President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, ousted in the military coup on Sunday, June 28, was in Costa Rica today for meetings with Costa Rican president Oscar Arías, who was selected by the Department of State (handpicked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) to "mediate" the conflict in Honduras. Coup leader Roberto Micheletti also flew in from Honduras and attended a separate meeting with President Arias, after real President Zelaya met with Arias in the presidential residence in San José.
President Zelaya was clear that the only "negotiation" he would engage in regarded how the coup leaders would step down and either leave the country or pay some form of justice. Meanwhile, coup leader and dictator Micheletti was also holding his own, stating he would negotiate all matters except for President Zelaya returning to power.
So things are pretty much where they were 12 days ago. And in the meantime, 12 days have passed and the people of Honduras are living in a dictatorship!! And their constitutional president, who is trying to return back to his elected position, is getting the brush away from the White House, which seems to be controlling the situation at this point. The people of Honduras are still living in a militarized state, with a curfew imposed and a suspension of constitutional rights. They are also still resisting in the streets, despite the dangers and risks, to try and force the coup government to step down.
Both Zelaya and Micheletti have left "delegations" in Costa Rica to continue "negotiating". The whole thing is getting pretty circusy and not looking good in the short time.
Personally I think the ALBA countries need to step forward here and take some hardcore action to return President Zelaya to the presidency by any means necessary.
9 comments:
Eva,
No one has written more tellingly about the 2002 coup in Venezuela than you have and I am merely one of thousands who regard you with gratitude and no little awe for your courageous and illuminating excavation of this important terrain.
This does not, unfortunately, guarantee infallibility to all of your conclusions and proposals about Latin American affairs and I am skeptical about your suggestion that at the present moment ALBA nations should undertake “hardcore action” to return Zelayas to his presidency.
Zelaya’s position is significantly different than Chavez’s was on 11 April of 2002. Chavez had been elected in a political campaign in which he had been very candid about his egalitarian objectives. By the time the coup occurred, Chavez had already achieved a highly democratic constitution for Venezuela which had received indisputable public endorsement. Most important, Chavez’s supporters were mobilized in support of an ideology they understood and embraced.
None of the above can be said about Zelaya. He was not elected on a leftist program; he did not succeed in redrafting the Honduran constitution; his support is neither well organized nor ideologically defined. The only public opinion poll I know of since the 28 June coup indicates that 41% of the Honduran population support the coup while only 28% share Zelaya’s position about this abomination. While the relatively low support Zelaya commands likely reflects biased polling and (more important) a muzzled, mutilated domestic media, the fact is that the restoration of Zelaya through “hardcore action” by ALBA nations would be denounced by the Honduran elite and by the international community as the imposition by foreign powers of the will of 28% against the will of 41%. The Obama/Clinton ambivalence would be applauded as the very summit of wisdom and a crassly pro-elite elitist would win the November elections overwhelmingly.
I think that delay is the best hope, though it might be a frail one. If the present situation continues for several weeks, it is possible that the de facto government will disgrace itself irretrievably or that the pro-Zelaya forces will gain cohesion and strength. Micheletti may be forced to liberate the media and the consequences of such liberation might be dramatic and telling.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/19753/careful_us_diplomacy_on_honduras.html?breadcrumb=%2F
CFR Check It Out
This is like deja vu to me..
Now they want to talk and create some dialogue. But when it was like early in the morning the only dialogue going on was a man with a gun and a sky mask. What are here to dialogue this is just an attempt to weaken ALBA. Why? Why are we talking to them? They strike we strike there is no harmony here. Damn. They did a military coup and now they want to try to bully Zelaya. Excuse my language but Fuck that shit. ALBA should have some snipers do the job. No Talking. Just like the CIA and its attempts on Castro. I want to see some Latin American attempts on this man life. The coup ring leaders attempted it on the life of every Honduras citizen. On the people who struggle for social justice. Please. Por Favor. Someone needs to send a clear message to the coup leaders. If a message is not sent and they are not removed. Than bon voya...they are going to keep advancing. Sniper, Suicide Militant, what ever it takes to up root that god damn coup. We fail in Honduras we know what it means for Latin America as a whole. Chavez doesn't have to be the strong voice all the time. Let other in the hemisphere thunder on the Honduras Military coup. Let other leaders from Chile, Guatamala, etc also take a stronger voice in condemning the coup.
Leave them one message and that is..that the coup leaders are a bullet away from revolution! The old oligarchy needs to be removed anyway now there is an excellent opportunity. Where more social programs can develop in that nation. ALBA most not miss out on this opportunity. To confront the empire and dominate it on its on court.
Comparto la posición del Sr. Milbrandt en relación con la diferenciación que hace de las condiciones imperantes en la Honduras actual y la que teníamos acá en Venezuela en abril de 2002. Mismo guión, aunque no las mismas condiciones.
http://digalotodo.blogspot.com/2009/07/el-golpe-de-honduras.html
Thanks for the post. Love the site!
I think that it's time ALBA finally dismissed the bogey of "foreign interference" and publicly declared that any action they might take to restore the elected president of Honduras is not "foreign interference", but resistance to foreign interference.
Something's fundamentally wrong when people can seriously entertain the notion that Nicaragua, Venezuela, and virtually the entire rest of Latin America are somehow more "foreign" to Honduras than the US.
Two Track Policy; Old Gringo Crisis Reborn
Those of you who read the first volume of my autobiographical series “Idaho Smith’s” Search for the Foundation! entitled The Buccaneer (Go to World Cat - i.e., world catalog) will recall the last time we had a serious schism in the US ruler’s strategic plan for world domination occurred in the first weeks of JFK’s administration, and I was involved. In that instance the CIA tried to trick the incoming President into supplying full US military support in the air, on the sea and on the land to implement its counter-revolution plan for Cuba beginning April 16, 1961. At that time, operating from Italy, I was able to supply US Senator Frank Church (D - Idaho) with the information that secret US troops were being lifted to Panama and Nicaragua to assist in the forthcoming invasion of Cuba to be launched on that date. The story for the President was that the Cuban people would rise up and overthrow Fidel Castro if they had just a little help from the Cuban émigrés in Miami. They planned they said for the entire effort to be all Cuban émigré. No U.S. troops, planes or ships to be involved. In fact, exactly the opposite was the case. The entire thing was based on the use of US forces to succeed and the CIA had the new interim government locked up in a safehouse in Miami awaiting their transport to Central Australia where the new “Cuban” government was to be declared to be holding power. This “government” backed up by special US troops from northern Italy where my own work had uncovered their real mission would then proceed with US protected Gusano (émigré) troops and US troops leading a lighting drive on Habana. We know how that worked out in practice and we know how JFK felt about the attempt to trick him after the failure of the gringo-gusano invasion.
Most importantly, even though this was a dispute among imperialist bosses, we know how the US oligarchy dealt with JFK later using the “good offices” of Meyer Lansky et al. For all the details go to that book when you have the opportunity.
This time around the incoming liberal President is confronted with an 18 month old small-unit trouble making activity program launched two years ago against the progressive governments of Latin America. This policy being put into place in Peru and Colombia by US Navy Seals and US Army Green Berets and explained fully by the imperialist chieftain Kaplan in his Annapolis lectures two years ago Thanksgiving.
The attempt is to force the Obama administration to move dramatically to the right and to support the fascist Latin American regimes so far the favorite sons of US Presidents throughout America. So, what do progressive forces do? Defeat the plotters wherever they are operating and destroy the regimes collaborating with US imperialism in Peru and Colombia, and now in Honduras.
How the gringo’s effect a solution to their internal problems is their problem. Our problem is simply to recognize they cannot get out of their existing quicksand predicament as long as we meet them tit for tat and defeat them each time. TIn this way the more they plot against America the more open they become to lethal counterblows by indigenous forces and perhaps by an International Brigade.
Jason W. Smith, Ph.D.
Los Angeles, 8 July, 2009
By the way for a free copy of my new book Foundations of Historical Materialism go to the Recent Archives button at http://www.communistfoundationpartyusa.org or go to the WorldCat website for a list of libraries with this and other of my books and university libraries with copies.
I'm with you, Eva. Washington and its allies in power in Honduras want nothing more than to drag this out until it becomes a fact on the ground, like in Haiti. The longer Zelaya remains out of the country, the stronger the position of the putschists.
dianabarahona.blogspot.com
Roger: I am sorry about your pacifist world-view, but The Eagles attack in straight lines. And the paradise exists at the shadows of the swords.
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Eva: I am with you and with Hugo Chavez 100%. The whole world left should support mentally, emotionally and physically the return of Zelaya to power, however the right-wing wants to label it. I know that the right-wing are speciallists at deconstructing language. Like calling the deffense of Zelaya by ALBA countries a "Foreing intervention" on Honduras. That's non-sense. And anti-marxist, anti-internationalist. In fact Capitalism is International and Socialism should also be international. The Socialists from other countries should responsibly support the return of Zelaya to power, even if world-capitalists label it as Intervention on Honduras soil.
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