is part of a network of diplomats named in the last days of the Bush Administration, all of whom are experts in undercover operations and psychological warfare against Cuba and Venezuela: Robert Blau in the El Salvador Embassy: Stephen McFarland in Guatemala and Robert Callahan in Managua, Nicaragua.

With her formal ambiguities, Hillary Clinton has legitimized the new privatized Micheletti and Company regime, and via the conduct of Öscar Arias, an old Washington lackey, has pushed forward a “negotiation-trap” to give the coup leaders time to strengthen their power and to wear down the heroic popular Honduran resistance. Obama will have to decide to label what has happened a coup d´etat, recall Ambassador Llorens and cut US assistance to Honduras or continue backing down before the hard wing of the imperial system.

Translated by William S. Stone: wstoneoax@yahoo.com

To read the original version in Spanish, please see the following link:

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2009/07/27/index.php?section=opinion&article=019a1pol