Can Honduras meet the certification goals of the Alliance for Prosperity?

Tiempo reported today that the newly passed US budget bill includes money for, and suggests the implementation of, a Comision Internacional Contra la Impunidad y la Corupción en Honduras (CICIH), something the indignados have been calling for since they began marching in May of this year.

Tiempo did not get it quite right. The bill does contain authorization of funding for a CICIH, should Honduras implement it, but does not suggest or mandate that Honduras do so nor does it set a cap on support for one, if implemented. It provides that if Honduras or El Salvador establishes an International Commission against corruption and impunity, funds from the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) can be used to support them if the House Appropriations Committee agrees after consultation.

Which is not to say that the bill has no policy implications for Honduras, and for US relations with it. House Bill 2029, which passed and was signed by President Obama, establishes the appropriations for the State Department, including the authorization language regarding the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle of Central America.

In reaction to concerns about continuing migration from these countries, Congress bars the disbursement of 25% of the approved funds to the Northern Triangle countries unless the Secretary of State can certify that these governments are informing their population of the dangers of traveling to the southwestern border of the United States; are combating human trafficking and smuggling; have improved their border security; and are cooperating with the US government and governments in the region to facilitate the return, repatriation, and reintegration of those that do not qualify for refugee status under International law. 

A further 50% of the funds for the Alliance are embargoed until and unless the Secretary of Sate can certify that each government meets twelve other criteria. In the case of Honduras, we think the State Department has its work cut out for it.

First the Secretary of State must certify in writing that each government is taking effective steps to
"establish an autonomous public accountability entity to provide oversight of the Plan". Honduras does not currently have such an entity that we can identify.

Next the Secretary of State must certify that each government is combating corruption "including investigating and prosecuting government officials credibly alleged to be corrupt."

In Honduras, there are far more identified cases of corruption than the Public Prosecutor's office has chosen to prosecute, and it has not prosecuted the most flagrant cases involving high status individuals in the National Party (the current ruling party in Honduras).

The Secretary of State is also charged to certify that these governments, including Honduras, has taken steps to "implement reforms, policies, and programs to improve transparency and strengthen public institutions, including increasing the capacity and independence of the judiciary and the Office of the Attorney General".

Honduras has recently been signatory to an agreement with Transparency International and the Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa (ASJ) to promote and encourage transparency in the Honduran government.

There's a conflict between what Honduras agreed to do with Transparency International, and what it is doing with the Ley de Secretos Oficiales, which allows the Honduran government to arbitrarily and unilaterally make anything it wants unavailable to the public for up to 25 years, an action taken despite strong opposition from groups like the ASJ and its own government transparency watchdog, the Instituto de Acceso a la Información Publica. In June of 2015 the Instituto de Acceso a la Información Publica issued a resolution ordering the Honduran Congress to reform the law to follow Article 72 of the constitution and other laws related to human rights and other agreements Honduras has entered into regarding transparency. To date, the Honduran Congress has refused to amend the law.

Honduras has taken baby steps towards training the judiciary and the office of the Public Prosecutor to better be able to do their jobs. While there's been a large financial investment in training, there is little to show for it. The Honduran government has agreed to implement the OAS sponsored MACCIH, but it largely shaped this program into yet another advisory group that will propose changes to the judiciary and Public Prosecutor's office. The current President and Congress have ignored at least four sets of recommendations for changes to the judiciary since the 2009 coup and we don't see any reason to expect the outcome this time will be different.

The Secretary must further certify that civil society organizations and local communities are consulted during the design of projects, and participate in the implementation of them. The lack of such consultation has been a constant concern for indigenous and rural communities faced with mining, hydroelectric, and other government approved projects.

Another certification required by the bill is that the Honduran government is taking effective steps to "counter the activities of criminal gangs, drug traffickers, and organized crime." 

Here the government of Honduras has a mixed record.  On the one hand, it has somewhat improved the national homicide rate, bringing it down to about 60 homicides per 100,00 population this year.  It has made numerous arrests of gang members and members of organized crime, but has successfully prosecuted none of them to date.  All high level members of organized crime in Honduras have been extradited to the United States for trial on charges here.  Extortion is rampant, kidnapping for ransom is on the rise, and mass murder, in which four or more people are killed in a single incident, is on the rise. Drug use within Honduras is increasing as well.

Another certification deals with the government taking effective steps to "investigate and prosecute in the civilian justice system members of military and police forces who are credibly alleged to have violated human rights, and ensure that the military and police are cooperating in such cases".

In theory this is already true under the Ley del Ministerio Publico of 1993.  However, the Public Prosecutor's office has to choose to prosecute the case, and has a miserable success record in court.

The Secretary of State will have to certify that the Northern Triangle governments are taking effective steps to "cooperate with commissions against impunity, as appropriate, and with regional human rights entities."  In Guatemala, the Public Prosecutor's office was slow to accept the help and guidance of its Comisión Internacional Contra la Corrupcion y la Impunidad (CICIG).  Honduras and El Salvador currently don't have such International commissions. Although there is sentiment in both places to establish them, that sentiment is just not in either current government.

Honduras recently boycotted a series of InterAmerican Human Rights hearings on judicial independence and the corruption of government institutions (see the videos of the hearings from October 22, 2015 on the linked page). Its absence was notable, and noted by the court.  It has, to date, ignored the finding of the InterAmerican Court that Honduras violated due process in dismissing three justices and a magistrate in 2010 for having opposed the 2009 coup.  In October, the court ordered two of the judges and the magistrate reinstated or paid lost wages. The Honduran government has done nothing to date, not even acknowledge the finding.  Ignoring and boycotting are not evidence of cooperation with regional human rights organizations.

The Secretary of State must also certify that the government will "support programs to reduce poverty, create jobs, and promote equitable economic growth in areas contributing to large numbers of migrants."

The Honduran Congress is barely moving here. Historically National Party governments, like the current one, have increased, rather than decreased poverty in Honduras. This is visible both in the percentage of the population living in poverty, and in the GINI index recorded each year for Honduras. We've written about this trend before (here and here).

The Secretary of State will have to certify that the Honduran government is taking effective steps to "create a professional, accountable civilian police force and curtail the role of the military in internal policing".

One could not certify that for Honduras today.  Not only is there no viable mechanism for removing corrupt, crime-linked police officers (everything done to date has been inconsequential), and no will to do so, but the current government is expressly in favor of militarizing the police and abolishing the civilian police force by progressively defunding it in favor of increased funding to the militarized police force it is building up from scratch.  Honduras is therefore unlikely to take steps under its current government to comply with this condition of funding.

The Secretary of State will have to certify that the government of Honduras is taking effective steps to "protect the rights of political opposition parties, journalists, trade unionists, human rights defenders, and other civil society activists to operate without interference".

In the Honduras of today, reporters, trade unionists, human rights defenders, and members of the opposition party all regularly receive death threats via text messages.  Many of those threatened either quit, or get killed.  The Honduran police don't have the staff to pursue something as high tech as tracing a text message source. The Honduran military intelligence group probably could do this, since they effectively have a tap on all Internet and telephone connections in the country, but haven't done anything about it.  Opposition parties in Congress are shut out of the public debate of bills by the leadership.

The Secretary of State must certify that the governments of these countries, including Honduras, are  taking steps to "increase government revenues, including by implementing tax reforms and strengthening customs agencies". 

Finally, the Secretary must certify the government of Honduras is taking effective steps to "resolve commercial disputes, including the confiscation of real property, between United States entities and such government."

Given the situation on the ground, it should be difficult for the Secretary of State to certify the Honduras of today is taking effective steps to meet these criteria. Unless it makes changes, Honduras might not have access to the funding it thinks it is going to receive under this program.

"The freedom and fairness of this election is very much at risk": US Congress members

In a letter dated October 15, Representatives Mike Honda, Raul Grijalva, and Hank Johnson urge Secretary of State John Kerry to speak out against factors that they argue make "the freedom and fairness" of the Honduran presidential election questionable.

You can read their press release for their comments on why they wrote. The headline singles out "Militarization of Civil Society Ahead of Honduran Election".

They note that the new militarized police was a signature policy of the presidential candidate of the Partido Nacional. They express concern about the consolidation of control over all branches of government by the same ruling party-- including control of the electoral process.

We agree that the integrity of the electoral process must be a concern.

But even more troubling, the congress members draw attention to a pattern of assassinations of candidates for office from the LIBRE party. They cite sixteen "activists and candidates" murdered since June 2012. Anthropologist Adrienne Pine reports a similar number, and comments that

LIBRE has been focused on keeping the campaign positive, and so the official reaction to all the targeted assassinations...has been near silence.

The congress members express concern that the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa

has not spoken more forcefully about the militarization of the police under the impetus of one of the candidates, expressed concern with the National party's concentration of institutional power through illegal means, and condemned the ongoing intimidation against the members of the opposition.

The letter ends with a polite yet firm indictment of the US for taking a premature position on the election in 2009-- when the country was under intermittent states of siege, with a government repudiated by the entire world in control of the presidential elections-- and declining to take a stronger position today. They write:

We are of the opinion that our government would lose credibility in Honduras and the region should it be perceived as taking sides in the election or turning a blind eye to fraud and unfair electoral conditions....It also appears that the State Department has largely countenanced the concentration of institutional power in Honduran government in the past year, in the hands of the ruling party candidate, through illegal means.

That leads to the letter's final request that the US State Department

use every available means to ensure free and fair elections... to guarantee a level playing field in the weeks preceding the election,... and to be entirely neutral in its public and private messages to this country. In addition, we request the Department of State to speak forcefully against the pattern of concerted attacks targeting human rights defenders and the opposition.

"To be entirely neutral in its public and private messages to this country".

As these Congress members note, the US State Department has come out as neutral in the election, and willing to work with whatever candidate wins. One would have hoped that went without saying, but the implication is that at least some political actors in Honduras may think the US government is tacitly or quietly or privately favoring specific candidates-- those that represent the traditional political hierarchy of the Partido Nacional and Partido Liberal. To be neutral shouldn't require assurances that you will work with whoever is elected (implicitly, however repugnant their policies might be). Neutrality is interpretable in this context as hoping LIBRE doesn't pull ahead.

As the writers of this letter note,

many in the region are well aware that in the past, the United States government has indeed supported specific candidates in Latin American elections, particularly in Central America.

They cite in particular the 2009 election in Honduras when the US announced it would recognize the outcome of the Honduran election, literally while people in Honduras were living under conditions suppressing their freedoms of speech and assembly, and despite the lack of any clear path for independent international observation of the election in 2009. That premature announcement derailed negotiations that might have led to the 2009 election being held with the elected president restored to office; instead, the 2009 election was seen by a wide sector of the population as illegitimate.

Read the letter for yourself. These are serious concerns by serious people paying attention. As this tight election heads into its final weeks, the range of tactics used by the Partido Nacional is already becoming ugly. Maybe the US is irrelevant in Honduras; but no one I know believes that.

Controlling the Supreme Court

The Honduran Supreme Court last week rolled over and offered its belly to Congress, voting 10-3 to open a disciplinary investigation into justice Marco Zuniga.

Zuniga, you will recall, wrote a scathing letter which he made public to chief justice Jorge Rivera Aviles in which he accused Rivera Aviles of being an alcoholic.

The Supreme Court vote came shortly after Congress threatened to dismiss Zuniga if he maintained his confrontational attitude with Rivera Aviles.  The threat came from Congressman Oswaldo Ramos Soto, chief author of many of the laws the previous Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court found unconstitutional.  Ramos Soto says that Congress gave Rivera Aviles special powers to have full authority over personnel within the court, to re-assign justices to other positions within the Supreme Court, and to appoint the new council that will in the future, review and appoint judges. 

Ramos Soto said:

It's too bad that in the highest court of justice you have this type of problems.  I recommend to the magistrates involved that they moderate their tempers, calm down, because if it comes to Congress, Congress is ready to make the call, including firing them for insubordination in the Court.

The Supreme Court took the action of opening an disciplinary investigation into justice Marco Zuniga after voting 10-3 to confirm that Chief Justice Rivera Aviles was authorized by Congress to move judges around between the branches of the court, an unprecedented action.  Neither Rivera Aviles nor Marco Zuniga participated in the voting.

Congressional threats are not limited to the Supreme Court.  Now that Congress has given itself the power to remove anyone in government, it is considering removing the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubí, who has a lousy investigation and conviction record. 

During the discussion of a revision to the law code to address hate crimes against women, Juan Orlando Hernandez said:

In advance, I tell you, I would not take it badly that as we are evaluating the performance of the Supreme Court and the Police, that this be done with the public prosecutors.

Marvin Ponce has said Rubí will be the first political justice case tried under the new law. 

This statement comes just after the Comisión de Reforma de la Seguridad Pública (CSRP) issued a report requesting the anti-corruption prosecutor be removed for corruption and incompetence, and a second report supposedly financed by the US Embassy was produced, recommending a complete reorganization of the public prosecutor's office. 

Marvin Ponce, vice president of Congress, confirmed he's heard of these reports, but the actions that might be taken are just rumors.

As Rafael Padilla of the Lawyers Against Corruption said:

The tragedy of Honduras is that justice is political, not legal, a product of the autocratic government that prevails.

As if to underscore Padilla's point, the Supreme Court ruled 9-4 with two abstentions to uphold the police cleanup law, the very same law that the four justices illegally fired by Congress said was unconstitutional because it failed to provide for the due process rights of the accused. So Congressional moves to remove justices who dared to disagree with them worked: from here on, expect Congress to be able to act with impunity.

Questioning the State Department: Human Rights "Progress" in Honduras?

UC Santa Cruz historian Dana Frank, in an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, strongly criticizes the US State Department for its recent affirmation that Honduras is making sufficient progress in correcting human rights abuses to allow disbursal of foreign aid funds sequestered by congressional mandate.


This finding recently received publicity, ironically, because of one small exception: the admission by the State Department that Porfirio Lobo Sosa's hand-picked police chief, Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, has a suspect history. As Frank writes:

the State Department did announce that it was withholding all U.S. funds to Juan Carlos (El Tigre) Bonilla, the national chief of police, or anyone under his direct supervision, until an investigation of his alleged death squad activity has concluded.

You would think that the fact that the president of Honduras appointed, and continues to support, someone with such a tainted history during a period when in theory the government is committed to clearing up corruption in the police would have raised questions about the Lobo Sosa administration, not just Bonilla. But apparently not: the vast majority of US funding that was subject to withholding has now been approved for release.

Why? Frank, in her final paragraph, reaches the same conclusion as most other observers of the situation; the US administration

is obsessed with an unwinnable, militarized drug war in Latin America, and as result appears to be willing to back almost any government that will allow it to expand its military presence in the region.

Frank cites the almost unbelievable numbers that have been tallied since 2009, when Honduran rule of law was disrupted by a coup, boundaries between military and policing began to be blurred, and the security forces were unleashed by the government to silence dissent:

• 10,000 human rights complaints against security forces
• 23 journalists killed
• multiple reports by international human rights groups about repeated abuses of due process, denial of constitutional rights, and violation of human rights.

Want to read more details? Start with the links provided by the UNHCR. Or those maintained by Reporters Without Borders.

Too internationalist for you? Then visit the website of Freedom House, generally considered a centrist organization. In a report dated July 4, 2012, Freedom House writes that in the past year,

Honduras continued to suffer from human rights violations, impunity, and corruption.

But none of this convinced the State Department to use the leverage provided by Congressional direction to withhold a small percentage of funding--"20% of a portion of U.S. police and military aid", to quote Frank-- to try to move the Honduran government away from its current posture.

What is that posture?

In June, Maria Antonieta Guillen represented the Honduran government in testimony to the UN.  She argued that the government had to walk a "fine line" to "avoid delinquency by minors" while "preserving the integrity of the diverse centers of rehabilitation". Deadly prison fires over the past year have exposed the reality: overcrowding, large numbers detained without charges, and the criminalization of practices of the young. As sociologist Leticia Salomon wrote, these fires are "evidence of the collapse of the system".

Guillen argued that, since human life is the fundamental human right, policing cannot be said to violate human rights, because it is the prevention of violent crime. Whenever accusations of human rights violations are raised, the Honduran government's response is either that the crimes were private (explaining away the systematic and unprecedented increases in crimes against activists and journalists); or that the security forces were acting to combat crime. These justifications betray a fundamental difference in how the Honduran government understands the role of security forces and the status of human rights.

It would be one thing for the State Department to admit that Honduras has not improved its record, and make a case-- however it might want-- that US national security interests outweigh this failure. That at least would not involve giving a blessing to a regime uninterested in improving actual human rights, and incompetent to do so in any event.

What is tragic is that, by certifying progress that no one else sees, the US State Department is lending support to assertions about what is needed for social order in Honduras that are directly at odds with values the US espouses.

Honduran Media Emphasize Role of DEA in Miskitu Killings

A story credited to the Spanish news agency EFE, published in Honduras by the news website Proceso Digital late on August 14, raises again the question of the degree of involvement of US Drug Enforcement Agents in the deaths of Honduran indigenous civilians in early May near Ahuas, a community in the Honduran Mosquitia.

Headlined "The DEA had a 'central role' [in the] anti-drug operation in Honduras that left 4 dead", the news story cites a 60 page report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Rights Action, dated August 15.

Proceso Digital summarizes the report as

underlining that the DEA agents took a "significant role" and not simply a support role as the US State Department argued; that the US has not sufficiently assisted in the investigation".

What is at issue, Proceso Digital makes clear, is that a full investigation of the events in May cannot take place without more active US participation, for example, making available surveillance video and providing access to the guns in the US helicopter for ballistics.

The CEPR report painstakingly pieces together news reports and official statements, reviews what has been described of the content of the as-yet restricted surveillance video that has been reported on by the New York Times, and-- most important-- assembles the testimony of the surviving passengers in the boat that was attacked under the claim it was engaged in drug trafficking.

The CEPR notes that "most witnesses report never having been interviewed by investigators."

The CEPR describes the journey of Hilda Lezama's boat, loaded with passengers and cargo. It provides the names of the passengers traveling that day, where they were coming from, and when they joined the trip.

It draws a clear picture of a commercial boat caught up in a military operation.

Approaching the final landing around 2:30 AM, the pilot passed a drifting, unmanned boat. Shortly after, the commercial boat was fired on by helicopters that had already been heard by some passengers:

Candelaria Trapp called her sister Geraldina Trapp shortly after 2:00 a.m. stating that she was almost at Paptalaya because she saw the town’s cell phone towers, but she expressed anxiety about four helicopters flying low over the boat. Geraldina reported hearing the noise of the helicopters over the phone.

While matter-of-fact, the report includes poignant detail on the experiences of the families traveling together, many of whom were shot or had family members killed-- including two pregnant women:

Bera, who remained on the boat longer than most of the others, says that the helicopter shined a light on the boat only after having opened fire and that she believed that they may have stopped shooting because only after they had projected their search light could they then clearly see that she was a woman with two young children. The helicopter flew away but circled around, and at this point Bera’s 11 year-old child jumped into the water. Bera grabbed her 2 year-old child and followed. She felt that she was on the verge of drowning, but managed to grab onto brush along the edge of the river and pull herself and her child onto the shore. She stayed hidden among the brush until after dawn when the helicopters had left and she heard people searching the river.

The CEPR report emphasizes what the US and Honduras should do now, including calling for a cut off in US funding for similar operations under the Leahy act.

This isn't what the Honduran media source found most worthy of highlighting. Instead, it emphasizes the "central role" of the DEA in the incident.

For many Hondurans, the attempt to disclaim the deep level of involvement of US forces in the country, and especially in drug operations, is the most significant aspect of reaction to the Ahuas killings.

US diplomats may focus on establishing that no DEA agent fired a gun-- a claim disputed in this report-- but in Honduras, the key issue is that this operation would not have taken place without the funding, equipment, training, and leadership of the DEA.

[edited 1:09 PDT 8/15/12 to reflect co-sponsorship and clarify who has seen the surveillance videotape]

US State Department Blinks on Honduran Security

All across the US, the news from Honduras over the last day has been the same:

"US withholds funds to Honduran police"

Or, if you read the Washington Post, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, or a number of other papers, you might see the story under the headline

"US cites human rights concerns, withholds funds to Honduran National Police"

What is making the rounds is an AP story by Alberto Arce in Tegucigalpa, with Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz. It says that funds are being withheld from

Honduran law enforcement units directly supervised by their new national police chief until the U.S. can investigate allegations that he ran a death squad a decade ago.

It's about time. The murky antecedents of Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, El Tigre, were well aired back when he was appointed -- in late May, more than two months ago.

We noted at the time that the appointment gave insight into what Porfirio Lobo Sosa thought made a good top cop: getting results quickly, at any cost:

Bonilla Valladares definitely has a history of getting results. But that history shows that the "results" came from his exercise of extra-judicial power.

We  cited an interview by the Salvadoran media outlet, El Faro, which included this chilling exchange with Bonilla:

—Have you killed anyone outside legal proceedings?-- I asked him, while we left behind El Paraíso.

—There are things that one carries to the grave. What I can say is that I love my country and I am disposed to defend it at any cost, and I have done things to defend it. That is all that I will say.

As we noted at the time, State Department documents from 2004 acknowledged the accusations against Bonilla Valladares. 

Now, according to the AP, the State Department has produced a new report (which we could not locate) that

says the State Department "is aware of allegations of human rights violations related to Police Chief Juan Carlos Bonilla's service" and that the U.S. government has established a working group to investigate.

This story is worth the coverage it is getting. But there are some subtleties here that are worth further comment. The AP report goes to say

Under the new guidelines, the U.S. is limiting assistance so that it only goes to special Honduran law enforcement units, staffed by Honduran personnel "who receive training, guidance, and advice directly from U.S. law enforcement and are not under Bonilla's direct supervision," according to the report.

"Direct supervision" is the operative phrase here, since Bonilla Valladares, as national police chief, is the commander of all the Honduran police. Does it really matter if there is an interposed subordinate officer between him and the units the US is still funding?

Or is the significant difference here that the US will still fund US trained, guided, and advised units which, while technically part of the Honduran police forces, would be expected not to follow orders from the national police chief?

Some Honduran drug enforcement agents already have direct connections to US FAST teams, although their training wasn't enough to stop a still-disputed massacre in the Mosquitia.

The most obvious candidate for funding under this exclusion is the new unit, named the Tigres, that Honduras has proposed to create to offer policing while in theory continuing to purge the national police of corrupt officers.

According to reports in Honduran press, by September Tigres (Tropas de Inteligencia y Grupos de Respuesta Especial de Seguridad, "Intelligence and Special Security Response Groups Unit") will be deployed independent of the National Police. 

Juan Orlando Hernández, head of Congress (and presidential primary candidate in the right-wing Nacional party) is quoted as saying the Tigres would be

“a highly trained elite force that will have hi-tech equipment for fighting common and organised crime... This is not at all a force parallel to the police or the army. What we want is a rapid response team to tackle the insecurity in our country. Regardless of whether they like it, it will strengthen the response capacity to crime, because the Tigres will attack everything”.

La Prensa offers this characterization of the expected progress of the law that would authorize the Tigres, and their recruitment and training:

The law will be approved next week, in August the first stage of training and selection will come to an end since that process is already advanced, and in September the first contingent will appear.

That does not seem to allow much time for the purported training in human rights that, it is claimed, will keep this new force from committing the kinds of violations so common in existing Honduran security forces.

We have previously noted that selection and training of officers should legally follow approval of the law, which in a real democracy would not be taken as a fait accompli, but then, this is policing in Honduras today. Initial funding for the new unit will reportedly come from the Interamerican Development Bank.  

This unit, with its novel reporting line (in times of peace, the Ministry of Security; and in times of emergency, the Ministry of Defense), is the one Honduran "police" force that could be characterized as outside the direct control of the impeached police chief, Bonilla Valladares.

Writing on the IPS news website, Thelma Mejía provides a thoughtful summary of what we know about the proposed Tigre unit, and its contribution to continuing to blur the line between policing and military actions. She cites Honduran sociologist Mirna Flores and social commentator Eugenio Sosa, reminding readers that

similar forces created in the 1980s ended in grave violations of human rights, the most recent example being the so-called "Red Car Gang", a paramilitary corps that carried out operations of "social cleansing" against young men in gangs from 2003 to 2005, and acted from within the police, according to humanitarian groups.

In other words, there is a history here of abusive action by such "elite" police groups given sweeping mandates to combat "violence". 

Bonilla Valladares is part of that history; but his selection as police chief was not an error, that the US can simply avoid reinforcing. It was deliberate, despite this known history. The reaction of the Honduran government to the US withholding aid shows that: the AP story cites a Lobo Sosa spokesman Saturday supporting Bonilla Valladares, saying

the administration has repeatedly pledged full support for the police chief and that under his leadership "there has been a real improvement in the security situation."

There is one final subtlety worth underlining: the AP story gives credit for this modest reversal of the US support for militarization of civilian policing in Honduras to "a series of letters from Honduran and U.S. academics, activists and members of Congress". It quotes a June 7 letter "signed by hundreds of academics" that read, in part

Combatting drug trafficking is not a legitimate justification for the U.S. to fund and train security forces that usurp democratic governments and violently repress our people. 

This letter was the culmination of the frustrated cry from the heart of scholars in Honduras, the US, and 28 other countries asking the US government to stop ignoring the on the ground reality in Honduras. Cautiously, we might conclude that finally this outcry is getting heard.

Three Years and Counting

Yesterday was the end of three years since Honduras' duly elected president was removed from office, mere months before he was slated to step down and cede power to the winner of an already scheduled election.

In the end, that election went forward, although not with the kind of aura of legitimacy that is normally expected: no impartial international observers were present; a state of emergency that reigned in the country throughout most of September and October (the legal months of campaigning) prevented the normal efforts of candidates, while suppression of public protest against the de facto regime involved such violence that even a presidential candidate was injured.

The successor government that emerged, headed by Porfirio Lobo Sosa, while eventually recognized by the governments that had refused to sanction the de facto regime, was in many ways powerless to confront what the coup and de facto regime had done to the country. Many of those appointed to high office continued under Lobo Sosa, and many still occupy positions of power today. The rhetoric of coup was used openly to threaten Lobo Sosa whenever he seemed to be acting in a way that powerful interests in the country did not like. The presidency as an institution clearly lost ground to Congress in the coup, and it has not gained it back.

The role of the US in the coup, the de facto regime, and the Lobo Sosa administration has come under intense scrutiny, and very little of what can be said about those roles is flattering. Within 48 hours the US President had denounced the events of June 28. From that point on, however, the US government either was ineffective in moving a pro-US regime to cede power, confusing about its understanding of events, or actively encouraged the regime to hold out.

With that last statement, I do not endorse the broader suspicions that many of my Honduran and US colleagues have shared, publicly and privately, that suggest the US actively encouraged the coup, and was never interested in solving the confrontation with the de facto regime. Read the Wikileaks cables yourself, and I think you will see why those suspicions exist: the US State Department had foreknowledge that the other branches of government were planning to remove President Zelaya, and by virtue of meeting with the principal civilian authors of the coup, gave them the understanding on which they acted, an understanding which explains why, in the first weeks after the coup, Micheletti and his group were so aggrieved not to have US support. They expected endorsement. In my reading, the US message in the weeks leading up to the coup was murky, and probably mixed.

But it isn't the run-up to the coup that I want to call out here: it is the incompetence the US showed after the coup. Earlier, and stronger, economic sanctions, including reduction or removal of military aid, was the one thing that might have clearly communicated to the de facto regime that the US disapproved of what had been done. By dithering for months and then failing to find the June 28 events legally a military coup, the US wasted the only clear message it had to send. The conclusion seems unavoidable that in US foreign policy, Honduras only matters as a piece in the campaign against drug trafficking from South America. We see the outcome of that in the current increased involvement of DEA agents, including as direct parties to violent deaths.

The lack of definition of a strong, sharp diplomatic response opened the door to extremists in the US Congress, who traveled to Honduras during the de facto regime, including during the elections, and somehow never noticed the violence being carried out against the people of Honduras. This allowed Hondurans supportive of the coup to claim that "the US government" was on their side. For us, this culminated in the deeply flawed report commissioned from the Law Library of Congress (not, we repeat, the Congressional Research Office) in which an under-qualified bureaucrat relying mainly on phone conversations with an apologist of the de facto regime found that the events of June 28 were constitutional-- while not citing the by-then published opinions of US, Spanish, and Latin American constitutional scholars, which showed quite the opposite.

The role of the US in the prolonged negotiations launched under the aegis of Oscar Arias, between the legally elected president of Honduras and a usurper, did not help. Even when, as a result of the added pressure brought to bear by President Zelaya's return to Honduras and dramatic asylum in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Micheletti regime agreed to a resolution, the US managed to undercut the terms of that resolution, in what clearly was an exchange for congressional approval of political appointments being held up.

So now where are we? Dozens of deaths later, the targeting of LBGT activists, journalists, and labor leaders has now been joined by the killing of LIBRE party activists, even though no one thinks the new party has a chance of winning the 2013 presidential election. The interests of business and the wealthy elite reign supreme: Honduras is not only "open for business", it is literally for sale-- sovereignty included. Environmental destruction in the name of profit is unchecked. Notably, none of this appears to have reduced either common crime or drug-related crime; the militarization of civilian policing has simply unleashed more violence against even the children of elites unfortunate enough to run into the police at the wrong time in the wrong place. And while cultural policy may seem like a less important arena, the distortion of the management of the historical sites held in trust for the people of Honduras reached new lows with the promotion of "2012" and spurious pan-Maya "heritage" tourism, the signing of a constitutionally unacceptable "agreement" with the town government of Copan that effectively privatizes public good, and culminated in the top official installed by the de facto regime to run the Institute of Anthropology and History announcing what he thinks is the greatest archaeological discovery of the 21st century-- with no expert opinion involved, and without his apparently even knowing who the experts to talk to would be.

This year brings primaries for next year's elections, in a political system in which the people of Honduras have little trust. Porfirio Lobo Sosa is at the point in his administration where Honduran presidents lose any chance to make policy, as even their own parties turn to the next candidate. The economic damage from the coup has not been healed. Gun violence continues unabated.

So on this third commemoration-- a word more appropriate, we think, than "anniversary", with its celebratory overtones-- we can only hope that the continued passion of those in resistance to the status quo, mobilized during the de facto regime, whether transformed into new political parties or invested in civil organizations, can find paths to advance the cause of the Honduran people. Thirty years after passing out of military dictatorship, they deserve more than their leaders, and the global community, have given them or are offering.

Honduras Was The Template

You probably haven't heard much on your nightly news about a coup in Paraguay. There's rarely any news about Paraguay in English.

What should interest readers of this blog, the "coup" in Paraguay on June 22 was patterned after the Honduran coup of 2009. Only this one was slightly less bumbling.

While regional governments sent diplomatic missions to Paraguay to try and avoid the constitutional showdown between the Paraguayan Senate and President Fernando Lugo, the US State Department just watched.

So what actually happened?

On June 22, the Paraguayan House and Senate each held a trial on 5 charges of misconduct against President Lugo, less than 24 hours after notifying him they intended to bring charges.  The charges were spelled out in a resolution (formulated by the Paraguayan House of Representatives) in which they accused him of doing his job badly, one of the three conditions under which the Paraguayan constitution states call for an impeachment hearing.

The charges?

(1)  Allowing a political youth gathering financed by the government in a military base in 2009.
(2)  Facilitating and supporting the invasion of private lands by landless peasants in Nacunday.
(3)  Dissatisfaction with the state of public security, linking Lugo to leftist kidnapping groups and accusing him of maintaining an incompetent Interior Minister responsible for 17 deaths.
(4)  Signing the Protocol de Ushuaia II in "an attempt against the sovereignty of Paraguay".  The document, in which the governments of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) agree to support democracy in their fellow countries, would allow regional governments (as part of a policy to return an errant state to democracy) to "cut off electric power" to Paraguay.
(5)  In the case of 17 deaths in Curuguaty (on June 15), he showed the "inoperativeness of his government, the negligence, ineptitude, and improvisation....which merits his charging by the House of Representatives with bad job performance."

There was no investigation of the charges by either the House or Senate in Paraguay.  Indeed, the House resolution, under the heading "Proof That Substantiates the Charges"  writes:

All of the above charges are of public notoriety, and because of this it is not necessary they be proven, according to the laws in effect.

The Spanish is "son de publica notoriedad (public notoriety)", similar to the Spanish colonial form of "publico y notorio (public and well known)" which was often used to make a claim of truthfulness for something that was not actually attested to by witnesses.  If it was "publico y notorio" that meant everyone knew it to be true, therefore they didn't need to have people swear it was true. It didn't actually mean something was undeniably true.  It was shorthand for "we take this as a given".

Take the story that Americans are all taught in grade school, that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and then owned up to it when asked.  That was invented by Washington biographer  Mason Locke Weems in 1800.  We all know it, it's of public notoriety, but its not true.

Indeed, InsightCrime actually debunked one of the charges, number 3, linking Lugo to the Paraguayan People's Army (EPP), a leftist group accused of kidnapping, four days before charges were levied against Lugo. Author Elyssa Pachico noted that linking farmers' movements to organized crime is a standard practice in Latin America for discrediting agrarian reformers, and specifically cited the Honduran case of attempts to discredit MUCA in the Bajo Aguan as similar.  The charge may well have been of "public notariety" but it wasn't true, according to InsightCrime.

On June 22, the Paraguayan Congress voted 76-1 in the House, and 39 - 4 in the Senate to uphold the charges and impeach Fernando Lugo after giving him just two hours to mount a defense.  It may have followed the letter of the constitution, if you ignore any requirements for due process. That was completely lacking.

As other regional governments tried to intervene diplomatically to avoid the impeachment hearing, and with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton next door in Brazil, the US State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, in response to a question from the press said:

My understanding is that the Secretary took a shouted question, I think, down in Rio about an hour ago. I just got a brief message. And her response was that we are concerned and we’re watching the situation closely. Obviously, we want to see any resolution of this matter be consistent with democracy in Paraguay and the Paraguayan constitution.

Four of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) countries (Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina) have withdrawn their diplomatic representatives with Paraguay, perhaps in adherence to what they promised to do as part of the Ushuaia II protocol, UNASUR's equivalent of the OAS Democratic Charter.

Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic have also said they will not recognize the new government.  Mexico, Colombia, and Chile all said they regretted that Lugo had not been given adequate time to prepare a defense.  The Interamerican Commission on Human Rights said of Lugo's removal that it was "an attack on the legal foundations of the state."

Yet spokesperson Darla Jordan, from the State Department's Western Hemisphere Affairs division, simply said:

We urge all Paraguayans to act peacefully, with calm and responsibility, in the spirit of Paraguay's democratic principles.

Just as in the Honduran case, we have a coup government installed in Paraguay that all surrounding countries refuse to recognize as legitimate, but which the State Department has not condemned.  Like Honduras, this was a coup supported by the elite, against a President popular with the poor.  Like Honduran de facto regime head Micheletti, the de facto head of Paraguay, Federico Franco, has vowed to gain international recognition again for Paraguay by the time the next government takes over, about a year from now.

In Honduras 2009, a template was formed for how to stage a successful coup in the 21rst century.   Paraguayan elites followed the template.

This assessment was echoed by Fernando Anduray, presidential candidate for the Authentic Nationalist movement of the Nationalist Party in Honduras. He says that what happened in Paraguay is just like what happened in Honduras in 2009. In fact, he called for the Honduran Congress to use similar procedures to throw out unnamed government officials who abuse their positions; this despite the fact that the Honduran constitution does not allow for this procedure.

Porfirio Lobo Sosa disagrees with Anduray.  In an official release he rejected events in Paraguay and said:

We Hondurans defend the full respect of the democratic institution and rule of law, and for this reason we declare that the political judgement carried out did not attend to the right of legitimate defense of every citizen.

Would that be the same "right of defense" denied to Manuel Zelaya in 2009?

International Vote of Confidence(?) in Honduran Human Rights

The Honduran government campaign to get international observers to ignore violations of human rights is in full swing. Latest up: Honduras's representative to UNESCO, Alejandro Palma.

In one of the most important Honduran government statements made to date, Palma argued that they must be innocent of any wrong-doing, because otherwise, they would not have the support they do from other nations:

The international community supports us because they have confidence in our government and they wouldn't have confidence in a government that represses.

Taking a "one explanation covers everything" approach tailor-made to fit into the US State Department's own preferred narrative, Palma took UNESCO to task for blaming Honduras for endangering press freedom. He said, predictably, that it is drug violence that was responsible for the elevated number of deaths of reporters in Honduras in 2010 and 2011:

We only want the world to understand the critical situation in which we are living, with an enemy that's difficult to confront, a situation not of our making because we neither produce nor consume the huge quantity of drugs that pass through our country daily.

Palma went on to say that it's not just reporters that are being killed, but also prosecutors, judges, and other citizens. Notably absent from his list: university students, campesino activists, LGBT activists, and others who have been targets of deadly attacks over the same period.

His main point: to absolve the Lobo Sosa government of any responsibility; as he put it, "it's not the result of any internal policy". Good to know that murder of the citizenry is not Honduran government policy.

But neither, apparently, is it a government policy to solve those murders. And journalists are bearing a disproportionate measure of the deadly violence that the Lobo Sosa government has failed to investigate, and, many international human rights reports demonstrate, has actually promoted through both policy moves and investigative inaction.

The chilling of a free press in Honduras goes beyond assassination.

UNESCO reported that the work conditions of journalists in Honduras have seriously deteriorated over the last several years with "harassment, attacks and the murder of journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists," as well as the closing of opposition radio and TV stations, use of disproportional force against protesters, and blocking of the web pages of international media.

Palma simply rejected the report as "confusion generated by the complicated political situation" that arose out of the 2009 coup.

By Palma's logic, the US would never support a repressive government so there must be nothing they need to do differently. So much for the US State Department's assertion that it is working with that government to improve human rights.

Sounds like time to give some consideration to the opinions of US Senators and Congress members who are calling for putting real pressure on Honduras by withdrawing security aid, aid that is directly supporting a corrupt military and police, whose violations of law are never going to be investigated as long as the Honduran administration can say "they wouldn't have confidence in a government that represses".

Rumors of a Coup

Here we go again.

Marvin Ponce, Vice President of the Honduran Congress, says that he's been present at various discussions of political scenarios with politicians and businessmen in which they were discussing that Porfirio Lobo Sosa could be a victim of a coup.

According to Ponce, there are groups within Honduras that want to take advantage of the political destabilization and the internal chaos caused by the "discovery" of police corruption to get rid of Lobo Sosa:

These groups would like to take advantage of the Police crisis and can count on a sector of the Armed Forces with which they could go as far as to stage a coup,

Ponce told El Tiempo. He added:

there's a geopolitical game between Honduran politicians and businessmen.

Ponce was even more forthcoming in what he told El Heraldo's reporters:

In the last few days they have been talking about coups in political circles, that they no longer want Pepe Lobo as president. There is a geopolitical game between the US Embassy and powerful economic and political groups that want a government that serves them.

Ponce went on to allege that the US Embassy is behind an intentional destabilization of the democratic order in Honduras, pointing to the failure of Honduras to qualify for a Millennium Challenge grant and the withdrawal of the Peace Corp.

He also included a recent Washington Post article describing conditions in Honduras as out of control due to drug trafficking in his list of US Embassy efforts to destabilize Honduras.

So two and a half years on from the first coup in Honduras in over 30 years, and there's talk of a coup again.

Why?

Well for one thing, those who carried out the first coup, who did the unthinkable, got away with it, unpunished in any fashion.

Why wouldn't they think about doing it again if they're unhappy with Lobo Sosa?

"The demonstrations of the past week are truly frightening": A response

Via Quotha, a translation of a COFADEH summary of police actions during the recent escalation of repression against those supporting the striking teachers and the called-for general strike. In their statement, COFADEH puts the case starkly:

The attention of the world community to the crisis generated by the coup and coup ideology is still very insufficient, but it is key to brewing institutional solutions that create the minimal social and political consensus to transform the country.

Shamefully, as has been widely reported, the US State Department, through its Human Rights Labor Attaché in Tegucigalpa, came down solidly on the side of the oppressed military, threatened by the violence of protesters, writing

we cannot condone the violence currently being used by demonstrators ... While we have consistently urged the police to use restraint, some demonstrators have engaged in a level of violence not seen in many years. ...The demonstrations of the past week are truly frightening and a cause for concern. We ask that those in contact with teachers groups encourage them to stop the violence...

and concluding that "the majority of reported injuries are on the side of the security officials". Thus the US slides from tacit permission for militarization of the response to civil disobedience, to active approval of police and military actions.

Knowingly or not, the US State Department is echoing the arguments offered by Oscar Alvarez and Defense Minister Marlon Pascua against beleaguered Ana Pineda, whose appointment to a new ministry the Lobo Sosa government touts as a sign of commitment to the protection of human rights, even though it was widely opposed, endorsed in an atmosphere of political cynicism, and has been entirely ineffective.

We extract from COFADEH's statement only the reports from affected communities in the area around San Pedro Sula, communities we know well. We think they counter the US attaché's impression that, in the current unrest, it is the military and police who are the real victims. Dozens of people engaged in protest, in communities across this small region, illegally detained, beaten, shot at, and tear gassed.

When the police tear gas a town in reaction to a road blockade, that violates international expectations about restraint, and is an unproportional use of force. When they shoot tear gas canisters at individuals exercising their rights of free speech, they violate international expectations, not to mention display their misunderstanding of the effective use of the weapons that the international community, regrettably, provides them. Don't just take our word for it; ask Ana Pineda. She knows this, and is trying to communicate it to the Lobo Sosa government.

In San Pedro Sula, capital of the province of Cortes, the daughter of an ex-congresswoman from the Party of Democratic Unification (UD), Silvia Ayala, was wounded during the violent eviction of students from the University Center of the Valley of Sula, where dozens of students and professors were also detained.

A young student, Josue Rodriguez (20) was hit on the side of his head by his right ear by a metal tear gas canister fired by the policy into the interior of the university facility.

The installations of the Regional University Center were surrounded by lines of police and soldiers impeding the exit of students and professors while they were being attacked by tear gas bombs fired directly at their bodies, fainting and vomiting were caused by the inhalation of the gases.

In the municipalities of Santa Cruz de Yojoa, Potrerillos, La Lima and Choloma, in the province of Cortes, there were 43 persons detained for participating in the Civic Strike; they were not freed from the police station until yesterday, Wednesday, during the night; in some cases they had marks from the beatings they received and gave testimony of insults and discriminatory remarks made to them.

At the highway turn-off to La Flores, Santa Cruz, in Cortes, the (Police) Commissioner Rubi, nephew of the current Attorney General, unleashed a violent repression against the protest and ordered the detention of 17 people who were transferred to the First Police Station of San Pedro Sula. Among the detained were : Lidia Arita, Nedi Santos Castillo, Antonio Maradiaga and Glenda Cabrera. There were 6 people wounded by bullets, including Daisy Sabillon and Manuel Miranda, who were taken by private transport to the Mario Catarino Rivas Hospital in San Pedro Sula.

In addition, the riot police punctured the tires of more than 30 vehicles using their firearms, and knives and then chased the owners with tear gas and gunfire while they sought refuge in the forested area of the locale.

In Potrerillo, a town in the province of Cortes, in the area of the Colonia El Triunfo 5 people were detained: with head wounds (Alejandro Duarte Garcia), blows to the legs (Luciano Barrera Monroy) and lesions on the thighs (Haydee Marquez del Cid; Junior Mejia Murillo and Gloria Marina Perdomo Rodriguez).

Lawyers, Evaristo Euceda and Iris Bude, who were carrying out human rights defense work in the police station of Villanueva were verbally and physically assaulted by the police sub-inspector of the locale.

In the community of Tacamiche, a peasant settlement that belongs to the municipality of La Lima, Cortes, the repressive forces entered the settlement to fire toxic gases into the interiors of homes as revenge for the protest blockade of the highway to the town of San Manuel and Villaneva, Cortes. The director of the community school, Professor Esmeralda Flores along with teachers, Favricio Sevilla and Pedro Valladares, were taken to the First Police Station of San Pedro Sula.

We agree that this is a "truly frightening" situation. But we think it is more frightening for the Honduran people who are being punished for disagreeing with the policies of the Lobo Sosa administration, now with the open approval of the US State Department.

Who's Who in Hugo Lloren's Cable

Looking at the list of people receiving Hugo Lloren's cable available from Wikileaks, presented in our previous post, there's something odd in the list of recipients.

Here's the list of addressees:

FM AMEMBASSY TEGUCIGALPA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0237
INFO RUEHZA/WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE
RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS IMMEDIATE 0735
RHEHAAA/THE WHITE HOUSE WASHDC IMMEDIATE
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC IMMEDIATE
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RUEIDN/DNI WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RUMIAAA/USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL IMMEDIATE

and further, in the body it notes distribution to:

WHA FOR A/S TOM SHANNON
L FOR HAROLD KOH AND JOAN DONOGHUE
NSC FOR DAN RESTREPO

Tom Shannon was, at that time, nominated as ambassador to Brazil but was still Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs. His nomination to become ambassador was held up by Senator Jim DeMint (R, NC).

Harold Koh was appointed by President Obama to be the Legal Advisor to the Secretary of State. Under President Clinton he had been Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor.

Joan Donoghue, at the time of the cable, was Principle Deputy Legal Advisor at the State Department, having for the six months ending in June 2009 been the acting Legal Advisor. She has served in a number of roles in the State Department since her most recent tenure there began in 2007, including giving advice to the State Department on the development, interpretation and application of international human rights law. She has since been nominated and appointed a judge in the International Court of Justice.

Dan Restrepo, at the National Security Council, was President Obama's senior adviser on Latin American Affairs during the campaign. He was appointed as Senior Director of the Western Hemisphere Affairs council of the National Security Council, the post which he occupied at the time of this cable.

Other addressees include the Western Hemisphere Affairs Central American Committee in the State Department, the White House, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the National Security Council (NSC) and SOUTHCOMM, the Southern Command of the US Military.

The last addressee, however, puzzles me. That addressee is the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, at the time just reoccupied by Patrick Duddy. Duddy had been appointed ambassador under President Bush, but was thrown out of Venezuela by Hugo Chavez in September 2008, for alleged complicity in the coup plot against Chavez. He was subsequently re-appointed under the Obama administration and after Obama met with Hugo Chavez in April 2009, was allowed to resume his post in Caracas in July 2009.

Why is the cable addressed to the US Embassy in Venezuela? Wikileaks does not currently have any related traffic from either Honduras or Venezuela, but promises more cables from each country will be posted in coming weeks. Maybe some of that traffic will help clarify the inclusion of this one other embassy in communication about the Honduran coup.

UCD Condemns Lobo Sosa

The right-wing, coup-supporting Unión Civica Democratica (UCD) has awakened from its deep sleep (tired, no doubt, from all that marching to support Micheletti) only to condemn Porfirio Lobo Sosa for interfering in the Public Prosecutor's office and with the Supreme Court's autonomy.

It seems they don't like Lobo Sosa's announcement that he is willing to go to the Dominican Republic and bring Manuel Zelaya Rosales back, and to guarantee he will not be arrested on the spot once he returns to Honduras. After all, Jimmy Dacaret, the UCD president, reminds us, there are 3, count them 3, separate arrest orders for Zelaya; one for political crimes, and two for corruption.

Lobo's announcement caused an emergency meeting of the UCD governance. Dacaret, a rotary member, member of the administrative council of ANDI, and a bread magnate, complained that Lobo Sosa was interfering in the institutional independence of the Supreme Court and the Public Prosecutor since he was going to guarantee Zelaya would not be arrested.

"It would appear as if there is a pact or arrangement between the people related to the case of Zelaya, to give him freedom without him presenting himself to the corresponding courts."

Dacaret continued

"The statements of the President leave a great preoccupation in the society because the primordial reason for the founding of the UCD is to protect the Constitution of the Republic, the respect for the laws in all senses."

The UCD is funded in part by the US State Department.

The UCD also requested that the Supreme Court hand over its decision on the four judges and one magistrate dismissed for anti-coup activity to the Inspector General of the government so that the international community can see the basis on which the court dismissed those individuals.

"With this we can determine if they proceeded on the basis of law, or if there was some kind of mistake that the Court could rectify, but not with pressure from the Executive branch or interference from foreigners because Honduras needs to proceed on the basis of respect for its laws."

With that, the UCD rolled over and went back to sleep. This was something it could not get excited enough about to put on its white shirts and march in the streets!

US response in Honduras as part of a pattern...

CBS News has published a thoughtful analysis by Dilip Hiro that examines the foreign policy record of the Obama administration. His conclusion: the bungled handling of the Honduran coup is typical of a pattern of under-estimating opponents, and backing off and assuming a conciliatory posture once other states resist direction.

Lots to think about here; not entirely in agreement, but it does speak to what remains a debate among Honduran colleagues, which is: how to explain the disastrous way the Obama administration responded, with the mixed signals they sent continually undercutting the unified resistance of the rest of the world to legitimating the coup?

(On the road so no analysis-- but note that Hiro manages something most English-language media still cannot: correctly describing the precipitating events of the June 28, 2009 coup.)

"We'll know the truth in 10 years"

"A truth commission also aims to affect the way the public understands its national history and the conflict or violence of recent years. It is thus important that the conclusions of the report are made widely available throughout the country." -- Rule of law tools for Post-Conflict States -- Truth Commissions, United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, page 31.

I know that the truth commission was forced on Honduras, and that no one in power there wants it, but we are left just scratching our head at the resultant truth commission that Honduras has come up with. Who does it serve, and to what purpose?

"We'll know the truth in ten years" was the headline in La Tribuna this morning. My jaw dropped; I did a double take, and then I laughed. I've read the UN manual on truth commissions; they literally wrote the book on them. Apparently no one at the State Department, which pushed for the truth commission in Honduras, or in Porfirio Lobo Sosa's government in Honduras, bothered to read the manual on what a truth commission is, or does, or why you have one, because this is a joke.

"We'll know the truth in ten years" according to La Tribuna, is a quote from Eduardo Stein, the Guatemalan to whom Porfirio Lobo Sosa subcontracted the organization and charter of the truth commission. La Tribuna tells us Stein says the final report of the truth commission will be deposited in the National Archives to be released to the public in 10 years.

Stein writes, "Collection of elements that help to clarify the facts are at all times the key to rebuilding and support these issues of national reconciliation" in the preamble of the charter of the truth commission; but what national reconciliation is being aided by hiding the truth for ten years, we are forced to ask? Is the whole exercise a farce? or is it that Honduras is not ready to have a truth commission? Stein assures us that the OAS is in favor of hiding the truth for 10 years.

Originally this commission was supposed to be formally organized on February 25, but that date slipped and next Stein announced it would be formally chartered on April 29, however, today he announced that "there is particular interest by some international organizations in participating," so the formal charter will be delayed again to give them time to be invited to participate.

"The impact of a final report may ultimately depend less on its content than on a variety of surrounding factors, including when and in what circumstances the report is released and publicized, how widely it is distributed, how much coverage it receives in the media, and, perhaps most importantly, how the political authorities treat the report and whether they have any interest in publicizing and implementing its conclusions and recommendations." Rule of law tools for Post-Conflict States -- Truth Commissions, page 31.

May I be the first to be wrong in predicting this report will have no impact, because the political authorities have no interest in knowing, publicizing, or implementing any of its future conclusions. Remind me again why they are going through this exercise? Oh, right, the State Department wanted it? Why again?

Populism

In their book, Twenty -First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnel define populism as

"an ideology which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice (p.3)."

The key to populism is the opposition between the common masses, usually seen as good and virtuous, and the elite in a nation, usually seen as self serving, and therefore, bad.

The US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, doesn't like populism, which he links to weakened states. To quote his congressional testimony from today (so far only covered by the Spanish language press and not on the State Department website):

"The lack of strong institutions in Latin America feeds populism....Our commitment is institutional strengthening, which includes the rule of law and attention to the real needs of people."

This sheds some light on why the US State Department was not enthusiastic about Manuel Zelaya Rosales, who was viewed as a populist.

But it also raises the question of how this view of populism relates to support or lack of support for the Frente Popular de Resistencia and other Honduran progressive organizations arguing that existing institutions in Honduras cannot be reformed incrementally. Does that mean supporting "institutional strengthening" means ignoring or even battling against reform movements?

This question is especially urgent because Honduras' governmental system fails minimal tests for democracy. The main editorial in the March 10 edition of El Tiempo (no longer accessible online) points out that Honduras' representational system lacks the core concept of popular participation, without which there can be no democracy.

Instead, the editorial argued, today popular participation is under attack, and "all state policies reinforce authoritarianism, elitism, and autocracy":

The big problem in Honduras is the class politics of the power elite; they lack a democratic culture. They consider themselves the owner of the country and don't recognize the people as the supreme power, as the sovereign state. They look at the grassroots with suspicion and distrust and fear, as an enemy that must be kept from the most basic democratic right, that of self determination. "The village is not ready for independence," they have said from time immemorial.

Is this the populist message Valenzuela wants to eradicate by strengthening state institutions?

A coup is "the kind of thing that cannot be easily absorbed": Celso Amorim

"And finally, on Central America, again, I don’t know what you’re referring to, but the United States believes strongly in democracy and we are supporting the return of constitutional democracy to Honduras. The election which was held was by all observers found to be free, fair, and legitimate. President Lobo has moved quickly to implement many of the recommendations that first came from President Arias’s work on the San Jose accords and then were incorporated into the Tegucigalpa Accord. He has a unity government. He has a truth commission that will be stood up. He expedited the safe departure of former President Zelaya. And we think that Honduras has taken important and necessary steps that deserve the recognition and the normalization of relations."


Hillary Clinton, March 4, 2010, in remarks in San Jose, Costa Rica

The recently concluded trip throughout Latin America may have produced many positive outcomes for the US Department of State. But on the topic of Honduras, what it mainly showed was how far apart the US and Latin American countries still are, and why.

First, let's point out that Clinton's description of the situation on the ground is not, shall we say, entirely reality-based:

"The election which was held was by all observers found to be free, fair, and legitimate."

The Honduran election was not observed by any of the usual institutions. UN election observers and the Carter Center for Democracy declined to observe the elections. Both groups stated that they did not find there were proper conditions to hold free and fair elections. Conservative organizations did send "observers", but these can hardly be regarded as independent. Nor can the individual national observers recruited to fill the breach through the business councils (COHEP and ANDI) and conservative civic organizations (the UCD). In some cases, these observers interfered with other observers. International progressive observers of the election, like those from the Quixote Center, would also contest this characterization.

"He has a unity government."

The redefinition of government of unity (and remember, the original call was for a government of unity and reconciliation) is one of the most cynical things here. Appointing the minor party candidates to the cabinet has now been redefined as "unity". Elvin Santos and the Liberal Party, sent to political exile, surely would debate that, as would the Frente de Resistencia. And even the minor gestures Lobo Sosa made have gotten him into trouble in his own National Party, which now says it intends to monitor him monthly, having registered its unhappiness with his failure to give out enough plum positions to party loyalists.

"He has a truth commission that will be stood up."

Ah, wishful thinking. The date for formation of the truth commission has passed, with only the Honduran participants named. And this immediately set off a smear campaign against Julieta Castellanos, who is regarded by many Honduran activists as not progressive enough, yet is under attack for hiring former members of the Zelaya government who are well-qualified for the jobs they are taking up. But perhaps the definition of what constitutes "standing up" a truth commission will be reshaped just as the definition of "unity government" has been.

So, in Hillary Clinton's world all is forgiven, and, as she put it, while "other countries in the region say that they want to wait a while. I don’t know what they’re waiting for" to regularize relations with Honduras.

There is a lot we could write about what actions other countries might appreciate. Start with the following:

Lobo Sosa has never renounced or condemned the coup d'etat of June 28 itself.

His government continues to appoint extremists from the de facto regime to positions of even greater authority.

He shows no sign of even wanting to engage in dialogue with the popular forces that opposed the coup and continue to campaign for constitutional reform.

His few actions to remove the most visible members of the coup, all taken under obvious pressure from the US, have followed equivocal statements in support of these same actors, and have been followed by their reappointment to other government jobs.

But in fact, Brazil's Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim, managed to put it much more succinctly than all of that, as reported in the NY Times:

Foreign Minister Celso Amorim described some of Mr. Lobo’s actions since taking office as positive, but would not commit to restoring full relations with Honduras. A military coup “is the kind of thing that cannot be easily absorbed,” he said.

Contrast that with Secretary of State Clinton's statement after her meeting with President Kirchner of Argentina:

"We had a very frank exchange of views about our different perceptions of Honduras. And as the president said, I appreciated the opportunity to explain why we believe that the free and fair elections which have elected the new president in Honduras means it’s time to turn the page. The difficult period Honduras went through, we hope is now over. "

Again, listen to Celso Amorim's remarks after his meeting with Clinton:

"Countries that have undergone, say, the trauma of living under a military dictatorship following a coup d’état – for example, my own generation, Brazil was deprived of voting rights. For 21 years on end we were not able to vote for the presidency. So you can’t take these things that widely. You have to bring that into perspective."
....
"It’s the kind of thing that cannot be easily absorbed. I mean, the type of a military coup d’état happened and it struck a legitimately elected president who was very much in the middle of an otherwise successful term in office. So we need to, of course, work on the basis of two things, two variables: facts on the one hand, and time on the other hand. It can’t be just time, because, of course, some events may speed up the lapse of time, and that is why I do not wish to indicate any deadline, because very often you may find yourself without any relevant events, therefore time itself is not enough."

Yes. It can't just be time: there need to be facts. And the facts in Honduras include continued threats and murders of progressives, vilification of opposition members, and a failure to repudiate the coup d'etat or the authors of it.