Honduras’ Zelaya: Making Waves

Honduras’ Zelaya: Making Waves
Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 10:10 pm
Press Release: Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Honduras’ Zelaya: Making Waves

On November 27, 2005, in the tightest presidential election in the Central American country’s history, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya of the center-left Partido Liberal (PL) party was elected president of Honduras. Zelaya was able to take office by a 4 percent margin of victory, with his Liberal party taking 62 of 128 congressional seats. On the inception of his administration, observers noted that, despite conservative elements within his own party, Zelaya’s presidency would likely be of a left-leaning political hue.

Honduras for decades has been the quintessential “banana republic,” in the pocket of Chiquita and the U.S. Embassy. Thus, while the U.S. State Department notes that, “Honduras is an ally of the United States and generally supports U.S. initiatives in international fora,” Zelaya’s recent words and actions have encouraged widespread speculation that something has happened to the Honduran leader, who today is markedly moving to the moderate left. Observers point to a relative shift in Honduras’ political and economic loyalties away from the United States, in favor of strengthened ties with some of its more venturesome Latin American neighbors, especially Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. While Honduras signed onto the U.S.-led Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2004, and the U.S. currently is Honduras’ primary trading partner and the source of approximately two-thirds of the country’s foreign direct investment (FDI), Zelaya has, within the past year, joined Petrocaribe, Chavez’s oil-subsidy initiative, as well as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the Venezuelan-led trade bloc. Honduras’ Congress ratified its membership in Petrocaribe on March 13, by 69 votes, and Zelaya signed ALBA membership documents on August 22. The Honduran president has said that apathy on the part of the U.S. as well as by the international lending institutions toward rising food prices and deepening poverty in his country—one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, with per capita income around $1,600—compelled him to turn to Caracas.

Relations between Honduras and the United States were also strained of late as Zelaya delayed the formal accreditation of newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens for a week to express solidarity with Bolivian President Evo Morales in his recent drug policy-related diplomatic row with Washington. Zelaya used the occasion to express displeasure with how the U.S. “meddles in affairs.” Meanwhile, a positive-minded Llorens managed to find that, “relations between the U.S. and Honduras are excellent.”

Many observers remain unsure whether the motivation behind Zelaya’s latest moves are primarily ideological or simply pragmatic. Some, like Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations, highlight how, generally speaking, and in light of Washington’s relative neglect, “Latin Americans are stepping in and managing their own crises, some of which the United States played a role in generating—but not so much resolving.”

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0810/S00026.htm

on their way to slaughter teachers and mayors and nuns and bishops and other 'dangerous' people in Nicaragua and El Salvador, in the 1980s.

And their reward? The reward that all poor countries get for colluding with U.S. fascists--extreme poverty--and, often combined with that, major drugs and weapons trafficking, that the failed, corrupt, murderous U.S. "war on drugs" never stops or even slows down--resulting in intractable problems of poverty and lawlessness.

Guatemala is another example of rich elites in poor countries colluding with the U.S. and creating a basketcase of poverty and crime, that then gets inflicted with the major thievery of U.S.-dominated "free trade." In the case of Guatemala, this degradation and humiliation was also combined with the Reagan-backed slaughter of 200,000 Mayan villagers, in the 1980s--from which Guatemala is only just recovering.

Wherever the U.S. dominates, the indigenous and other poor people, and their leaders, get tortured and murdererd, and poverty gets worse. And that is why Guatemala and Honduras--and likely Mexico, in the next election--are going leftist. Guatemala just elected its first progressive government, ever, with social justice goals similar to the Bolivarian countries. Honduras' government, once a "free trade" advocate, has joined ALBA (Bolivarian trade group). Mexico came within a hairsbreadth--0.05%--of electing a strong leftist president in the last election, and if the rightwing/Corpo effort to privatize Mexico's constitutionally protected oil resource, and U.S.-funded "war on drugs" nazism toward the poor, continue, Mexico will join this amazing leftist democracy and Latin American sovereignty movement.

This is one of the reasons that I am rather worried about the U.S.-Bush plot in oil rich Zulia, Venezuela, on the Caribbean coast. Although elements of the plot (a fascist secessionist scheme, as in Bolivia) were recently exposed, the Bushwhacks may still try to grab Zulia--using the recently reconstituted U.S. 4th Fleet, the Colombian military and its paramilitary death squads, Blackwater and U.S. special forces (Zulia is adjacent to Colombia), and local fascist militias, to take over Venezuela's main oil reserve, cripple Venezuela, and try to create a leftist-free zone in the Caribbean, using the oil resource for blackmail, with violent enforcement. This could then be a U.S. Corpo/fascist bulwark--a "circling of the wagons"--against the coming powerhouse of the social justice-oriented, South American "Common Market" (UNASUR).

The countries of the peninsula--Panama, (leftist) Nicaragua, (left-leaning) Honduras, El Salvador (very likely to elect a strong leftist this winter) and up the peninsula to Guatemala and Mexico--could suffer serious repression, like the 1980s, if this Bushwhack war plot is sucessful. This is no doubt why Chavez invited the Russians to naval maneuvers in the Caribbean--as a warning off. Another key strength in Latin America is the long hard work of many people on transparent elections. Although I think Mexico's 2005 election was stolen, Latin America's elections, on the whole, are trustworthy and far more transparent than our own (with the exception of Colombia). South America has led the way, once again--as on so many issues--is strengthening democratic institutions, and Central America is coming along. Real democracies--where the people have a major say in the government--are difficult to topple, as Venezuela has time and again proven. And when democratic countries strongly ally with each other, and have each other's backs--as has happened in South America--they are nearly impossible to topple, even without strong militaries. Central America is not as strong as South America, in this regard. Bushwhack "divide and conquer" has been more successful there, thus far--but that is changing for the better, as well.

I doubt that this Bushwhack Zulia plot will succeed, if they try it, but it could cause a lot of suffering and mayhem. And Obama getting elected is no guarantee against it. The Bushwhacks could present him with a war-in-progress (in support of those poor, freedom-loving Venezuelan assassins and fascists who just want their "independence")--the short-term plan, which would have to happen in the next few months (and is similar to the CIA/Miami mafia "Bay of Pigs" scheme, to involve JFK in a war on Cuba in his first months in office)--or they could conceivably instigate a private Corpo war using U.S. taxpayer bought and paid for operatives in South America, and some of those billions of dollars stolen from us in Iraq, which Rumsfeld (who is quite possibly orchestrating Oil War II-South America) has stashed away for such contingencies. This longer term plan could unfold at any time, on into the next few years.

The short-term plan--fascist insurrections and secessionist movements in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, all erupting at once, which may have been scheduled for March of this year--seems to have been stymied by a number of developments, including Chavez not taking the bait, in March (after the U.S./Colombia bombing/raid on Ecuador), and the creation of UNASUR this May, the South American "Common Market," which has already intervened to prevent the Bush-backed split up of Bolivia--and has done so with total unanimity. The South Americans have had it with this "divide and conquer" crap, and are acting strongly and in a unified way to counter it.

So Exxon Mobil & brethren may go to Plan B, the private Corpo war, and try to drag the U.S. into it. That won't likely succeed either, and will simply alienate Latin America even more.

This joke that Michele Batchelet, president of Chile, told the other day, in the U.S., at the expense of the U.S. and the Bushwhacks, is perhaps the best indicator of how things are going for the Bushwhacks and their dirty rotten schemes in South America. If a center-leftist like Batchelet can tell a joke like this about U.S. interventionism, to an audience of U.S. investers, you know times have changed. It would have been unheard of, just a couple of years ago, and at any time in the past.

See
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x8240

When centrist South American leaders start joking about U.S. interventions, to our faces, you have to be impressed with the self-confidence, unity and determination that is behind such a joke. Jokes don't come out of nowhere. They come from bantering among friends--in this case, all the other leaders of South America, fresh from their counter-intervention in Bolivia, which Chile organized.

Honduras should follow the path it wants to but I am sure relations will be better under the Obama administration.

I also do not believe the Zulia plot will succeed given that it is fictitious.

Correa has mentioned meetings in Ecuador (where the three fascist groups came together). The latest assassination/coup plot against Chavez, that was recently exposed, was located in Zulia. And, strategically, it makes sense.

I think this is what Donald Rumsfeld was talking about, in his Dec 07 op-ed in the Washington Post, in which he urges "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America. And I'm fairly convinced that the plot was set to go off in March of this year, with the U.S. Colombia bombing/raid on Ecuador, with simultaneous fascist insurrections (declarations of "independence," requests for U.S. support) in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, but the Bushwhacks got foiled by Chavez not taking the bait (and doing a bit of his own "dividing and conquering," by making friends with Uribe, in their "bury the hatchet" meeting, to the distress of Colombia's Defense Minister Santos). This is why Lula da Silva called Chavez "the great peacemaker." I think he not only averted the war the Bushites were spoiling for, but also averted the three-country destabilization plot that lay behind it, whereby the Bushites would have had their excuse to grab Zulia (and anything else they could--such as Ecuador's northern oil reserves, crossing the border from Colombia, for which the bombing/raid of Raul Reyes' camp may have been a rehearsal, and maybe bringing in some gunships from the Pacific).

Yes, it is fictitious, in the sense that it didn't happen--and hasn't happened yet. It is a scenario, but a highly plausible one--especially if you figure that Zulia is the main prize and the main target, with its strategic importance in the Caribbean region (where Nicaragua has gone leftist, El Salvador will likely go leftist this winter, and Honduras is leaning leftist and joined ALBA) and with Zulia's vast oil reserves, as a weapon for keeping these countries in line (also cutting off cheap oil to Cuba and other countries, and guaranteeing supplies and higher profits to U.S. corpos). There are a lot of reasons for the Bushites to do it, and not a whole lot standing in their way, from their screwy perspective.

What they've done in Bolivia is kind of strange, because the fascist position there is so impossible. But, as a distraction--as "divide and conquer" mayhem--it makes more sense.

Finally, there is Chavez's invitation to Russia for naval maneuvers in the Caribbean. That seems very pointed to me, and the big red arrow it's pointing to is Zulia.

I know that it making sense, as a war plan--and even there being evidence for it--doesn't mean that it has in fact been planned, or is going to be implemented. But little did we know that Dick Cheney's secret "energy" meetings in spring 2001 were actually mapping sessions, at which the big oil companies carved up their interests in Iraq's oil fields, six months before 9/11. We are not privy to "our" government's dirty rotten schemes. There is that, too--in favor of the Zulia scheme as a real plan. This is what Bushites DO. They steal resources by means of violence, and dirty rotten, secret scheming.

And the critical poverty that has ensued, in Honduras, IS what happens to poor countries whose leaders collude with Corpo/fascists. They get used as R&R for thugs, murderers and drug traffickers, and then get tossed away like dirty toilet paper. Or, if they possess anything--oil, minerals, forests--that gets ripped off, with slave labor, then these countries and peoples have nothing.

I have used the toilet metaphor, deliberately, to convey what I think is the contempt that Bushwhacks and other Corpo/fascists have for the people and countries that they use and exploit, and then toss away, when they are no longer useful, or have anything worth taking.

It is Negroponte and his ilk who are grievously contemptuous, not me. For all the worth that Honduras once had to them, as a staging area for their horrors in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Honduras got nothing in return. No regard. No help. And they have slipped into the worst poverty in Latin America.

I think "toilet" for the Corpo/fascist death squads--the place where they cleaned their guns, bought prostitutes cheap, got wired on coke, dumped their loads in the toilet, gathered their duffle bags and got on the plane or drove over the border to go whack some leftists--is an apt description of their attitude toward Honduras.

I meant it to be disgusting. That's what I think of their attitude. And I am very, very glad to see Latin American countries standing up for themselves and saying, "No more!"

Times HAVE changed and will keep changing for the better for lands south.

searches of "Battalion 316," the best known Honduran death squad could go the distance in informing people of what was clearly ommitted from the news our corporate media chose not to share with us, although we were deeply involved via our tax dollars. What a pity.

Good article from F.A.I.R. covers a lot of ground, including Honduras:

Scandal? What Scandal?
Bush's Iran-Contra appointees are barely a story

By Terry J. Allen

Throughout the summer of 2001, the media were profligate with resources for the Chandra Levy story, excavating every corner of her and Rep. Gary Condit's past to unearth a prurient bounty of personal detail. That level of investigative vigor mighthave exposed far more vital information had it been applied to Bush's appointment of numerous Iran-Contra veterans to key posts.

But with a few admirable exceptions, news stories about Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte and Otto Reich have largely relied on past reporting and he-said, she-said soundbites by the usual supporters and critics, rather than in-depth investigations into their complicity in one of the bloodiest scandals of the past 20 years. And their guilt is based not on speculation or gossip, but on hard evidence that they aided torturers and death squads,circumvented Congress and the Constitution, and deceived the American people.

~snip~
In 1995, the Baltimore Sun undertook a months-long investigation into the U.S. role in Honduras, implicating Negroponte. Under editor John Carroll, Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson reported (6/27/95) that members of the U.S.-trained Battalion 316 used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." Cohn and Thompson showed that despite insistent denials, Negroponte had to have known.

Most of the media have not been as diligent. For months after Negroponte's name was floated for U.N. ambassador, virtually the only mention of his Honduras record in the New York Times was a paragraph inside Jane Perlez's May 27 piece on how Sen. James Jefford's defection would impact Bush's foreign policy. Perlez noted "obstacles" to Negroponte's confirmation, "largely over his role as ambassador in Nicaragua {sic} in the Reagan administration, when he carried out the covert strategy to crush the leftist Sandinista government." As Ronald Reagan said after a 1982 trip to Latin America, "You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries" down there. The Times ran a correction (6/5/01).

It includes info. on Reagan's (later _{George W. Bush's)} little propaganda meister, Otto Reich:

Mightier than the pen

As head of the Reagan administration's Orwellian Office of Public Diplomacy, Reich ran "Operation 'White Propaganda.'" He and other OPD officials regularly showed up in newsrooms and editorial meetings to excoriate reporters and editors for unfavorable coverage and to slander insufficiently sympathetic reporters. The OPD planted stories and op-eds in the U.S. media that were ghostwritten by Reich's operatives or assigned to "independent" experts. Tainted articles ran in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post, among other outlets. His office also engaged in such dirty tricks as charging that reporters in Nicaragua were paid for their anti-U.S. coverage with the services of Sandinista-supplied prostitutes. Jason Vest's 7,000-word piece on the American Prospect website (5/25/01) offers the most extensive account of Reich's attempts to influence the U.S. media.

Reich himself visited executives and reporters at CBS where, according to a 1984 memo from Secretary of State George Shultz to Ronald Reagan (In These Times, 4/16/01), he "privately and confidentially" influenced coverage of the Salvador war. "Everyone at CBS has been cordial and cooperative," the memo noted, adding that this example of OPD activities "has been repeated dozens of times over the past few months."

Reich had help from his friends. According to a staff report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee (9/7/88), "senior CIA officials with backgrounds in covert operations, as well as military intelligence and psychological operations specialists from the Department of Defense, were deeply involved in establishing and participating in a domestic political and propaganda operation run through an obscure bureau in the Department of State which reported directly to the National Security Council rather than through the normal State Department channels."

According to Eric Alterman in The Nation (5/7/01), old habits die hard. After the New York Times assigned Bonner to cover Reich's nomination, Reich tried to have the reporter taken off the story. The Times ran the March 8 article by Bonner and Christopher Marquis on page 6. Like Karen DeYoung's piece a month later (4/15/01) for the Washington Post, it devoted a few workmanlike paragraphs Reich's questionable activities as head of OPD. Both articles discussed the policy implications of appointing an anti-Castro ideologue and detailed potential conflicts of interest raised by Reich's lobbying for corporations including Bacardi-Martini and Lockheed Martin.

More:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1076