- RIGHTS ACTION INFORMATION: Annie Bird, Washington DC, annie@rightsaction.org, 202-470-6075; Grahame Russell, Connecticut, info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448
- Please re-distribute & re-publish this information all around
* * *
WHAT ARE THE REAL THREATS TO DEMOCRACY IN THE AMERICAS?:A HONDURAN CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION & THE NEW "COLD WAR" OF THE U.S.A.By Annie Bird, Rights Action, March 2010
On March 10, the U.S. House Sub Committee on the Western Hemisphere held a hearing to chart the course of their agenda in Western Hemisphere over the coming year.
On March 12-15, the National Popular Resistance Front in Honduras (FNRP) held a national meeting to pave the way for a Honduran Constitutional Convention, even in the wake of last June’s military coup and constant killings of FNRP activists.
What does a meeting in Washington, of men who influence or control the strongest military and covert operations network in the world, have to do with a meeting of a non-violent social justice movement made up of campesinos, indigenous, and impoverished peoples who have throughout the history of their nation been denied their fundamental democratic right to have a voice in the policies of their nation? Everything.
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS ON THE HILL IN WASHINGTON
In a House of Representatives hearing room, a crowd of about two hundred people, mostly congressional staffers with a scattering of Latin American ambassadors, press, lobbyist and NGO observers, gathered to watch as three, and at times four, congressmen voiced their opinions and listened to the testimony of the new Deputy Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Arturo Valenzuela, and three “independent experts” including former State Department official and “consultant” Otto Reich.
What emerged was a disturbing portrait of the foreign policy agenda that the pundits of big business are selling to US policy makers and the press.
Their new ‘Axis of Evil’ consists of a growing partnership between Iran and the Venezuela – Ecuador – Nicaragua alliance, which is “gaining influence” on other nations in the U.S.’s “Front Yard” (they carefully avoided saying “back yard”), even with key regional partners like Brazil.
Honduras plays a big role in this drama as the ‘brave little nation’ that ‘stood up to Chavez’ by pulling their elected president out of bed at gunpoint and sending him into exile.
The problem with this narrative is that it completely distorts reality in order to advance the interests of transnational corporations.
Déjà vu? Yes, you have been there before. They are trying to relive the “cold war” in Latin America, the good old days when the so-called National Security Doctrine provided the cover necessary to topple governments, and torture and massacre anyone who attempted to defend their fundamental rights when those rights got in the way of economic interests. In Central America alone it cost about 400,000 lives in the 1970s and 80s.
This is not to say that every congressperson on the Western Hemisphere Sub Committee of the International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives buys this argument or is advancing it, but the complete absence of a voice to clearly contradict this very dangerous narrative is frightening.
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES IN LATIN AMERICA
The ludicrous argument advanced in favor of militarily tossing Honduras’ elected president onto an airstrip in Costa Rica is that the army was ‘defending the constitution’.
The line being spun in Washington, repeated in the March 10 hearing, is that the drafting of new constitutions in the region is part of a trend (or ‘Cuban backed conspiracy’, depending who is speaking) in which ‘populist’ governments get themselves elected then ‘take down democracy from within’ by rewriting constitutions to allow themselves to be reelected.
Yes, Constitutions are being rewritten in Latin America, as they have been constantly through history. Constitutional law in Latin America is just not the same as in the United States, just as the charters of nations in Europe are different.
In Latin America, constitutional law is an evolving body of law that reflects the changing political context, at times progressive- promoting a growing body of human rights and democratic principals, and at times restrictive, limiting rights and debilitating democratic governance. Honduras has had sixteen constitutions, El Salvador fifteen, and Guatemala ten.
This year the Dominican Republic adopted a new constitution, last year Bolivia did and the year before Ecuador. Venezuela’s new constitution was adopted in 1999. These are the countries which have been breaking with transnational business, re-nationalizing resources that over the past decades had been privatized and in the process straining relations with the United States and Canada.
Though much focus has been placed on Presidential term limits, changes to term limit restrictions are not what has differentiated the newest constitutions. Term limit changes have occurred in the region through amendments to the constitutions, like the 2007 amendment in Venezuela, and 2005 amendment in Colombia.
What does distinguish this new generation of constitutions is a strong focus on defending social and economic rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, collective rights, promoting national control over natural resources and strategic industries and services.
Fuente: elquinceavopaso.blogspot.com
.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario