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<h1><font size=4><b>Toppling a Coup, Part II: The Honduras Regime Is Like
an Onion</b></font></h1><font size=3>Posted by
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/users/al-giordano">Al
Giordano</a> - August 8, 2009 at 11:39 am <br>
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/toppling-coup-part-ii-honduras-regime-onion" eudora="autourl">
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/toppling-coup-part-ii-honduras-regime-onion<br>
<br>
</a>By Al Giordano<br><br>
In three decades of organizing or reporting on social movements, one
develops a very good memory of which of them won their battles, which
were defeated, and what made the difference between those that won and
those that lost.<br><br>
If it could be boiled down to a single factor it would be this: In
victorious struggles, a critical mass of the organizers arm themselves to
think strategically and act tactically to isolate and defeat their
opponent.<br><br>
They learn from experience that the power structure that props up the
enemy – be it a government, a particular corporation or an entire
political-economic system – is shaped like an onion, and they set about
methodically to identify, target and peel away the rings of protection
around its core.<br><br>
In this, Part II of a series on how the Honduran people are toppling a
coup d’etat, I will identify the rings around the coup regime. The lines
between each ring represent the cracks and potential divisions of the
coup structure. And as with an onion, it is often easiest to begin with
the outer rings and peel one’s way down to the core, a tiny stub that
without those rings becomes vulnerable, unprotected, and quickly rots in
the sunlight.<br><br>
As preface, here is some sage advice, offered in Tegucigalpa, Honduras,
on Friday evening, July 31, by Serbian resistance veteran Ivan Marovich,
invited to speak to a closed door group of key sectors of the Honduran
civil resistance held at the Beverage Workers union hall (SITBYS, in its
Spanish initials).<br><br>
Because this was a private meeting – a crew from Telesur and I were
invited to attend on the condition that we did not record the meeting on
audio or videotape – I won’t be quoting or identifying the participants,
who represented labor, campesinos, students, artists, neighborhood, and
other organizations throughout the country. But with Marovich’s
permission, I will quote from my notes from his words there over the
course of three-and-a-half hours.<br><br>
In the interests of full disclosure, I should also inform that organizers
called upon me to translate for Marovich during the latter part of the
meeting. The session went on for so long, with rapt attention by all
participants, that the translators needed a relief pitcher. For those
parts, I obviously do not have written notes, so will borrow from my
notes of other presentations and interviews with Marovich conducted on
Saturday and Sunday, August 1 and 2, as well my own interviews with
him.<br><br>
By way of introduction, Marovich summarized the story of the decade-long
struggle in Serbia to bring down the regime of dictator Slobodan
Milosevic in a country of seven million people, roughly the same size as
Honduras. The ultimate goal of the Serbian civil resistance – a new
constitution – was the same as that almost universally expressed by the
many Honduras civil resistance participants interviewed last week by
Narco News.<br><br>
Marovich began:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>We learned the hard way how to defeat our dictatorship.<br><br>
<dd>In 1991, the first big demonstrations were held. We didn’t pay
attention to discipline or strategic planning, and it was all over in six
hours. The regime brought tanks into the streets and put thousands in
jail. Leaders were beaten up and disappeared. It took us five years to
recover from that. Meanwhile, the war in Bosnia was raging.<br><br>
<dd>In 1996 we made our next attempt. We held demonstrations daily for
123 days, for four months. This time we were better at
discipline.<br><br>
<dd>We discovered that the regime was not monolithic. In the military
there were many conscripts.<br><br>
<dd>The police were highly militarized. They didn’t fight crime. Their
only purpose was to protect the regime.<br><br>
<dd>And there were the secret police, the death squads: small but
scary.<br><br>
<dd>In our case the military was not really a problem because it had
normal people in it.<br><br>
<dd>The police were called militia. Serbia had seven million people and
100,000 national policemen.<br><br>
<dd>We knew that if there was somebody that could crack down and destroy
us, it was the secret police.So we spent four months trying to avoid the
police, trying to avoid any kind of confrontation with the police. We had
gone from a demonstration of just six hours in 1991 to be able to sustain
them for four months in 1996. But we still didn’t win.<br><br>
<dd>Two years later was the third intent. This time we did it. We learned
how to do it over a long period of time.<br><br>
<dd>Our conflict was not resolved in a frontal clash and it wasn’t
resolved in a standoff. In the end, there were three principles that
carried us to victory.<br><br>
<dd>One: </b>We had to maintain our unity and expand our movement: We had
a broad coalition from left to right, and often the divisions were among
those that were closest to each other ideologically. On the right we had
some monarchists that wanted a return of monarchy, but they came in two
groups that fought over which</i> dynasty they supported. On the left,
the communists that had supported Tito and now were with us were divided
in two main groups.<br><br>
<dd>We wanted a new constitution and we avoided details about what it
would say. That was important because lots of energy was lost debates
before that over what the new constitution would say.<br><br>
<dd>Two:</b> Organization and discipline were key. Unions and political
parties were using their organizational potential in civil disobedience:
strikes, blockades, and boycotts. Each did the thing they were best at
doing.<br><br>
<dd>We, the students, were mainly involved in street activities:
university blockades and strikes.<br><br>
<dd>The transport workers were the best at organizing blockades because
with a single bus they could close a route.<br><br>
<dd>We worked with the structures of existing organizations and they were
responsible for maintaining the nonviolent discipline of their
members.<br><br>
<dd>Three:</b> We had a strategic action plan: We wanted to isolate
Milosevic. We set about to peel away people who were crucial for his
remaining in office. There were divisions in the regime, of personalities
and from the greed of some of its supporters.<br><br>
</dl>That third point, the goal to “peel away” the layers of support or
silent consent for the Serbian regime, describes the onion
concept.<br><br>
Marovich elaborated:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>As long as the regime felt it was being attacked from outside, they
hung together. So we carefully picked objects for attack.<br><br>
<dd>In the end, everybody except five people around Milosevic abandoned
him. It took us a long time to get to that point.<br><br>
<dd>We also looked at where the opponent was weak. We studied which
institutions had the least loyalty to the regime, and also which could be
the most dangerous to our efforts.<br><br>
<dd>Milosevic kept elite troops. They had been through five years of the
war in Bosnia. This was a force that killed 8,000 people in five
days.<br><br>
<dd>But in the end, in 2000, the police units fell one after another. The
different police agencies and units didn't say, "We won't follow
orders." They just said, "We'll wait."<br><br>
<dd>On the final day, the death squads circled our demonstrations with
their jeeps. Then they said, "We're with the people. Milosevic has
to go.”<br><br>
</dl>The Onion Skin: The Luster of Inevitability<br><br>
</b>One of the outer layers of the Serbian regime’s onion – very similar
to the current situation in Honduras - was the worldwide perception that
it had firm control over the country and its population. It’s the
“inevitability factor,” and considerable sectors of global and national
opinion, business interests, blow-in-the-wind politicians and parts of
society that simply want to be left alone and favor a climate of the
least conflict possible, will generally side with, or at least silently
provide consent to, the party in the conflict that appears to be in
control.<br><br>
A great part of the spin and lobbying in the media on behalf of the coup
is designed to reinforce the idea that the regime equals the status quo,
that whatever discomfort one might have with its actions, it’s still
fully in charge and therefore always will be.<br><br>
An example of that kind of spin came last week from the always-shifty
Michael Shifter of the Inter American Dialogue in Washington, one of
these “Latin Americanist experts” whose job is to give sound bites to
commercial media that seem objective but that always tend to reveal a
pro-status-quo agenda. In this case, Shifter’s agenda is to prop up the
Honduran coup regime by making it seem like it can’t be toppled. His
words to the
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124952525314809919.html?mod=googlenews_wsj">
Wall Street Journal</a>, when seen through the lens of the inevitability
factor, are nakedly intended to influence that outer layer of the onion,
the part that simply wants to “be with the winner.” He said:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>"In Honduras, Washington's wavering will be seen as a sign that
the government can wait it out until the elections and that the costs
they are bearing for international isolation, while considerable, are
preferable to the risks of allowing Zelaya to return, even for a limited
time and with his authority curtailed.”<br><br>
</dl>That echoes exactly what was the spin from many officialist quarters
back in the 1990s regarding the Serbian regime; that it would be able to
“hang on” despite international isolation. And now that play from the
playbook is being repeated to spin and influence the outer reaches of the
onion structure that supports or acquiesces to the Honduras
coup.<br><br>
During the public meeting on Saturday, August 1, Marovich shared with the
Hondurans how his movement set about to successfully disarm that
inevitability factor that had worked to prop up the dictator
Milosevic:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>The response we got from the world, including the US, for eight years
was "we don't care. He's in charge."<br><br>
<dd>Our task was to demonstrate that he was not in charge.<br><br>
<dd>Instead of arguing about legitimacy, we aimed to show that it wasn't
working.<br><br>
<dd>We started with the weakest institutions, feeding divisions. We tried
to improve our unity and divide theirs. Milosevic, for his part, tried to
create division in our ranks.<br><br>
</dl>The “dilemma actions” that we described in
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/toppling-coup-part-i-dilemmas-honduras-regime">
Part I of this series</a> were the knife with which the Serbian civil
resistance peeled away that outer skin's luster of perceived
inevitability from the regime. The resistance actions, one after another,
often daily, pounded away at a greater truth: that the regime really
wasn’t in control, that it was bumbling, stupid, bureaucratically
calcified, unable to react to provocations effectively or intelligently,
and cumulative effect of many of those individual creative dilemma
actions was to significantly erode the myth that the dictator was really
in charge.<br><br>
Specific to Honduras, the obsession in the corporate media and the First
World academic left alike with the circus up above among politicians and
nations – even though the two sectors see themselves on opposite sides of
the Honduran struggle – has served only to reinforce the system’s spin of
inevitability of the coup regime. For forty days and forty nights now,
this tandem team of right-left messaging has sung in harmony, not
authentic opposition, and has used up much of the oxygen and attention
that the civil resistance from below in Honduras needs to demonstrate
that the coup regime really isn’t in control.<br><br>
Yet as anyone can observe from our own reports – focused on what is
happening not up above, but on the ground, among the people – and those
of a precious few other authentic media, the reality is that the coup
regime has never established control over the population. It is in fact
in a tailspin. This was objectively
<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a2v6D6GL6zfo">
documented yesterday by the Bloomberg agency</a>, which looked at the
economic indicators in Honduras.<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>Honduras’s <a href="http://www.bch.hn/adminsup.php">central bank</a>
cut its economic outlook today, predicting a contraction of as much as 2
percent as the global slump and a political crisis curtail trade and
tourism.<br><br>
<dd>The $14.1 billion economy will shrink 1 percent to 2 percent this
year, compared with a previous estimate for growth of as much as 3
percent…<br><br>
<dd>Consumer spending, exports and inflows of tourism dollars have all
declined since the military removed President
<a href="http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Manuel%0AZelaya&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1">
Manuel Zelaya</a> from the country at gunpoint on June 28…<br><br>
<dd>Economist Alcides Hernandez, director of the Tegucigalpa- based
<a href="http://www.unah.hn/">National Autonomous University</a>’s
economics program, estimates the crisis is costing the country $20
million daily in lost trade, aid, tourism and investment.<br><br>
<dd>“I don’t know how long the Micheletti government can resist
international pressure,” Hernandez said. “If they start blocking trade
too, a country as poor as ours would quickly buckle.”<br><br>
</dl>We’ve all met those fans of a particular sports team that yell from
the bleachers or the Barcalounger that they want a home run or a
touchdown pass, not content to see their baseball team instead
methodically set up players on base with singles and double hits, or
their football team's running game that slowly marches the ball down the
field. Those that put all their attention in the basket of hoping
sanctions from a single foreign government will be that “Hail Mary pass”
in Honduras are no different than those armchair quarterbacks of
sportsdom. On a fundamental level, they don’t study the game, they don’t
listen, they don’t do community organizing themselves, and so they don’t
understand how victories really are constructed with strategy and tactics
on the field.<br><br>
This series of essays is obviously for you: those that do study, that do
listen, that do understand or want to know how history is really made to
happen from below.<br><br>
The Second Ring: The Honduran Economy<br><br>
</b>The Bloomberg estimate of $20 million dollars in losses per day as a
result of the coup and its consequences on the Honduran economy, if
continued for a year, adds up to $7.3 billion – fully half of Honduras’
$14.1 billion national economy without a single additional international
sanction heaped upon it. Even if that $20 million per day figure is
exaggerated, there's no doubt that the economic hit is sufficient enough
to cause attitude adjustments among those whose pockets are
emptying.<br><br>
And that brings us to the next layer of the coup regime’s onion: its
support from business interests, including among the oligarchy of a few
families that has historically controlled so much of the ownership,
wealth and political power in Honduras.<br><br>
It’s no secret that the business community in Honduras backed the central
push behind the coup and remains its foundation. Coup “president” Roberto
Micheletti virtually admitted it on July 29 when he told reporters that
although he could see his way to agree to the San Andrés proposal that
Zelaya could return “with limited powers,” the business community, he
said, would never tolerate it.<br><br>
With that statement, Micheletti fell into a kind of trap. He admitted
that he is not in control, that the real power is economic, that of the
oligarchy.<br><br>
Truth is, Micheletti has the ultimate power over whether he stays or
resigns as coup “president.” Yet it is also true that he is subjugated in
every way by the economic powers in his country (including the
multinational corporations that have sweatshops, agribusiness and other
interests there).<br><br>
As we will demonstrate, Micheletti himself, along with the nation’s
Supreme Court, make up the smallest inner stub of the coup onion. They
will be the last to fall, and it will come because the civil resistance
will peel the outer layers away from them, leaving them
unprotected.<br><br>
Already the important tourist industry, particularly along the northern
coast of Honduras, are voicing discontent with how the coup has turned
their hotels, restaurants and attractions into ghost towns, with only a
very small cadre of year-round expats and other tourists to toss them a
few lempiras or dollars. One of the stakes in the tourism industry’s
heart came from the regime itself in the form of military enforced
curfews over the past 40 days and nights, choking the bars, clubs,
restaurants, entertainers and workers that were shut out of their
paychecks by it. Resentment is building against the regime to the extreme
that whatever these interests thought of President Manuel Zelaya, the
objective truth is that they did better when he was in power than they
have since the coup arrived.<br><br>
A great many of these businesses are facing complete destruction and
bankruptcy already. Flights into Honduras from other lands are, on
average, more than half empty, whereas flights out of the country are, on
average, full with those Hondurans who can afford to escape this
disaster-in-process fleeing the scene of the crime. This economic problem
will continue to compound and deepen every day that the civil resistance
keeps up its fight, reminding the country and the world that Honduras has
not returned to normalcy (further suppressing tourism and non-criminal
investment), and the best, most objective indicators of that are
economic.<br><br>
The Third Ring: The Political Class<br><br>
</b>Claims of unanimous support on both sides of the coup conflict are
becoming unraveled. Internationally, the unanimity in opposition to the
coup has weakened from Ottawa to Washington to San Andrés to Panamá City
to México City to Bogotá. These are the focal points of the authoritarian
hyper-capitalist right in the hemisphere, and those with their gaze fixed
at the circus up above are mainly watching that indicator.<br><br>
But the same is happening inside the Honduran political system that, at
first, unanimously endorsed the coup (including with a specious claim
that the Honduran Congress had “unanimously” voted in a session that, it
has since been revealed, locked out dozens of legislators that it knew
would oppose the coup).<br><br>
This fracture is probably fatal to the Liberal Party, which along with
the National Party makes up the simulacrum of a “two party system” in
Honduras. Both Micheletti and Zelaya were elected to Congress and to the
Presidency, respectively, as Liberal Party candidates.<br><br>
But the 2009 Liberal Party presidential candidate, Elvin Santos, who had
been Zelaya’s vice president until last December when he stepped down to
be his party’s nominee for president this year, is now claiming that he
never supported the coup and that he backs the San Andrés agreement. His
problem is that nobody, absolutely nobody, believes him in that claim.
And yet it is a clear indication that the political system’s previous
united support for the coup has become unglued.<br><br>
On August 5,
<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAkMGKIUDg_ngUiZboxQbYj5_DPwD99T12CG0">
AP reported</a> that Santos now sings a different tune:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>"I will go to all corners of the country to explain that I was
in no way a part of the events of June 28," Santos said on Channel
5's "Face to Face" show.<br><br>
<dd>"The huge mistake was taking him (Zelaya) out of the country and
leaving him defenseless," said Santos, whose Liberal Party includes
both Zelaya and the man who replaced him, Roberto Micheletti.<br><br>
</dl>Santos is what we call in Latin America “un pendejo con iniciativa”
– a pendejo with initiative</i> - which can be loosely translated as an
idiot who can’t help but remind everyone of how weak and stupid he is
with his loud protestations and bumbling actions to the
contrary.<br><br>
This was most clearly demonstrated on that same August 5, when he had the
temerity to bring his campaign to the National Autonomous
University.<br><br>
<br><br>
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