Military Hitmen for hire?

Was the Honduran military paid to kill a Nicaraguan citizen?

That's what Nicaragua's La Prensa claims.

When Daniel Ortega announced that he would seek an unprecedented third term as Nicaragua's President, it raised all sorts of anger among the community of former Contra members who fought the Sandinistas in a civil war back in the 1980s with CIA and US military backing (look up Iran-Contra).

First to declare his opposition was Jose Gabriel Garmendia who in July 2010 announced he was organizing an armed rebellion against Ortega during a ceremony in Matagalpa to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Contra disarmament. Known as Comandante Jahob, he was known as a charismatic and brave commander among the rural anti-Sandinista population.

In late January 2011, he released a recording noting that:

It is aberrant that Daniel Ortega is doing what he wants with the constitution of Nicaragua.

In the recording he stated he had enough people, with an organized command structure. He called on ex-president Arnoldo Aleman and Fabbio Gadea, the two candidates opposing Ortega in the election, to set aside their political aspirations and unite against Ortega. Garmendia continued:

The worst thing that could happen is the re-election of Daniel Ortega and that re-election should not be possible

Ortega had managed to get the largely Sandinista Party Nicaraguan Congress to change the constitution to allow he to run for a third term. Ortega dismissed Garmendia's threats as those of a common criminal affiliated with the drug runners and coup-conspiring officers of the Honduran military.

Two weeks later, Garmendia lay dead in the mountains. He was either shot by Nicaraguan soldiers or intelligence officers (according to Nicaraguan media) or killed by a jealous farmer in the region (according to an official Police investigation).

A second group, the Fuerza Democrática Comandante 380 (FDC 380, a reference to former Contra Enrique Bermudez who was known as Comandante 3-80), is headed by Santos Guadalupe Joya Borge, known as Comandante Pablo Negro. It was organized in April, 2011. In November, 2011, the FDC announced it was an

"armed organization in defense of the democracy, liberty, and human rights which had been cut by the dictatorial regime of Daniel Ortega"

Early in January this year rumors began to circulate in the Nicaraguan press that the FDC was organizing in Honduras, probably in the El Paraiso province where the Contras had been based in the 1980s. Then they called El Paraiso "New Nicaragua" and terrorized the local Honduran population. The Honduran military announced they would check into that on January 9, and that they would be coordinating with the Nicaraguan military, who might know more about it than they did.

However, the FDC had already announced on January 7 that Comandante Pablo Negro had been captured by the Honduran military or police, two days before the Honduran military said they'd go looking for him.

They already had him when they announced they'd go looking for him.

Indeed the Nicaraguan press on the 8th of January said that the Honduran security forces were paid $2 million to pick Joya up. This is also what Roberto Petray, President of the Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights, told the press.

On Thursday, Joya's lifeless body was found in Honduras, 300 meters from the border (and the border crossing of ) in El Paraiso Department. He had been shot twice. His family, who arrived in Tegucigalpa to collect the body on Friday, said that he had been captured by four Honduran soldiers in El Paraiso. A silver Toyota pickup with four different soldiers came from the direction of the Nicaraguan border to pick him up and return him to Nicaragua the same day, January 7.

He never made it.

The Honduran police spokesperson denies that the Honduran police know anything about the capture of Joya Santos. The legal coordinator for the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH), Gonzalo Carrión. said it would by international standards fall to Honduras to do the due diligence to investigate Joya's death.

The Nicaraguan Police have opened an investigation into this citizen's death in Honduras, but indicated they will wait for Honduras to say what it knows before proceeding. They report the Honduran medical examiner will perform an autopsy tonight both to securely identify the body, and to determine the official cause of death.

There's not even a hint of an investigation mentioned in the Honduran press.

Honduras back in SICA or, what about the bylaws?

The headlines in many newspapers across Central America, like this one from El Salvador's El Mundo, pronounced Wednesday morning that Honduras was "approved to reincorporate itself into SICA" (emphasis added).

But is that really true? The Presidents of all the Central American countries except Nicaragua met in El Salvador and reportedly issued a proclamation urging the OAS to rapidly reincorporate Honduras back into the OAS. That would be news, but of course, is not the same thing as being reincorporated into SICA.

There is also a claim that Honduras was readmitted to SICA as a fully functioning member yesterday, but interestingly there is no such announcement or resolution on SICA's website. [See below for updates on this point.]

The only posted result of the most recent SICA meeting makes no mention of the reincorporation of Honduras, and lacks a signature from the representative of Nicaragua. Maybe they're just not into transparency?

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega decided last night to reprimand the other Central American presidents for their "ridiculousness" in issuing the proclamation that Honduras was reincorporated in SICA.

In a speech broadcast Tuesday evening, Ortega dismissed his Central American colleagues as "ridiculous" and as "challenging Central American integration", the NOTIMEX news service reported.

Ortega also said Nicaragua does not recognize the reintegration of Honduras in SICA, and that any such resolution passed at the extraordinary session held in El Salvador on July 20 lacks legal validity because SICA resolutions require unanimity under SICA bylaws. Nicaragua did not vote for any such resolution. Ortega said the announcement by his colleagues violates the basis of the SICA treaty. He said he considers that his colleagues "did something ridiculous" because SICA has its rules and establishes consensus as the rule, and consensus "requires unanimity"; without it, "you simply cannot make such decisions".

We first pointed out this SICA bylaw problem when SICA Secretary General Juan Daniel Alemán Gurdián (a Nicaraguan opponent of the current government of that country) unilaterally declared that no resolution was necessary to reincorporate Honduras into SICA, and that it had never been suspended, patently ignoring the SICA resolution of June 29, 2009.

There was no reaction at the time from any member government, not even President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador, who Alemán accused of just "getting it wrong" for reporting that no consensus had been reached. Which, given that President Ortega would have to be part of any consensus, shows that Funes was correct and Alemán is, lets say, playing fast and loose with the truth.

Meanwhile, Mario Canahuati, the Honduran Foreign Minister, boasted today that he had "24 or 25" votes for Honduras's readmission to the OAS. Under OAS bylaws he only needs 22 votes, a two-thirds majority.

But Boz, in a comment on an earlier post, noted that the OAS normally operates with consensus. He predicted that until the vote could be 30-0 or 28-0 with the remaining countries abstaining, the OAS is unlikely to consider a motion to readmit Honduras.

The reason that SICA coming to a consensus about reintegrating Honduras is important, is that it is the group most likely to accept Honduras back first, for pragmatic reasons: the need for economic integration, negotiation over contested territorial limits in the ocean that can otherwise lead to seizing of fishing boats, and the like.

Boz mentioned such pragmatic considerations in his post earlier today on early reports of "formal reintegration" of Honduras in SICA. There, he argued that it was unlikely that the other Central American presidents would have acted in Ortega's absence, against his expressed position:

I have a hard time believing that the region's presidents, particularly Colom and Funes, would have done this without Ortega's knowledge. I think [Ortega] chose not to attend as a way to abstain from having to either vote in favor or against. That way he can continue his opposition at the OAS and elsewhere, which only has political consequences, while having Honduras back within the Central American community, which benefits the region's economic health.

And this sounds about right to us. But when the other presidents announced that they were in favor of full reintegration of Honduras into the OAS-- assuming that report is true-- Ortega would have had every reason to be outraged. Having arranged not to stand in the way of the necessary (for the people of Honduras, and the region) economic reintegration, while maintaining opposition to the political reintegration into OAS, he finds himself bypassed and blind-sided.

Which we expect will increase, not decrease, his vocal opposition to OAS reintegration. And it is not just Nicaragua, of course (although having one's close neighbor oppose this should rhetorically count for quite a bit).

As the rabidly pro-coup Honduran online Proceso Digital put it, "Even though Central America wants it, South America confirms blockade of Honduras":

from the South they sent a jar of cold water to get across to Tegucigalpa that they will not permit the country to return to the institutional system.

As always, it was incumbent on the aggressive Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa not to fail to take advantage of a visit with the open enemy of Honduras into which the secretary general of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, has converted himself, to affirm that he will not permit the return of the country to the continental organization, unless it accedes to his desires to see imprisoned all those that removed from power his friend and partner José Manuel Zelaya.

Ecuadorian news media, while being far less colorful in their characterizations of the diplomats involved, basically confirmed that Correa told Insulza he was opposed to reintegration of Honduras in the OAS as long as those who participated in the coup enjoy impunity. The actual statement of Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño did not call for mass imprisonment, but it does call for justice:

"For Ecuador the return of Honduras to the OAS is not acceptable as long as there is no clear sanction or initiation of judgment against those responsible for the coup".

"We believe that it is a very bad precedent for democracy in the hemisphere that a country should carry out a coup d'Etat and organize elections in the next months, as if nothing had happened."

And so, if Boz is right in his assessment of the normal operating procedure of the OAS, it will be a long time before there is an agreement, because there is no indication that anyone in Honduras understands that they have to repudiate the coup, they have to take steps to rid the current government of the hangover coup appointees, and they have to do something substantive and believable about the impunity for the coup authors that was created by the passage of amnesty just before the Micheletti regime stepped down.

Bad Journalism

Proceso Digital is a fairly new Honduran digital newspaper, formed by two professional journalists, Marlen Perdomo de Zelaya and Orfa Sofia Mejia Maradiaga.

Perdomo has a professional degree from UNAH in journalism, and teaches journalism at UNAH. She is also a member of the advisory council of UNAH. Mejia Maradiaga is an investigative reporter, also with a professional degree in journalism from UNAH. She has worked for a number of radio stations and newspapers in Honduras, including Radio Cadena de Noticias and La Prensa. She has also worked for EFE and Reuters, and the digital magazine Revistazo.

In a recent interview in El Heraldo Mejia Maradiaga described journalism as playing a role in the development of society and the strengthening of democracy:

"Objectivity, they say in the classrooms of the university, is the goal (ideal). It is not easy, but it is possible. Obviously you will never please both sides. What we have to try to do is keep as much as possible to the truth, to be as responsible as possible in the treatment of information. We should not think that our truth is the truth which we should impose on our public."

Proceso Digital sometimes comes close to the above journalistic standard, but more often than not fails to distinguish between claims of fact, facts, and opinion.

Their article today about Porfirio Lobo Sosa's impending trip to Spain is a perfect example of when they fail, and is suggestive about what is wrong with Honduran journalism in general. The problems begin with the headline:

Lobo Sosa will go to Spain and make the boycott by "Twenty-First Century Socialism" fail

Already we're in trouble.

As our previous post on the Naumann Foundation showed, the phrase "twenty-first century socialism" is not a fact; it is editorializing. It has no business being in the article or headline except as part of a quotation. But it isn't taken from a quotation; it is inserted by the journalists.

Lobo Sosa will travel to Spain tomorrow, missing the EU-Latin American summit, which is attended by representatives of those countries that threatened to boycott if Lobo Sosa were present. In other words: Lobo Sosa is not there today; he is not at the EU-Latin American summit; and in fact, that means the UNASUR countries got what they demanded.

Lets look at some more of this "news article", datelined Tegucigalpa:

Twenty-First Century socialism failed in its boycott of Honduras, whose representatives will attend the Third Summit of the European Union and Latin America, with which the country has broken the diplomatic siege that some South American governments and their partners in the region still insist on making.

Fact Check: Lets see, the boycott failed because some representatives of Honduras, but not Porfirio Lobo Sosa, will attend the back room meetings, not the meetings of heads of state, at the Third European Union - Latin American summit?

Umm, no, the boycott threatened was by heads of state against Porfirio Lobo Sosa attending the meeting of heads of state. Redefining what the boycott was about is just making things up.

Not very objective journalism, but certainly within the realm of what rags like La Prensa and El Heraldo print every day as news.

Proceso Digital continues:

President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the representative of Honduras, will travel to Spain to attend the summit, which is on the brink of failure because of the impossibility and the limited political clout of Spain to get other governments in tune to achieve the objectives of the meeting.

Fact Check: Better. Porfirio Lobo Sosa will travel to Spain to attend the EU-Central American summit, a subset of the larger EU-Latin American summit. The Central American meetings will happen the day after the Latin America-wide meeting.

Some European news sources, including the BBC, have said the purpose of the meeting is unclear since both sides are divided about how to deal with each other and Europe is distracted by a financial crisis. There are economic trade agreements being negotiated frantically that Spain would like to see signed at the summits, one with the MERCOSUR countries in South America, and a separate agreement with Central America, including Honduras.

The goal of the Madrid EU-Latin American and Caribbean Summit is to get two documents signed. One is a declaration of political alliances between the regions, including themes like technology transfer, the other is a joint action plan. A strategic alliance declaration may well fail.

Returning to Proceso Digital:

Lobo Sosa will participate in the meeting between the EU-Central America, where the main goal is the signing of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, with its free trade component.

Fact Check: Good. This sentence communicates both where Lobo Sosa will go, what meeting he will attend, and why he's going. Note that the UNASUR countries would never have been at this meeting, so the boycott is irrelevant.

In addition, the summit will serve to allow Lobo Sosa to keep bilateral meetings with several leaders and figures of Latin American and Spanish politics.

In addition to meeting with the Spanish authorities who bowed to the boycott of the governments of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), Lobo Sosa will meet with the head of the [Spanish] Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy.

Fact Check: The first sentence is good, emphasizing Lobo Sosa's prominence on the world stage. The second sentence, however, goes off the rails yet again. It was the UNASUR countries that threatened a boycott, not the ALBA countries. They are distinct, separate groups, even if some of their membership overlaps. You need to keep them straight if you claim to provide reliable information.

Many of the Honduran newspapers have written that it is Hugo Chavez, not the presidents of Brazil and Argentina, who is behind the boycott, continuing a pattern of demonizing international pressure on Honduras by associating it with Venezuela. So perhaps the author of the Proceso Digital article is just confused because they've been reading the "journalists" Mejia Maradiaga and Perdomo trained in the university, instead of checking the facts of this story.

Lobo Sosa will, indeed, meet with the Popular Party (PP) head, Mariano Rajoy on his trip to Spain. That is not a surprise: the PP supported the coup, as did Lobo Sosa.

Again, returning to Proceso Digital:

In vain did the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero accede to the blackmail of Chavez, as the Venezuelan president finally decided to punish the Spanish and will not attend the event and sending a person without weight, Deputy Foreign Minister Francisco Cardenas Arias.

It is also likely that the Brazilian President, Lula da Silva, the other agent who announced the boycott, will not attend.

Nor will with Uruguayan President Mujica attend.

In fact, Brazilian President Lula da Silva announced yesterday that he would attend the meetings, so this speculation is factually wrong, and that fact was knowable before the article was posted on the website. Mujica will not attend because of health concerns. The stress of being President of Uruguay has badly affected his health, according to local news sources. These are not responses to Spain's actions nor do they diminish the success of the UNASUR action.

It is likely that in Madrid, if a new obstacle doesn't force Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua to not attend the meeting, that there will be concretized a meeting of the six Central American leaders.

In fact, Ortega may or may not attend since he was listed as "iffy" about the economic agreement. He did not threaten a boycott if Lobo Sosa attended, but Nicaragua has not recognized the Lobo government either.

The above was stated by the president of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, who noted that Madrid is propitious for the desired meeting where the return of Honduras Central American Integration System (SICA) will be defined.

If the reunion of SICA happens, and the Association agreement with the European Union is also signed, Lobo Sosa's trip will have been a diplomatic triumph.

Yes, Colom noted that he's trying to get the Central American presidents together in Madrid to discuss readmitting Honduras into SICA, and that Daniel Ortega might balk at getting everyone together. Getting readmitted to SICA is important for Honduras because symbolically it means Central America has forgiven the coup. It is the precursor to being readmitted to the OAS as well. Economically, Honduras is already participating in SICA, however, so its impact there will be non-existent.

Will it be a diplomatic triumph for which Lobo Sosa can take credit? I'm sure he will, if it happens. Not impossible that it will happen. But it will be Colom's "diplomatic triumph" if so, and a "triumph" of questionable value.

But Lobo Sosa also expects the offensive of the international left, which previously was in charge of the radical groups, unions and NGOs who fought several months for the Spanish government to withdraw the invitation to the Honduran president.

The groups said they had meetings and marches to censure the presence of Lobo Sosa.

The international groups will be supported by Hondurans, followers of the "melista" movement, that supported the ex-leader and employee of Hugo Chávez, Manuel Zelaya, when he was removed from power on June 28, 2009.

Several figures of the Honduran left went to Spain to make complaints and participate in the so-called People's Summit, which brings together all opposition to government figures.

Fact Check: Got a source for that? No one else is saying there will be protests against Lobo Sosa by anyone other than heads of state (remember the boycott?), so I'd really like to know where you got that information, or did you make that up?

And what about the characterization of former President Zelaya as an "employee of Chavez", which we presume is meant to smear supporters of Zelaya in his role as President of Honduras, by blurring the lines between a recent proposal to appoint Zelaya to a ceremonial position with Petrocaribe, and his role during his truncated term of office in Honduras. This is not a fact, it is a sneer.

This has been a fairly long exercise but if you stuck with me you have a fair idea of what passes for professional journalism in Honduras, written, we have to assume, since they are the only names on the website, by Marlen Perdomo de Zelaya or Orfa Sofia Mejia Maradiaga, or both. Certainly it falls far short of what Ms. Mejia cited above as the goal of good journalism. You can, and should do better, Proceso Digital.

Bitter Pill for Lobo Sosa

In a rare moment of candor, Porfirio Lobo Sosa admitted a setback in his program to get Honduras back to its pre-coup place in the international community. That would include reincorporation back into SICA, the Central American Integration System, and the OAS.

For weeks we've heard from the Lobo administration that that the process was proceeding ahead smoothly, and that they were confident that Honduras would be reincorporated back into SICA and the OAS early this summer, if not earlier.

The first evidence that this might all be bravado came when OAS Secretary General Miguel Insulza gave an interview to El Tiempo earlier this month, and revealed that the reincorporation of Honduras was not even on the program to be discussed at the June OAS meeting in Lima, Peru, as we reported at the time. In that interview Insulza revealed that many members of the OAS still had concerns, particularly about human rights in Honduras, and the continued pursuit of the political charges against Manuel Zelaya Rosales that prevent him from returning to Honduras, despite the Congressional amnesty bill. Insulza also mentioned that the verification commission appointed under the ill-fated Guaymuras Accords, made up of Ricardo Lagos and Hilda Solis, would have to return to Honduras and submit a report to the OAS before reincorporation could be discussed.

Now Porfirio Lobo Sosa tells us there's another problem.

Despite the best wishes of Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom and Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, it looks like the reincorporation of Honduras back into SICA has hit a roadblock. In comments made to the press yesterday as he left an education event, Lobo Sosa said, "Look, it depends on what Nicaragua decides, but Honduras, with SICA or without SICA will move ahead, you don't have to lose hope about it." Lobo admitted that reincorporation into SICA depends on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who ducked the Saturday lunch where Honduras's reincorporation was supposed to be discussed. Nicaragua does not recognize Lobo's government as legitimate and has not re-established normal diplomatic relations with Honduras since Lobo's inauguration.

Ortega also, Tiempo reports, changed the agenda for the Wednesday meeting of the Central American Presidents in Guatemala; they will discuss the proposed economic treaty between Central America and the European Union. "Possibly Wednesday we will go to Guatemala to revise the free trade agreement with Europe," Lobo said, "although there was no opportunity to consult; its not certain if he [Ortega] will attend or that the meeting is confirmed."

Add to the uncertainty about whether this meeting will happen that Honduras's reincorporation into SICA is no longer on the agenda, and this is really bad news for Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

He and his Foreign Minister, Mario Canahuati, have been emphasizing that all of this was on track to happen soon, and that there were no obstacles to returning Honduras's international relations to normal. Looks like reality caught up with them.

Miguel Insulza told Tiempo on May 5 that Honduras would need to be reincorporated into SICA before the OAS could take up reincorporation into the OAS. As long as reintegration in SICA is deferred, so is consideration of returning to the OAS. And while that is a bitter pill for Lobo Sosa to swallow, it may be the medicine Honduras needs to stop ignoring the continued legacy of the coup.

Another Failed Reunion: No Free Lunch for Lobo Sosa

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom agreed to recognize Porfirio Lobo Sosa as President of Honduras and work for Honduras's reintegration into SICA after Lobo Sosa agreed to give Manuel Zelaya Rosales safe conduct out of the Brazilian embassy on January 27, 2010.

Since that time Colom as been trying to get the Central American Presidents together to discuss how and when to reincorporate Honduras in the Central American Integration System (Sistema de Integración Centroamericano, or SICA .

Honduras was suspended from SICA after the coup last June. SICA, composed of the Central American countries, with China and Mexico as observers, seeks to fortify its member countries' democracy and institutions, deal with regional security interests, and provide for economic integration among its member countries, among other guiding principles. SICA is currently engaged in negotiations with the European Union to establish better trade relations between the two regions.

On May 7, President Colom issued an urgent call for a meeting in Guatemala attended by all the Central American Presidents for next Wednesday. This invitation was almost immediately canceled because all the Central American Presidents were confirmed to attend the inauguration of Costa Rica's new President, Laura Chinchilla, yesterday, and were expected to be staying on to attend a lunch yesterday hosted by President Chinchilla, where the discussions could take place.

That lunch meeting never happened.

President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador announced on arrival in Costa Rica yesterday that he would have to return to El Salvador because one of the members of his delegation had developed a health problem. Then, Presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and Ricardo Martinelli of Panama, decided not to stay for the lunch and returned to their home countries right after the inauguration.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the press the summit in Costa Rica had been canceled, so they all gathered together, cameramen and photographers waiting for statements.

Porfirio Lobo appeared first and told them "We hadn't exactly settled on a meeting for today, but there was the idea that it would be here, or in Guatemala on Wednesday."

Because President Ortega left right after the inauguration, as did President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, who doesn't recognize Lobo as President of Honduras, this started rumors that there was discord among the Central American Presidents.

Costa Rica's Foreign Minister, René Castro, appeared before the press two hours later to reassure them that there was no discord, that it had simply proved impossible to get all the Presidents together to discuss reincorporating Honduras in SICA.

Putting the best face on things, Castro said it was a positive step that all of the Presidents came to Chinchilla's inauguration. "All Central Americans are happy to be together again," he said. "We had been thinking about substituting the meeting that we could not have here today for a quick meeting on Wednesday among the Presidents in Guatemala, which has a problem in that there is already planned another meeting of the [Central American negotiators of the agreement with the EU] and it would be almost parallel".

The reference, of course, is to the negotiation for a Central America economic agreement with the EU in Spain, to which Lobo Sosa was invited and then uninvited.

As long as the Lobo Sosa administration insists on touting every minor international contact as "recognition", though, it seems that the continued inability of Mauricio Funes to make it to planned "summits", and the polite but determined attempt by Daniel Ortega to avoid sitting down at a table with Porfirio Lobo Sosa for anything other than urgent bilateral negotiations, cannot really be chalked up in the win column.

On to Spain!

Misrecognition

As we previously noted, supporters of the government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa and the government itself are desperate to find any indication of "recognition" that they can. So pro-coup Honduran news media claimed that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega had "recognized" Honduras by signing an accord to reauthorize a border dispute commission.

Now, Danilo Valladares writing for IPS notes that Nicaragua officially disclaimed such an interpretation:

In a statement issued by Managua after their meeting, representatives of leftist parties, including the governing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) headed by Ortega, said they had decided "not to recognise the de facto government of Honduras."

The IPS article also includes comments from Ángel Edmundo Orellana Mercado, who resigned his post in the Zelaya cabinet days before the coup, then refused to participate in the post-coup Congress in protest against its illegal actions on June 28. Orellana was the author of a series of important editorials contesting the innovative attempts by the de facto regime to retroactively cleanse the coup of the stain of illegality.

IPS notes that Orellana argued against too-easy agreement to reintegrate Honduras in regional organizations like SICA and the OAS. Commenting on the Truth Commission set up by the Lobo Sosa government as part of its attempt to gain re-admission into OAS, Orellana said

"A bad precedent could be set if the commitments outlined there are not fulfilled and everything that happened is simply pardoned".

This is, of course, precisely what has been set in motion by the Honduran Congress passing a decree granting amnesty for "political crimes", which has been criticized by legal experts.

The IPS story repeats the claim seen in most recent articles that only 30 countries world-wide have recognized the Honduran government. This is far less than the number of countries claimed by the Lobo Sosa administration.

Among the Central American countries, as it properly points out, only Nicaragua has so far refused to recognize Lobo Sosa's government. The newly elected president of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, has gone even further than Oscar Arias, saying

"We will be advocating, as we have up to now, the full and total reincorporation of our beloved sister republic of Honduras in all of the region's bodies".

Mauricio Funes, president of El Salvador, is reported to have stated that "Honduras will be fully integrated in SICA" by its scheduled July 20 meeting.

Renzo Rosal, described as assistant director of the Central American Institute for Political Studies, is quoted in the IPS article as saying that before Honduras is re-admitted to SICA,

"Issues that should be discussed are the role of the Honduran army in a democratic society; the historical two-party system in Honduras; the reconstruction of the social fabric; and the role that the OAS and SICA should play to help solve conflicts like the one in Honduras".

That would seem a very ambitious agenda to complete before July 20. Notably, it is not within the charge of the Truth Commission, which has been explicitly warned off such fundamental areas of Honduran political life.

The closest approximation to this agenda is, in fact, the manifesto issued by the Frente Popular de Resistencia following the meeting it convened in La Esperanza earlier this spring, which also called for reconsidering the role of the army, the place of the historical two party system, and the reconstruction of the social fabric. Good ideas; maybe someone should invite the authors to the table for real dialogue.

"Recognition": grasping at straws in Nicaragua

A news article in El Heraldo today reports that a previously scheduled meeting of the Presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua to be held in Guatemala this Sunday has been canceled.

Explanations were diverse, but all concerned the President of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes. He is either sick, over-scheduled, or had a problem with his agenda. Three participants, three reasons. Raises the question, what really is going on?

Funes and Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom were reportedly to try to convince Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega to support the re-integration of Honduras in the Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (SICA), the Central American System of Integration.

Reintegration in SICA, the El Heraldo article says (in the kind of editorializing that is typical of the Honduran press)

without a doubt will open the doors for the return of Honduras to the OAS.

Nicaragua, the story notes, is the only Central American government not to recognize what the writers call

the democratic process from which Lobo emerged, because it was carried out under the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti.

Pretty fair factual statement about what Nicaragua sees as the problem with the Lobo Sosa government.

But the story then editorializes that Nicaragua (actually, it says Daniel Ortega, trying to personalize a government action and thus delegitimate it) took this position

despite the fact that [the election] was programmed since before the coup d'Etat that deposed the constitutional president Manuel Zelaya.

Today's story also mentions a meeting that took place between Ortega and Lobo Sosa in Managua on Friday as evidence of progress toward the goal of Honduran legitimation.

Coverage of the Friday meeting in El Heraldo happily headlined the story "Daniel Ortega bestows recognition on Lobo".

So what was the political content of the meeting, how did it come about, and how can El Heraldo claim it represented "recognition"?

Lobo Sosa was en route to Panama, and the meeting took place in the Managua airport during a stopover.

Ortega is quoted as saying

"Hemos coincidido en que no se debe de rehuir la palabra unidad, que es una necesidad vital, la unidad de la región centroamericana".

["We have concurred that the word unity should not be avoided, that it is a vital necessity, the unity of the Central American region."]

Quite an endorsement of the Lobo Sosa government, isn't it? See the clear statement of recognition? Why not? The Latin American Herald Tribune thinks it did.

The actual purpose of the meeting was for the two countries to sign an agreement to reactivate a bilateral commission on disputes about the Gulf of Fonseca, the Pacific coastline shared by Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The El Heraldo article resuscitates the claim that Nicaragua and El Salvador are trying to close access to the Pacific by Honduras, by projecting a marine frontier directly between them (leaving Honduras with frontage on the Gulf of Fonseca, but no right to move into the Pacific).

Border disputes also exist on the Caribbean coast, for which, the same article noted, Ortega and Lobo Sosa agreed they should reactivate the commission on national boundaries initiated October 2008.

Lobo Sosa thanked Ortega for releasing a group of Honduran fisherman seized in Pacific waters claimed by Nicaragua. His other quotes were the same kind of vague generalizations about unity as the one quote from Ortega.

So: how is this recognition?

Quoting El Heraldo:

La firma del acuerdo de carácter político, selló el reconocimiento de parte de Ortega al gobierno del presidente Lobo.

[The signing of an agreement of a political character, seals the recognition on the part of Ortega of the government of president Lobo.]

Inter-governmental negotiation of border disputes cannot be entirely set aside, or among other things, Nicaragua would be forced to indefinitely hold Honduran fisherman captive. Vague endorsement of greater integration of Central America is a far cry from recognition, even if it is a relief to Lobo Sosa not to be so completely ostracized.

The problem with this kind of reporting-- other than that it is a complete misrepresentation of facts-- is that it continues to muddy the waters of what precisely is and is not recognition of a government.

It might even disincline a diplomat to participate in other discussions that might be subject to the same kind of egregious spin, spin that recalls the constant drumbeat of disinformation published by the Honduran newspapers throughout the rule of Roberto Micheletti.