Honduran connections

Photo: Notimex

Honduran president Mel Zelaya was received yesterday in Mexico City, which scrupulously followed the protocol for receiving a head of state.  The conservative Calderon administration has no problem referring to the Micheletti government in Tegacigalpa as “illegitimate”, though the United States STILL does not call a “coup” a coup (neither apparently, do the Canadians)

The reasons why might be found in Machetera’s excellent two-part article on the pernicious influence of former U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Otto Reich.  Journalist Michael Fox, in Counterpunch, offers some insight into what lies behind the U.S. “ambivalence” towards what should be a cut and dried matter:

While the perpetrators of the biggest threat to regional democracy in years were allowed to keep their US visas, bank accounts and even lobby on behalf of a former Clinton lawyer in Washington, the democratically elected leader of Honduras was warned that he should be patient, and that his actions could lead to violence.

Why such leniency towards the de facto coup plotters?  Would the Taliban be allowed to hire a Clinton Lobbyist?  Would Guantanamo detainees be permitted to lobby in Washington?  Would suspected terrorists be allowed the freedom that Washington had allotted Micheletti and his cohorts?

Of course [Former Hillary Clinton campaign organizer Lanny] Davis is not paid directly by the Micheletti government.  He’s working for the Honduran chapter of the Latin American Chamber of Commerce (CEAL).

“My main contacts are Camilo Atala and Jorge Canahuati. I’m proud to represent businessmen who are committed to the rule of law,” Davis told Roberto Lovato of the American Prospect a week ago.  Both Atala and Canahuati represent vested business interests in Honduras.

Atala is CEO of Banco Ficohsa, “the third-largest bank in terms of loan portfolio and deposits” in Honduras.  Canahuati is the majority owner of two of Honduras’ largest newspapers, La Prensa and El Heraldo, both of which have supported the coup.  He also happens to be on the Executive Committee of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), and head of the IAPA’s International Affairs Committee.  The IAPA is an organization of newspaper tycoons, owners, publishers and editors, who among other things immediately recognized both the 2002 Venezuelan coup and the Honduran coup.

Of course, the kind of people who can pay Lannie Davis to talk to Hillary Clinton are not the same kind of people who talk to Albor Ruiz, of the New York Daily News:

Honduras, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, is a nation where eight wealthy families control politics, business and the media.

“The only thing we want is to live in a country that respects everybody’s will, not only the will of the rich,” Wendy Cruz, who was with Vallejo Soriano when he was shot, wrote in a harrowing e-mail.

“The military were beating everybody and more than 80 people were arrested and taken to ‘la Cuarta’ police precinct,” Cruz added. “There are many people wounded.”

So much for Micheletti’s sanctimonious claims that there is no violence in Honduras.

It might, in the short run, be to the advantage of those eight families (and their patrons in Washington) to let this coup stand, with the legitimate government having already agreed to considerable (and, in my opinion, humiliating) concessions to the golpistas, foot-dragging by the United States will ultimately create more problems than it solves.  As  Zelaya pointed out to Jens Glüsing of Der Speigel:

[A negotiated settlement] will only work if the international community increases its pressure on the coup leaders. It has to make sure that coups don’t become an epidemic. That would jeopardize security and stability on the entire continent. If coups, revolutions and uprisings were to spread throughout Latin America once again, the United States and Europe would also pay a high price.

As did the Hondurans before the coup and do as a result of it. Where only three percent of Mexicans depend directly on remittances from the United States,about twenty percent of Hondurans do. That is besides the heavy investments in Honduran infrastructure, “maquiadora” plants and military presence. What do the Hondurans want?

Hermano Juancito, the church worker from Iowa (who I blackmailed into updating regularly*), sent me a link to this from Catholic News Service:

Bishop Luis Santos Villeda of Santa Rosa de Copan also said the country needs a dialogue between the elite and Honduras’ poor and working-class citizens. “Some say Manuel Zelaya threatened democracy by proposing a constitutional assembly. But the poor of Honduras know that Zelaya raised the minimum salary. That’s what they understand. They know he defended the poor by sharing money with mayors and small towns. That’s why they are out in the streets closing highways and protesting (to demand Zelaya’s return),” the bishop told Catholic News Service.

In a July 30 telephone interview, he said it is misleading to consider Honduras a democracy, either before or after the June 28 coup. “There has never been a real democracy in Honduras. All we have is an electoral system where the people get to choose candidates imposed from above. The people don’t really have representation, whether in the Congress or the Supreme Court, which are all chosen by the rich. We’re the most corrupt country in Central America, and we can’t talk about real democracy because the people don’t participate in the decisions,” he said.

Juancito, on his own website, writes:

There are many very capable people , very committed Christians, many who want the best for their villages and their country. But the poverty, the system, the corruption, the polarized politics make it very hard for them. Yet they persist. The persistence of the poor is a virtue that needs to be recognized and respected for what it is – a sign of hope that must not be frustrated.

* I remember very well what has happened to church workers in Central America who did their job — comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable — when right-wing thugs have felt threatened. I “suggested” he post every day, so I didn’t feel compelled to bombard the United States Embassy with telephone calls and e-mails. Not that I trust the U.S. Embassy to do the right thing.