Another big defeat for military coup as President Zelaya returns to Honduras

On June 28th,this website sadly reported that a military coup d’etat had deposed the democratically-elected head of state for Honduras, President Manuel Zelaya. This action sent shock waves through Latin America, which has been fighting for decades (and, arguably, centuries) against foreign-supported dictatorships. By the 1990s, most of these dictatorships had come to an end and were replaced by some of the most exciting and vibrant experiments in participatory democracy anywhere in the world.

Today, President Zelaya returned to Honduras, crossing the border with Nicaragua, surrounded by Honduran people and international journalists. This marked a historic blow against the de facto government in Honduras, who has claimed that they are actively seeking the arrest of President Zelaya but have twice denied him entry into the country, which would have given them their chance to arrest him.

Unfortunately, if you only read the mainstream media, you may be left with the impression that this coup d’etat is not so clear-cut … and in some cases, mainstream media has denied that it was a coup at all.

This is no accident. The coup plotters represent that wealthy elite of Honduras who have historically dominated Honduran politics. Honduras is literally a “banana republic,” with enormous influence wielded by companies such as Dole and Chiquita. The coup plotters have retained a number of high-power lobbyists, led by infamous Washington lobbyist Lanny Davis, who previously worked for Hillary Clinton.

For this reason, we have assembled a number of articles which provide context and under-reported information to anyone who is interested in understanding the situation in Honduras in greater depth.

1. The coup plotters have repeatedly asserted that President Zelaya was illegally pursuing a mad power grab that went outside the law. This is one of many articles which exposes this logic as pure spin: Why President Zelaya’s Actions Where Legal
2. The Miami Herald punched a big hole through the coup plotter’s claims that they are acting within the law and, therefore, are representing the constitutional government. The Herald exposed the criminal mentality of the coup plotters with their incredible interview of coup plotter and top Honduran Army attorney, Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, who openly admitted that the military took the law into their own hands by kidnapping President Zelaya and literally dumping him in Costa Rica. Furthermore, Col. Inestroza amazingly admitted that because of the training the top Honduran military brass received in the 80’s during their support of the contras, they would never support a left-oriented government. In other words, no matter who the people elected, the military would only take orders from governments that they ideologically supported. “It would be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That’s impossible,” explains Col. Inestroza, seemingly oblivious that in republican democracies, the military is supposed to take orders from elected representatives.
3. Then, Honduran Supreme Court President Jorge Rivera also acknowledged that the military’s actions were not legal. To date, the coup plotters claim that they represent constitutional law and order and, yet, none of those responsible for the illegal actions described by Justice Rivera and Col. Inestroza have been held responsible for their treasonous crimes; on the contrary, these traitors are now in charge of Honduras.
4. What is very clear is that the Honduran Constitution stipulates that every Honduran citizen has the right to wage insurrection against any usurper regime which gained power through “force of weapons” and that such a regime has absolutely no legal standing: “No one owes obedience to an usurper government nor to those who through force of weapons assume public functions or positions…. The acts of such authorities have no legal standing, and the people have the right to resort to insurrection in defense of the Constitutional order.”
5. The people have exercised this right from the moment the illegal coup took place. A broad coalition of unions, human rights groups, social service providers, community organizations and political groups have come together to protest the illegitimate coup regime every single day since President Zelaya was kidnapped. The coup regime has responded with even more illegal violence and repression: they’ve officially suspended specific constitutional rights, imposed a curfew (resulting in at least 800 arrests), systematically detained and harassed journalists, attacked peaceful protests with tear gas and beatings and live ammunition. A disturbing photograph shows an innocent protester who was shot in the head and killed. Perversely, the regime later arrested the father of the young protester who they murdered, as he was grieving.
6. The coup plotters are not a clandestine conspiracy. In fact, a courageous Honduran newspaper has named exactly who they are. In an article entitled “These are the Coup Leaders, They Will Be Judged!”, the daily newspaper El Libertador has named 48 members of the Honduran elite class who are directly involved in this illegal coup. It’s not a secret and the international community has the opportunity to hold these individuals responsible for attacking democracy head-on.
7. There is a very real and very organized group of far right-wing elites who have been behind the savage brutalities committed against the people of Latin America in contemporary history. And, these same people are responding to the participatory democratic revolution that has been taking place throughout the region. The coup in Honduras is particularly dangerous because it offers this elite class the chance to show that they can still pull off military coups, the overthrow or assassination of reform-minded leaders and the subversion of democracy to the will of large corporations, banks and wealthy families. It is up to everyone who believes in representative and/or participatory democracy to take a stand here and now.