[News] Canada's Long Embrace of the Honduran Dictatorship
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Mar 19 18:19:50 EDT 2010
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon03192010.html
March 19 - 21, 2010
Imperialism Re-Booted in Latin America
Canada's Long Embrace of the Honduran Dictatorship
By TODD GORDON and JEFFERY R. WEBBER
Peter Kent recently returned from a three day
trip (February 17-20) to Honduras, proudly
declaring the mission a success. As Canadas
Minister of State for the Americas, Kent is the
Tory governments point person for Canadas
growing political and economic interests in the
region. Honduras has become an important focus of
those interests, since the military coup last
June against the moderately left-leaning
president, Manuel Zelaya, swung the country sharply back to the right.
Ignoring the ongoing abuses of human rights in
the country under the new coupist presidency of
Porfirio Pepe Lobo, Kent has been following
through with his promise to promote the
normalization of the countrys relations with the
rest of the hemisphere. Lobo won fraudulent
elections held in November under the military
dictatorship in a context of repression and
intimidation. The election was boycotted by the
anti-coup movement, and the Organization of
American States and European Union refused to
send official observers. Despite this,
immediately following Lobos inauguration on
January 27, Kent declared that Canada will
support President Lobos efforts as he moves to
fully reintegrate Honduras into the international
and hemispheric community, including in the Organization of American States.
Canada, Honduras and the OAS
On his way to Honduras Kent met with the
Secretary General of the Organization of American
States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, on February
16. Kent used the meeting to push Canadas goal
of recognizing the Lobo government onto the OAS
agenda. Roberto Micheletti, the dictator that
replaced Zelaya after the coup, withdrew Honduras
from the organization when it became clear that
the majority of member states were going to vote
to kick the country out. While some staunch
imperial allies in the region, such as Colombia
and Peru, have recognized the Lobo government,
other countries, notably Venezuela and Brazil,
have refused to do so. The re-admittance of
Honduras into the OAS will be a contentious and
divisive issue, pitting the U.S., Canada, and
their right wing allies, against those countries
that want less influence from North American imperialism in the region.
Kents visit to Honduras, following his meeting
with Insulza, was thus intended to strengthen the
new governments claim to legitimacy and its case
for reinsertion into the OAS. Acting as if
everything is once again well and good in
Honduras also makes it easier for Canada to
deepen its economic ties with the country. Canada
is the largest mining investor in Honduras, for
example, and its interests will increase
significantly should Lobo and the right get their
way and pass a new mining law that increases the rights of foreign capital.
Peter Kent and the Boys in Honduras
Unsurprisingly, then, Kent was all praise for
Lobo and his administration during his latest
trip. He was pleased that President Lobo is
beginning the process of national reconciliation,
including supporting the formation of a truth
commission. Besides meeting with Lobo, Kent also
met with three of the latters cabinet ministers.
These included Michelettis spokesperson,
Minister of Planning and Cooperation, Arturo
Corrales. Corrales supported the Micheletti
governments refusal to implement the San
José-Tegucigalpa Accord, which it had initially
signed along with Zelaya and which called for a
government of national reconciliation (itself a
very problematic feature of the Accord from a
democratic perspective). Kent also met with
Foreign Minister, Mario Canahuati. Canahuati is
the son of one of Hondurass most powerful
capitalists, the maquila magnate, Juan Canahuati.
His brother, Jesus, is the president of the
Honduran Manufacturers Association. Mario,
meanwhile, was Lobos vice presidential candidate
in the 2005 election, which Lobo lost to Zelaya,
and is the past president of the Honduran
National Business Council, a pro-coup organization.
Kent also met with Canadian business leaders in
the country, though he didnt publicly disclose
which ones (requests from his office for the
names of companies with which he met went unanswered).
Who Kent Didnt Talk To
Kent suggested the Lobo government was taking
crucial steps toward, healing the wounds created
by the recent political impasse, steps which
will allow Honduras to regain a sense of trust
in their countrys democratic institutions.
This depiction of political developments in the
country is hard to square with facts on the
ground namely, political assassinations,
repression, torture, and mass arrests. Kent might
have grasped this had he bothered to meet with
the Committee of Family Members of the
Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH), the countrys
most prestigious human rights organization, founded in the 1980s.
On January 30, three days after the celebrated
inauguration of Pepe Lobo, COFADEH reports that
Blas López, a Secondary School Teacher and known
member of the anti-coup resistance, was
discovered dead from multiple gun shot wounds. On
February 2, Vanessa Zepeda, a 29-year-old union
activist and active member of the resistance, was
killed after she was thrown from a moving vehicle
in the streets of Tegucigalpa. On February 15,
just two days prior to Kents arrival in
Honduras, Julio Fúnez Benítez, a union activist
and resistance member who had received multiple
death threats by coupist supporters, was gunned
down and killed by men on a motorcycle. Four days
after Kent left the country, and only a day after
the release of his press communiqué exalting the
successes of Lobos administration, Claudia
Larisa Brizuela Rodríguez, the 36-year-old
daughter of a prominent radio journalist and
resistance activist was shot in the face in front
of her children after opening the front door to her home.
Such para-military terrorization of peaceful
resisters has been a continuous stain on
Honduras human rights record from the moment of
Michelettis coup on June 28, 2009, through the
transition to Pepe Lobo, and on until the present
day. According to COFADEH, by the end of
February, 2010, there had been 43
politically-motivated assassinations of civilians
associated with the resistance since the coup.
This number is almost certainly a low estimate,
the human rights organization acknowledges, as
community members and the families of those
killed are often too afraid to come forward for
fear of reprisal. Many political murders are
passed over in the mainstream media as gang
killings. As far back as January, the Frente
Nacional de Resistencia Popular (National Front
of Popular Resistance, FNRP) claimed that over
130 activists had been assassinated.
In a communiqué released on March 5, 2010,
COFADEH argues that the selective attacks against
members of the resistance are part of an
orchestrated campaign to demobilize and fragment
the FRNP. They document 250 violations of human
rights since Lobos inauguration.
According to the report, the government is also
engaged in a full-blown disinformation campaign
through the domestic, coup-backing, private
media, and the mainstream international media
outlets, to consolidate the image of Pepe Lobo as
a legitimate, democratic, and civilian government
open to foreign investment and good relations
with North America and the European Union.
Disgracefully, the EU fell in line with North
American imperialism and decided at the end of
February to normalize relations with Honduras.
Imperialism Re-Booted in Latin America
The first decade of this century witnessed mass,
extra-parliamentary mobilizations overthrow a
series of heads of state in Argentina, Ecuador,
and Bolivia, followed by the election of a vast
array of self-described left and centre-left
governments across South and Central America.
Overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US
state has felt its grip on the region loosen.
Recent years have seen renewed efforts by the
Bush and Obama governments to reconstitute the
contours of a new counter-reform offensive. The
Obama administration, today, sees new sources of
hope in the consolidation of right-wing
governments in Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Panama,
and, more recently, Honduras and Chile. New U.S.
military bases in Colombia and Panama illustrate
the utility of such clients. Washington is also
betting on its ability to turn a number of
centre-left regimes Kirchner in Argentina,
Funes in El Salvador, Colom in Guatemala, and
Mujica in Uruguay, among others against the
relatively more independent regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent the
first five days of March on a whirlwind tour of
the region, denouncing Venezuelan leader Hugo
Chávez and attempting to pressure various
governments into normalizing relations with the Honduran dictatorship.
Clinton met with Lobo in Guatemala City on March
5. We support the work that President Lobo is
doing to promote national unity and strengthen
democracy, she told journalists gathered at a
news conference. Earlier in the week, during a
visit to Buenos Aires, she claimed that the
Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful
conclusion. It was also apparently done without violence.
As Eric Toussaint, president of the Committee for
the Abolition of Third World Debt, recently
pointed out in the Socialist Worker, we can see
that the Obama administration is in no hurry to
break with the methods used by its predecessors:
witness the massive funding of different
opposition movements within the context of its
policy to strengthen democracy; the launching
of media campaigns to discredit governments that
do not share its political agenda (Cuba,
Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Manuel
Zelayas Honduras and so on); maintaining the
blockade of Cuba; the support for separatist
movements in Bolivia (the media luna and the
regional capital, Santa Cruz), in Ecuador (the
city of Guayaquil and its province), and in
Venezuela (the petroleum state of Zulia, the
capital of which is Maracaibo); the support for
military attacks, like the one perpetrated by
Colombia in Ecuador in March 2008; as well as
actions by Colombian or other paramilitary forces in Venezuela.
Canadas imperial role in the region has taken on
a similar guise as the U.S., although shaped more
specifically around Canadian mining and other
capitalist interests in the area.
Kents last trip to the region, prior to the
Honduras visit, saw him in Venezuela. Apparently
there was insufficient time to meet with any
representatives of the democratically-elected
government of Hugo Chávez, although he met with a
number of groups associated with the far-right
opposition. On January 28, after having returned
to Canada, Kent issued a news release declaring
that there was shrinking democratic space in
Venezuela under Chávez. During my recent visit
to Venezuela, Kent said, I heard many
individuals and organizations express concerns
related to violations of the right to freedom of
expression and other basic liberties.
The comments elicited a response from Chávez on
his weekly Alo Presidente TV program. The
Venezuelan President said he wouldnt take advice
from an ultraright government that had just
closed parliament. Chávez was referring to
Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harpers,
notorious suspension, or proroguement, of the
Canadian parliament on December 30 until March 3
to avoid debate surrounding Canadian military
abuses in occupied Afghanistan. The Vancouver Sun
reported that Roy Chaderton Matos, Venezuelas
ambassador to the OAS, accused the Canadian
government of backing coup-plotters and destabilizers the country.
Last week, Peter Van Loan, Minister of
International Trade, made a further show of whom
Canada considers its friends in the region,
tabling legislation to implement the
Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Of course,
no word was uttered of the infamous record of
human rights violations committed by the Álvaro
Uribe regime in Colombia, nor of its intimate
ties to paramilitary networks operating with
impunity throughout the country. The
Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement will provide
greater market access for Canadian exporters of
goods such as wheat, pulses, barley, paper
products and heavy equipment, the press release
from the Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade declared this week. An
increasing number of Canadian investors and
exporters are entering the Colombian market, and
it is also a strategic destination for Canadian
direct investment, especially in mining, oil
exploration, printing and education.
The effort to consolidate the coupist
installation of the far-right in Honduras is, in
other words, merely the latest puzzle piece in a
much wider and reviving North American imperial
project in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Resistance Continues
In Honduras, as elsewhere, the resistance has not
been cowed. On March 8, the FNRP released their
51st communiqué. They announced that they would
be organizing a poll of the Honduran people on
June 28, 2010 to assess the popularity of the
call for an Inclusive and Popular Constituent
Assembly. The date will commemorate the first
anniversary of the coupist regime, and will
represent the unbreakable will of the Honduran
people to resist, and to build an authentic
democracy that transforms at its roots the
reigning system of injustice and repression.
The communiqué condemned the U.S. governments
efforts to construct a legitimate face for this
dictatorship, especially the role played by U.S.
ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens.
The resistance also pointed to the role played by
the private media in defending the Honduran
oligarchy and the coup regime that serves its
interests. In particular, the FNRP pointed to the
way in which the daily newspapers La Prensa and
El Heraldo, owned by business tycoon, Jorge
Canahuati, have portrayed working class families
and popular leaders aligned with the resistance
as terrorists. The FNRP also highlighted the
parallel part played by the TV station
Corporación de Televicentro, property of Rafael Ferrari.
The Communiqué closed with a call to popular
movements to attend the Second Gathering for the
Refoundation of Honduras, in the city of La
Esperanza, between March 12 and 14.
According to Claudia Korols América Latina en
Movimiento report, dispatched from on scene in La
Esperanza, over a thousand delegates had gathered
by March 13th, representing an array of different
popular sectors: Lenca and Garífuna peoples
movements; feminists; environmentalists; rural
and urban trade unionists; peasants; and
different currents of the revolutionary left
many with links going back to the Central
American revolutionary struggles of the 1980s.
A mix of popular political traditions focusing on
decolonization, anti-imperialism, and socialism
converged as those gathered broke off into twenty
simultaneous popular assemblies to discuss a
variety of themes: the preservation of water,
forests, land, subsoil, traditional territories,
and air; the political system and popular
sovereignty; culture; justice; autonomy; sexual
diversity; health; communications; foreign policy
and international relations; anti-patriarchal
struggles; anti-racism; national security; work
and workers rights; the economic system;
indigenous and black communities; youth; fighting
corruption and learning about popular accounting.
These different general discussions then fed into
issues of strategic orientation: What does
refounding Honduras mean, and how is it different
than mere reform? What will a refounded Honduras
look like? What are the necessary stages to get
there? What do we mean by constituent power and
the building of popular power from below? How can
we strengthen our popular organizations to foment
this popular power? What are we really calling
for when we demand a Popular and Democratic
Constituent Assembly? How can we shape our
participation as a resistance movement to ensure
that the genuine interests, aspirations, and
proposals of the people will be included in the new constitution?
In the coming months these questions will begin
to take concrete form through the
extra-parliamentary struggles in the streets and
the countryside, in defiance of selective
assassinations, intimidation, media obfuscation, and imperialist meddling.
Todd Gordon teaches political science at York
University, in Toronto. He is the author of Cops,
Crime and Capitalism: The Law-and-Order Agenda in
Canada (Fernwood), and the forthcoming Imperial
Canada (Arbeiter Ring Publishing).
Jeffery R. Webber teaches political science at
the University of Regina. He is the author of two
forthcoming books: Red October: Left-Indigenous
Struggles in Modern Bolivia (Brill) and Rebellion
to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous
Liberation and the Politics of Evo Morales (Haymarket).
Together they are currently writing a book on
Canadian imperialism in the Americas in the age of neoliberalism.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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