The Frente and the Liberal Party

As the previous posts should indicate, there was considerable tension around the assembly of the FNRP that was held in Tocoa this weekend.

Under the headline Second Day of the National Assembly: the debates and the wager on the unity of the FNRP continue, Vos el Soberano provides a report that starts with the following quote:

"Before being a Liberal I am of the people and the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, that is the future.”

Ubodoro Arriaga Izaguirre, Delegate from the Department of La Paz to the First National Assembly of the FNRP.

While that tells the whole story in a nutshell, the report goes on to specify what happened:

Liberal leaders withdrew from the National Assembly of the FNRP on not succeeding in impose their delegates named outside the Departmental Assemblies of the Resistance.

Specifically cited as speaking for the Liberal Party were Carlos Eduardo Reina, Orfilia de Mejía and Rasel Tome, who "took the floor to explain to the departmental delegates their reasons to self-exclude themselves". According to this report they clarified that they "do not renounce" the FNRP, just participating in the provisional National Coordination to be elected today.

On the one hand, this is not that different from what COPINH and the Feminists in Resistance did. But timing is everything. Making a principled statement in advance that you are not interested in being part of a formal structure you consider dubious, and withdrawing when things don't go your way, are as different as, well, making a principled stand and saving face.

Reporting describes an unsuccessful attempt to install 29 extra delegates representing Liberals in Resistance over and above those elected on a state by state basis:

Yesterday, in hours of the afternoon and night, the leaders of the sector called Liberals in Resistance tried by every means to impose and inscribe 29 delegates in addition to those elected in departmental assemblies of the Resistance...

The trigger for rejection by the departmental delegates was, according to this report, an attempt to appoint the ex mayor of Tocoa, Adán Fúnez. The latter participated in open resistance to the coup up until one week before the November election, when, Vos el Soberano (citing news reports in El Heraldo) says

with the intention of relecting himself in office, he appeared in a center of the golpista sector of the Liberal Party to ask, publicly and on bended knee, pardon for having participated in the activities of the Resistance.

One can see why he was an unwelcome person. It is almost unbelievable that experienced party politicians would have such a tin ear as to think this would go down without choking.

Rasel Tome is given the principal responsibility for the attempted to expand delegates:

Within hours of yesterday it was possible to confirm that Rasel Tome had unilaterally ordered his sympathizers to expand the departmental delegates from two incumbents and an alternate to four incumbents and an alternate (two additional hand-picked delegates) against the decision of the last Assembly of the Resistance celebrated in Siguatepeque that established the number of delegates at 56 for logistical and budgetary reasons.

The report emphasizes that with the departure of the Liberal leaders, debate continued, underlining that the FNRP is not about winning traditional elections:

the political wager of the FNRP will not be the electoral processes, so as not to continue accepting elections Honduras-style, and it was decided that the fundamental task of the moment is the installation of the National Constituent Assembly with the conditions that the popular movement proposes.

In addition, it was made clear that the guarantors of this political process unleashed by the coup d'Etat are not the political parties, but the popular and social movement.

Undoubtedly there will be political analysts willing to argue that the activists of the Frente are being unrealistic and should have trimmed their ambitious project to fit into the goals of the Liberal Party faction.

But the message the Frente is conveying is that politics in Honduras is completely broken: if the system is dysfunctional, taking it over will not help.

"How Democractic Should Democracy Be?": Oscar Estrada

Note: The original in Spanish was posted today on Quotha, with the first half translated there in a comment by Charles II and the second half in a comment by me. In the following translation, I make slight changes to the original translation of the first half.

For those of us who didn’t go to the national assembly of the FNRP in Tocoa because we weren’t elected as delegates by our organizations or simply because we weren’t active in any organization other than the Frente, the accomplishments of this week still seem unclear. In the afternoon, the assembly will have ended and we hope that everything will be more broadly known. Meanwhile, various ideas occurred to me which I think are important to explore to better understand the “conflict” which we live internally.

The Liberal Party, which historically had a moderately progressive origin, has been controlled by the right for at least the last 60 years. I previously wrote on the 17th of June, about the role which the Liberal Party played in the most key stages of Honduran history, such as the ‘54 strike, the coup d’état of ’63, the different military governments of the ‘70s, the dirty war of the ‘80s, the neoliberalism of the ‘90s, and about how always, with rare individual exceptions, it bent itself to the interests of the national oligarchy and transnational capital. And while the labor code, voluntary military service, and certain legal changes were given in Liberal administrations, it would be remote from history to try to say now, that the changes that have been achieved in social matters correspond to the political will of the Party alone, making invisible the social and popular movements which drove those changes. One should understand that in Honduras, nothing is ever done except through pressure.

The crisis which the Honduran people lives in actuality originates in essence in a struggle of classes [class war]. It is the product of the erosion of an economic and political model which favors the most wealthy, displacing from wealth a broad sector of the population which lacks representation within the power structures.

The Liberal Party as a an institution never, through its individual leaders, owners, and caudillos, will be able to understand the urgencies of the dispossessed classes of the country, simply because they belong to another class, and therefore to another Honduras. This is not to say that there aren’t Liberals who belong to the popular classes. It’s clear that there are such and that they understand very well what it is to be poor in Honduras. But those who take decisions, those who today urge the rescue of the party, because without it they are nothing politically, those are NOT of the same class which filled the streets in repudiation of the coup d’état.

This is the basic contradiction of the Liberal Party in Resistance. To form a part of the FNRP and to propose to “rescue” the Liberal Party which amounts to rescuing the bipartisanship reigning for more than 100 years. To rescue the Liberal Party, the same Liberal Party would have to seize the Party. [To rescue the Liberal Party they will have to seize the Party, the Liberal Party itself.]

It has not been clear up till now what would be the strategy for the Liberals in Resistance to rescue their party. At times they can be seen seated in the gringo embassy, then in the office of Rosenthal and their goal seems remarkably similar to that of Elvin Santos or Micheletti: to return to power in the next elections.

They, the Liberals in Resistance, now accuse a faction of the left of the Frente of not being “inclusive” on blocking them from “storming the assembly,” placing 29 delegates more than those which by agreement they had obtained in the previous assembly in Siguatepeque. This strategy reminds me a great deal of the assemblies of the 90s in the UNAH, when it was a common practice to bring 100 delegates from another campus, normally from the north of the country, to flip the results and to impose a directive according to the interests of the caudillo of the student front and it was naive to think, that with all those years of experience, we would not have learned.

The ideological separation within the Frente has been evidenced basically among what the Liberals call "los bloqueros", in reference to the bloque popular, but that is composed as well by the parties of the left (PSOCA, TR, MND, OPLN, CNRP, BP, unions, guilds and social movements) on one side and on the other the Liberals, who independently of the name that they use continue being a party of the right with all the practices and vices of traditional politics.

We have all always said that the FNRP is a diverse and pluralistic organization. And although pluralism as a concept can seem sound to us, what is certain is that this has pushed us to accept, on some occasions, actions contrary to the will of the base, both by political organizations as well as by individuals, that far from unifying in their political pragmatism have weakened us.

I would put as an example the decision of the UD to participate in the elections of last November, legitimating the same and their inflated results, and later to participate in the Government of National Unity of Lobo Sosa, permitting him to say internationally that his government is of Reconciliation since he counts among his ministers one that is "of the resistance". This action, accepted by that mistaken sense of plurality, has brought a great political cost for the Frente and will continue doing so.

On the other side, and as a prelude to the assembly, the COPINH launched a communique that has had a certain replication, both by the Feminists in Resistance, as well as by some independent authors. The basic propositions of the public communique of COPINH, far from representing differences in the objectives of FNRP, show a discussion that sooner or later it will be necessary to have.

What those communiques demand, more than representation in the leadership of the Frente, is a different vision of power. It is a call to attention to the traditional left that continues thinking about democratic centralism, the political bureau or the negotiations of realpolitik distant from the will of the base. It is a questioning about the concept of popular representation and democracy as an expression of the will of the majority (denying voice to minorities). It is a demand, to the entire FNRP, that it see power as something that is constructed from the base, from below, because the history of the peoples has demonstrated to us that in the end, a revolutionary government without popular power is nothing more than a reactionary government with a populist discourse.

While all this happens, the machinery of terror does not stop. Lobo journeyed to Miami on a lightning visit to meet with Insulza in relation to the return (in August, according to CODEH) of the expresident Manuel Zelaya, as a prior requisite for there to be total recognition of Lobo Sosa in the extraordinary Assembly of the OAS at the end of July.

"We are near a solution, but I don't believe that it is possible to speak of a solution still nor to be overly optimistic", said Insulza.

And that's something the un-government understands very well, because its master Colombia has demonstrated it, that international recognition is one thing and internal legitimacy is another very distinct thing.

In Tocoa, the same municipio where the Assembly was carried out, "various police and military commandoes advanced toward the land where more than 190 families in the Bajo Aguan are found" according to a report of COFADEH, violating in this form the accord signed by the president with MUCA the past month of April, throwing fire on the powder keg of the national agrarian conflict.

And the repression continues and while this week in Tegucigalpa we say goodbye to two known fighters of the Bloque Popular (dead of natural causes), Luis Morel and Oscar Padilla, on the north coast they assassinated in front of his house Julio Fúnez Benítez (57), union member of SANAA and member of the frente, and Jorge Alberto Castro Ramírez, of 41 years, horchata vendor in the numerous marches of 2009.

Oscar Estrada
11 de Julio de 2010

Not quite a reply from the FNRP

But the statement posted on Vos el Soberano today may show some effects of the public positioning of COPINH and the Feministas en Resistencia.

Titled In installation of its first National Assembly the FNRP recognizes its diversity and strengthens unity, the statement starts

Recognizing the diversity of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP) there was initiated this day in Tocoa, Department of Colón, the act of installation of the First National Assembly of the Honduran Resistance.

That "recognizing the diversity" is, obviously, critical to many constituent parts of the Frente.

Choosing Tocoa as the site of the Assembly is itself symbolic: Tocoa is in the region of the Bajo Aguan, where the confrontation of campesinos and landowners has not yet been concluded, and where tensions continue.

The statement goes on to say that

delegates, militants and sympathizers of the FNRP coming from all Honduras participated actively in the Forum of installation.

This wording raises the question, what constitutes a delegate, versus a sympathizer? The statement goes on to describe the assembly as including

men and women, youths and adults of all the political currents that have expression in the country and that have space in the FNRP.

Near the end of the statement tensions are finally openly acknowledged:

At the end of the act of installation and previous to the mobilization various doubts were clarified that have to do with the character of the Resistance, it was clarified that "the objective that the FNRP has is the National Assembly. What matters now, is not if we will be a political party, the important thing is that we are the principal social and political force of the country and that we have succeeded in reconfiguring the map of power in Honduras".

The "big tent" rhetoric, especially given the specification that it concerns "all the political currents", hints at the tensions between traditional political parties and the more revolutionary groups in the Frente.

So who did attendees hear from to represent the diversity of the Frente?

The three speakers mentioned by name in the article are Marcelino Borjas, Pavel Núñez, and Gloria Oquelí.

Borjas is described in the statement by the Frente as a retired teacher with a Master's degree in sociology and a doctorate in economics. His remarks at the Assembly reaffirmed the anti-imperialist posture of the Frente, and argued that the coup "would not have been possible without the participation and the help of officials of the highest level of the North American government".

Pavel Núñez, a member of the musical group Café Guancasco "spoke in the name of Honduran youth".

But the really interesting choice here is to give a great deal of print to Gloria Oquelí, described as "recognized leader of the Liberal Party, member for Honduras of the Parlamento Centroamericano (PARLACEN), and until recently President of that regional organization".

In March, Oquelí was listed as part of a group called the "encounter of progressive Liberals", one of seven factions within the Liberal Party that El Heraldo claimed would "promote the overthrow of the Liberal Party and even ask for the disappearance of that party". In May, El Heraldo augmented its count of factions of Liberals in Resistance to include what it called three "zelayist" factions, for a total of ten separate movements within the Liberal Party organizing against the dominance of Roberto Micheletti and Elvin Santos.

So, whatever other role she has, when Oquelí speaks, one of the tensions she voices is that between Liberals in the Resistance and those suspicious of the party system itself.

Oquelí is quoted as saying that

the rules of democracy are simple: one of those affirms that the majority rules and a second reaffirms that the majority can change any rule that might be established in a democratic system, except for the first.

Sounds uncontroversial, right? Majority rule = democracy.

But in fact, COPINH and the Feminists in Resistance each have articulated different rules of democracy, which stem from a minority position that understands that majority rule may actually end up being majority command. COPINH builds on a tradition of indigenous organizing in which consensus is the goal. A consensus is a majority; but it is a majority without significant dissent. To arrive at consensus, you have to take time to thrash things out, and you may well need to abandon some things that are objectionable to a determined minority.

Feminist organizations often strive for consensus as well. They also may advocate, as the Feministas en Resistencia did in their statement, for parity between men and women in governance.

Minority groups, including traditional parties that have strong agendas but are not popular enough to win a majority (such as the Liberal Democrats in the recent UK elections), often advocate an alternative to majority rule: proportional representation. Unlike the more familiar winner-takes-all approach, in proportional representation, minority positions can emerge with representation equal to that of their supporters. In pluralistic societies, proportional representation is probably more truly democratic.

So, the rules of democracy are not so simple after all.

But back to Gloria Oquelí. The report on the Assembly says she argued that "it is important to consolidate the political project known as Resistance". Again, not all participating segments of the Frente would agree that the Resistance is a "political project", and if they did, they would disagree on what kind of "political project" it is; and they may well continue to politely disagree with the claim that it has to be "consolidated".

Oquelí is a good politician, a progressive one, and she clearly feels the Resistance has a once in a lifetime opportunity. According to the report,

Recognizing the wide character of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular and the traps of empire she declared that "if they push us, if they corner us, so that we will be an institution of a homogeneous ideology, we could fall into error. In the FNRP we all fit, therefore it is not true what Hugo Llorens says, that we are a small group of the extreme left and of the extreme right facing off. It is the ideas, the ideals and all our dreams, not the ideologies that mark our way".

While it isn't entirely clear here who "they" are who want to corner the Frente into a homogeneous ideology, the juxtaposition with US Ambassador Llorens' regrettable dismissal of the Frente as an "extreme left" group tends to suggest Oquelí is concerned about the Frente being pushed to remain ideologically pure by the left. While it is hard to reduce feminist or indigenous activism to right/left terms, if you have to choose one position, it would indeed be left.

So, perhaps "they" who are trying to corner the Frente into an "ideology" in place of simply "ideas" and "ideals" includes those who recently expressed their uncertainties about the goals of this weekend's assembly. Since no one from indigenous or feminist networks is quoted in this first report, it is hard to say what they thought of how the event was opened.

Feminists in Resistance also caution about FRNP elections

In response to the public position statement about proposed selection of difectors of the Frente de Resistencia this week issued by COPINH, the Feminists in Resistance have come out in solidarity with that statement, calling it a "wake-up call" [literally, sound of knocking at a door] "so that the errors that have been committed can be corrected if we are actually committed, men and women, to the Refounding of Honduras".

In the second point of their ten point statement, the Feminists in Resistance say that

our diversity of expressions confronts us with different forms of oppression, for reasons of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, land tenure and damages to the environment, among others. The FNRP cannot ignore this situation, at the moment of forming its organic structures, because otherwise it will be over-valuing some movements and organized groups with participation and representation that is majority masculine, above others in which we women participate under a different philosophy as is feminism.

They argue that

in all the organisms of direction of the Frente, women in resistance should participate in a joint form together with the men, in this way it will be putting into practice the exercise of a full citizenship, to which all women aspire, that is to say, to participate in the taking of decisions.

As with the statement by COPINH, the Feministas en Resistencia reiterate their stance against neoliberalism, patriarchy, neocolonialism, and related tendencies. They go to state firmly that

we consider that our actions within the FNRP should be totally divorced from old exlusionary practices, set-up and opportunistic, proper to the oligarchic parties that lamentably have permeated some of the social and political organizations that make up the Frente, which obligates us to be permanently vigilant and in particular, in this moment in which processes of election are being carried out of our structures and national conduct, in which we hope will exist parity between men and women and that the principles of equality, liberty and autonomy will be put into effect, understanding this as the possibility to take collective and individual internal decisions without interference, nor external pressures of any nature.

The group Feministas en Resistencia has published regular blog posts since August of 2009 with a focus on the impact of the coup and de facto regime on women's issues, and on actions taken in resistance. Like COPINH, it has participated in all the forums of the FNRP.

According to a description of its birth, Feministas en Resistencia was formed by "a collection of Honduran organizations and activists against the coup". With their tagline of Ni golpe de Estado, ni golpe a las mujeres! (Neither a coup d'etat nor violence toward women") they conjoin these forms of repression and underline the fact that women, as ever, pay a particular price for speaking up.

As the profile of the organization (written during the de facto regime, and thus referencing what then was a key demand, the return of the constitutional president) pointed out, for the Feministas en Resistencia

resistance signifies a fight for a substantive democracy that will transform existing relationships of power and generate a new and egalitarian social pact. This goes far beyond Manuel Zelaya’s return. From their perspective, struggling for the restitution of the constitutional president to his office is a condition for democracy and a point of departure for the process of re-establishing the Honduran State by recognizing diversity, citizen participation, gender equality, and human rights.

Incorporating explicit statements of women's rights in a new Constitution is as much a motivating force for these activists as incorporating guarantees of indigenous rights is for COPINH.

Like COPINH, this means they are not interested in converting into a traditional party or political organization.

And even more explicitly, they are pointing the finger at traditional party operatives now in the Frente who they suspect would like to convert it into something that will not achieve the revolutionary goals they seek as feminists.

Representation, Resistance, and Indigenous Organizations

This weekend, the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular is reportedly holding elections for regional and national directors.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the proposed election of representatives in an organization dedicated to advocating for participatory democracy.

One of the participating movements, COPINH, has gone so far as to publish a public position paper on the topic, declaring their intention to abstain from the interim organization of FNRP leadership, and asking that the Frente publish a description of the mechanisms for selecting directors.

Writing on Vos el Soberano, sociologist and activist in the Frente Ricardo Arturo Salgado voices his support for the statement by COPINH, and outlines his own concerns about the planned elections. He urges that the FNRP not forget that its "vertebral column" is in

the popular movement, whether that is feminists, writers, intellectuals, union organizers, LGBT groups, artists, politicians (not parties, individuals), professionals, campesinos, all the Honduran men and women; this should be the base of its construction of power as well.

At issue, as it has been continuously as the Frente evolves, is the relationship of the Frente to traditional forms of party politics in Honduras. Salgado asks that the Frente

demonstrate why we are different. We should stop conspiring, we should not permit an assembly in the style of a "united front" this weekend. Please publish the methodology adopted so that we militants can see clearly the process.

The Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas (COPINH) is a major partner in the FNRP, serving as the sponsor for the II Encuentro Nacional por la Refundacion de Honduras held in La Esperanza in March, which advocated a strongly participatory dialogic process to arrive at proposals for a new constitution.

The existence of COPINH as an activist group long predated the coup of June 2009.

On their official website, COPINH records their formation in March of 1993 to bring together "the popular movement in the Department of Intibucá, the battle in defense of the environment, the rescue of the Lenca culture, and to raise the conditions of life of the population in the region" of southwestern Honduras, and with a national visibility on these issues. Their statements of history, policies, and programs culminates in this description:

We are an indigenous and popular organization, anti-patriarchal, anti-imperialist, anti-neoliberal, sensitive in the face of the problems, needs, and rights of the indigenous, campesino, and urban communities of the Honduran people and the world.

As early as spring of 2009, COPINH spoke out in favor of a consulta of public opinion about a new Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution. Salvador Zuñiga of COPINH wrote

The new constituyente should not be a personalized project around a caudillo, the new constituyente should be a project of the Honduran people for the construction of a true democratic institutionality that will end the disorder of manipulation, of lies, of social inequalities, of discrimination, of violence, of impunity and of corruption in which the powerful laugh everyday at our people who each time lose more of their hopes in all men and women.

The statement enumerated that the new constitution should be a document

in which the country is declared a multilingual country and the indigenous languages, Tol, Pech, Garifuna and others, are recognized as official, in which the equitable distribution of natural resources is declared, in which therapeutic abortion or abortion in case of rape is declared legal, in which the exercise of direct democracy is expedited, in which national sovereignty is rescued by ordering the dismantling of foreign military bases, in which gender equality remains clearly established and it puts and end to discrimination and violence against women, in which the wealth of the corrupt who for years have been enjoying impunity is expropriated, a new constitutional assembly that will leave clear the functioning of the organizations that should impart justice with the aim of guaranteeing a true administration of justice, a constitution that guarantees liberty of expression through communication media that will be independent and not supernumeraries of the powerful groups that do enormous business selling publicity and their role of manipulators of consciousness.

In other words, COPINH has long-standing, consistently articulated and substantive positions on the central issue of "refounding" Honduras via a new Constitution.

In their public position statement on the planned elections of this weekend, COPINH reiterates their dedication to forming part of the Frente, but insists that the principles they espouse be honored:

it is necessary to make clear that the struggle of COPINH transcends the conjuncture of the oppressor golpismo, to project itself in a permanent manner against all forms of domination that repress the people. The communities of COPINH will continue resisting the capacity of the colonialist system that wants to put an end to the peoples and leave them without their water, their forests and their territories. Therefore the struggle will continue in the path of our martyrs of the colonialist invasion: Lempira, Mota, Iselaca, Etempica.

We are convinced, men and women, of the role that we should play in this historical crisis, in this form, we hold ourselves to reason to command obedience and to the construction of socio-political power from below, from the base itself. Power and reason should emanate from the people from below and on the left. We are inspired, in that sense, by:

• Political practices that will be democratized and not concentrating of decision-making power.
• Political practices that make decisions, resources, actions and discussions transparent.
• Political practices that include, diverge, and multiply both reasoning as well as responses to the historical urgencies of our people.
• Political practices that spring from the collective and not individualities. Principles and not slogans, actions and ideas and not pamphlets pre-designed as epitaphs. Practices that will be congruent with collective discourse and organizational reasoning.

Against these principles, COPINH warns that

Groups, persons, parties and phantom organizations, with no social base, pretend today to get shares of power and of decision within the FNRP, behind the back of the people, and that will throw away the liberatory struggles by the social organizations before, during, and after the coup d'Etat.

COPINH reiterates that they

maintain ourselves in resistance against the oligarchic oppressor's boot, but as well against all those behaviors that would lead the FNRP to positions that attempt against the interests of the people and popular dignity and against all those decisions that pretend to bargain the blood of our martyrs.

This is a strong challenge to the would-be leadership of the Frente.

As it moves from a stage of opposition to the coup and the de facto regime, to a campaign of mobilization, there will be pressure on the Frente to follow a conventional course to gain recognition and a modicum of political power.

From the point of view of COPINH, though, the stakes are higher than merely being admitted into Honduran politics: their position requires them to demand new forms of political organization, or risk being swamped as a minority in a majority-rules democratic system yet again.

Getting at the Truth of the Coup: Tiempo coverage of new documentary

Honduras' Tiempo today published an extraordinary article: extraordinary because it promotes a documentary, Detras del Golpe, that opens up a Pandora's box about the conspiracy that led to the coup d'Etat against President José Manuel Zelaya.

It sketches in connections that lead to the right wing in the US and Venezuela. These involve a very messy set of legal proceedings concerning practices in the Honduran phone company (Hondutel). This case has been used by opponents of Zelaya to discredit him and his administration. The principal figures in this story are Roberto Carmona, a Venezuelan who participated in the abortive coup against Hugo Chavez, and Otto Reich, US Subsecretary of State for Latin American Affairs under George Bush.

The story is so complicated that we hesitate to even open up this topic; but that makes it even more remarkable that a Honduran newspaper not only advertised that this documentary exists, but gave such a complete account of what it brings to light. Here are some highlights from the Tiempo coverage:

A new documentary about the coup d'Etat in Honduras opens up the participation of Otto Reich and Roberto Carmona Borjas in the conspiracy that ended with the overthrow of the constitutional president Manuel Zelaya, on 28-6-2009....

[The documentary cites Carmona and Reich denying they have any contacts]

"Carmona Borjas is a public figure in Honduras because supposedly he has an NGO that is called the Arcadia Foundation...Incorporated in July of 2007, specifically for the media campaign against the government of Manuel Zelaya" [quoting Venezuelan lawyer and investigator Arturo J. Viscarra]...

"The interest of the lawyer Carmona in Honduras is very unusual, because it is not known why a Venezuelan golpista lawyer, that has gone into exile for participating in a coup [in Venezuela], reappears afterward in Honduras speaking about corruption in the state communications business (Hondutel)", noted Viscarra.

"Roberto Carmona begins a relationship with Hondutel through a business in Miami 'LD Telecommunications'. He signs a contract for a type of service. There is a dispute about money because he wants to blackmail Hondutel, but he doesn't get away with it, so then a plan is born to destabilize the government of Zelaya accusing it of corruption in Hondutel" added the investigator.

In an interview for the documentary Carmona argues "what I did was represent the business to be able to ascertain the facts about corruption in Hondutel, that was what permitted me to open the door to bring proceedings, to be able to see how a contract for telecommunications was made"....

According to Patricia Rodas, ex-chancellor of the government of Manuel Zelaya, "the day of the coup Robert Carmona was already in Honduras staying in the hotel zone San Martin [in Tegucigalpa]. Staying in a room under another name, he was directing the operations of the coup".

The documentary includes a communication kept up between Robert Carmona and a Honduran official in which they reach an agreement on the media campaign that would be carried out.... [This Honduran official is interviewed and initially denies the documented contact but later confirms it]

The conspiracy of Reich and Carmona is confirmed in interviews with Manuel Zelaya and Rodolfo Pastor, ex charge d'affaires of the Honduran Embassy in the US.

"Robert Carmona, is the lawyer for Otto Reich, when Reich went to Honduras to sign a contract with Hondutel to arrange a telephone company, Carmona was his representative" asserted Zelaya.

"They were interested in having Hondutel opened for private investment. First they made a friendly approach, in which they even proposed a deal, when president Zelaya did not accept the proposals, then they began to attack him, from that moment you have a systematic attack on the part of Otto Reich and Carmona and the supposed Arcadia Foundation that was dedicated to make accusations of corruption" affirmed Pastor....

For her part, Bertha Oliva opines that "we do believe that Otto Reich did have a great deal of participation in the coup. He made visits before, during, and after the coup, never publicized, they were closed door".

Rodolfo Pastor notes that "he was here after the coup, both in Congress as well as present in the events where he tried to whitewash the coup, personally and with representatives"....

The supporters of the coup d'Etat have represented it as a home-grown reaction. But what has long been rumor in Honduras, and is explored in this documentary, is the role of right-wing individuals and organizations, with a mixture of ideological and economic motives to change the direction of Honduras. While there is little hope that the official "truth commission" will pursue these connections, until they are out in the open, they will be part of what divides Honduras and fuels suspicions about the coup d'Etat.

The documentary is important for that reason; but even more so, the willingness of a newspaper like Tiempo to publish these arguments.

OAS Commission Named

We mentioned in a previous post that the OAS had not yet formed the commission to report on the evolution of the situation in Honduras since Lobo Sosa took office. Now it has.

The commission will consist of high level representatives from all of the Central American countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama), Peru, Ecuador, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, and Jamaica, according to EFE.

According to Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the OAS, there are two major themes voiced by those who oppose Honduras's readmission to the OAS. The first of these is a desire for Manuel Zelaya Rosales to be able to return to Honduras with all of his rights intact. The other is for an improvement in human rights conditions in Honduras.

Insulza revealed today that he had met privately with Zelaya on Friday, and with Lobo Sosa on Monday to communicate to each of them his ideas for a possible solution to these problems. He indicated that there was no disagreement between Zelaya and Lobo Sosa but "many things still had to be worked out and solidifying them is going to be held up a bit."

The working group of the commission, he emphasized, is not negotiating with either side:

"Our mission is not to achieve an accord between the two parties. There are other political actors in Honduras also and we aren't organizing a kind of national accord...What we have to do is find the conditions under which all the countries are in agreement for the return of Honduras to the OAS."

Insulza noted that no country has rejected the proposals that he presented to Lobo Sosa and Zelaya.

No date has been set for the commission to travel to Honduras. The working group of the commission has already had meetings with representatives of both Zelaya and Lobo Sosa. Wednesday, Insulza met with Arturo Corrales, for Lobo Sosa, and Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, representing Zelaya, on the topic of completing all the points of the Tegucigalpa/San Jose accords.

Meanwhile, Lobo Sosa is getting flak within Honduras for even talking to Jose Miguel Insulza.

Today the president of the Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada (COHEP), Santiago Ruiz, asked Lobo Sosa to "stop playing Insulza's game." Ruiz said

"I believe that he is playing Jose Miguel Insulza's game; if there's one thing Hondurans have recovered it's our dignity and we have to maintain it, working with those that already recognize us."

Ruiz had harsh words for Insulza, who he accused of "damaging Honduran interests," and of "not worrying about trampling on millions of Hondurans who are voiceless."

"We should not continue in this game of satisfying the outsiders who have harmed us and made the Honduran people uncertain," Ruiz concluded.

If anyone thought this was going to be easy, Ruiz's comments should be a wake up call. What if Porfirio Lobo Sosa agrees to OAS conditions and cannot find enough support at home to follow through?