Coup in Honduras Not Over

By Christine Millan
January 02, 2010

Honduras is off the mainstream media radar but the effects of the June 2009 coup's impact are reverberating still throughout Latin America. This issue is far from resolved. The U.S. stating that the elections have "restored democracy", using the excuse that the elections were scheduled before the coup took place, is a contradictory distortion to the reality that the elections were held under an illegal, menacing dictatorship.

The U.S. had no intention of ever supporting democracy and the disenfranchised masses who have been impacted the most by this turn of events. The U.S. publicly paid lip service to democracy, calling for the restoration to office of the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, while wasting time with ridiculous negotiations. At the same time, the U.S. was enabling the coup government to entrench itself in power. The U.S. did not even give Zelaya the courtesy of respect for his position as head of state when they sent officials to Honduras. Instead, they relegated low level functionaries to meet with him basically as a form of appeasement.

The power battles between the two major U.S. political parties this time was led by Republican Senator Jim DeMint. DeMint is a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the body of the U.S. government charged with leading foreign-policy legislation. In this instance, DeMint, along with a few other Republican Senators, held out confirmation of supposed key appointments to Latin America in lieu of the Democrat Obama administration selling out Honduras. This Senate quarrel bought time and fed fuel to the disingenous, belittling messages of Hillary Clinton aimed at President Manuel Zelaya and his supporters. U.S. President Obama was oddly silent and nowhere to be found during what played out to be the cementing of the coup government into power in Honduras. These U.S. players have been outed as Honduras coup supporters walk shamelessly, hand in hand, with Micheletti and his cronies.

Unfortunately, President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya, lost valuable time and effort letting Washington take the lead in resolving the crisis. The outcome was predicted by those such as Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leaders who are aware of U.S. imperialistic history and the basic functions of capitalism. As predicted, the U.S. made a mockery of democracy, pandering and empowering the illegal government of Roberto Micheletti.

Had those involved in the resistance to the coup forseen to what extent they would become victims of state sponsored violence, perhaps consideration of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's call for an invasion to quell the coup might have been a favored option. To the contrary, for whatever reason, this idea was stifled in favor of allowing the U.S. to broker a "peaceful" deal.

Now Honduras is stuck, for the time being, with a U.S. military base that underhandedly controls the Honduran military and, by extension, the government. The militarized coup government is reversing much of the progress undertaken during President Zelaya's alliance with the ALBA states. The recently held fraudulent elections, endorsed by the U.S., that saw Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo being declared the winner, puts in place another U.S. puppet president to do Washington's bidding in the region.

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