http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23211.htm


Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?
By John Perkins

August 07, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.

Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc. (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras’s minimum wage, claiming that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.

Memories are short in the US, but not in Central America. I kept hearing people who claimed that it was a matter of record that Chiquita (United Fruit) and the CIA had toppled Guatemala’s democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973. These people were certain that Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed a minimum wage increase, like Zelaya’s.

I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president, “Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom line for minimum wages. The big companies are determined to stop what they call a ‘leftist revolt’ in this hemisphere. In throwing out Zelaya they are sending frightening messages to all the other presidents who are trying to raise the living standards of their people.”


It did not take much imagination to envision the turmoil sweeping through every Latin American capital. There had been a collective sign of relief at Barack Obama’s election in the U.S., a sense of hope that the empire in the North would finally exhibit compassion toward its southern neighbors, that the unfair trade agreements, privatizations, draconian IMF Structural Adjustment Programs, and threats of military intervention would slow down and perhaps even fade away. Now, that optimism was turning sour.

The cozy relationship between Honduras’s military coup leaders and the corporatocracy were confirmed a couple of days after my arrival in Panama. England’s The Guardian ran an article announcing that “two of the Honduran coup government's top advisers have close ties to the US secretary of state. One is Lanny Davis, an influential lobbyist who was a personal lawyer for President Bill Clinton and also campaigned for Hillary. . . The other hired gun for the coup government that has deep Clinton ties is (lobbyist) Bennett Ratcliff.” (1)

DemocracyNow! broke the news that Chiquita was represented by a powerful Washington law firm, Covington & Burling LLP, and its consultant, McLarty Associates (2). President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder had been a Covington partner and a defender of Chiquita when the company was accused of hiring “assassination squads” in Colombia (Chiquita was found guilty, admitting that it had paid organizations listed by the US government as terrorist groups “for protection” and agreeing in 2004 to a $25 million fine). (3) George W. Bush’s UN Ambassador, John Bolton, a former Covington lawyer, had fiercely opposed Latin American leaders who fought for their peoples’ rights to larger shares of the profits derived from their resources; after leaving the government in 2006, Bolton became involved with the
Project for the New American Century, the Council for National Policy, and a number of other programs that promote corporate hegemony in Honduras and elsewhere.

McLarty Vice Chairman John Negroponte was U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, former Deputy Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, and U.S. Representative to the United Nations; he played a major role in the U.S.-backed Contra’s secret war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and has consistently opposed the policies of the democratically-elected pro-reform Latin American presidents. (4) These three men symbolize the insidious power of the corporatocracy, its bipartisan composition, and the fact that the Obama Administration has been sucked in.

The Los Angeles Times went to the heart of this matter when it concluded:

What happened in Honduras is a classic Latin American coup in another sense: Gen. Romeo Vasquez, who led it, is an alumnus of the United States' School of the Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). The school is best known for producing Latin American officers who have committed major human rights abuses, including military coups. (5)

All of this leads us once again to the inevitable conclusion: you and I must change the system. The president – whether Democrat or Republican – needs us to speak out.

Chiquita, Dole and all your representatives need to hear from you. Zelaya must be reinstated.

FOOTNOTES

(1)

“Who's in charge of US foreign policy? The coup in Honduras has exposed divisions between Barack Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton” by Mark Weisbrot

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jul/16/honduras-coup-obama-clinton (July 23, 2009)

(2) http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/21/from_arbenz_to_zelaya_chiquita_in (July 23, 2009)

(3) “Chiquita admits to paying Colombia terrorists: Banana company agrees to $25 million fine for paying AUC for protection” MSNBC March 15, 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17615143/ (July 24, 2009)

(4) Fore more information: http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2009/07/eric-holder-and-chaquita-covington.html (July 23, 2009)

(5) “The high-powered hidden support for Honduras' coup: The country's rightful president was ousted by a military leadership that takes many of its cues from Washington insiders.” by Mark Weisbrot, Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2009

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-weisbrot23-2009jul23,0,7566740.story (July 23, 2009)

Zelaya is Kaput !
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Manuel Zelaya's chances of getting restored to the Honduran presidency become more distant with each passing week. Across Latin America, his allies and foes alike see a precedent being set.

It's a glimmer of hope for the region's conservative elite, which has watched with dismay over the past decade as a wave of leftist presidents has risen to power, promising to topple the establishment and give greater power to the poor.

When the once-moderate Zelaya started down that path, Honduras' military, Congress and Supreme Court teamed up to oust him, and despite protests from across the hemisphere the coup-installed government remains in place. Could this be the model Latin America's conservatives were desperately seeking?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who was briefly ousted in a 2002 coup himself, said Cuba's Fidel Castro told him the situation in Honduras will "open the door to the wave of coups coming in Latin America."

"Fidel says something that is very true," he said.

Added Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, a close ally of Chavez and Zelaya: "We have intelligence reports that say that after Zelaya, I'm next."

Across the region, conservatives who long ruled Latin America — and still own much of it — are showing signs of unrest, with armed uprisings in Bolivia and marches in Guatemala where tens of thousands of protesters have demanded the president resign.

But the most extreme case came in Honduras, a country with three decades of political stability and seven consecutive democratically elected presidents.

"This coup really surprised us," said Jorge Acevedo, deputy director of a Honduran human rights group. "We thought the issue of civilian rule was something we had resolved a long time ago."

Soldiers arrested Zelaya on June 28 and flew him into exile, and within hours Congress swore in the next-in-line to the presidency, Roberto Micheletti. In the six weeks since, demonstrations by Zelaya supporters and diplomatic efforts by countries ranging from the United States to Venezuela have been unsuccessful in orchestrating Zelaya's return.

Argentina's Cristina Fernandez, whose popularity has plummeted, said allowing Honduras' interim government to remain in power until Nov. 29 presidential elections would undermine democracy across the region.

"It would be enough for someone to stage a civilian coup, backed by the armed forces, or simply a civilian one and later justify it by convoking elections," Fernandez told South American leaders. "And then democratic guarantees would truly be fiction."

Honduras responded Tuesday by giving Argentina's diplomatic mission 72 hours to leave the country.

Those who have stirred turmoil in left-led countries insist they are the ones defending democracy.

Many of the so-called "revolutionary" governments that have been voted into power from Nicaragua to Bolivia have not only tried to redistribute wealth but also remove limits on their time in power. Many have reduced the powers of opponents in ways that have made traditional elites feel their private holdings, investments and democratic freedoms are under attack.

"I think Zelaya gave enough reasons to be removed from government — reasons that exist in abundance in Venezuela," said Venezuelan opposition leader Jose Luis Farias. "Chavez has violated the constitution a lot more than Zelaya did."

In Bolivia, opposition Gov. Ruben Costas called Zelaya's ouster a logical reaction to "a process that follows the same book as Chavez, which only seeks constitutional changes to perpetuate strongmen."

"There is a limit in countries where we are suffering abuses," he told radio Erbol.

Of course, the Honduras precedent goes only so far.

No other leader in the region faces the utter political isolation that drove Zelaya from power so swiftly and efficiently: The military, the Supreme Court and even Zelaya's own political party turned against him when he deepened his allegiance with Chavez and pursued constitutional changes in defiance of court rulings.

Elsewhere in the region, many of the leaders have already solidified their hold on power, in part through referendums and new constitutions overwhelmingly approved by voters. In Venezuela, other branches of government including congress and the judiciary are stacked with Chavez allies, leaving his opponents with few options for getting back into power.

"Removing Chavez through legal means — that is, through institutions — is very difficult because he has absolute control over all the institutions of the country," Farias said.

Leftist leaders are taking no chances.

Ecuador has announced plans to create citizens committees to defend against Honduras-style coups. Correa has not provided details of how the groups will work, but critics fear they could become something akin to Cuba's Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, used to monitor "counterrevolutionary" activities.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, who calls two weeks of deadly protests in the eastern lowlands last year a "civilian coup," recently announced that three men killed by police had been planning to assassinate him in a plot backed by opposition leaders.

Guatemala's Alvaro Colom said he was being targeted by elites angry about his attempts to eliminate corporate tax loopholes when thousands took to the streets in May. They were demanding his resignation after a videotape by a prominent lawyer foretold his own murder, claiming Colom was to blame.

And for any Latin American leader who feels confident of their hold on power, Honduras offers a sobering lesson in how quickly a president can lose control.

Luis Vicente Leon, an analyst with Venezuela's Datanalisis polling firm, said all of Latin America's leftist leaders "have a lot of enemies."

"No one," he said, "is immune."

Nice find Fredd good article.

Thanks Riz where have you been ?