In an action that has spread shock waves throughout the region, the Honduran military has deposed democratically elected left-wing President Manuel Zelaya. This video from The Real News Network summarizes the events of the past days.
Honduras, an ally of the US during the Cold War, was undergoing a process to modify the constitution to allow for increased popular participation. The process was to begin with a non-binding referendum. Eva Golinger, reporting from Caracas, Venezuela, published this account on NicaNet:
The text message that beeped on my cell phone this morning read “Alert, Zelaya has been kidnapped, coup d’état underway in Honduras, spread the word.” It’s a rude awakening for a Sunday morning, especially for the millions of Hondurans that were preparing to exercise their sacred right to vote today for the first time on a consultative referendum concerning the future convening of a constitutional assembly to reform the constitution. Supposedly at the center of the controversary is today’s scheduled referendum, which is not a binding vote but merely an opinion poll to determine whether or not a majority of Hondurans desire to eventually enter into a process to modify their constitution.
Roberto Lovato, Associate Editor with New America Media, posted this today:
But when viewed from the closer physical (Miami is just 800 miles from Honduras) and historical proximity of the United States, the differences between Iran and Honduras are marked and clear in important ways: the M-16's pointing at this very moment at the thousands of peaceful protesters are paid for with U.S. tax dollars and still carry a "Made in America" label; the military airplane in which they kidnapped and exiled President Zelaya was purchased with the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid the Honduran government has been the benefactor of since the Cold War military build-up that began in 1980's; the leader of the coup, General Romeo Vasquez, and many other military leaders repressing the populace received "counterinsurgency" training at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the infamous "School of the Americas," responsible for training those who perpetrated the greatest atrocities in the Americas.
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Hemispheric concerns about the coup were expressed in the rapid, historic and almost universal condemnation of the plot by almost all Latin American governments. Such concerns in the region represent an opportunity for the United States. But, while the Honduran coup represents a major opportunity for Obama to make real his recent and repeated calls for a "new" relationship to the Americas, failure to take actions that send a rapid and unequivocal denunciation of the coup will be devastating to the Honduran people -- and to the still-fragile U.S. image in the region.
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Beyond immediate calls to continue demanding that Zelaya and democratic order be reinstated, protesters in Honduras, Latin America and across the United States will also pressure the Obama Administration to take a number of tougher measures including: cutting off of U.S. military aid, demanding that Hondurans and others kidnapped, jailed and detained be released and accounted for immediately, bringing Vasquez and coup leaders to justice, investigating what U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, did or didn't know about the coup.
President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto condemned the coup, stating:
The forces behind this crime must be exposed and brought to justice. More importantly, we must not let them take advantage of the economic turmoil to return to business as usual. We must allow the peoples of the world to choose for themselves their governments and listen to their voices that call for justice and participation in their societies, and in their economies. Let us not allow these voices to be extinguished as all of us will be diminished and our future dimmed.
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