Story Created:
Aug 6, 2009 at 2:47 PM PST
Story Updated:
Aug 6, 2009 at 2:47 PM PST
The Obama administration’s handling of the recent coup in Honduras has been a bit disconcerting. Actually, it has been more than a “bit” disconcerting. After all, the US government was aware that a coup was being plotted.
While it is true — and a good thing — that the U.S. appears not to have actively supported the coup, what was also true was that the U.S. did not notify the government of Honduran President José Manuel Zelaya as to the coup preparations.
Such a failure is more than curious. Compounding this “lapse” have been the mixed signals issued by the Obama administration after the coup took place. While the Obama administration condemned the coup, they did not break all economic ties with Honduras, despite appeals by other Latin American countries to do so. This is a particularly significant issue given how dependent Honduras is on the U.S. for economic assistance.
Thus, had the purse strings really been cut, it is very likely that so too would have been the coup.
The Obama administration was very slow to have high level meetings with ousted Honduran Zelaya. Once they did, they encouraged negotiations between the coup people and Zelaya.
In the background to this were backhanded attacks on Zelaya from the political right in the U.S., as well as from some so-called liberals, for supposedly bringing the coup down on himself by his alleged authoritarianism.
This is only worth mentioning because it is reminiscent of the disingenuous U.S. response to the failed coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002 and the successful coup against Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Allegations of supposed authoritarianism aimed at Zelaya lacked any foundation but were driven by the fact that Zelaya has been pursuing policies aimed at addressing the massive poverty in Honduras and the polarization of wealth in his country.
This ran him afoul of the interests of the country’s elite and also led to his aligning himself with other Latin American leaders on the political Left such as Venezuela’s Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. Such alignments put him in the bull’s eye for many forces in the U.S. who continue to seek unfettered U.S. corporate domination of Latin America.
The approach to the Honduran coup by the Obama administration, no matter how it turns out now, sets a very bad precedent. By encouraging negotiations between the coup people and the ousted president, the Obama administration is suggesting that there is some sort of legitimacy to the coup regime.
In addition, the continuation of the coup regime will tend to encourage the illegal activities of other right-wing forces in Central America, particularly in volatile states such as El Salvador and Nicaragua, who are licking their wounds after having suffered electoral defeats.
If the worst that they have to look forward to from the USA after carrying out a coup is harsh language and a demand to negotiate with those they overthrew, there is little to stop their nefarious conspiracies — except perhaps a mobilized population in those countries that have no desire to return to the days of the atrocious juntas.
Fletcher is an NNPA columnist and senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies.
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