[News] ‘The coup turned Honduras into hell’: Interview with President Manuel Zelaya on 10th anniversary of overthrow by US

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/01/coup-honduras-interview-president-manuel-zelaya-10th-anniversary-us/?fbclid=IwAR0XOOlP6xOKf4mIXALuqCSjrDl6gojLztpV0uv6QeIYeWSSiHoL_52_H3Y 



  ‘The coup turned Honduras into hell’: Interview with President Manuel
  Zelaya on 10th anniversary of overthrow by US

Anya Parampil - July 1, 2019
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        The Grayzone’s Anya Parampil sat down for an exclusive interview
        with Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, on the 10th anniversary
        of the US-backed right-wing military coup that overthrew him.


        He discusses the extreme violence, drug trafficking, economic
        depression, migration crisis, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH),
        WikiLeaks, Venezuela, and more.


        Video by Ben Norton


      Transcript

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: Thank you for your time, Mr. President. It has been 10 
years since you were removed in a US-backed coup from your position as 
the democratically elected president of Honduras. What has the United 
States accomplished since then, what has changed in your country?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: The rupture of a social contract, which we call the 
constitution of the republic, in the constitution of the state, when a 
social contract is broken, what logically comes next is the the law of 
the stronger (survival of the fittest). Crimes, killings, torture. 
Always the winning side against the opposition.

That has been a sacrifice for the Honduran people, because the side that 
took power had the support of the United States. The US is the major 
beneficiary of the coup. And there is a principle in penal law that says 
the beneficiary of a crime is the principal suspect.

How has it been the beneficiary? The US has almost complete control over 
Honduras. Control over justice through the OAS (Organization of American 
States). It controls security through US Southern Command. It controls 
the economy through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, 
and IDB (Inter-American Development Bank).

It controls the main media networks in Honduras; it has a big influence 
over the opinion of the main media outlets. It funds many churches, 
which receive donations from North American NGOs. And it finances 
Honduran NGOs. That is, it controls public opinion. It controls the 
powers of the state.

And in this way, it has a high interference in the decisions of states 
like Honduras, poor states, weak states, where their rulers, to receive 
protection, give up everything to the North Americans.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: What has been the impact on the average Hondurans 
throughout these years?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: Poverty increased. There are more poor people. The 
poverty level already surpasses almost 70 percent of the population. 
Crime increased. Drug trafficking increased. According to a report from 
the US State Department, the drug trafficking in Honduras after the coup 
increased by almost double. And the report says that Honduras became 
“the drug-trafficking paradise.”

External debt increased. When they took me out at gunpoint, we owed $3 
billion. Today, in 10 years, we owe $14 billion. That is four times 
more. So this means the country has serious problems with a lack of 
economic growth, a lack of investment, human rights violations.

And I will present you with only one piece of proof: The [migrant] 
caravans heading to the US are from Honduras. Because the [US-backed] 
coup d’etat turned Honduras into hell.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: How has this situation, what has happened over the last 
10 years, contributed to the development of your party, Libre?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: We are a party of opposition to the coup d’etat. And 
for 10 years those who carried out the coup have governed. They are the 
spawn of the coup. And the more errors they commit, the more they 
oppress, the more the opposition grows.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: And this has led to the strengthening of the social 
movements here?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: Well, social movements don’t grow for a sectarian 
political reason; they grow because electricity was privatized and they 
can’t pay for light. Many social services have been privatized. They 
have been given to private companies. And the problem is not just that 
they leave it to private enterprise. Private enterprise is efficient, 
but it’s expensive.

The most comfortable thing for a ruler is to say, “Security will be 
managed for me by US Southern Command.” “The economy will be managed for 
me by the IMF.” “The soldiers will manage internal security for me.” 
“And private enterprise will manage the money for me.” So, what does the 
ruler do? Nothing. Simply give benefits to his followers.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: Who is Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH) and why are we 
seeing now, 10 years after the coup, a re-ignition of unrest in the 
streets and a demand that JOH leave office?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: He (JOH) is a son of the coup. He has serious 
personality problems. For example, I was president. And I walked in the 
streets. And people greeted me. And they told me, “Hi Mel! Hi 
President!” He (JOH) travels with armored cars, with helicopters. He 
travels with a huge security team.

In my opinion, he has a problem with mental illness. He believes that 
being president is a big deal. And the pastors come and tell him he is 
chosen by God. So it becomes even worse. And he begins to act like a 
person who is not in touch with reality.

The people are protesting because of hunger. And he thinks they’re 
protesting because of politics. And he tells to the United States a 
speech that the US, its right-wing, conservative governing class wants 
to hear. He says, “In Honduras there is terrorism. [Venezuelan President 
Hugo] Chávez’s people are there in Honduras. And they are affecting me, 
the drug traffickers.”

I think he is suffering from psychopathy.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: And what about the accusations of corruption? Some 
Hondurans I spoke to today told me now JOH is one of the richest men in 
the region.

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: The corruption is public. They broke the social 
security system. Look, how do you sustain an illegal government? Paying 
people off. If they are legal, they don’t need to pay. Because they are 
the product of a social pact.

But when there is a coup d’etat, there is fraud. So they need to corrupt 
the institutions to sustain themselves. The fact that the United States 
supports a coup d’etat makes them support a dictator. And that is why 
corruption is surging. The corruption is the result of the dictatorship.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: Hondurans have also told me that a small group of 
families control much of the country in terms of in terms of industry 
and specifically the media. Can you talk about the media’s role in the 
coup and also in sustaining the dictatorship, which you describe?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: That is how capitalism works. In the US, France, 
anywhere. Capitalism is based on just one principle: accumulation of 
wealth. That is how it functions here and in the rest of the world.

A small elite of transnational [corporations] associated with people in 
countries who clean up for them. They do business, and that business 
creates the need to set up security for themselves.

They don’t tolerate competition. I brought in oil from Venezuela, with 
Hugo Chávez, and they insisted that they had to maintain their 
agreements. And they did not accept Venezuela. And that was one of the 
motives behind the coup.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: And I believe the US ambassador at the time, Charles 
Ford, told you you’re not allowed to do this, as though he had the right 
to do this as a foreign ambassador.

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: The US gives advice that if you don’t follow, they act 
with reprisals. US President George W. Bush told it to me. John 
Negroponte told it to me. Ambassador Ford told it to me. And other 
government officials.

Bush said it to me in these words: “You cannot have relations with Hugo 
Chávez.” John Negroponte, his deputy secretary of state, told me, “If 
you sign the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance), you are going to have problems 
with the US.”

And I signed the ALBA. And I would sign it again if I had the chance. 
Because it is to help Honduras progress.

I needed the support from Brazil, the support from Venezuela, the 
support from the US, the support from Europe. We are not able to depend 
solely on the US, because the US has its own interests. It’s another nation.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: I would like you to comment on the significance of 
Wikileaks in the history of your country but also the region, and what 
you think about what is currently happening to Julian Assange with the 
with the help of the government in Ecuador?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: Julian Assange is a symbol of freedom in the world 
today, tomorrow, and forever. He will be one of the people, in the 
future, like one of the great prophets. In their day, they are 
repressed. And later they become a symbol. That’s what Julian Assange 
will become.

Julian Assange proclaimed a world without secrets, an open world, a free 
world. Of course he affects the [powerful] interests of today. But in 
the future, I, and others in other generations, will follow the example 
of Assange.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: We were speaking about Ambassador Ford, I believe after 
he finished his work in the embassy here he went to go work for 
SOUTHCOM, the military. Can you talk about how central the interests of 
the US military are to what happened with you and how its presence in 
the country has grown since you were ousted?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: [Honduran] soldiers are trained at the [US] School of 
the Americas. All of their drills they do with the US. For the soldiers, 
the ideal of their life is to be like the US Marines, like the US soldiers.

And here, the US controls the armed forces and the police. They do what 
the US wants them to do. They are occupation forces.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: I want to talk a little bit about the region, 
specifically Nicaragua. What do you think about the US-backed coup 
attempt he (Daniel Ortega) has faced over this last year? This month, I 
believe, is the one year anniversary since the government there defeated 
a US backed regime change operation.

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: When I returned [after the coup], I made several 
attempts to return to Honduras. In the return from Washington to 
Honduras, I was not able to land, because the military blocked me. So I 
had to come back through the Las Manos border crossing in Nicaragua. 
Then I secretly entered the Brazilian embassy. Two years later I 
returned from the Dominican Republic, from the Dominican Republic to 
Nicaragua, and from Nicaragua to Honduras.

In relation to the US trying to overthrow [Nicaraguan President] Daniel 
Ortega, I believe it already did it before, in the 1980s. The US armed 
Contras here in Honduras to fight against Nicaraguans. Since that time, 
I have always protested against this US occupation of Honduras to invade 
Nicaragua. And the people [today] voted for the Ortega government. He 
was elected.

Now, the US has been unable to overthrow him. Now, he is strong. Now 
Ortega has a lot of popular support. And I don’t think they are able to 
overthrow him, as they did in the past, from Honduras.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: Can you compare your party, Libre, to the Sandinista 
Movement and what lessons you took from them?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: They are two different historical moments. Sandinismo 
was developed by a military sergeant, who went to the mountains at the 
beginning of the 20th century, and he created an anti-imperialist force 
that created a party called the Sandinista Front for National Liberation 
(FSLN). This party won a war, overthrew the Somoza dictatorship, and now 
organizes democratically to stay in power.

We (in Honduras’ Libre Party) are a party that did not come out of the 
armed struggle. We did not come out of a war. We were born out of a 
movement that is revolutionary and democratic, but peaceful. Against the 
coup d’etat. And against those who support the coup. The US supported 
the coup.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: I want to talk about your personal political 
development because when you were elected you were considered part of a 
more center-left party and movement, and now you are speaking about 
socialism. Why did you change and how would you characterize yourself now?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: Center-right actually. (Not center-left.) It has been 
an evolution. Because the right wing is done for. It sustains itself 
with weapons, with coups, with fraud, with deceptions.

The future of humanity has to be social. You are a social being. You. 
Aristotle says that we are rational beings. The human is a rational 
animal. But we think that the human being, today, is a totally social 
being. Without society, men and women can’t survive. Everything that we 
think and perceive is related to our social environment.

So where should humanity walk to? To individualism, to egoism? To 
individual interests, or social interests? It’s to social interests.

The future of humanity is socialist. We might have to struggle for 
10,000 years or more. But in the future, if humanity does not advance to 
be social, we would be living in caves, according to the survival of the 
fittest. Human beings are advancing, progressing to become social.

I was raised in a liberal political philosophy. But now I evolved to a 
new politics: first liberal and pro-socialist, but now democratic socialist.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: How were you influenced by other governments of the 
Pink Tide, specifically Hugo Chavez of Venezuela?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: Well you would have to ask how Chávez, a soldier, 
became a socialist. If you find this explanation, then you will find an 
explanation for how I, a land-owner, went from being a capitalist to a 
socialist. It is a heightening of the spirit. It is the conviction of a 
human being.

Capitalism is so barbaric. It is not the future of humanity. If 
capitalism is the future of humanity, humanity is destroyed. It is 
defeated. It is doomed to fail. The same for the planet.

The future of the humanity has to be social. It’s simple. It’s not 
money. It’s not commerce. It’s not simply economic activities that 
should lead humanity. No, those should be subject to the social.

It’s fine that private enterprise exists, private initiative. It’s fine 
that capital exists. But it is not ok for capital to direct the world. 
No, it is the world that should direct capital. This is an upside-down 
world.

And when you reach the highest governmental position in a country, which 
I reached, even in a small nation like Honduras, I learned then that 
there is no way to deal with capital other than subjecting it to popular 
sovereignty. Capital should continue to exist, but subjected to a plan 
of popular sovereignty that is the people.

The voice of the people is the voice of God. You have to have faith.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: Like Chavez, you were pursuing the process of a 
Constituent Assembly in your country the day of the coup, to change the 
character of the state here. Why do you think that specifically was so 
threatening to the oligarchy here and the US government?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: The question is not well formulated. Do you know who 
Thomas Jefferson is? Do you know who George Washington is? They created 
the United States, with a constitution.

Why mention Chávez? Chávez is simply from the 21st century. Jefferson 
and Washington were from 1776. The American Revolution was 
anti-imperialist, against the British Empire. They developed a 
constitutional assembly. And you have your constitution in the US. It’s 
not Chávez who invented the constituent assembly; it’s Jefferson and 
Washington. So why be afraid of the way in which nations are formed?

When the social pact is broken, because there is a lot of poverty, there 
is a lot of hunger, many people in need, and the majority does not 
resist the economic and social situation, you have to return to the 
constituent dialogue. This is basic in a society.

Inside the US, there are no coups. No, there presidents have to be ready 
in case in any moment they are killed. Here, there are coups. And in 
these countries in Latin America there have been 170 coups. And the 
great majority of them were sponsored by the US.

And what do you do when the pact is broken? You start over with a 
constituent assembly.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: When you were facing the coup, Maduro was the Foreign 
Minister of Venezuela and you worked very closely with him at that time. 
What did you think about him, what was your impression of Nicolas 
Maduro, and what do you think about what’s happening now with Venezuela?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: Two things: One, Chávez did not seek me out. Chávez was 
never going to look for a far-right country like Honduras, almost 
totally governed by the US. And now more than ever. And me, a president 
who arrived with the center-right. Chávez would never have sought me out.

I reached out to Chávez. I have to clarify that. Chávez never had an 
interest in Honduras. This is an invention of right-wing activists in 
the US, like Otto Reich, Robert Carmona, and Roger Noriega. I had to 
convince him [Chávez] to come here to help us, with oil, with the ALBA 
alliance, with Petrocaribe.

Two: Nicolás Maduro, yes he is a socialist from birth. He is a worker, 
from the working class, from the class that is exploited by capital, 
from the class that sells its labor force, and that is denied the rights 
that capitalists enjoy. He is a socialist, like Chávez.

And moreover, the Bolivarian Revolution, that was initiated by Chávez, 
with his socialist convictions, was inherited by Nicolás [Maduro]. And 
he has led with a great capacity, sensibility, and conscience.

They don’t want you to recognize it, but Nicolás [Maduro] is a Latin 
American leader of great international stature.

*ANYA PARAMPIL*: We’re 10 years since the coup, since then, one by one 
other progressive governments have been picked off and changed back into 
pawns of the United States. What gives you hope that one day we will see 
progressive governments return to power in Latin America?

*MANUEL ZELAYA*: No empire is eternal. With the exception of God 
eternal. Since the end of World War II, the US has ruled over much of 
the world. But it has serious contradictions. It is a country with high 
levels of poverty. There are serious internal contradictions.

And sometime soon, the North American ruling class will learn that to 
survive in the world, it will have to reduce military spending, to give 
medicine, healthcare, education and a good quality of life to its 
people. Someday they are going to understand that being the soldiers of 
the world, that being the police of the world, does not bring them as 
many benefits as they think.

And one day they are going to understand that it is better to have 
democratic countries than military dictatorships. When they come around, 
let’s hope it’s not too late.

The world is going to applaud, and meanwhile they continue giving 
fascist and imperialist orders installing dictators in our countries, 
setting up multinational corporations that exploit our rivers, our seas, 
our forests, our lands, and our working class. Then they will be pointed 
at and called practices that do not suit our countries.

I don’t have anything against the North American people. Nor do I have 
anything against the North American society. I’m an admirer of Lincoln, 
Kennedy, Jefferson, Washington, of what the US had signified. But I 
condemn its imperialist practices toward small countries like ours.

Instead of strengthening democracies, it strengthens military 
dictatorships. And that impoverishes our nation, and immigrants move 
there. And when immigrants move there, they start to complain.

Anya Parampil is a journalist based in Washington, DC. She previously 
hosted a daily progressive afternoon news program called In Question on 
RT America. She has produced and reported several documentaries, 
including on-the-ground reports from the Korean peninsula and Palestine.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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