The Honduran Political Crisis

What is Honduras to me? Or, me to Honduras? Those are two interesting questions. I have a Facebook friend who does mission work in Honduras, and she has been writing passionately about Honduras on Facebook. I admire her passion and her desire for social justice in that Central American country, so I decided to do some research.

In case you didn't know it, Honduras is the middle of a political and social crisis. Political and social crises in Honduras are fairly common. It is one of the poorest countries in the world. The United States is its major trading partner. Honduras exports bananas, clothing, illegal immigrants and drugs.

According to the CIA World Factbook,

Honduras, the second poorest country in Central America, has an extraordinarily unequal distribution of income and high unemployment. The economy relies heavily on a narrow range of exports, notably bananas and coffee, making it vulnerable to natural disasters and shifts in commodity prices; however, investments in the maquila and non-traditional export sectors are slowly diversifying the economy. Economic growth remains dependent on the US economy its largest trading partner, and will decline in 2009 as a result of reduction in export demand and tightening global credit markets.

Most Americans can't spell Honduras and most couldn't place it on a map. Since I had five years of Spanish in high school, my ignorance is less. Capital: Tegucigalpa. I know it fought a senseless little war with El Salvador (The Soccer War) in the late 1960s. It was one of our staging points for Reagan's dirty war against the Ortega Regime in Nicarauga and it was the place where KMart's Kathie Lee Gifford line of clothing was manufactured in sweatshops using child labor. (Bit of an embarassment that) I imagine the sweatshops are still there and indigenous people are still being exploited.

So now that I've told you a little bit about Honduras, I will describe, the current political crisis, the international and national reactions to the crisis and the interesting way that certain conservative political constituencies have attempted to use the crisis to embarass the United States and the Obama administration.

The current political crisis Honduras has been a democracy, but at best a fragile one. Its current president, Manuel (Mel) Zelaya, was elected as a conservative in 2005. During the last couple of years he has allied himself with leftist and populist elements in the country. Internationally, he has also embraced the Latin American brand of socialism expoused by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Like Chavez, Zelaya wanted to run Honduras beyond the end of his 2009 term. So he tried to hold a plebescite to allow him to continue past Nov. 2009.

Zelayas attempt to stay in power, caused a political firestorm. The Honduran Supreme Court declared his actions illegal. The Army rousted him out of bed and flew him to Nicaragua. He was replaced by Congressional Leader Roberto Micheletti. International reaction to Zelaya's ouster was swift and fairly consistent. The Obama Administration joined the European Union and the rest of the world in labeling Zelayas ouster as a coup and insisting that President Zelaya be allowed to return to Honduras and finish his Presidencial term. The Obama administration also encouraged both sides to negotiate a compromise under the auspices of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.

I became aware of the crisis when my Facebook friend posted this op-ed by current Honduran President Roberto Micheletti in op-ed in the WSJ

One of America’s most loyal Latin American allies—Honduras—has been in the midst of a constitutional crisis that threatens its democracy. Sadly, key undisputed facts regarding the crisis have often been ignored by America’s leaders, at least during the earliest days of the crisis.

The op-ed made me curious, because while the Wall Street Journal is a great place for news regarding investment, its editorial page has become the mouth piece for American right wingers.
Once I started looking, I found considerable Right-wing support for coup Magazines, the National Review and the Weekly Standard support the Micheletti government and criticized the Obama administration for failing support the ouster of Zelaya.

Soon some Republican members of Congress were beginning to express dismay at the Washington’s lack of support for Micheletti. On July 24, Congressman Connie Mack of R-Florida posted an editorial in Human Events, castigating Secretary of State Hilary Clinton for supporting negotiations conducted by Pres. Arias.

Day after day, the message from the State Department has been that we should let the negotiators negotiate and ultimately accept the outcome from the Arias talks. But in what seems to be Secretary Clinton’s first conversation with Honduran President Roberto Micheletti since the removal of Mr. Manuel Zelaya, Secretary Clinton joined the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and other leaders in the region and warned President Micheletti of serious consequences if he did not back down and allow Mr. Zelaya to return to power.

According to Congressman Mack, supporting negotiations was tantamount to letting the terrorists win,

“Our nation’s legitimacy as the leader of the free world comes into question when we accept the Administration’s argument that by joining the thugocrats, we neutralize their anti-American rhetoric and leave them deflated and without an enemy to fight.”

Mack then went down to Honduras to investigate the political crisis first hand. After returning from Honduras, Mack denounced the administration’s cancelling the visas of four Honduran diplomats.

“Having returned from a trip to Honduras this past weekend where I met with President Micheletti, Members of the National Congress, the Supreme Court President, Honduran and American businessmen, and human rights organizations, it is clear that the Honduran people want a peaceful, lawful resolution to the upheaval. They don’t want the United States to cut off aid to their country. They don’t want our country to pull diplomatic visas. And they don’t want us to stand with the “thugocrats” of the Western Hemisphere like Hugo Chavez.

“The Honduran people, in their fight for freedom from the tyranny of Manuel Zelaya, have earned our support and deserve to have the United States stand with them as they seek freedom and democracy for their country.”

Mack is not the only congressional Republican to criticize or express concern regarding the Administration’s handling of the Honduras’ current political crisis. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) and Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) have also shared their concerns with the State Department.

The Republican view point is wrong headed according to a July 23, 2009, article in the Economist

This argument is short-sighted and wrong. Mr Zelaya’s many faults did not justify his early-morning arrest and summary deportation. Coups are bad whatever the political colour of their victims. That is a lesson Latin America learned the hard way. Any election held under Mr Micheletti will be seen by many as illegitimate. But it is similarly wrongheaded to seek to reverse the coup through violence, as Mr Zelaya, egged on by Mr Chávez, seems to wish. The evidence suggests that only about one Honduran in three supports Mr Zelaya.

While the right-wing media and certain Republican members of Congress, condemn the Obama Administration for not supporting acting President Micheletti and blessing the coup, other voices are examining the implications of the long-term damage that endorsing the coup could cause.
Kevin Casas-Zamora, a Fellow at the Brooking Institution took a dimmer view of the view of the coup. The intervention by the military was illegal and wrong.

Now the Honduran military have responded in kind: an illegal referendum has met an illegal military intervention, with the avowed intention of protecting the constitution. Moreover, as has been so often the case, this intervention has been called for and celebrated by Zelaya’s civilian opponents. For the past week, the Honduran Congress has waxed lyrical about the armed forces as the guarantors of the constitution, a disturbing notion in Latin America. When we hear that, we can expect the worst. And the worst has happened. At the very least, we are witnessing in Honduras the return of the sad role of the military as the ultimate referee in the political conflicts amongst the civilian leadership, a huge step back in the consolidation of democracy.

The U.S. has been spending a great deal of time and our tax dollars to provide a varity of of aid to Honduras. Some of that aid has been dedicated to improving the quality of the Honduran government. The U.S. has been working with Honduran officials trying to improve the quality of their government. Aid has been directed to improving the quality of government officials. Better government will allow the Honduran government to improve the quality of life of its people, reduce poverty and foster real economic growth. According the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) it has been ,

working to strengthen the transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of local governments; increase civil society participation in the oversight of public funds and local decision-making; support free and fair elections; and promote civic education among Honduran youth. USAID promotes democracy and governance in Honduras primarily through decentralization (the transfer of responsibility and resources from the central government to the local governments) to increase participation in local decision making.

To its credit, Honduras has been run by civilians and not the military for nearly 20 years. The use of soldiers to end the coup can be seen as a bad omen. No one wants the military to seize power. Some supporters of the coup said the soldiers were acting lawfully when the escorted President Zelaya to Nicaragua. But still having the military topple the current president is not in the best long-term interest of Honduran democracy.

Recognizing the Micheletti government would also play into the hands of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Zelaya was attempting to use the populist left-wing ideas exposed by Chavez to maintain his hold on power. The Obama Administration appears to have been acting wisely when it refused to recognize the coup and encouraging negoitiations mediated by Oscar Arias.

According to the July 28 article in the Miami Herald, a balanced, patient approach to the crisis has forced Mr. Zelaya depend on Washington and has limited Hugo Chavez to bellicose posturing,

Chavez has limited his action to calling for Hondurans to rise up to reinstate Zelaya, even as pro-Zelaya protests have been small. Instead, the Venezuelan president has been a talkative bystander, calling coup leaders "gorillas" and referring to Micheletti as "Goriletti."
This is not the role Chavez imagined for himself. In a decade in office, he has used his nation's oil wealth and his vision of a united continent free of "U.S. imperialism" to cultivate a leadership role beyond Venezuela's borders.

At the moment, Chavez cannot accuse the United States of preaching the benefits of democracy in one hand while supporting the overthrow of the democratically-elected Zelaya. This would give Hugo Chavez an opportunity and justification to meddle further in Honduran politics.

Conclusion,

As of today, not much has changed. Zelaya appears to be slowly running out of time and political options. The Micheletti government benefits by delaying his return and since the United States is still encouraging both sides to negotiate a solution, while holding the threat of harsher economic and political sanctions. The Obama's administration's demand that both parties negotiate a settlement will probably lead to a non-voilent transition of power, and a new election.

But what of the Honduran people? It appears that the current political crisis is just another in a long line of politcal crises. Most Hondurans don't have much faith in their government or their politicians. Until the country's chronic poverty and economic problems are solved it will not matter too much who runs the country. Politicians like Micheletti and Zelaya are just mirror images of one another. Roger Marin Neda, in a July 6, 2009, editorial "Who Cares About Zelaya?" described the political apathy of many Hondurans,

After almost 30 years of formal democracy, Julia, like most Hondurans, has lost all trust in politicians. While we have had basic liberties and precarious growth, our leaders have thoroughly failed to ease this country’s poverty and longstanding social divide. For these reasons, many Hondurans are apathetic about politicians — and politics in general.

According to Marin Neda, nothing will change until the politicians change,

Mr. Zelaya may or may not return to serve the remaining months of his term. But for the future of Honduras, does it really even matter? Until a new generation of young, uncontaminated, democratic politicians take control — and the deep inequalities in our economic system are addressed — we will not be able to trust our leaders.

Capitano Tedeschi

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