The Good Neighbor Awakens A Sleeping Giant in Honduras

It has been more than clear. The Obama administration refuses to recognize that militants have accomplished a coup d’état in Honduras. If it were not for the belligerency and dynamism of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean) presidents and for President Manuel Zelaya Rosales, the militants would have consolidated their illegitimate and repressive regime without major problems. Now, Hillary Clinton is facilitating the next phase of the coup d’état by insisting on a dialogue, which in practice offers legitimacy to an illegitimate regime.

More than one of Obama’s admirers has suggested that his government could represent a reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Good Neighbor policy towards Latin America. The Central American governments during Roosevelt’s administration must be examined. All of them were blood-stained dictatorships: Anastasio Somoza García, in Nicaragua; Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, in El Salvador; Jorge Ubico Castañeda, in Guatemala; Tiburcio Carias Andino, in Honduras.

In Honduras, the regional allies of the Obama administration have made a determined and bloody effort to return to the Good Neighbor era. Obama’s administration, acting exactly as it does in Palestine, accepts the crimes of executioners. Obama’s administration insists on not correcting injustices or punishing criminals, but on resolving the conflict between the two sides, the executioners and the victims, through an illegitimate dialogue.

There are people who want to justify Obama’s actions by pointing out that his response is more acceptable than the response George W. Bush would have offered. This argument is completely irrelevant. The fundamental question is: has there been any change in the U.S.’s historical support for dictatorships, dictators, torturers, assassins, or executioners of the indigenous people? The answer is categorically no.

For example, the above statement is not a result of Robert Zoellick’s announcement to delay funding from the World Bank or the suspension of American military cooperation in Honduras. These things are short term and easy to fix. The State Department’s goal is to stall in order to reach a balance of forces even more favorable for the elections on Nov. 29, and above all, categorically crush any initiative for the possibility of a constituent assembly backed by the people.

Despite the atmosphere of repression and coercion, the U.S., the European Union and their regional allies will recognize the November elections as legitimate. For them, but not for the Honduran citizens, everything will go back to normal. The counterfeit dialogue – mediated by Oscar Arias, a right-wing politician as cynical as Clinton and Obama – represents the first phase in the process to legitimize the results of a military intervention, one that has broken the constitutional legitimacy in Honduras and threatens the stability of the whole region.

We cannot forget the words of Robert J. Callahan, a three-decade long supporter of the death squad general, John Negroponte. On the night of Obama’s election, Callahan, his ambassador in Managua, was asked if there would be a change of U.S. policy in Latin America. Callahan made it clear there would be no changes. This is in continuity with all previous U.S. governments, going all the way back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy and even further to the speak-softly-but-carry-a-big-stick policies of Theodore Roosevelt.

The coup d’état in Honduras signifies an intensification of the 2008 offensive by the neo-colonialist powers – U.S. and its allies – through their regional allies. We must remember the assault in Sucumbíos, where Ecuadorian territory was violated in order to assassinate Raul Reyes; the massacre in Pando and the Bolivian separatist campaign; the destabilization in Argentina; the false allegation of the electoral fraud in Nicaragua. Just this May, there was a crisis fabricated by right-wing Guatemalans in order to overthrow Álvaro Colom. Now, to serve the oligarchy, a coup d’état has occurred in Honduras.

Perhaps the United States has returned, in fact, to the Good Neighbor era, as the Hondurans’ answer to the coup d’état has been to return to the example set by the working and peasant classes of the 1954 national strike. In effect, the coup d’état has awakened a giant that has been sleeping for more than 50 years. In the whole country, the massive demonstrations against the usurping regime still continue. On Saturday, July 4th, around 100,000 individuals protested in Tegucigalpa. On Sunday, July 5th, observers calculated that double that number had been mobilized at the Toncontín airport to welcome Manuel Zelaya. It is impossible to know how long the Honduran people will be able to maintain this level of resistance in spite of the wave of detentions, violent repression and threats of all kinds. At the same time, it has to be taken into account that when it is time for the harvest, the families of farmers will have to attend to their fields.

The massive mobilization of 1954 lasted more than two months, from May to July. In the end, it made possible many progressive measures that helped transform the quasi-feudal Honduran society of that time. In 1955, women gained their right to vote. Later, during Ramón Villeda Morales’ government, other important benchmarks of a democratic society were achieved, such as the Labor Laws, the Agrarian Reform and Social Security.

In 1963, there was another military coup d’état against the administration of Ramón Villeda Morales, a few months before the end of his term. A fierce repression was unleashed to silence the Honduran people. A few months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson recognized the military regime. It remains to be seen if this military regime, its protectors in the U.S. and its regional allies, will be able to make the giant sleep again after they have awakened him.