The People’s Fight in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

July 24, 2013
Resisting Chaos, Repression, and U.S. Intervention

The People’s Fight in Honduras

by W.T. WHITNEY


Fallout from President Mel Zelaya’s removal from power by the Honduran military four years ago, on June 28, 2009, affects much of what happened there since, especially revived struggle for national independence and social justice. Yet economic and humanitarian disaster, the government’s return to oligarchic hands, and U.S. intrusion serve as daunting impediments to the project of an alternative politics.

U.S. meddling is a fact. Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, had “participated in meetings in which coup plans were discussed.” Subsequently, the U.S. government overlooked voting irregularities to praise the election of President Porfirio Lobo. It pushed for Honduras’ readmission to the Organization of American States.

A repressive post – coup government enforcing privatization presumably suits U.S. interests. It recently stepped up efforts to encourage mining projects, large-scale monoculture, and regions called “model cities” where the Constitution doesn’t apply. A “technical coup” by which the Congress in late 2012 assigned four compliant judges to the Supreme Court eased the way. The Congress opened up rivers to hydroelectric developers. In a reversal of Zelaya – era steps to implement earlier land redistribution policies, the government has opened up large tracts of land to take-over by industrial-scale farm operators. State security forces expel small farmers from such land.

Now, according to close observer Giorgio Trucchi, there is a “level of violence and impunity [that is] directly proportional to the grade of corruption and infiltration of organized crime and narco-trafficking in state institutions.” A U.S. analyst confirms that “the Honduran government and the elites who control it are widely alleged to be implicated in drug trafficking (which is) “rampant, murderous and growing.” She notes too that, “State security forces still enjoy near-complete impunity for thousands of alleged human rights abuses and even murders since the 2009 coup.”

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/24/the-peoples-fight-in-honduras/

[Judi Lynn]

1. More worth pondering from this article:

In Aguan, attacks by security forces and private police over four years have killed 60 small farmers. On June 24, police and soldiers violently attacked and dispersed 150 families in Rigores municipality. They destroyed churches, schools, crops, and 120 homes. For the fourth time in a year troops in early July evicted small farmers from land in Yoro department coveted by the foreign-owned SABMiller sugar- producing corporation. A victim observed, “We live under a regime where the security apparatus doesn’t serve the people, but rather the big landowners and the national and international impresarios.”

An estimated 67 percent of Hondurans lived in poverty in 2012 – half in extreme poverty. Government debt now exceeds 70 percent of GDP. Banks that issued the coup government short terms loans at 15 percent interest are thriving. With 50% of governmental income being applied to debt service and salaries, public investment is nil. At least 80 percent of the population is unemployed or under-employed. Commerce depends largely on remittances from abroad worth $3 billion annually.

“North American priorities” like military build-up take precedence over any local agenda,” says close observer Giorgio Trucchi. “There are some 10 groups inside the Honduran security apparatus controlled, directed, and structured by the United States,” he adds. High U.S. State Department official William Brownfield recently expressed admiration for Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla, chief of the Honduran police who organizes death squads. Tried for multiple murders and kidnappings, he went free, said an inside source, because “top agency officials” short-circuited his prosecution. The Bonilla case was one reason U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy blocked $30 million in aid for Honduras’ security forces. State Department official Brownfield, however, indicated in March they’d be receiving $16.3 million.

The pretext often given for U.S. military intrusion is drug war. U.S. military build-up in Latin America has consumed more than $20 billion since 2002. The U.S. government sent $1.3 billion to Honduras in 2011 for a regional military electronics center, also $89 million and $25 million in 2012 for U.S. troops and for barracks, respectively, at the Soto Cano air base. U.S. military expenditure in Honduras has risen every year since coup – by 71 percent, for example, in 2011. There are new U.S. bases in the Mosquitia region and in tourist-destination Guanaja.

[SamKnause]

2. Honduras

Thanks for posting Judi Lynn.

I am so sick of the U.S. interfering in Latin America.

I wish Latin America had some way to keep the U.S. out of their countries.