HONDURAS: The Day Washington Underhandedly Forced an Accord

In this article, Carlos Aznarez hits all the nails on the head and kicks all the asses that deserve it.

 

Saturday, November 7, 2009
Honduras: The day Washington underhandedly forced an accord

By Carlos Aznarez

One doesn’t have to be very shrewd to realize that the accord signed by the legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and the putschist Micheletti seems to do away with a good part of what the people defended in the street during more than four months. And this is the way it is, even beyond the joy that may ensue upon seeing Zelaya go back into the place from which he was violently thrown, and beyond a fortuitous recycling of the Resistance into an electoral front for the elections on November 29.

Since almost the beginning of the fascist coup it was clear, and that is what revolutionary presidents like Raúl Castro and Hugo Chávez expressed, that behind the gorillas was the puppet master, that is to say the United States. No de facto government would have withstood so many days if the Pentagon, the CIA and its collaborators hadn’t generated the conditions to overthrow a member government of ALBA (an agreement among peoples that hurts the gringos) and sustain it over time.

Then came the back-ups for that strategy: the always-willing President Oscar Arias, the imperial dame Hillary Clinton, the obliging Mister Insulza with his partners of the OAS, and on several occasions the hawk of North American policies on the continent, Sub-Secretary of State Thomas Shannon. All agreed and that is the way they expressed it every chance they had, that Zelaya should ease up on his demands, stop fooling himself with the constituent assembly and think how much the possibility of a reconciliation with the putschists suited him (although it underhandedly suited the negotiators).

In the face of those onslaughts, that Zelaya seemed to withstand with a firm footing (beyond some circumstantial hesitations), the Resistance roared in the streets of Tegucigalpa and the entire country. That phenomenon of a people risen up that surprised our own and outsiders because of its unanimity, because of its forcefulness and its persistence. In all of these four months not a single day went by in which the men, women, youth and children of Honduras didn’t protest against the coup. The put their bodies in the line of fire, broke the state of siege, they beat the curfew, left dead bodies on the road, but they never became cowed. That was the main support that Zelaya has had until today. And it is well that he understand it this way, and that he think about his future steps very carefully.

Undoubtedly, being shut up in an embassy, stunned by the noise that the putschists intentionally make, going through certain times of want (although they can never be compared with those suffered by the poor of Honduras), may have influenced negatively on Zelaya, and from there, to sign a bad accord is one step away. It may be, we say, but we are not convinced.

Everything indicates that those who did play a fundamental role in this which smells like a dangerous resignation and which will surely end with Zelaya in a government shared with those who murdered his people, were the gringo Shannon and the lap dog of the OAS, the “Bacheletist” Insulza, who forced the situation in such a way so that the “legitimate one” gave in to a shameful pact.

The strategists of the pact say that a reconciliation is in the interest of Honduras, but straightaway comes the question of what is to be done with the murderers of so many Hondurans, with those who were beaten in the jails, with those who have lost their job for protesting. It is evident that what happened in these four months of terror cannot be erased for the sake of an agreement, and if this were to be done, the edifice that is built from here on out will be full of cracks.

On the other hand, everything made one think—and this the Resistance expressed better than anyone—that the great trap of this struggle was in the calling of elections for November 29, since if these elections are held it is probable that those best prepared to win are the parties of the right. Those groupings continued in campaign mode all this time while the Zelaya supporters fought in the streets. The most notable case is that of the National Party, of Porfirio (Pepe) Lobo, a cunning coup-supporter who is now firmly convinced that restoring Zelaya to the government—for a few days—could generate the conditions for his triumph.

In that same elaborate scheming for the immediate future, the question could arise: Why would it be so simple now for the putschists to win electorally, with so much of the population mobilized together with Zelaya?

What is happening is that one thing is to win the streets and heroically maintain a protest, as in this case, and quite another to have a well-oiled party machine to win an election, precisely on a terrain where the right and the liberals are used to moving like fish in the water. Nevertheless, in the ranks of the Resistance, there are many who think that the popular uprising has an undeniable political future, which could be synthesized by bringing together on the same slate Cesar Ham, of the leftist Democratic Unification Party, and the independent Carlos H. Reyes, a man who was at the head of several mobilizations in these four months of struggle in the streets.

Everything seems to indicate that the Washington strategists have prepared a trap, with the excuse of providing a “possible” solution to the conflict. And in that consists the dogged role that the yankees have played convincing Zelaya to give in and also Goriletti to accept an accord that will probably end up benefitting those who don’t want the people to govern. For that very reason, in the signing of the pact there is printed Zelaya’s renunciation of the fundamental demand for which the Honduran people have mobilized, the calling of a pluralistic and inclusive constitutional assembly.

Now we will have to see the reaction of that multicolored and valiant mass of people that is the popular Resistance. Apart from the undeniable joy that seeing their beloved president may provoke (of that there is no doubt, since Zelaya is venerated by the most humble) in the presidential seat from which he was torn on an infamous 28 of June, the important thing is that the people do not allow their demands of self determination and social justice, for which they have struggled so much, to be snatched from them. As the leadership of the Resistance, represented by Juan Barahona, Berta Cáceres, Rafael Alegría and others, has expressed on multiple occasions: “Our struggle is for the Constitutional Assembly and for a Honduras that includes all of us, and this will happen with Zelaya or without Zelaya. There is now no turning back.” That is what it’s about now that winds of underhanded accords blow, precisely this: that we do not return to the old politics that sunk the Honduran population in hunger, misery, repression and dependence on the U.S.

But on top of that, something more important still: it’s about not letting the imperial policy obtain another star for its flag of death in the continent, precisely now that it has managed to impose seven bases in Colombian territory, with ruses similar to those used in Honduras.

From Diana Barahona’s blog.