GOLPE EN HONDURAS LO QUE NO SE TRASMITE

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Intelectuales de “izquierda” a la derecha del golpe de Estado

Por Eugenio Sosa

En el campo académico y político, el tema de los intelectuales y la política siempre ha ocupado un espacio importante. Es un tema que genera mucha polémica. En periodos “normales” los intelectuales se mueven en la comodidad de sus espacios, académicos y otros, desde donde producen o difunden sus ideas y las de otros. Pero, cuando se enfrentan a coyunturas políticas críticas se enfrentan ante el dilema de guardar silencio, acomodarse a los grupos de poder, o tomar posiciones críticas consecuentes con la el desafío histórico que se presenta. Es frecuente también que los intelectuales entren en pánico por la conflictividad y movilización de las masas, que casi siempre acompaña a las crisis políticas, cuando éstas están enraizadas en problemas estructurales profundos, y sobre todo cuando adquieren la dimensión de lucha de clases, más allá de los conflictos políticos intra-elitarios. ¿Qué ha pasado con la llamada intelectualidad hondureña frente al golpe de Estado del 28 de junio de 2009?

Están los intelectuales que siempre se han acomodado a los grupos de poder, y sus posiciones políticas cambian tanto como cambian los gobiernos, según las posibilidades de un cargo público u otra canonjía que ofrecen los poderosos a sus voceros. Son los que conociendo del rechazo que el presidente Zelaya generaba ante los grupos de poder, no perdieron tiempo en colocarse contra el presidente, los que le recomendaban qué hacer (para que no se saliera de los lineamientos políticos que la elite hondureña está acostumbrada a imponer a sus gobernantes). Son los que ocuparon las primeras filas en los programas de televisión y en las columnas de los periódicos, presentándose como los sensatos consejeros políticos. Pero de estos intelectuales ya no sorprende nada, todo lo que hagan está mediado por el dinero, “por esa sensación de ternura”, palabras más palabras menos, que produce el dinero, como lo dijera el poeta hondureño Roberto Sosa.

Interesa aquí reflexionar sobre los intelectuales que han sido reconocidos o se han autodenominado de izquierda, progresistas o demócratas, y que ahora para sorpresa de propios y extraños de manera abierta o solapada están a favor del golpe de Estado y del régimen de facto. Lo que se puede considerar la intelectualidad hondureña durante el gobierno de Zelaya se perfiló como timorata y confundida, en el mejor de los casos; pero sobre todo conservadora y hasta reaccionaria. Desde antes de que Zelaya jurara como presidente de la República de Honduras, varios de los autodenominados intelectuales apostaron a que Zelaya no terminaba su periodo de gobierno. ¡Vaya oráculos que lograron predecir el golpe de Estado!

Están los intelectuales que fueron anti-melistas, anti-cuarta urna, anti-Asamblea Nacional Constituyente, y ahora siguen en su coherencia siendo pro golpe de Estado. Son los que con arrogancia y orgullo han expresaron: “si por ser anti-melista coincido con la derecha, voy a coincidir con la derecha”, son los que en Zelaya no vieron más que una “patastera [enredadera] ideológica” pero que ahora encuentran en el bloque golpista a los grandes demócratas hondureños, son los que consideran que el “retorno del presidente constitucional de Honduras no es bueno para la sociedad hondureña”, son los que piensan que las elecciones, sin importar que sean bajo un gobierno de facto y espurio, “son la solución a la actual crisis política”.

En estos intelectuales no se encuentran diferencias discursivas con los principales actores políticos y militares que condujeron el país en los años ochentas, bajo la humillante ocupación militar norteamericana, bajo la doctrina de la seguridad nacional y la represión política que se expresó en centenares de desapariciones y asesinatos políticos. Son los que hoy coinciden con la ex-cúpula militar golpista. Son los que dos días antes del golpe marcharon en las calles de Tegucigalpa junto a los militares golpistas y los reservistas, que ahogándose gritaron: “señores del Congreso Nacional actúen”, es decir procedan al golpe de Estado. Son los mismos que se han recorrido las ONGs haciendo consultorías para las reformas democráticas que según ellos requiere el país. Pero claro, es esa democracia complaciente, despolitizada, que teme a la soberanía popular en la que el pueblo, el “populacho” pueda decidir sobre el rumbo del país. Son los intelectuales eternamente críticos del movimiento popular, que lo desprecian y lo consideran incapaz. Los que en las movilizaciones sólo ven gente comprada por unos cuantos lempiras. Son los que atrincherados en los grandes medios de comunicación no se atreven a mencionar la frase golpe de Estado, régimen de facto, y prefieren utilizar los eufemismos de sucesión forzada, sucesión constitucional y gobierno interino.

Son los que defienden una ciencia neutra y una prensa objetiva. Es la neutralidad y la objetividad hacia los sectores populares, y el compromiso complaciente con las elites y los sectores dominantes. Es la neutralidad y la objetividad que se asusta ante el conflicto social, que tiene una visión moralista y religiosa de la política y de la democracia. No les vendría mal algunas breves lecturas de Max Weber:

La política consiste en una dura y prolongada penetración a través de tenaces resistencias, para la que se requiere, al mismo tiempo, pasión y mesura […]. Sólo quien está seguro de no quebrarse cuando, desde su punto de vista, el mundo se muestra demasiado estúpido o demasiado adyecto para lo que él ofrece, sólo quien frente a todo esto es capaz de responder con un "sin embargo"; sólo un hombre de esta forma construido tiene "vocación" para la política.

Estos son los intelectuales de “izquierda” que se han colocado a la derecha del golpe de Estado.

www.rebelion.org

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Honduras: ex paramilitares colombianos habrían sido reclutados para trabajar como mercenarios

Según el Tiempo de Bogotá, los ex miembros de las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia habrían recibido ofertas por parte de empresarios hondureños que buscan proteger cultivos de palma y caña de los actos de violencia que aumentaron tras el golpe de Estado contra el presidente Manuel Zelaya

Varios ex integrantes de los grupos paramilitares de ultraderecha colombianos habrían sido reclutados para ir a Honduras para trabajar como mercenarios tras el golpe de Estado que desalojó del poder al presidente Manuel Zelaya, informa este domingo Dpa citando al diario El Tiempo de Bogotá.

Según la versión, el rumor circula con mucha fuerza desde hace varios días en una zona del centro del país que tuvo gran presencia paramilitar en los últimos años, aunque autoridades consultadas no lo confirmaron.

Las supuestas ofertas a los miembros de las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), incluyen un salario equivalente a unos 750 dólares, además de comida y vivienda.

El Tiempo de Bogotá indica que la oferta "se regó como pólvora" hace tres semanas, cuando dos ex lugartenientes del ex jefe paramilitar Walter Ochoa, alias "El Gurre", convocaron a antiguos miembros de las AUC a una reunión en una finca de la población de La Dorada, en el departamento de Caldas (centro-oeste).

La convocatoria fue atendida por cerca de 40 hombres, a quienes les dijeron que empresarios hondureños estaban interesados en contar con un servicio especial de seguridad y que para ello requerían a gente con experiencia en conflictos armados.

Los empresarios estarían buscando proteger cultivos de palma y caña a raíz de actos de violencia que aumentaron tras el golpe de Estado, de acuerdo con la versión.

"Uno de los líderes del reclutamiento, con oficina en Bogotá, ya viajó a Centroamérica con un grupo, y ahora anda negociando armas", le dijo a El Tiempo de Bogotá una fuente no identificada.

El alto comisionado para la Paz de Colombia, Frank Pearl, afirmó que no puede confirmar ni desmentir la información, mientras que el coronel de la Policía Ricardo Restrepo afirmó que se están investigando los rumores.

Restrepo aseveró que no descarta que detrás del reclutamiento esté la banda paramilitar y narcotraficante de "Los Rastrojos", que surgió tras la desmovilización de cerca de 32 mil miembros de las AUC.

Las autoridades migratorias no han advertido un movimiento inusual de colombianos hacia Honduras, en tanto que el embajador de Tegucigalpa en Bogotá, Hernán Bermúdez, dijo desconocer el tema y aseguró que las autoridades de su país controlan todo el territorio hondureño.

"Pueden decir eso, pero de ahí a que sea cierto, es otra cosa. No tenemos información de que esté ocurriendo, es algo insólito y descabellado", dijo el diplomático.

La presidenta del Comité de Familiares de Detenidos y Desaparecidos de Honduras, Bertha Olivo, expresó al diario bogotano que tiene "información confiable" sobre la formación de un grupo de 120 paramilitares, financiados por empresarios, que apoyan el golpe.

Fuente: www.vtv.gov.ve

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Los revolucionarios/as en Honduras le damos nuestras condolencias al pueblo cubano por tan grande pérdida

Cuba se viste de luto para despedir a Juan Almeida

En la Plaza de la Revolución, en el memorial a José Martí, se montó una enorme fotografía de Almeida perfectamente enmarcada y debajo de la cual se colocó una tarima roja con las medallas del fallecido.

Dom, 13/09/2009 - 08:21

El comandante de la revolución y vicepresidente, Juan Almeida Bosque. Foto: AP

La Habana.-Encabezada por el mandatario Raúl Castro y con las banderas a media asta, Cuba dio inicio el domingo a un duelo nacional por la muerte del comandante de la revolución y vicepresidente Juan Almeida Bosque.

El presidente Castro abrió la ceremonia en recuerdo de Almeida, quien además fue uno de sus amigos personales y cercano colaborador por décadas y que falleció el viernes de un paro cardiorespiratorio a los 82 años de edad. Las banderas fueron colocadas a media asta.

En la Plaza de la Revolución, en el memorial a José Martí, se montó una enorme fotografía de Almeida perfectamente enmarcada y debajo de la cual se colocó una tarima roja con las medallas del fallecido. Estaban instaladas un par de ofrendas florales a nombre de Castro y su hermano, el ex gobernante, Fidel Castro.

Se informó que el deseo del extinto fue que su cuerpo no se expusiera.

A las 8 de la mañana hora local, Raúl Castro vestido de uniforme verde olivo inició el homenaje junto a un nieto del comandante revolucionario muerto el viernes por la noche y a una mujer, ambos vestidos de blanco y con lágrimas en los ojos.

Tras la presentación de armas por parte de una guardia del Batallón de Ceremonias, Castro avanzó hacia la fotografía de Almeida y depositó junto a ella una rosa rosada, pero sin decir una palabra. La prensa extranjera no tuvo acceso a este momento del duelo.

Los otros dos comandantes de la revolución Ramiro Valdés y Guillermo García también se encontraban presentes.

De esta manera comenzó un desfile popular y de las principales figuras del Partido Comunista y del Gobierno frente a la fotografía de Almeida.

La televisión cubana realizó una transmisión del inicio de la ceremonia de duelo, mientras dio pasos a otras capitales de provincia donde la escena se repitió en diferentes lugares establecidos para tal fin.

"Fue proverbial su sencillez", comentó Raúl González, uno colaborador del dirigente, en declaraciones a la televisión cubana que transmitió desde Holguín. Según González era un jefe que combinaba su carácter afable con la exigencia.

Nacido en La Habana el 17 de febrero de 1927, se incorporó a la lucha rebelde al conocer en marzo de 1952 en la Universidad de La Habana a un alumno de la facultad de derecho y quien cambiaría su destino: Fidel Castro.

Un año después, en julio de 1953, Almeida se integraría el centenar de jóvenes que encabezados por Castro asaltó el cuartel Moncada en Santiago de Cuba, al oriente de la isla, el detonante para el inicio de la lucha contra la dictadura de Batista.

Desde entonces cumplió cárcel, se exilió en México y luego fue a la Sierra Maestra de guerrillero.

"Almeida vivirá siempre entre nosotros", dijo a periodistas por su parte el líder parlamentario Ricardo Alarcón, cuando se enteró la noticia el sábado.

AP

Fuente: www.milenio.com

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Honduras and U.S. Double Standards in Latin American Drug War

Check out this recent article I wrote with Bill Weinberg, the author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso 2000). His website is World War 4 Report (WW4Report.com)

In its never ending effort to justify its military presence in Latin America the U.S. has employed any number of rationales, the most recent being the need to combat drug trafficking. Those countries on the right which assist in the U.S.-funded war on drugs are rewarded handsomely with military and political assistance while countries on the left who criticize U.S. foreign policy are demonized and risk Washington’s wrath.

Indeed, as ex-Honduran President Manuel Zelaya found out, criticizing the U.S. war on drugs can be a sticky affair. Before he was overthrown in a military coup d’etat in June, Zelaya was frequently at odds with U.S. officials over the fight against drug trafficking. There’s no evidence that Zelaya’s opposition to Washington on this score was a factor in his overthrow, but it’s no secret that the U.S. has been less than enthusiastic in calling for Zelaya’s return to power.

Drugs and Demonization of the Sandinista Regime

To put the recent Honduran affair in proper context go back some twenty years to the Reagan administration’s Contra war against Nicaragua. In an effort to discredit the left wing Sandinistas, Washington employed a dirty propaganda campaign attempting to link the regime to drug trafficking. The case involved Barry Seal, a convicted drug dealer turned informant who worked closely with Vice President George H.W. Bush’s anti-drug task force.

The CIA, which was training the Contras at the time in an effort to overthrow the Sandinistas, installed a hidden camera in Seal’s C-130 cargo plane. Seal then snapped an out-of-focus photo of himself with a top Sandinista official --- who was likely a U.S. spy --- and a Colombian drug trafficker unloading bags of cocaine at an airstrip in Nicaragua. Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Agency was intimately involved in the affair and coordinated efforts with the CIA.
When the photo of Seal in Nicaragua was leaked to the press, all the major papers ran sensational articles about Sandinista drug running. The Reagan administration used the incident for maximum PR effect, with the president displaying Seal’s photo in a nationally televised speech in March 1986.

Operation “Just Cause” and the Drug Connection in Panama

Washington also employed a propaganda campaign against Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega. In an effort to justify invasion, the U.S. sensationalized Noriega’s links to drug trafficking. Yet throughout the 1980s, the CIA collaborated with Noriega and Colombia’s Medellin Cartel to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. “Privatized” CIA assets maintained Honduran and Costa Rican airstrips as transfer points for coke going north and guns coming south for the Nicaraguan contra rebels. Officially derided as “conspiracy theory,” this fact has been abundantly documented since the “Contragate” scandal broke in 1986.

In July 1989, just months before the invasion of Panama, five key U.S. figures associated with the Contragate scandal—Lt. Col. Oliver North, Maj. Gen. Ricard Secord, former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, former Ambassador Lewis Tambs and former local CIA station chief Joe Fernández—were barred from returning to the territory of U.S. ally Costa Rica after a special commission of the country’s congress concluded that the contra resupply network they had established on the Nicaraguan border doubled as a cocaine-smuggling operation.

Following the Contragate scandal, Noriega became more useful as a scapegoat than a client. In Christmas 1989, the U.S. invaded Panama and installed the client regime of Guillermo Endara. Endara was also ensconced with the cartels. As an attorney he had represented companies run by Carlos Eleta, a Panamanian business tycoon arrested in Georgia that April for conspiring to import more than half a ton of cocaine each month into the U.S. (The indictment would be dropped following the invasion.) His vice president Guillermo "Billy" Ford was a co-founder and part owner of the Dadeland Bank in Miami, named in federal court testimony in the U.S .as a repository for Medellín Cartel money.

These rather salient facts went down an Orwellian Memory Hole as the media portrayed a one-sided U.S. victory over a corrupt narco-regime in the Christmastime 1989 invasion of Panama.

Double Standards and the War on Drugs in South America

When fiery Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela in the late 1990s the U.S.-fueled drug war once again became the topic du jour. A fierce critic of U.S. militarization in neighboring Colombia, Chávez prohibited Pentagon over-flights of Venezuelan airspace. In an inflammatory move, he furthermore ceased cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), accusing the agency of drug running and espionage.

It wasn’t long before the Bush administration started to accuse Caracas of being derelict in fighting the drug war. The Bush administration, in fact, said Venezuela “failed demonstrably” to halt the flow of drugs through Venezuela. Specifically, the U.S. government accused Venezuela of not eliminating coca and poppy fields along the Colombian border. Venezuelan officials countered that Washington was simply acting for political motives.

When Chávez allied to Bolivia after 2005 and the rise of the leftist former coca-growers leader Evo Morales, Washington once again went on the offensive, claiming that the Andean nation was not doing enough to prosecute the drug war. During the George W. Bush years, U.S. officials were dismayed by Morales’ coca policy which sought to increase the amount of coca that could be legally grown for traditional and medicinal purposes and asked farmers to voluntarily tear up their plantings above half an acre.

The policy, which promised to crack down on cocaine, abandoned previous efforts of government-forced eradication of coca plants. The State Department lambasted Bolivia for supposedly backsliding in the counter-narcotics effort.

For some contrast, let’s look at the situation in the closest U.S. ally in South America—Colombia, where President Alvaro Uribe now hopes to open the country to permanent U.S. military bases to police the rest of the continent against drug trafficking. Somehow, evidence of Uribe’s ties to the cartels doesn’t seem to stick.

In 2004, a single New York Times story noted the emergence of a 1991 report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) naming Uribe as a high-level operative of the Medellín Cartel. The DIA report was released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to a D.C.-based research group, the National Security Archives. The report asserts that Uribe, then a senator from the department of Antioquia, was "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel at high government levels." It named him as a "close personal friend" of cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar, and claimed he helped Escobar secure his seat as an auxiliary congressman.

Both Uribe and the U.S. State Department denied the charge. But the National Security Archives' Michael Evans said: "We now know that the DIA, either through its own reporting or through liaison with another investigative agency, had information indicating that Álvaro Uribe was one of Colombia's top drug-trafficking figures."

Washington portrays Uribe as a key ally in the war on drugs and terrorism, boasting that his administration has extradited 150 accused traffickers to the U.S., more than twice the number extradited in his predecessor's four-year term. But there have been persistent claims that as chief of Colombia's civil aviation authority in the late 1980s, Uribe protected drug flights. When he was governor of Antioquia between 1995 and 1997, paramilitary activity exploded in the department.

Another study in contrast is provided by Peru—second to Colombia as a U.S. ally and anti-drug aid recipient in South America. According to the latest report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), coca cultivation fell in Colombia last year (after several years of growth) but rose 6% in Bolivia and 4.5% in Peru. Yet, the two countries are treated entirely differently. While the U.S. has entered into a free trade agreement with Peru, it has just cut trade preferences with Bolivia— a move that could cost thousands of jobs in the country's export industries—on the grounds the government of Evo Morales is not doing enough to combat coca cultivation.


The Honduras Imbroglio and ALBA

While using trade to punish Bolivia, Washington simultaneously works against efforts to establish regional trade pacts that seek to create an alternative to U.S. hegemony.

The Latin American right and its allies in Washington have been particularly concerned about the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas, also known by its Spanish acronym ALBA. A reciprocal trade agreement designed to promote trade reciprocity between like-minded left regimes in Latin America, the project groups Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras and Ecuador. To really understand the politics of the drug war one must fundamentally understand its connection to ALBA.

Consider once again the case of deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya. Originally a political moderate, Zelaya went along with the larger U.S. political and economic designs until recently. However, the Bush administration may have been taken aback by the Honduran’s desire to convert the U.S. airbase at Soto Cano into a civilian airport. The base is used for drug surveillance flights. Then, in late 2008 the Honduran came out for drug decriminalization and confirmed that he would join in Chávez’s ALBA scheme.

With alarm bells going off within the Bush administration, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Charles Ford fired a warning shot across Zelaya’s bow. A large portion of remittances sent by U.S.-based Hondurans back to their home country, he remarked, were the product of illicit drug trafficking.

Speaking to local TV media, Ford declared that 30% of remissions from the U.S. were the product of money laundering by drug smugglers. The U.S. ambassador was joined in his criticism by his French counterpart in Honduras Laurent Dominati, who remarked that the Central American nation was in danger of becoming a “narco-state.”

Ford’s remarks caused a diplomatic firestorm, with the Honduran foreign minister shooting back that the ambassador’s comments were unacceptable. The foreign minister added that his government had officially protested to both the U.S. and France, and requested that both back up their inflammatory statements.

Having caused a massive diplomatic row, Ford left Tegucigalpa after three years of ambassadorial duty. And what was Ford’s next job? He served as diplomatic attaché for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which seeks to prosecute the drug war in Latin America.

In an interview with the Honduras paper La Prensa, Ford warned that “big people” from the Mexican, Guatemalan and Colombian cartels had arrived in Honduras in recent years. It was up to the U.S. and like minded Latin American regimes, Ford added, to counteract such influence through joint efforts such as the Mérida Initiative.

Zelaya himself voiced support for the U.S. program, which included millions in military aid for anti-drug efforts. In an effort to tone down tensions, he met with new U.S. ambassador Hugo Llorens to shore up the Mérida plan. Zelaya was still critical of the U.S., however, and declared that Washington was not doing enough to help Honduras counteract violence and the cartels. (Zelaya was joined in his criticisms of U.S. drug policy by none other than Daniel Ortega, whose Sandinista party was maligned by Washington in the 1980s for its alleged ties to drug trafficking. Ortega, who has also moved his country into Chávez’s ALBA, charged that Washington only provided petty change for its war on drugs. )

Furthermore, Zelaya charged that the U.S. was the “chief cause” of drug smuggling in Latin America and the Caribbean. Ford had been “belligerent,” Zelaya affirmed, simply because Honduras pursued diplomatic relations with Caracas, Havana, and Managua. Just because Honduras received U.S. aid, Zelaya said, did not mean that his country was a “vassal” of its northern benefactor. Zelaya accused the U.S. of promoting coup d'etats, invasions, and uprisings across Central America.

Honduras Coup and Drug War Rhetoric

Soon enough, Zelaya was removed from power. However, the drug issue has not faded and in fact has taken on a heated new political dimension in recent weeks. Even though Zelaya clamped down on the drug trade, he has been predictably accused of having links to narco-trafficking. Right-wing politicians in Honduras have always been critical of Zelaya’s efforts to cultivate diplomatic ties to Hugo Chávez. Now, the coup government is trying to link Zelaya with alleged drug trafficking emanating from Venezuela.


In the wake of Zelaya’s overthrow, the new Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez said that the government had proof that Venezuelan planes landed in Honduras loaded with cocaine and cash. “Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds ... and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking,” the minister told CNN en Español. “We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it,” he added.

The de facto coup-installed president of Honduras Roberto Micheletti himself also insinuated that Zelaya could be mixed up in the drug trade and the constant Venezuelan drug flights. Meanwhile, the Honduras attorney general’s office is conducting an investigation into whether Zelaya funded pro-Chávez demonstrations with FARC or drug smuggling money.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration told the AP it could neither confirm nor deny that it was investigating the matter, though the U.S. State Department has frankly declared that in Honduras “official corruption continues to be an impediment to effective law enforcement and there are press reports of drug trafficking and associated criminal activity among current and former government and military officials."

Adding fuel to the fire, TV network Telemundo reports that Zelaya government officials could have been linked to Venezuelan and Colombian drug traffickers. The report fingered Héctor Zelaya, the president’s own son, as a possible mafioso. Seizing on the reports, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, met with DEA officials to discuss drug trafficking in Honduras. “Obtaining an assessment from DEA about the situation on the ground is of increasing importance in light of recent developments in Honduras and reports of possible Zelaya drug ties,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

Could the accusations form part of a concerted PR effort on the part of the Micheletti government? The Los Angeles Times reports that Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, was overheard speaking to the country’s attorney general on his cell phone nine days after the coup. According to the report, Maradiaga urged the government official to produce drug trafficking evidence against Zelaya. “My son,” he remarked, “we need that proof. It's the only thing that will help us now.”

In an effort to legitimize his government, Micheletti has emphasized the drug issue. Recently, he remarked that “during our short period of being in power no small plane has landed in the country loaded with drugs, which used to happen frequently. The police and army are protecting the wellbeing of the Honduran people.” Micheletti’s positive spin was revealed as questionable however when a cocaine-trafficking plane crashed on a highway in northern Honduras. It was the second such accident involving a cocaine-transporting plane since the military coup.

Target: ALBA

ALBA nations, however, have not taken the Honduran government’s accusations against Zelaya lightly. Recently, they banded together in an effort to return the ousted Central American president to power. “Revolutionary” governments, Chávez declared, would not remain idle as long as the coup government was in power in Tegucigalpa. The Venezuelan leader rejected Honduran press reports linking the ousted Zelaya with drug traffic.

Chávez said that the claims were simply a “ghost” being used to justify “anything.” “Now they are accusing Zelaya of being a drug-trafficker, they say it in 100 newspapers, as article and breaking news. They report that since the ousting of Zelaya –a constitutional ousting, they say-, mysterious Venezuelan light planes stop arriving there loaded with dollars and drugs. Thus, they use this ghost for anything, for ousting governments, for killing people,” Chávez added.

For his part, Evo Morales declared that the coup in Honduras was “a warning” from “North American imperialism” that the U.S. was intent on halting the spread of ALBA.

Rafael Correa has voiced similar concerns --- the Ecuadoran president recently remarked that he had “intelligence studies showing that after Zelaya, the next destabilization effort would be me.”

“Honduras was not an isolated occurrence,” Correa said. “A de facto government which is so crude and insulting could not maintain itself without external assistance and it gets this help from powerful groups in the U.S. and the Latin American oligarchy.”

Correa has denounced a supposed domestic and international media campaign designed to destabilize his country and link him with FARC guerrillas in Colombia. In a video which surfaced in Colombia, a FARC leader named Jorge Briceño says that his organization helped to finance Correa’s presidential campaign in 2006. Correa believes the video is part of a right-wing strategy to destabilize progressive governments in the region.

There have been similar accusations made against Chávez, alleging that the Venezuelan has military ties to the FARC. Such charges are patently false, says Bolivian Evo Morales, who says that his South American counterparts in Ecuador and Venezuela had been unfairly maligned.

It is predictable that Zelaya is being ensnared in the same propaganda campaign.
Honduran authorities claimed July 27 that Colombia's FARC guerilla organization has financed supporters of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. The National Police say they seized a book and receipts that show payments between $2,500 and $100,000 for officials of the Zelaya government to "spend in El Paraiso," the region on the Nicaraguan border where followers of Zelaya wait for the ousted president's return. Given the FARC’s current state of disarray in the face of Uribe’s offensive, this seems highly improbable.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Aug. 10, columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady cited a 2005 letter purportedly intercepted by Colombian authorities from the late FARC chief Raul Reyes to another commander listing “political contacts.” One was apparently the Honduran Democratic Unification (UD) party—which, while not Zelaya’s party, is a key voice demanding his return. So not only is this evidence pretty far removed from Zelaya, but it means little more than that Reyes sought to propagandize the UD—even assuming the letter is real.

ALBA Nations Shoot Back With Their Own Accusations

Morales says the drug spin about Zelaya is all backwards: it is the CIA, the Pentagon, the Southern Command and drug smugglers who are really behind the coup in Honduras. In making his startling accusations, Morales is echoing reports in recent weeks that de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti may be tied to traffickers.

The Havana-based website Cuba Debate sports a scanned version of what purports to be an undated document from the Honduran Defense Ministy that names one “Roberto Michelleti Bain” (with an evident mis-spelling) on a list of several Honduran nationals with international drug trafficking connections. His “connection” is named as the Calí Cartel and his area of operations is named as Yoro. In the ‘80s, when the Calí Cartel was at its peak of power, Micheletti was a member of the local council in Yoro department, in the north of the country near the Caribbean coast. He would later sucessfully run for congress from Yoro.

Jean Guy Allard, the author of the article, has not answered e-mails to clarify where he acquired the document implicating Micheletti in drug trafficking. This however has not stopped others in fellow ALBA nations from repeating the accusations. In early August, José Vicente Rangel, who has served in various high level posts within the Chávez government, made reference to the Cuban report on Venezuelan TV.

Illegal drugs are simply a major part of the Latin American economy, right up there with oil, tourism and legal agro-exports like coffee, beef and bananas. Allegations of narco-corruption against anyone in the region’s power elite are never hard to find. But which charges stick against which leaders in the U.S. media appears to have more to do with politics than fact.

Fuente: senorchichero.blogspot.com

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WASHINGTON’S DRUG WAR AND THE HONDURAN COUP: DEADLY CONNECTIONS?

Check out this recent article I wrote with journalist Bill Weinberg, the author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso 2000). His website is World War 4 Report (WW4Report.com).

While the foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C. certainly had diverse reasons for disliking Manuel Zelaya, the deposed Honduran president’s criticism of the U.S.-driven drug war certainly did not help to ingratiate the Central American within the halls of power. In December 2008, just months before Zelaya was ousted from power by the military, he wrote Barack Obama and complained of U.S. “interventionism.”

Audaciously, Zelaya wrote: “The legitimate struggle against drug trafficking... should not be used as an excuse to carry out interventionist policies in other countries.” The struggle against drug smuggling, the Honduran added, “should not be divorced from a vigorous policy of controlling distribution and consumer demand in all countries, as well as money laundering which operates through financial circuits and which involve networks within developed countries.”

It was not the first time that Zelaya had been so outspoken. Just a month before, during a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean anti-drug officials in Tegucigalpa, he declared that drug consumption should be legalized to halt violence related to smuggling. “Instead of pursuing drug traffickers, societies should invest resources in educating drug addicts and curbing their demand,” Zelaya said. Rodolfo Zelaya, the head of a Honduran congressional commission on drug trafficking, rejected Zelaya's comments. He told participants at the meeting that he was “confused and stunned by what the Honduran leader said.”

From “Mano Dura” to decriminalization?

What could have driven Zelaya to confront the U.S. so openly on drug policy? In recent years Honduras has been plagued by drug trafficking and so-called maras or street gangs that carry out gruesome beheadings, rapes, and eye gouging. The small Central American nation has become a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine. According to U.S. authorities, the drugs arrive on non-commercial aircraft from Venezuela and increasingly in speedboats from Colombia.

Prior to Zelaya’s election, Honduras adopted a mano dura policy towards the maras as opposed to focusing on prevention and rehabilitation. In 2002, the country launched special anti-mara operations under a zero-tolerance strategy including the passage of stiffer laws. But the strong-arm policies led to persecution of young people simply because they bore tattoos, frequently an identifying feature for gang members, or wore baggy hip-hop style clothes. In 2005, 204 maras were detained under a special law which allowed people to be arrested merely on suspicion of belonging to gangs.

The Honduran government was even accused before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights of prison massacres of young gang members. The massacres were allegedly planned as “purges,” and included one incident in the El Porvenir prison in the city of La Ceiba in which a whopping 69 prisoners including 61 mara members were murdered.

After he was elected in 2006, Zelaya pledged to negotiate with Mara Salvatrucha gangs MS-13 and MS-18 in an effort to get the narco-traffickers to hand in their arms. Offering out an olive branch, Zelaya said he wanted to peacefully rehabilitate the maras and reincorporate the gangs into society.

Unfortunately for Zelaya, the violence showed no signs of abating. In a country of just 7.4 million 710 murders were reported in the first quarter of 2006, 100 more than in the same period in 2005. Experts worried that if the violence continued in Honduras that it would be next to impossible to implement social development policies and the nation’s democratic stability would be jeopardized. After kidnappings surged and the nephew of the Speaker of Congress Roberto Micheletti (and future Honduran President following Zelaya’s overthrow) was killed, Zelaya carried out Operation Thunder—a broad police and military crackdown.

San Pedro Sula, an important commercial city, has been in the crosshairs of drug violence. The city has been the center of activity for drug smuggling gangs who transport cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. In recent years, San Pedro Sula gangs have fought out brutal turf wars. The violence has taken on a brazen quality with assassinations curb-side and night club attacks. The local bishop of San Pedro Sula remarked to reporters, “The city has had enough blood—every day deaths and more deaths.” He added, “This is a hell…people don’t want to go out at night, there’s a tremendous fear.”

Zelaya doubled the national police budget and claimed that his government had confiscated more cocaine than his predecessor. The President also pledged to establish a special police unit which would combat Colombian drug trafficking via the Honduran Atlantic coast en route to the U.S. Zelaya also said that the army would be sent into the streets to reinforce the police.

Zelaya’s efforts however foundered amidst unending violence. In mid-2008, thousands marched in San Pedro Sula in protest over drug-related violence. Some women held photographs of their sons who had been assassinated. Realizing that his strategy was not yielding a positive result, Zelaya sent his letter to Obama and in early 2009 gave a feisty press conference at the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C.

The U.S., Zelaya said, was not doing enough to help countries like Honduras confront drug smuggling. The Honduran however backed away from his previous remarks about drug policy, saying that he merely favored an international law which would regulate anti-drug efforts. “From the U.S. to Cape Horn in Chile and the plains of Argentina there should be just one rule, and that rule should be respected and it should come out of consensus.”

Zelaya did get on board with the Mérida Initiative, Washington’s multi-billion dollar Drug War aid package for Mexico and the Central American nations. In January 2009, Zelaya’s Security Minister Jorge Rodas Gamero signed an agreement with U.S. Amabassador Hugo Llorens for Honduras to receive $3.5 million in mostly military aid under the program.

But Zelaya meanwhile raised eyebrows when he declared his intention to turn the military base at Soto Cano—which has long been strategic to Pentagon operations in the region—into a civilian airport.

Pentagon access to Honduras

The question of Pentagon access to Honduras may have been a central one to the coup d’etat. In 2006, Zelaya and the Bush administration negotiated the future of Soto Cano air base, which is northwest of Tegucigalpa in central Comayagua department. The base was known as Palmerola back in the ‘80s when it hosted some 5,000 US troops. Since then it has intermittently hosted lesser numbers, as well as serving as a base for US drug surveillance flights. Zelaya insisted on its conversion to a civilian airport and following a Washington, D.C. meeting with Bush that June, the US agreed.

The pay-off, it seems, was to be greater US military access to Mosquitia. Rendered by its indigenous Miskito residents as Miskitia, this is the remote area of rainforest and coastal wetlands along the Nicaraguan border in the Caribbean zone. Drug traffickers have long used its many sheltered coves with impunity. Honduran Defense Secretary Aristides Mejía said the Miskitia presence wouldn’t necessarily be “a classic base with permanent installations, but just when needed. We intend, if President Zelaya approves, to expand joint operations” with the United States.
Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velázquez, the armed forces chief who would later lead the coup against Zelaya, had already traveled to Washington to discuss future plans for Mosquitia. Contradicting his colleague Mejía, Vásquez said the plan was “to establish a permanent military base of ours in the zone,” including aircraft. The U.S., Vásquez added, would help to construct air strips on site.

Then-Assistant Secretary of State John Negroponte—who was ambassador to Honduras in the ‘80s and would later serve as Bush’s first National Intelligence director—weighed in, saying that Honduras could not transform Palmerola into a civilian airport “from one day to the next.” He made his own trip to Tegucigalpa to discuss Palmerola and the Mérida Initiative in June, 2008. Speaking later on Honduran radio, Negroponte emphasized that the airport would have to receive international certification before plans could proceed. The Spanish news agency EFE reported that Negroponte also sat down with the president of the Honduran Parliament and future de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain. The account did not say what the two discussed.

In December 2008, US Ambassador Llorens actually made a tour of the remote Miskito Coast with the local press and spoke about the narco threat to the region. Two months later, the Honduran armed forces named Laguna de Caratasca, near the regional capital of Puerto Lempira, as the site for the new naval installation with construction underway.

It may be significant that the impetus for closing Soto Cano came from Zelaya, while that for opening Laguna de Caratasca came from Vásquez. Perhaps, the general gambled that his enthusiasm for militarizing the Miskito Coast and generally opening Honduran territory to the U.S. military would keep him in Washington’s good graces despite a messy little putsch. And with the Sandinista Daniel Ortega once again in power in Nicaragua, a U.S. military presence in the border zone may once again be perceived as an imperative in Washington—as it was in the 1980s.

Narcotics and propaganda

Charges of complicity in narco-trafficking make for convenient propaganda ammunition on both sides of the Honduran conflict. After the coup, the de facto government issued a request to Interpol for an arrest warrant for Zelaya and many of his officials. In addition to the usual charges of supposed constitutional violations, the request made accusations of the Zelaya administration’s involvement in drug trafficking. Interpol declined to issue the warrant, citing sovereign immunity and not addressing the allegations.

Meanwhile the Havana-based website Cuba Debate sports a scanned version of what purports to be an undated document from the Honduran Defense Ministy that names one “Roberto Michelleti Bain” (with an evident mis-spellng) on a list of several Honduran nationals with international drug trafficking connections. His “connection” is named as the Calí Cartel and his area of operations is named as Yoro. In the ‘80s, when the Calí Cartel was at its peak of power, Micheletti was a member of the local council in Yoro department, in the north of the country near the Caribbean coast. He would later sucessfully run for congress from Yoro.

The same report quoted Andrés Pavón of the Honduran Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CODEH), who accused Gen. Vázquez of working with narco-traffickers in league with corrupt elements of the DEA.

Vázquez and his chief collaborator in the coup, air force chief Gen. Luis Prince Suazo, are both graduates of the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. Leaders of the popular resistance in Honduras also allege that Negroponte—now ostensibly retired from public life—made a quiet trip to Tegucigalpa in the weeks before the coup, where he met with Gen. Vázquez and other coup plotters.

Fuente: senorchichero.blogspot.com

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Estalla artefacto en Canal 36 y dejan amenazante proclama

Foto: www.radiomundial.com.ve/.../t_canal_36_958.jpg


Un artefacto explosivo estalló ésta madrugada en el pasillo frontal de Canal 36 en franca represalia por su abierta línea contra el Golpe de Estado producido el pasado 28 de junio, por fortuna no hubo ni heridos, ni víctimas mortales, mientras que los daños materiales fueron de poca cuantía.

Los hechores también dejaron comunicados públicos en donde se reivindican el atentado bajo el nombre de un supuesto “Frente Armado General Álvarez Martínez”. En esa hoja plasmaron amenazas a muerte contra la Resistencia y cierran su comunicado con la frase “El mejor zelayista, es el zelayista muerto”. En referencia a los seguidores del presidente legítimo Manuel Zelaya Rosales, que 77 días después del golpe continúan su lucha por el retorno de la democracia y de Mel Zelaya al país.

Canal 36 es la única televisora hondureña que continúa su línea popular en defensa de los derechos del pueblo. Ha jugado un papel importante porque el resto de los medios están al servicio del Golpe y de los golpistas. Esa conducta le ha valido una serie de atentados, como el del 23 de agosto pasado cuando personas armadas les destruyeron sus transmisores. Diez días después, Canal 36 regresó al aire.

Hoy por la mañana, luego de encontrarse con el atentado y abrir su transmisión mostraron las imágenes de los supuestos agresores, dos hombres, que de moto en marcha lanzaron el artefacto y también dejaron ir los papeles.

En el comunicado, declaran haber iniciando con el Frente Armado, mencionan varios nombres de miembros de la resistencia y dan vítores al fallecido general Álvarez Martínez, el terrorífico militar responsable de la doctrina de seguridad nacional que, en la década de los ochentas asesinó a centenares de hondureños.

Las llamadas telefónicas de la ciudadanía no se hizo esperar solidarizándose con el Canal y condenando el hecho.

Fuente: kennycastillo.blogspot.com

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