Honduras Coup Dictator Micheletti Calls Out the Geezer Patrol

By Al Giordano

The pro-coup dailies in Honduras are abuzz with EXCELLENT NEWS FOR THE COUP REGIME!

Faced with the reality that millions of Hondurans have done the math and figured out that 14,000 National Police plus 9,000 members of the Armed Forces do not equal enough force to squash their unarmed movement to topple the coup d’etat, coup “president” Roberto Micheletti has called in the reserves.

The pro-coup daily La Tribuna gushes that the cavalry has come to save the coup regime from the forward march of the Honduran people:

More than 2,000 reservists, veterans of war and retired officials of the Armed Forces (FFAA, in its Spanish initials) reiterated their support for the President, Roberto Micheletti, at the celebration of the National Day of the Reservist.

At the celebration a group of war veterans attended from Honduras’ 1957 conflict with Nicaragua and with El Salvador in 1969…

“I don’t know if the war veterans want to consider me part of them because I – here is the proof, dated August 4, 1969, that shows that I participated in the defense of the sovereignty of our country, here it is, nobody can deny it, and we will do the same as long as we are alive,” said President Micheletti…

The pro-coup daily El Heraldo added to the celebration:

To some of the military veterans, their physical handicaps and the passage of years didn’t stop them from attending this celebration and declare themselves ready “for any mission” to support the institutionality.”

El Heraldo subtitled its story, “It is estimated that there are 50,000 reservists in Honduras.”

Journalist Arturo Cano of the Mexico City daily La Jornada also attended the celebration and offered a more detailed look at yesterday's spectacle:

White tee shirts were distributed from Army trucks. Senior citizens, mature men and some still young received them. The fronts of the tee shirts had the Honduras flag and two soldier figures: “Reservists in defense of democracy.” On the back was the same slogan of the pro-coup marches: “For Peace and Democracy.” In smaller letters the message was completed: “Every man should be a soldier when it is time to combat tyranny.”

“We are here to defend the country and we will not put put on our knees, although there are campaigns to discredit us,” said General Romeo Vásquez, perhaps less worried about the “campaigns” by the resistance to the coup d’etat than by the declarations by Liberal Party presidential candidate Elvin Santos and textile magnate Adolfo Facussé who now seek punishment for the military officials who took Zelaya out of the country…”

Cano estimated the crowd size at the reservists photo opportunity to be “one thousand” including current members of the military and Armed Forces employees that were dressed in the tee shirts to expand the size of the group in the photo. If there really are another 49,000 reservistas out there, they didn't attend the pro-coup media event yesterday.

The idea of calling out the veterans of the 1969 “soccer war” with El Salvador (a 16-year-old then would be 56 today) and the 1957 war with Nicaragua (today, 68 and over) – in a country where the average life expectancy for a male is 67 - is certainly novel and entertaining, but also an admission that the regime’s 23,000 police and soldiers combined aren’t enough to stem the tide of peaceful civil resistance that is driving the regime to distraction.

And since the cash-strapped coup regime does not have visible means of financial support to pay these retirees and reservists – who, after all, are of the great multitude of Honduras’ impoverished population - to suit up again, put a gun in their hands, and be sent after the seditionist highway walkers, hunger strikers, Radio Globo reporters and other threats to the banana republic of coups d’etat, a lyric from Woody Guthrie comes to mind: “I will point a gun for my country, but I won’t guarantee you which way.”

This event was much more about the photo opportunity and media stunt than an authentic show of force. But typical to the coup regime’s clown shoe antics in the last 43 days, it mainly serves to remind of what everyone knows is one of its fatal weaknesses: that when it comes to real police and soldiers, the regime’s last line of defense against its own people numbers a paltry 23,000, or one uniform to hold back every 326 Hondurans.

Update: AP has a one sentence breaking news story up that the Honduras coup regime has just banned the scheduled delegation from the Organization of American States from entering the country this week. That would have been made up of the foreign ministers of Canada, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mexico and Argentina. How is your "San José negotiations" scenario going now, Secretary Clinton?

Update II: As this video taken yesterday at the entrance from the capital city of Tegucigalpa toward the eastern highway toward Danlí demonstrates, the taxi drivers cooperatives and unions have now officially joined the civil resistance against the coup:

Note the creativity of this style of "blockade," in which the cars keep moving at a slow pace - like a vehicular picket line - thus not violating any law but still effectively shutting down a key transportation route. How the regime can deal with that is yet another "dilemma action" that the resistance has tossed its bureaucracy.