Dario Euraque: Required Reading

In cities across Honduras, the release of historian Darío Euraque's book, El golpe de Estado, el patrimonio cultural y la identidad nacional [The coup d'etat, cultural patrimony, and national identity] is being marked, starting this coming week.

The event marking the release of the book in San Pedro Sula will be December 11.

We won't be there in person; but as we have since June 28, we will be there in spirit for our colleague and for others who, like him, struggled and continue to struggle to bring Hondurans into a conversation of what it means to be a people without giving into the logics of the modern nation-state.

Euraque has a record of publication which is, quite simply, indispensable to anyone wanting to understand cultural identity in modern Honduras. A previous book, Conversaciones históricas con el mestizaje y su identidad nacional en Honduras [Historical conversations about mestizaje and national identity in Honduras], published in 2004, reframes the conversation about Honduras' roots in indigenous, African, and European populations and how that diversity has come to be misrecognized.

Even earlier, in the 1996 Reinterpreting the Banana Republic, Euraque established a unique focus that refused to homogenize the Honduran past, and that resisted easy simplification. For anyone studying the north coast, it was an unparalleled examination of the local social networks and their influence in the 20th century history of the Honduran state.

And of course, Euraque coined the term "mayanization" to label the process through which deliberate promotion of an image of the Honduran precolumbian past as entirely Maya-- thus making the histories of other Honduran indigenous groups valueless and invisible.

I have had the privilege of reading a draft of Euraque's latest book. It offers a unique, and to me still painful, record of how the practice of liberatory historical research became one of the targets of a reactionary right-wing coup in Honduras. Like all Euraque's works, it is meticulously supported by a rich documentary record. It is a kind of study that really is without equal, despite two decades (or more) of examinations of the pernicious tangle of nationalism and "cultural heritage" (the conceptualize of the physical remains of past people in an area as a property owned by the modern nation, often bolstering that nation's claim to coherent historical reality).

We do not know yet how the book will be distributed in the US. But we will relay that information as soon as we have it, and will hope readers of this blog who have sufficient Spanish will read it. And we look forward to a long future with Dr. Euraque's voice speaking clearly about issues of culture and politics in Honduras.

When Citizens Aren't Equal

Áfrico Madrid, the Honduran Foreign Minister says naturalized citizens cannot engage in political activity. We wonder what constitution and set of laws he's been reading. His position would seem to violate the Honduran constitution and Ley de Migración y Extranjeria (Decreto 208-2003).

First to what Madrid told La Tribuna.

"The country is not a field in which the foreigners can do what they want and for this we are going to apply the screws [to them]...."
"The constitution of the Republic and the Ley de Migración y Extranjería facilitate evaluation of those persons who have acquired naturalization, including suspending and deporting from the country, this is a power the State has."

Well, yes that is a power the State has, but only under carefully defined circumstances as we will see below.

The only named individual to be threatened is Federico Alvarez, a Costa Rican citizen, former president of the Central American Development Bank, and 40 year resident of Honduras. During the de facto regime, Michelletti got Congress to pass a bill giving him naturalized citizenship. But Madrid, and Porfirio Lobo Sosa, claim that Alvarez and five "foreigners" are targeted for expulsion because of political activity.

Remind anyone of the excuse Micheletti's Foreign Minister, Oscar Matute, used to expell Father Andres Tamayo?

What they did then appeared to us at the time to be without merit in Honduran law.

This looks to us like more of the same creative fabrication of Honduran law.

Now in Federico Alvarez's case, Madrid may have a leg to stand on, if, as claimed, Alvarez did not complete the application process for naturalization. Honduran law is clear. Foreigners may not engage in politics in Honduras. But, once you're naturalized, a citizen can engage in politics. The things you, as a naturalized citizen cannot do are spelled out in the Honduran constitution.

A naturalized citizen is a full citizen according to the constitution of Honduras, except for certain clearly spelled out specific things in the constitution.

Article 26 says a naturalized citizen of Honduras cannot:

- Perform official acts on behalf of the Honduran government in your birth country.

Article 42 establishes the grounds by which you can lose citizenship.

- Supporting an enemy of Honduras in a time of war.
- Giving support to a foreigner or foreign government against the government of Honduras.
- To act politically for a foreign government or military, without the permission of Congress.
- by restricting the freedom to vote, adulterate ballots, or employing fraudulent means to circumvent the popular will.
- by supporting re-election of the President of the Republic.
- by, as a naturalized citizen, residing more than 2 years outside of Honduras.

Article 42 goes on to state that for the first two offenses, Congress must issue a law revoking citizenship. For next two, the Executive must issue a decree, and for the last two, the Executive must issue a decree, and there must have been a legal condemnation in the appropriate judicial court.

Decreto 345-2002 (ratified by Decreto 31-2003) establishes that you lose your naturalization if you

(1) accept citizenship in another country
(2) your naturalization letter is revoked for legal reasons.

The Ley de Migración y Extraneria establishes in Article 65 the following reasons a naturalized citizen can lose their citizenship.

(1) By becoming a naturalized citizen in another country
(2) By the cancellation of your naturalization papers
(3) when justified by serious reasons which show the citizen unworthy of Honduran nationality.
(4) when they made a false declaration to aquire citizenship.

That's it.

There's nothing there about a naturalized citizen not participating in the political life of the country. That would make them second class citizens, not something the Honduran constitution contemplates.

The First Reaction from the US Embassy

Wikileaks has now released more Honduran cables (see quotha for a list with links). The latest includes a cable from June 29, 2009-- the day after the coup itself. Paragraphs 13 and 14 are a report about the coup in the heading "significant events":

¶13. (C) WHA Honduras - Honduran military forces arrested
President Manuel Zelaya June 28 according to orders issued by
the National Congress and the Supreme Court of Honduras.
Zelaya was taken to a local air force base and flown to Costa
Rica. Emergency Action Committee (EAC) Tegucigalpa
subsequently met to discuss the ramifications of the seizure
of the president by host-cost country military forces. The
RSO noted the general climate in the capital was calm;
however, a standfast order was issued, and additional
security measures were implemented. The Embassy released a
Warden Message regarding the actions against Zelaya and urged
AmCits to remain in the residences or hotels for the day.


¶14. (C) Later in the day, Congress officially named Roberto
Micheletti interim president. The U.S. Ambassador gave a
press conference outside the Embassy; he insisted that
President Zelaya was the only democratically elected
president of the country and urged that freedom of expression
and circulation be restored. He also demanded the release of
those government officials said to be in military custody.
The EAC reconvened to assess the situation. Protest activity
has centered around the presidential palace, some roads in
the capital were blocked, and there were some troops on the
street. However, traffic flow was reported normal in most of
the city. Authorized Departure for family members was
discussed, but not warranted at this time. Embassy personnel
were advised to remain in their homes for the rest of the day
and to limit their movements today, June 29. All Peace Corps
volunteers have been accounted for and are on standfast. Post
will be open today for emergency services only. The EAC will
continue monitoring events in-country and provide updated
information as available. (Tegucigalpa Spot Report; telcon;
Warden Message; Appendix sources 8-10)

There has been an explosion of punditry over the first cable, all reaching whatever conclusion they had already reached, in which perhaps the most interesting thing from our perspective is the repudiation of the analysis by conservative congress members and their continued insistence that there was "no coup": Connie Mack and colleagues are more insistent on this point now than any Hondurans, with the possible exception of Roberto Micheletti. Otherwise, the Honduran perspective has been that yeah, it was a coup, but (in the notorious phrase) a "good coup".

We would agree that the cables are unlikely to change minds, and we doubt there are any true smoking guns to find. The smoking guns were all out in the open in US policy on Honduras: dithering about whether it was a "military" coup; Thomas Shannon assuring the Honduran and US right wing that whether or not the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord was implemented properly, the US would recognize whoever came out on top in the presidential election; and the outright failure of scholarship embodied in the Library of Congress producing a report that validated the coup through an analysis repudiated by leading scholars of the Honduran constitution, through relying on the personal communications of an advocate of the coup.

But from the perspective of researchers on history, and on the production and circulation of meanings, seeing the precise way things unfolded does matter.

It matters that on the day after the coup, the US Embassy, despite the ambassador speaking out against the coup, reported that President Zelaya had been "arrested" (when he had not been); that this was on "orders of the National Congress and the Supreme Court" (when it was not); and that he "was taken to a local air base" (without mentioning the stop at Soto Cano/Palmerola).

And it matters that the cable says "Congress officially named Roberto Micheletti interim president". Not only does that mistakenly imply that congress had the authority to act ("officially": why not say "illegally", or "extra-officially"-- especially as the special session held violated the rules of order for Congress, people who voted reportedly included members without authority, and the reported number of votes has always be questioned).

Worse: it gives Micheletti a status that even the Honduran Congress did not try to give him. Their claim was that he was now "President". By inventing an office of "interim president", the US early on chose to treat Micheletti as a legitimate actor, insisting that he and the real elected president negotiate.

The US, in other words, never quite got the point about what constituted the rule of law in Honduras. In this they joined many Honduran political actors; and yes, I hear you all already telling me that's how politics works.

But some situations present us with a moment of choice: do we follow principle, or abandon it? The US never even seems to have contemplated the issues-- despite having an ambassador who clearly understood them in place in the country.

Only Nightmares After All

It seems that Oscar Alvarez, Honduras's Security Minister, only dreamed he had intelligence that Nicaragua was training campesinos in the Bajo Aguan to be insurgent guerrillas, and that Nicaragua was arming said campesinos with thousands of AK-47s.

At least, that should be the only conclusion possible after Porfirio Lobo Sosa flatly denied that the Government of Nicaragua was participating in a scheme to train and arm Honduran campesinos as insurgents.

Lobo Sosa made his comments to the press after officiating at the graduation of the current class from Zamorano, the Agriculture school near Tegucigalpa, saying

"there is no evidence of any participation by the government of Nicaragua in training rebels to act in land disputes between campesinos and landlords in Honduras."

Oscar Alvarez's fantasy of Nicaraguan trained peasant insurgents began in the cabinet minister's meeting on November 22 when he told Lobo Sosa that he had intelligence that indicated there were armed campesinos in the Bajo Aguan and that Nicaraguans were training them.

Alvarez included a telling detail: there was a large arms cache of 1000 AK-47s, and he knew where it was.

Lobo Sosa went public with Alvarez's accusation on November 22, backing it as something known by police intelligence.

On November 24, Alvarez himself made press statements that repeated all the same elements, but backpedaled on claiming that the government of Nicaragua was behind it:

"The information that we have is that people coming out of Honduras have been moving to Nicaragua, supposedly to train....We've been informed that they've entered from Nicaragua, that they've entered, also, in shipping containers."

Alvarez said.

Unfortunately for the security minister, his claims did not gain wide support from his colleagues in the cabinet.

In fact, one of the security minister's targets actually was another cabinet ministry: the National Agrarian Institute (INA), headed by his colleague in Lobo Sosa's "government of reconciliation", Cesar Ham.

The local INA office was the target of a raid as part of the "security" operation seeking the non-existent arms caches in the Bajo Aguan, as we previously noted, without finding the promised fire arms.

Then an even more important cabinet colleague, Mario Canahauti, Honduras' Foreign Minister, asked for documentation of the claims of Nicaraguan government involvement:

"I need the documentation which permits me to guarantee we have the evidence, so as not to create a serious international problem for Honduras."

Nicaragua, of course, strongly denied training or arming any Hondurans.

Lobo Sosa backpedaled and said he never mentioned Nicaragua. And in fact, his remarks just said it was an adjacent country:

"we have all this located, including the places where they are training outside of Honduras; its a large quantity of arms that they have and we have to chase this down."

Now Lobo Sosa says there's no evidence of participation by the Nicaraguan government.

No weapons, no proof of Nicaragua's participation. But a Security Minister can dream......

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.

Hugo Llorens Concluded Coup was Utterly Unjustified

------- Comment -------

¶19. (C) The analysis of the Constitution sheds some interesting light on the events of June 28. The Honduran establishment confronted a dilemma: near unanimity among the institutions of the state and the political class that Zelaya had abused his powers in violation of the Constitution, but with some ambiguity what to do about it. Faced with that lack of clarity, the military and/or whoever ordered the coup fell back on what they knew -- the way Honduran presidents were removed in the past: a bogus resignation letter and a one-way ticket to a neighboring country. No matter what the merits of the case against Zelaya, his forced removal by the military was clearly illegal, and Micheletti's ascendance as "interim president" was totally illegitimate.

¶20. (C) Nonetheless, the very Constitutional uncertainty that presented the political class with this dilemma may provide the seeds for a solution. The coup's most ardent legal defenders have been unable to make the intellectual leap from their arguments regarding Zelaya's alleged crimes to how those allegations justified dragging him out of his bed in the night and flying him to Costa Rica. That the Attorney General's office and the Supreme Court now reportedly question the legality of that final step is encouraging and may provide a face-saving "out" for the two opposing sides in the current standoff. End Comment.

These are the last two paragraphs in a cable sent from Tegucigalpa in July, 2009, by US Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens.

The cable, included among a massive release of documents by Wikileaks, has already been discussed by the Miami Herald. They chose to emphasize the fact that the ambassador reached the conclusion that the coup was "clearly illegal".

That conclusion should come as no surprise to anyone who has actually paid attention to the facts, and tells us more about the ability of the US media to refuse to understand those facts than about the content of the cable or US policy.

Instead, we would emphasize the point by point summary of the arguments of coup supporters and the devastating rejection of those points:

¶3. (SBU) Defenders of the June 28 coup have offered some combination of the following, often ambiguous, arguments to assert it's legality:

-- Zelaya had broken the law (alleged but not proven);

-- Zelaya resigned (a clear fabrication);

-- Zelaya intended to extend his term in office (supposition);

-- Had he been allowed to proceed with his June 28 constitutional reform opinion poll, Zelaya would have dissolved Congress the following day and convened a constituent assembly (supposition);

-- Zelaya had to be removed from the country to prevent a bloodbath;

-- Congress "unanimously" (or in some versions by a 123-5 vote) deposed Zelaya; (after the fact and under the cloak of secrecy); and

-- Zelaya "automatically" ceased to be president the moment he suggested modifying the constitutional prohibition on presidential reelection.

¶4. (C) In our view, none of the above arguments has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution. Some are outright false. Others are mere supposition or ex-post rationalizations of a patently illegal act. Essentially:

-- the military had no authority to remove Zelaya from the country;

-- Congress has no constitutional authority to remove a Honduran president;

-- Congress and the judiciary removed Zelaya on the basis of a hasty, ad-hoc, extralegal, secret, 48-hour process;

-- the purported "resignation" letter was a fabrication and was not even the basis for Congress's action of June 28; and

-- Zelaya's arrest and forced removal from the country violated multiple constitutional guarantees, including the prohibition on expatriation, presumption of innocence and right to due process.

This reads almost exactly like a summary of the arguments we have made, in this blog and its predecessor, Honduras Coup 2009.

We also like the ambassador's choice of words for paragraphs 11 through 13 of his cable, which he entitled "The Article 239 Canard". As he properly noted, this was only cited post-facto to retroactively claim that President Zelaya had removed himself from office by advocating constitutional reform. The US Embassy cites numerous good reasons for rejecting this entire line of argument.

Most wonderful in this section is the final paragraph:

¶13. (C) It further warrants mention that Micheletti himself should be forced to resign following the logic of the 239 argument, since as President of Congress he considered legislation to have a fourth ballot box ("cuarta urna") at the November elections to seek voter approval for a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. Any member of Congress who discussed the proposal should also be required to resign, and National Party presidential candidate Pepe Lobo, who endorsed the idea, should be ineligible to hold public office for 10 years.

This is indeed the case; but look who's in the Presidential Palace now, with full US recognition.

Finally, we fully endorse the conclusion in paragraph 18 that the illegal actions of the Honduran Congress did more than remove Zelaya; they were an illegal removal of an entire branch of government by the other two branches, a violation of the very notion of checks and balances:

In the absence of any of these conditions and since Congress lacked the legal authority to remove Zelaya, the actions of June 28 can only be considered a coup d'etat by the legislative branch, with the support of the judicial branch and the military, against the executive branch. It bears mentioning that, whereas the resolution adopted June 28 refers only to Zelaya, its effect was to remove the entire executive branch.

There is every reason to expect more material posted on Wikileaks will be relevant to understanding US policy in Honduras.

The question this July 2009 cable raises is, why was the US so timid in its actions when it had access to such a clear exposition of the issues?

Dreams of an Insurgency

On November 15, armed guards at one of Miguel Facussé's African palm plantations in the Bajo Aguan community of El Tumbador, shot and killed 6 campesinos who they said were trying to invade the plantation.

The police declined to investigate the latest shootings. They neither recovered the bodies nor collected any evidence.

After these latest killings, Porfirio Lobo Sosa ordered the complete militarization of the zone.

Oscar Alvarez, Honduras' security minister, claims to have information through the Police intelligence unit that there are armed groups intending insurrection forming in the Bajo Aguan.

This is not a new claim; it was made at least as early as February of this year. There's no public evidence to support the claim.

Then on Wednesday, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, declaring that there was good evidence that there was an arms cache somewhere in the Bajo Aguan with 1000 AK-47s and M-16s in the hands of groups being trained to attack the government of Honduras. Lobo Sosa knows this because Security Minister Alvarez told him it was true.

Lobo Sosa indicated a massive, secret operation was underway in the Aguan, to clean out all the known arms caches in the Bajo Aguan:

"We have traces of the people who have been voyaging outside of Honduras to receive training, we have them all located, including the places where they are being trained outside of here, of Honduras; it's a large quantity of arms they have, and we're going after them."

No one outside of the military and the national police knows the target(s) of this investigation. Lobo Sosa claims the current operation will put an end to the killings in the Bajo Aguan.

The first, and so far, only target, was the INA regional office in the Bajo Aguan, which the military and police took over in an early morning raid yesterday morning.

They found nothing.

Why target INA? it might have something to do with the history of the land where the latest massacre of peasant activists took place.

El Tumbador, the site of the massacre, in the 1980s formed part of the Centro Regional de Entrenamiento Militar (CREM). CREM, just outside Trujillo, was where US military advisers trained Salvadoran, and later Nicaraguan Contra forces, in the US's battle against leftists in Central America.

There's a long history of conflict over this land, home to some important archaeological remains investigated in the 1970s by Paul Healy. In 1983 I was advised by the Honduran military that the US base commander had denied me permission to verify the safety of the Selin Farm archaeological site, which I was checking as a representative of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia.

After the CREM facility was decommissioned, campesinos moved in and established the community of Guadalupe Carney in the remains of the base. Guadalupe Carney has been the site of killings of as many as 17 campesinos in struggles over rights to the land.

Today, both the Movimiento Unificado de Campesino del Aguan (MUCA) and the US citizen Temistocles Ramirez claim El Tumbador. So how does Miguel Facussé come into it?

The Instituto Nacional Agrario (INA) says that the government, not Miguel Facussé, owns the land in question at El Tumbador.

The documentation is stored in the INA regional office in Sinaloa, in the Bajo Aguan. César Ham, current head of INA (a cabinet position in the Lobo Sosa government, remember), said that Facussé appropriated 565 hectares of government land inappropriately, land which belongs specificially to INA, land that was part of CREM.

Oscar Alvarez, the security minister, says that armed groups in the Bajo Aguan are funded by NGO's that are trying to destabilize Honduras. According to him, it's Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who are supporting these supposed clandestine groups. This charge has drawn a categorical denial by Nicaraguan Authorities.

Rafael Alegria, campesino leader and one of the voices of the FNRP called Alvarez's allegations a smoke screen designed to disorient public opinion.

The de facto regime made similar claims about the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP) right after the coup, and harrassed and deported many Central Americans during its 7 month reign. In fact, Oscar Alvarez goes further, and revives a claim that in the 1980s, "several Hondurans were recruited in Nicaragua and then trained in Cuba to try to destabilize the Honduran government".

In fact, there is a large paramilitary organization in the Bajo Aguan right now, armed with AK-47s and M-16s, and protected by powerful individuals, just as Porfirio Lobo Sosa claimed. Except that it's not a campesino group. It's the armed guards hired by DINANT corporation to guard facilities in the Bajo Aguan.

Honduran resistance members argue that these private police forces are being trained by Colombian groups like the Mano Blanco, linked to similar violence against campesinos in Colombia. Reports of former AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) operatives being hired by Honduran elites were treated seriously by the UN in fall 2009. It is publicly acknowledged by Honduras and Colombia that security forces from Colombia are in Honduras this year on a "training" mission.

It was the spokesperson for DINANT corporation, Roger Pineda, who told HRN radio the unbelievable story that the El Tumbador finca guards were attacked by a group of 200 campesinos armed with AK-47 rifles. Press photographs circulated that showed several of the corpses allegedly holding (in what appeared to me to be a completely unnatural manner) AK-47s.

It's among DINANT corporation's paramilitary guards that Oscar Alvarez needs to look for his arms cache.

But instead, credit the new military operation for the successes it can report: in traffic stops they found 27 people carrying pistols and even a shotgun, without having the proper documentation of their right to own these guns

So José Luis Muñoz Licona, director of the National Police called the operation a success.