Indefensible Defenders

( on an extended London adventure due to Mother Nature )

On December 16, the Attorney General of Honduras (Procuraduria General) asked a Tegucigalpa court to appoint a public defender for Manuel Zelaya Rosales

"so that they could facilitate proceedings against him,"

said Ethel Deras, the Procuraduria General.

Deras said that rather than smoothing the path for Zelaya, as Canahuati's papers (El Heraldo and La Prensa) have accused, she wants to "move the case forward":

"ex-president Manuel Zelaya Rosales has stated publicly that he will not appear (before a justice) because he considers there aren't sufficient guarantees in the country for his appearance, and he has declined to appoint a defender. This office has request, based on this knowledge, that [the court] name a defense lawyer so the cases can continue.....In conformity with the Legal Proceedings Code and the Honduran Constitution, everyone processed in the courts has the right to a defender."

Just not, apparently, the right to choose their defender.

But wait, it gets better:

"I believe it is in the national interest to finalize once and for all these proceedings and bring them to an end, and a criminal trial comes to an end only when we read the real truth of the facts; it is logical that we continue with the criminal process."

Sigh.

Arturo Corrales, a Micheletti supporter and Lobo Sosa's Minister of Planning, says that Lobo Sosa asked the Attorney General to act.

"What the President (Lobo Sosa) asked of the judicial branch was they look for a legal way to leave the charges behind on these two remaining cases (of supposed corruption) to establish a propitious environment so that the ex president can come to the country."

So it's a request from on high to make this a national priority to settle this case.

This "procedure" goes completely against the Código Procesal Penal of Honduras, the very law Deras cites as supporting her actions.

Here's the problem she's trying to get around. Manuel Zelaya Rosales refuses to participate in the charges against him, and as part of not recognizing the court, has not named a defense lawyer. This pretty much puts the case on hold under Honduran law, until Zelaya either returns and voluntarily presents himself, or is arrested and brought before the court, or names a defense lawyer to represent him.

Under the Code (Chapter 5, Articles 111-122), a defender can be appointed by the court only when the defendant cannot afford to hire one, or is mentally incompetent to designate one. The code assumes the defendant has already been arrested or named as the target of an investigation by the Public Prosecutor. A defendant can only have two defense lawyers, plus one substitute.

Article 14 of the Code says

the right to defense is inviolable....the accused and their defender have the right to be present in all procedural acts that incorporate elements of proof.

Article 15 reads, in full

Everyone should have the technical assistance and advocacy of a legal practitioner, from the time they are held as allegedly involved in a crime, or when they voluntarily surrender and make a declaration, until the sentence has been fully executed. If the accused does not appoint a defender, the judicial authority shall immediately request the appointment of a public defender, or failing that will immediately appoint them self. This right is absolute. Its violation nullifies the acts that occur without the participation of counsel for the accused.

Key points here, which seem to have escaped the top attorney in Honduras charged with following this code: the defendant has to "held" or "voluntarily surrender" to put in motion the appointment of a defender. And the right to appoint a defender is absolute.

Its violation nullifies the acts that occur without the participation of counsel for the accused.

While the UCD is not my idea of a legal authority, they outlined the same points made above in a letter to Supreme Court Chief Justice Aviles, pointing out that this would nullify any judicial actions taken as a result of appointing defenders.

The Honduran papers are unclear on whether the court actually appointed defenders or not, with published reports that they did, and that they are waiting to decide.

So much for a rule of law.

Lobo Sosa: I know who wants to throw me out

We previously mentioned rumors from Honduras of a possible coup against Porfirio Lobo Sosa, referred to in an editorial published in Tiempo advising Lobo Sosa to "pack his pijamas".

El Heraldo reported a bit ago that today Porfirio Lobo Sosa hinted that he knows who is interested in ousting him. This came to light after the meeting of the Council of Ministers this morning in the city of Guaimaca, in Francisco Morazan.

Lobo Sosa responded to a press question about rumors going through the National Congress that he intended to fire the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Jorge Rivera Avilés.

"No, whoever they want to mess with, they say it is the President of the Republic,"

Lobo Sosa answered, and added that he has already identified all the people who seek his ouster.

Asked if he had any fear he replied,

"fear, please no; better yet, they'll get tangled up with me, they don't know... I'll tell you something, never forget that for every action there's a reaction.... and I'll tell you that we have everything well ordered. I have them all pinpointed, I know who they are.... I have all the information."

Interesting source for this news: both El Heraldo and La Prensa are owned by Jorge Canahuati Larach, one of the principal forces behind the coup. Canahuati Larach financed the Washington, D.C. campaign of Lanny Davis to legitimate the coup, and was frequently visited last fall by the generals who carried out Zelaya's expatriation.

Women's Day and the Frente de Resistencia

A story dated March 9 in Cuba's Prensa Latina reports that the Frente de Resistencia is calling for a popular consulta on June 28, 2010. The aim would be to carry out the popular opinion poll that was cut short by the coup d'etat of 2009. But where that consulta was going to ask if there should be a referendum on last November's ballot to determine levels of support for a constituyente, the proposed 2010 consulta is directly on whether to convene a constituent assembly.

The same communique also convenes the "Segundo Encuentro por la Refundación de Honduras" (Second Meeting for the Refounding of Honduras) this coming March 12 to 14. Following up on the first assembly of the Frente, held in Siguatepeque, this second meeting will take place in La Esperanza.

Siguatepeque, located in the Department of Comayagua, was a traditional Lenca community. Today, it is the location of the Red Comal (Comal Network), a development organization working with rural men and women that was targeted by the de facto regime in the days leading up to the coup. La Esperanza, in the Department of Intibucá, is located in the heart of contemporary Lenca country, and has been a center of popular and Lenca resistance, exemplified by this video statement against the coup d'etat by a Lenca woman. The places chosen for meetings by the Frente exemplify the fact that the Frente is a network of labor, campesino, indigenous, and women's organizations. Which brings us to International Women's Day.

While the communique from the Frente referred to by Prensa Latina has yet to appear on the website Vos el Soberano, the convening of the gathering in La Esperanza is mentioned in a statement by Feminists in Resistance posted on March 7, anticipating the International Day of Women, today, March 8.

The Feminists in Resistance write

The commemoration of this March 8 is invested with profound significance for organized women, since it coincides with the celebration of the first century that this date has been recognized as the International Day of the Working Woman. Nonetheless we cannot forget that this date is the result of the great and heroic journeys that we have carried out through the course of history to attain the dignity and emancipation of working women and women in general. We should not forget the pioneers that, on March 8, 1908, declared themselves on strike, demanding the right to form unions, salary increases, vocational training and a workday of less than 12 hours.

Linking the challenges facing women then to those in Honduras after the coup and today, the statement calls on

world feminist organizations, international women's movements, popular movements and democratic institutions on all the continents and, of course, all our [Honduran] people who from their respective spaces can contribute to holding back this repressive wave against the Honduran popular movement that is setting free a peaceful struggle to achieve a life of peace and liberty.

The full communique from the Resistance Front, Number 51, is available on the blog Resistencia 5 Estrellas. Coverage in Prensa Latina is partial: reporting only on the first two points of the communique (calling the consulta, and condemning the US for interference in the country's affairs).

Left out was the Frente's call for human rights organizations to pay attention to the escalation of tension in the Aguan valley. In this point of the statement, the Frente accuses

La Prensa and El Heraldo, property of Jorge Canahuati Larach, and the TV channels of the Corporación de Televicentro, property of Rafael Ferrari, that attempt to show the working families and popular leaders as terrorists.

In addition, the communique expresses support for the union of workers at the national university, UNAH.

Why do these omissions matter? whether it is CNN failing to discuss the entire context of the coup d'etat, or Cuban media ignoring the current local issues to cherry-pick the Frente's statements, it is important not to substitute selective representations that match our expectations for the unprecedented historical processes unfolding through the agency of the Frente and its constituents, including the Honduran Feminists in Resistance.

Saludos, compañeras, en el día internacional del mujer. Venceremos.

Echos of the 1980s

Hey, La Prensa, the 1980s called and they want their rhetoric back!

I knew something was wrong when I read the story in Jorge Canahuati's La Prensa on March 1 entitled "Guerrilla cell arming itself in the Bajo Aguan". The article, which claims to be based on a military intelligence report in their possession, makes a series of unbelievable claims about the campesinos opposing Miguel Facussé's title to several farms of african oil palms in the Bajo Aguan.

In a nutshell, it accuses the campesinos of allying themselves with drug traffickers for protection, organized by non-governmental organizations "of a socialist type" and by Jesuits "with communist ideologies". The alleged report claims to have studied 54 campesino cooperatives that through misadministration and corruption sold off their lands in 1993, but now want it back.

The Honduran government of the 1970s and 1980s had a single minded agrarian policy. If a group of campesinos wanted land, they were made to form agricultural cooperatives and the cooperative was then given land at the discretion of the state.

In the Bajo Aguan, the campesinos involved were largely from more highland departments of Santa Barbara, Lempira, Intibuca, and so on, forced to move into the tropical lowlands of Honduras to have access to land. The government of the 1980s failed to learn what the Spanish colonial government learned in building the eighteenth-century fort at Omoa: when you make highland people relocate to the lowlands, they die of malaria and other tropical diseases that only rarely occur in the highlands. Yet the government of Honduras continued to encourage people from the highlands to "emigrate" to the lowlands to gain access to land. The land campesinos were moved to in large numbers in the 1980s previously had been developed for agriculture in the 1920s and 1930s by banana companies, then abandoned as banana production became uneconomical.

In exchange for the land, cooperatives were directed, as part of national agricultural policy, to plant export crops like sugar cane, african palm, and to a lesser extent cacao, and were given low interest loans to buy the equipment and fertilizers necessary to plant and harvest these crops. They were not given guaranteed markets, or price guarantees on their crops, and had to compete with the oligarchy, who already controlled the markets for these raw agricultural goods and set the prices. Many cooperatives went badly into debt when market prices were low for their crop, and disbanded, though others managed to survive.

The supposed intelligence report alleges that Miguel Facussé and a Nicaraguan, Reynaldo Morales, bought up land as cooperatives failed and sold land to pay off their debts. The campesinos contest this, pointing to agrarian policy under Rafael Callejas in the early 1990s, under the Law for the Modernization and Development of the Agricultural Sector. Through this law, the government expropriated land it had previously given to campesino cooperatives, and turned it over to modern industrial farmers. The timing of this policy is not coincidentally linked to the paving of the road from La Ceiba into the Aguan valley, and back up to Olancho, which happened in the 1980s, giving this region decent access to the national market for the first time.

The alleged report, La Prensa tells us, singles out and analyzes the positions of a number of named organizations. The Movimiento Unido de Campesinos del Aguan (MUCA) is said to be more heavily armed than the National Police and supposedly is causing "thousands of dollars of losses daily to businesses" and scaring away international investment. Here's the most ludicrous part: La Prensa tells us that a named campesino leader affiliated with MUCA, and a named campesino leader affiliated with the resistance, are purchasing arms and waiting for FARC, the Colombian guerrilla movement, to come and train them in how to use them! Even more ludicrous is the allegation that these resistence leaders also head a band of kidnappers. The report claims there are orders out for their arrest. Both of these named individuals would be easy to find and arrest, since neither is in hiding, were there actually any such arrest warrants.

The report goes on like this, a fantasy with no anchor in reality, laughable if things like this didn't kill people. It talks about school teachers, assuring us that in the end, they won't support the campesinos. It talks about the Comité de Organizaciones Populares del Aguán (COPA), which sided with the resistance during the coup. It describes the Catholic Church "trying to fortify its political party, the Christian Democrats", and that the priests in the region are Jesuits, and are marxist advocates of liberation theology.

Rafael Alegria, head of Via Campesina and a leader in the resistance, rightly denounced this fantastic story. He reports he talked with the military spokesperson, Ramiro Archiaga, who denied the existence of any such military report and said he would ask La Prensa for a written explanation. Alegria attributed this bit of disinformation to the security minister, Oscar Alvarez.

A pseudonymous source, published and translated yesterday by Adrienne Pine at quotha.net, attributed this campaign of disinformation directly to La Prensa's owner, Jorge Canahuati Larach, along with Maria Antonia de Fuentes, Ana Morales, and Nelson Garcia.

Whatever the source of this disinformation, it is dangerous. It is meant to provoke bloodshed. It is a reminder that "newspapers" such as Canahuati's La Prensa and El Heraldo have not changed since they served as media to churn up enough controversy to incite and then justify a military coup d'etat. Maybe the rhetoric is from the fight against communism of the 1980s; but the tactic is that of yellow journalism of the 19th century.

Mario Canahuati Goes to Washington

A story on the AP newswire last Saturday quotes Mario Canahuati, new Foreign Minister of Honduras, saying he is on his way to Washington, DC to promote a direct meeting between Barack Obama and Porfirio Lobo Sosa as part of the campaign to normalize relations with the US.

According to El Tiempo, Lobo Sosa's main goal in meeting with President Obama would be to seek extension of the Temporary Protected Status, extended to almost 80,000 Honduran immigrants in the US. This status allowed undocumented migrants who came to the US in the wake of Hurricane Mitch to remain there.

Foreign Relations Minister Canahuati is quoted in the Spanish El Economista as saying

What has been requested is to strengthen relations with the US and logically for that a reunion of president Porfirio Lobo with president Barack Obama is necessary.

Of course, a direct face-to-face conversation between the two is not required for strengthening of relations with the US; but it would be a publicity boon for Lobo Sosa. It is worth remembering that President Obama never met directly with former President Zelaya after the coup d'etat, despite Zelaya making at least five separate trips to Washington, and despite reiterating that Zelaya remained the only recognized president of Honduras in the eyes of the US government, even as late as January 22 of this year. Instead, Zelaya was offered meetings with representatives of the State Department, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. There is a reason that governments use high-ranking cabinet members for such purposes: the aura that comes from meeting directly with the US president is political capital on its own.

So does Mario Canahuati have a chance of promoting such an encounter between Obama and Lobo Sosa? In part, that depends on defining a politically acceptable agenda. So it is worth pointing out that while the AP claims the purpose of such a meeting would be "restoring ties damaged by last June's coup", the actual proposal by Canahuati steers clear of that touchy terrain. Instead, by raising the impending end of the protected status in summer of this year, Canahuati has identified an issue that is of sufficient weight that it can credibly be proposed as the focus of joint discussions by presidents of the two countries. Which of course does not mean Obama has to agree to this, and given the radioactive nature of debate in the US about undocumented immigrants, and hysteria promoted by news coverage of gang violence by youths of Central American background, it would not be surprising if this issue were taken up at a lower level of the government.

And that brings us to a second factor at play in this bid to get Lobo Sosa some reflected glow, which is Canahuati's own skills and connections. As minister of Relaciones Exteriores, Canahuati brings to the table a history as Ambassador to Washington, from 2002 to 2005. As Ambassador, he was responsible for negotiating a previous renewal of the protected status given to undocumented Hondurans in the US after Hurricane Mitch. In 2005, he was the National Party candidate for vice president, on the losing ticket with Porfirio Lobo Sosa. He went on to be President of the Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada (COHEP, Honduran Council of Private Enterprise) in 2006, speaking in opposition to President Zelaya's policies.

Canahuati is the son of a businessman, Juan Canahuati, whose wealth came from textile companies in the north coast, near San Pedro Sula, founded in 1964, and today called Grupo Lovable. His brother is Jesús Canahuati, head of the maquiladora's association. Jorge Canahuati, owner of La Prensa and El Heraldo, is another relative. According to a profile published while he was Ambassador to Washington previously, Mario Canahuati studied industrial engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

In a previous post, we noted Canahuati's role as a defender of the coup d'etat of 2009 who promoted the idea that the economic sector could withstand international pressure. He was a major rival of Lobo Sosa's in the primary campaign for the National Party nomination, leading the "Todos Somos Honduras" movement. Juan Canahuati was identified by sociologist Leticia Salomon as one of the group of wealthy elites who backed the June 28 coup d'etat. Jesus Canahuati was vice president of the Honduran section of CEAL, the Business Council of Latin America, notorious as the on-the-record employer of Lanny Davis as apologist for the 2008 coup.