Honduras Democracy, Washington Style

Uncle Sam is having a hard time of it. There was a time, up to the end of the ‘80s, when the whole of Latin America was a mirror image of U.S. administration, whether Republican or Democrat. Violent dictatorships and hungry neoliberal regimes came and went, as was the case in Chile. Argentines and Chileans disappeared in the tens of thousands and the democratic U.S. government did not bat an eyelid. On the contrary, the U.S. installed harsh dictatorial governments, riling the communist bogeyman and fostering the instability that would lead to the coup d’état. Only 40 full years have passed since the overthrow in Chile that had been so longed for, encouraged and enforced by the Nobel Prize winner Henry Kissinger through the use of Pinochet and other assassins.

Today, times have changed. From Cuba to Uruguay, a diverse host of popular coalitions, bound by a single ideal of a united Latin America and by the potential for a socialist future that is geared toward real achievements in human rights, have governing control of the majority of the continent. I recently returned to Cuba, where economic reform is advancing slowly but surely, under the watchful eye of popular democracy. They recently voted, for example, against the removal of the libreta (the food ration book); as a result, it was not abolished. This trend is seen in Venezuela, too, where Maduro and the Venezuelan population are determinedly facing the rumors encouraged by swathes of local municipal leaders who are ready to founder the country just in order to protect their own wretched interests. Coalitions in Ecuador and Bolivia are involved in making multinationals pay the price of their pollution and in freeing themselves from international finance. This last point is truly a great example for Europe, where bogus liberals Francois Hollande and Matteo Renzi bow slavishly to any economic power. Argentina is clamping down on excessive media powers with a law to eliminate all forms of control on public opinion — a law which we could do with adopting ourselves, in fact. In the behemoth that is Brazil, a popular struggle against the PT Worker’s Party government is back with a vengeance to demand that public sentiments are heard and their priorities acknowledged. In Chile, together with the comeback of Michelle Bachelet, there was the entry into parliament of determined young leaders such as the communist Camila Vallejo. In Uruguay, the current president is opposing the caste system there.

There are few true exceptions to this season of great popular progress. Among these countries, and together with Mexico — too far from God and too close to the U.S. to be a normal country, dominated by fierce families of drug traffickers — is little old Honduras. Honduras is the only, sorry country where maneuvers in Washington have actually succeeded in removing a president who had been elected and chosen by the people, as Manuel Zelaya had been. Thus in Honduras we see what the whole of Latin America risks becoming if servitude to the U.S. should continue. Marco Consolo recently sketched the scene:

“In 2012, Honduras had the miserable record of being the country with the highest homicide rate in the world — 86 per 100,000 inhabitants. Eighty percent of these go unpunished and only 20 percent are investigated. From the coup d’état to now, we’re talking about thousands of murders, many of which are political homicides that have been disguised as common criminality.

“On a social level, Honduras is one of the poorest countries on the American continent. Thirty-nine percent of the population lives in conditions of extreme poverty. To this we need to also add the situation of serious debt with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The sum of foreign debt — $4 billion — and internal debt — $3 billion — from national banks in particular after the coup makes up more or less 40 percent of the country’s $18 billion GNP.”

It is a hunting ground for international finance and for the most heartless and unscrupulous of investors, such as those who rallied round after the disgraceful Italian TV show “Celebrity Island, Honduras,” a program which only served to add to Italian national shame and embarrassment, as if Silvio wasn’t enough. To protect this rich man’s paradise the Honduran army has carried out at least 18 assassinations, including popular leaders and journalists, in the wake of the coup d’état. Today, the head of the guerrillas and the U.S. ambassador hasten to claim the victory of their candidate, on the basis of obvious electoral gerrymandering and condemnation by all opposition forces.

Electoral gerrymandering and targeted homicides: This is the democracy of the “Amerikans.” Poor Honduras seems to have been transported back in time by some sort of cruel time machine, back to Latin America’s darker years. But how long will this last? We won’t abandon the Honduran population to face cruel repression orchestrated by the dictatorship and by the government of the United States.