Xenophobia and Racism in the Honduran Crisis

Posted: October 12, 2009 08:10 PM
Xenophobia and Racism in the Honduran Crisis

The political crisis has brought out the worst of Honduras. The media has already documented many of the country's ills since June: the reliance on the military to address internal political problems and the sharp polarization with Cold War echoes as well as political violence, repression and censorship. One nasty phenomenon, however, has slipped under the radar: the frightening nationalist sentiment, xenophobia and racism that have been on display since June 28--the day of the coup. Hondurans on both sides of this crisis have continually failed to recognize that substantial domestic support exists for both Manuel Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti, and that these domestic forces are willing and able to mobilize themselves. They have proceeded by first defining "us"--the true Hondurans who "love their country"--and then using racial and national markers to identify a blameworthy "them."

Since the coup, Hondurans have been crying for leadership from "people who really love their country." Honduran politicians, media pundits and radio-show callers have repeated this banal phrase ad nauseum. They suggest that "true" Hondurans would never have gotten into this mess and that love of country is sufficient to ward off political crisis. That both Micheletti and Zelaya supporters utter this phrase reveals the patent absurdity of such arguments. People with widely divergent interests can all profess to "love their country." Democratic politics is about aggregating and balancing interests and developing representative institutions to mediate these interests and protect citizens' rights; it is not about who can be the loudest cheerleader for the nation.

Unfortunately, these "love of country" statements are not simply vacuous. In addition to being unhelpful, nationalist rhetoric since June 28 has gone hand-in-hand with troubling expressions of xenophobia and racism.

Xenophobia has plagued the rhetoric of both the Micheletti and the Zelaya camps. On Micheletti's side, condemnation of outside influences and a rejection of multilateralism has become commonplace after the international community's condemnation of the coup. This is bad news, but it's not quite xenophobia. Instead, xenophobia has reared its ugly head in the continuous references to "outside agitators"-- Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and Colombians (from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC)--stirring up the Zelaya supporters. The Honduran Right claims that their country has been infiltrated by Leftist, Communist and Marxist (any Cold War adjective will do, actually) rabble-rousers from all of these nations.

These phantom foreigners have taken the blame for organizing violence and funding insurrection. Some even blame them for the wave of pro-Zelaya graffiti that's gone up throughout Tegucigalpa. As one Micheletti supporter told me, "Hondurans have never put up graffiti like this. It's being done by people from those other countries." Meanwhile, first-hand experience at pro-Zelaya protests reveals that it's primarily adolescent Hondurans putting up the graffiti.

Perhaps the nastiest case of such "othering" came when the de facto government stripped Catholic priest Father Andrés Tamayo of his citizenship. Tamayo, a naturalized Honduran citizen born in El Salvador, has been an outspoken Zelaya supporter while the historically conservative church sided with Micheletti. The response from the Right: he's Salvadoran, he's not one of us.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-altschuler/xenophobia-and-racism-in_b_318054.html

This is simply not true: "That both Micheletti and Zelaya supporters utter this phrase ("people who really love their country") reveals the patent absurdity of such arguments." --Daniel Altschuler (write of the article)

No, it does NOT reveal any such thing--especially if one side is lying and the other is not.

The golpistas don't love their country; they love MONEY. And the poor majority has nothing else BUT their country, and each other, to love--the land, the peasant farmer traditions (literally love of the land), their communities, their families, their identity and pride. The golpistas have deprived them of everything else--they are the poorest people in Latin America. And now the golpistas are bashing their heads, and jailing them, and torturing and killing them, and stripping them of all rights--and claiming, falsely, to be doing this because they "love their country." They are lying. And the Zelaya supporters are NOT lying. And to falsely equate these two assertions of love of country is academic bullshit.

The writer also reveals an egregious bias, when he cites the racist, anti-Jewish comment of one pro-Zelalya radio commentator. It was a really bad comment, and certainly deserves condemnation. But he FAILS to cite the Junta foreign minister's also extremely racist comment about Obama!

How can he cite one without the other, in making an argument that Hondurans are xenophobic and racist? That is extremely unfair.

Further--not to excuse the radio commentator's hate speech; it was inexcusable--but other pro-Zelaya supporters, who are not racists, have a legitimate beef against Israel, which recognized the coup government (one of only two countries in the entire world that did so). As for their objection to Israeli mercenaries being in Honduras and involved with the Honduran military in persecuting Zelaya and his family and the other people in the embassy, that has not been disproven and is quite plausible, and, if it had been Blackwater mercenaries, or Colombian mercenaries (whom we know are in Honduras), it would be equally objectionable. (Israelies are known to be involved with the Colombian military--a military and country with one of the worst human rights records on earth.)

This writer has a really screwy and very limited focus--accusing virtually all Hondurans of racism and hatred of outsiders, while SOME Hondurans are getting severely brutalized and oppressed, and OTHERS are DOING the brutality and the oppression TO them. This is hardly an equal situation! And someone's WORDS--however hateful they were--simply do NOT have the gravity of the poor of Honduras being KILLED and terrorized for their political opinions. Zelaya's supporters are not killing anybody. They are not jailing anybody for their political views. They are not torturing anybody.. The have not suspended all civil rights and shut down the media. ONLY the golpistas are doing these things, and Zelaya's supporters are the victims of it.

more than the headline before posting it. I'm almost always in a wild rush most nights and only have minutes to get in and get out, and have to catch up as I can.

Wish I HAD read this one first!

I would be so angry if some completely clueless person took this seriously.

Thanks, Peace Patriot. I'll try harder to take a harder squint at my material FIRST. Don't want this kind of trash with my name on it.

help to put the material in perspective. It's important for people to know "what is out there"--the kinds of things they are going to be hearing, because they get prominence at a blog like Huffington Post or in corpo/fascist sources like the Associated Pukes. I actually found this article interesting. At first (reading the first half), I thought he was just an insular academic (my guess--then I found out he is a Rhodes Scholar!). I'm familiar with academic writing, and I can smell the imbalance in attempted "balance" (this false equation of the golpistas and the resistance) that academics use to create an appearance of objectivity, often in the service of corporate agendas. But the second half of the article reveals more about his motives. All he seems to care about is that Jews were slandered--and he magnifies this to level a charge of widespread anti-semitism and hatred of outsiders in the whole country. The golpista-inflicted deaths and torture and suspension of all civil rights, and shutdown of the media, seem to be of little or no moment to him. And I think this results in his own blindness to (or deliberate failure to mention) the golpista foreign minister's rancid remark about Obama (basically calling him "little black Sambo"). By leaving this out, he makes Zelaya's supporters/the left look really bad, as to impressions that the reader is left with. Most readers won't know what he left out. (The "little black Sambo" remark was very suppressed here.)

Nor can anyone understand from this article what it must be like to be in a militarized, countrywide prison--this state of siege in Honduras--with people getting tortured and assassinated. He cites some Zelaya supporters' blame of "the Arabs" as well (more "balance")--a population of rich, naturalized Arab-Hondurans who back the coup--but if your community is under siege, with horrible beatings and deaths, and the news media have been suppressed--cutting you off from the outside world--it is understandable, and human, to try to identify the perps. The golpistas have no excuses. They are running this horror. The victims and prisoners of it deserve our compassion. And this writer fails to even note the peacefulness of the resistance movement, the face of extraordinary provocation.

Anyway, I totally sympathize with your dilemma--not enough time--and you are forgiven! Your work here at DU, bringing historical and current REAL information to DUers on Latin American issues, and your awesome photo archive which you use so brilliantly to illustrate the realities of Latin America, is of inestimable value. You really deserve a Pullitizer, Judi! (Do they have Pullitzer's for bloggers?)

Thanks for all the material you bring here, Judi Lynn!