Honduras Poised on a Knife Edge

It is now more than 50 days that Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, the President of Honduras was deposed in a military coup and packed off into exile early morning of June 28th without even the curtsy of allowing him to change out of his pyjamas. Later, a so-called civilian Government was sworn in under Roberto Micheletti, a former President of the Congress.

The mass protests that have since erupted in Honduras and the almost unanimous worldwide rejection of the regime change makes it more and more likely that the days of the coup-makers are numbered. Even Washington, who saw Zelaya as an ally of Chavez and was not unhappy with the coup initially, has now distanced itself from the new regime in Honduras and called for the return of the Zelaya Presidency, though in an emasculated form.

To the world, this was a throwback to an era in Latin America where military coups were endemic. Not that military coups have disappeared. Only in 2002, Hugo Chavez was overthrown in a similar coup and came back only after the people of Venezuela revolted. Starting from the 80’s, military regimes have declined in Latin America, when it made the long trek back to democracy. People believed that the era of death squads, military coups, and big corporations pulling the plug on elected governments was over. The Honduras coup therefore came as a rude shock to Latin American governments and people.

The reaction in Latin America was strong and unanimous; the Organisation of American States (OAS), generally not known for bucking the US, came out strongly against the coup.

Position of the US has been quite revealing. Initially, it expressed concern about the deportation of Zelaya but did not call for his return nor declare it a coup. Subsequently, the US has come out for a return of the Zelaya Presidency, but hedged it with various riders while condemning Zelaya’s attempts to return to Honduras. The US is backing the Costa Rican President Arias’s attempts to negotiate Zelaya’s return to presidency but in a largely titular form and bringing the elections up from its scheduled November date. Even this has not been acceptable to the military backed Micheletti regime, which has made clear that they will not accept Zelaya back under any conditions. The US is willing to buy time for the military backed coup while it tries and puts down the public resistance it is facing.

In all this, the ALBA group of countries has played a key role in opposing the coup. With the election of a number of left Governments to power in Latin America -- Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay—there has been a clear break with the neo-liberal consensus that has run Latin America from the 80’s. The ALBA was in fact Hugo Chavez’s answer to the Free Trade Agreement for Americas that the US was trying very hard to impose on Americas and has a number of member countries. (The Crisis in Honduras and the Bolivarian Dynamic: Emile Schepers)

Even though countries such as Brazil and Chile are not a part of ALBA or allies of Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian alternative, they have also distanced themselves from the US. Zelaya, who started as a conservative-right President in 2002, had moved sharply to the left when he found that the only way to save the Honduras economy under the crushing burden of debts and rising oil prices was to align with Venezuela. He followed this up with a 60% increase of minimum wages and various other measures that deeply upset the Honduras elite as well as the leading MNC’s. Incidentally, one of the major MNC’s in Honduras is Chiquita Brands International Inc, the legal descendant of the infamous United Fruit Company with its record of involvement in the 1954 coup against President Arbenz in Guatemala.

The deposing of President Zelaya was not just an aberration of the Honduras military. Honduras is probably the most unequal of all countries in Latin America. Here, top 10 corporations own most of its wealth. They also own the media, and therefore control the flow of news. The coup was preceded by a huge campaign against Zelaya for wanting a non-binding referendum on a constitutional convention to be put as an item in the November ballot. It was this attempt to bring in a more egalitarian constitution, which became the focus of the anti Zelaya campaign. Interestingly, the international media has reported it as an attempt to extend Zelaya’s two term presidency to a third term. Since it is the November Presidential and the Congressional election that would have included the possibility of a constitutional change as a ballot item, it is difficult to imagine how this could be construed as an attempt to extend the Zelaya presidency. He in any case can not run in November under the current 1982 constitution .

If the role of the big corporations in the Zelaya affair is clear, the role of the US has also come under the scanner. Honduras military has very close ties with the US. The US Embassy in Tegucipalga, the capital of Hondurs has 500 US soldiers permanently posted there and continuously train its Honduras counterparts. The current Ambassador Hugo Llorens was President Bush’s National Security Advisor on Latin America during the 2002 coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Honduras is financially entirely dependent on the flow of US aid. Most of Latin American left believe that the US Embassy and the State Department of the US were closely involved with the planning and execution of the coup. They also point out that the blueprint for the coup was very similar to the 2002 aborted Venezuelan coup, in which US fingerprints have been already documented (Eva Golliger: The Hugo Chavez Code)

It is difficult to believe that the US administration was unaware of the plans for the coup. There is also little doubt that the US administration is happy to see Zelaya fall and would regard it as a weakening of the Bolivarian alternative in Latin America. It is also clear that the US is buying time for the coup makers and trying to coerce Zelaya to give up his ALBA connections. However, a direct involvement of the Obama Administration in the coup would also mean that they have now joined with the extreme right in the US over Latin America. It is various Republican bodies in the US who are openly supportive of the coup and the coup leaders. Given the visceral hatred of the Republican right for Obama, the direct involvement of the Obama Administration of the Administration to promote such right-wing allies of the Republicans in Latin America would be suicidal.

While the case for Obama Administration planning the coup may still be open to question, there is little doubt of its connivance with the coup makers after the coup. It has compromised its public position of supporting democracy in Latin America and come out as going where its imperial interests lie. While it may be too much to expect anything different from Obama, his problem is that with each of such incident, his stock of goodwill in Latin America and elsewhere is going to come down. The Obama Administration at present seems to be completely preoccupied by the US health care reforms and looks to have sacrificed its foreign policy, at least temporarily. In all foreign policy issues, there is some noise, but little substance that is emerging from the Obama camp.

The right wing in Honduras, is a throw back to the 80’s cold war warriors and a bunch of racists. One of the Military Generals justifying the coup talked of the good old days against the communists and how they are still continuing that good fight. A former leader of the death squads came on Honduran TV justifying the coup. To add spice to this mix of thugs and military gorillas, was the “foreign minister” of the Micheletti regime, Enrique Ortez, who called Obama “a know-nothing little blackie”, the Spanish Prime Minister a cobbler and referred to El Salvador in terms that reminded the audience of the “soccer war” that Honduras had fought with that country. For this outburst, he was transferred to the Justice Ministry. Obviously, his version of justice would sit well with the current oligarchy, even if his pronouncements were not quite the stuff of diplomacy.

The Honduras coup is not just another coup in a small nation of 7 million in Latin America. It is the focus of contradictions that are currently emerging in Latin America. The Bolivarian alternative is a continuation of the larger struggle of the Latin American people against US hegemony and its neo-liberal economics being imposed through the WTO regime and various Free Trade Agreements. The left regimes in some of these countries, allied with the peoples' struggles in others, is what worries the US and the local oligarchies. The coup in Honduras is warning not to tread this path.

The coup has failed on two counts already. The OAS and the EU has condemned the coup makers and it stands globally as an illegitimate regime. The people's protests continue in the streets and there are now some visible cracks in the Honduras oligarchy itself. Whether the coup makers will survive till November when the elections are due is an open question. The real battle is whether they can continue in power till then and effectively rig the next elections or they fall and a relatively free and fair election is conducted. Whichever way it goes, it is clear that the old way of changing regimes in Latin America is no longer viable. The United Fruit or the ITT equivalents today will not find it easy to get rid of governments that they do not like through their US connections and the US links with the local military.