Why Honduras Matters — to the U.S. and Mexico

3 July 2009

I’m not all that interested in the fate of Mel Zelaya, the deposed president of Honduras. I really don’t care if he is impeached… for any number of things. The original justification for the coup — that Zelaya “disobeyed” a court order is pretty tenuous: when the Supreme Court ruled a planned referendum was unconstitutional, the President changed it to a non-binding referendum; when the Elections Commission said their resources couldn’t be legally involved, the now non-binding referendum became something no different than the on-line polls, as “la gringa” wants coup supporters to manipulate). Perhaps government funds were involved, and perhaps it’s an impeachable offense. Who cares?

The rights and wrongs of the Zelaya Administration are irrelevant, as are the rationales being spun in Tecapagalpa and presented to a skeptical world.

The best reason, and one that doesn’t involve geo-politics, was given by Inca Kola News:

I have two kids, five and nearly three years old. When they’re 21 and 18 I’m going to have enough trouble on my hands worrying about boys and drugs and getting them into unversities and making sure they get there unpregnant and all the rest. I really don’t need to worry whether they’re going to take a bullet in the chest if they decide to protest the government of the day. Or maybe just disappear.

Not having kids, that’s not a worry of mine… but I live here, too. And, I am a United States citizen. In both Mexico, and in the United States, there is a creeping (or rather blatant) attempt to move the military into more civilian roles. In Mexico, military involvement in civilian police matters has been applauded and supported by the United States — but the record of human rights abuses is growing. In the United States, where “terrorism” is used to justify an expanded military role in civilian affairs, there haven’t been that many overt problems… yet.

Gloriosa Victoria, Diego Rivera (1954), commemorating the coup overthrowing Guatemala's democratically-elected President, Jacobo Arbenz (Photo: BBC)

There seems to be a myth that coups are outside a constitutional framework. Not so. Victoriana Huerta became president in 1913 constitutionally. For real. Jose Pino Suarez, the vice-president resigned, leaving Foreign Minister Pedro Lascuráin as second in line when Francisco I. Madero resigned for reasons of health (like there was a gun pointed at him). Lascuráin holds the world record for the shortest term in office for a legitimate president of all times… probably about 45 minutes.. long enough to appoint Victoriano Huerta HIS foreign minister, and then resign himself. All constitutional, all legal. And… defended by the right as a way of “restoring order” and dealing with a president over his head during a time of calls for social change.

Constitutional… but no one in their right mind would say that wasn’t a coup. Lydia Gueller was President of Bolivia (remembered only for being Bolivia’s one and only Presidenta) for eight months (November 1979 – July 1980) to provide a “constitutional” cover for a military dictatorship. Until, of course, she acted too civil, and was overthrown by the “Cocaine Coup” of General Luis Garcia Meza.

People forget that the United States very nearly did have a military coup — which was crafted to fit “constitutional norms” in the early 1930s. How seriously the “Business Plot” had advanced is a matter of historical speculation, but it would have been a “constitutional” solution that allowed for a military and fascist state. That the coup failed was ironically due to one of the major figures in U.S. intervention in Latin America, General Smedley Butler. The plan called for “persuading” the President to create a “Secretary of General Affairs” (perfectly constitutional) and installing a fascist economic system (also constitutional… nowhere does the U.S. Constitution require any particular economic system).

In 1935, as in 2009, you had deep economic unrest, political calls for “change”, and resistance from those who were willing to turn to a military solution to preserve the status quo. Butler was something of a crank, and maybe so were the organizers (which included Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of two future Presidents) , but there are overt signals being given by today’s right-wingers that they would accept the use of military force to create an extra-legal solution to temporary problems… and to after-the-fact develop a legal fiction to cover the event. What stopped the coup in 1935, more than anything, was that Smedley Butler was the wrong man for the job. Not that he wasn’t experienced in military intervention. He was… all too well. As he said to the New Britain CT American Legion (31 August 1931):

“I spent 33 years…being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism….

“I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street….

“In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested….I had…a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions….I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents…”

Calls for social and economic change here in Mexico have largely gone unheeded. One reason for the high abstention rate, and the voto nulo campaign is disgust with the existing political system, and the sense that voting is a futile act. After the 2006 Presidental election (which many believe was manipulated), a huge segment of the people feel the system failed them. That doesn’t mean they don’t want social change, however. And… with the sitting administration turning to using the military (which, many argue, is unconstitutional), there is a sense in some quarters that this country did have a “constitutional” coup.

The danger isn’t the preservation of legal formality, but the after-effects. The military has been used here to attack domestic dissent — sometimes in the guise of fighting the “drug war” (as with the Zapatistas) and there are there have already been minor incidents in the United States when the military is used to “fight terrorists” along the border. Almost unnoticed, the Calderon Administration slipped in a bill allowing for a “state of exception” (i.e., the abrogation of civil rights) in the latest crime bill. More on our “state of exception” here.

In Honduras, where the “constitutional” fig leaf is slipping, there are reports of forced recruitments into the Army … or, perhaps, into those pro-coup protests the gardener tries to sell as “proof” of the rightness to the coup (not that one can’t create a crowd to support a government proposal easily. PRI mastered the mass demonstration years ago, and the Calderon Adminstration, with the help of Televisa, convinced even foreigners to turn out for an “anti-crime” rally to justify continued military intervention in civil justice), arbitrary replacement of elected officials, and, in the words of Bishop Luis Alfonso Santos, speaking for the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán, read from the Cathedral altar yesterday:

… protests of the citizenry in the streets and highways, a climate of insecurity and fear in families because of the limitation of constitutional rights, including:

The right to freedom of movement, freedom of association and to demonstrate, inviolability of one’s home, the right of private property, freedom of the press and of dissemination of ideas and opinions, personal freedom, including the right not to be detained administratively in a police station for more than 24 hours and [the right to] a limit of six days of investigative detention under judicial orders, which would lead to indefinite detentions. All this mentioned above is contained in the Decree about the “State of Exception” which was being drawn up yesterday, July 1, in the National Congress. With this we are coming near to a massive violation of human rights.

When even factually challenged, supposedly “progressive”, voices in the United States make excuses for military intervention (and abrogation of civil rights, as well as state terrorism), there’s a sense that — given the U.S. propensity to use Latin American social and political events only as object lessons for whatever political football is being kicked around within Washington — tolerance for extra-legal ways of resolving political disputes is acceptable to more people than we realize.

Consider this, broadcast among other places, on Armed Forces Radio (“Nork” means “North Koreans”).