ignored by the ‘mainstream press’

Obama’s Rollback Strategy (extract)
James Petras, Global Research, Jul 9 2009

The US’s roll-back of critical elected regimes to impose pliant clients has found further expression in the recent military coup in Honduras. The use of the high command in the Honduras military, and Washington’s long-standing ties with the local oligarchy who control the Congress and Supreme Court, facilitated the process and obviated the need for direct US intervention. Unlike in Haiti, where US marines intervened to oust Aristide only a decade ago, or in Venezuela, where the US openly backed the failed coup against Chavez in 2002, or more recently in Peru, where the US funded the botched coup against Morales in Sep 2008, the circumstances of US involvement in Honduras were more discreet, in order to allow for ‘pausible denial’. The ‘structural presence’ and motives of the US are readily identifiable. Historically the US has trained and socialized almost the entire Honduran officer corps and maintained deep penetration at all senior levels through daily consultation and common strategic planning. Through its military base in Honduras, the Pentagon’s military intelligence operatives maintain intimate contacts. Honduras has served as an important base for US military intervention in the region: In 1954 the successful US-backed coup against Guatemala’s Arbenz was launched from Honduras. In 1961 the US-orchestrated Cuban exile invasion of Cuba was launched from Honduras. From 1981-1989, the US financed and trained over 20,000 ‘Contra’ mercenaries in Honduras which comprised the army of death squads to attack the Nicaraguan Sandinista government. During the first seven years of the Chavez government, Honduran regimes were staunchly allied with Washington against Venezuela.

Obviously no military coups ever occurred or could occur against any US puppet regime in Honduras. The key to the shift in US policy toward Honduras occurred in 2007-2008 when the Zelaya decided to improved relations with Venezuela in order to secure generous petro-subsidies and foreign aid from Caracas. Subsequently Zelaya joined ‘Petro-Caribe’, a Venezuelan-organized Caribbean and Central American association to provide long-term, low-cost oil and gas to meet the energy needs of member countries. In more recent days, Zelaya joined ALBA, a regional integration organization sponsored by Chavez to promote greater trade and investment among its member countries in opposition to the US-promoted regional free trade pact, known as ALCA. Since Washington defined Venezuela as a threat and alternative to its hegemony in Latin America, Zelaya’s alignment with Chavez on economic issues and his criticism of US intervention turned him into a likely target for US coup planners eager to make Zelaya an example and concerned about their access to Honduran military bases as their traditional launching point for intervention in the region. Washington wrongly assumed that a coup in a small Central American ‘banana republic’ (indeed the original banana republic) would not provoke any major outcry. They believed that Central American ‘roll-back’ would serve as a warning to other independent-minded regimes in the Caribbean and Central American region of what awaits them if they align with Venezuela.

The mechanics of the coup are well-known and public: The Honduran military seized President Zelaya and ‘exiled’ him to Costa Rica; the oligarchs appointed one of their own in Congress as the interim ‘President’ while their colleagues in the Supreme Court provided bogus legality. Latin American governments from the left to the right condemned the coup and called for the re-instatement of the legally-elected President. Obama and Clinton, not willing to disown their clients, condemned unspecified ‘violence’ and called for ‘negotiations’ between the powerful usurpers and the weakened exile President, a clear recognition of the legitimate role of the Honduran generals as interlocutors. After the UNGA condemned the coup and, along with the OAS, demanded Zelaya’s re-instatement, Obama and Clinton finally condemned the ousting of Zelaya but they refused to call it a ‘coup’, which according to US legislation would have automatically led to a complete suspension of their annual $80m military and economic aid package to Honduras. While Zelaya met with all the Latin American heads of state, Obama and Clinton turned him over to a lesser functionary in order not to weaken their allies in the Honduran junta. All the countries in the OAS withdrew their Ambassadors except the US, whose embassy began to negotiate with the junta to see how they might salvage the situation in which both were increasingly isolated, especially in the face of Honduras’ expulsion from the OAS. Whether Zelaya eventually returns to office or whether the US-backed junta continues in office for an extended period of time, while Obama and Clinton sabotage his immediate return through prolonged negotiations, the key issue of the US-promoted ‘roll-back’ has been extremely costly diplomatically as well as politically.

The US-backed coup in Honduras demonstrates that unlike the 1980s, when Reagan invaded Grenada and Bush 41 invaded Panama, the situation and political profile of Latin America (and the rest of the world) has changed drastically. Back then the military and pro-US regimes in the region generally approved of US interventions and collaborated; a few protested mildly. Today the center-left and even rightist electoral regimes oppose military coups anywhere as a potential threat to their own futures. Equally important, the last thing the incumbent regimes want is bloody domestic unrest, stimulated by crude US imperial interventions. Finally, the capitalist classes in Latin America’s center-left countries want stability because they can shift the balance of power via elections (as in the recent cases in Panama, Argentina) and pro-US military regimes can upset their growing trade ties with China, the Middle East and Venezuela/Bolivia.

Honduras: “El negrito del batey”
cadejo4, Kos, Jul 8 2009

The situation involving racist comments by Enrique Ortez Colindres, foreign minister for the de facto regime sworn in following the Jun 28 military coup in Honduras, boiled over yesterday when the US ambassador to Honduras expressed his outrage over Ortez’ comments. Ortez has called Obama a “little black man” at least three times in public interviews since the coup. Following the US denunciation yesterday, he apologized on Honduran television and said he had written a letter of apology to Obama. A third quote by Ortez Colindres surfaced yesterday, made during an interview with a Honduran television station and cited in El Tiempo newspaper:

He negociado con maricones, prostitutas, con ñángaras, negros, blancos. Ese es mi trabajo, yo estudié eso. No tengo prejuicios raciales, me gusta el negrito del batey que está presidiendo los Estados Unidos.
I have negotiated with queers, prostitutes, leftists, blacks, whites. This is my job, I studied for it. I am not racially prejudiced. I like the little black sugar plantation worker who is president of the United States.

The US ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, responded in the strongest possible terms yesterday:

As the official and personal representative of the president of the United States of America, I convey my deep outrage about the unfortunate, disrespectful and racially insensitive comments by Mr. Enrique Ortez Colindres about President Barack Obama. Statements like this are deeply outrageous for the American people and for me personally. I am shocked by these comments, which I condemn in the strongest terms.

Llorens studiously avoided any recognition of Ortez as foreign minister for the de facto regime. In other press statements, Ortez Colindres has called Obama “a little black man who doesn’t know where Tegucigalpa is” and “a little black man who doesn’t know anything about anything.” Hondurans opposed to the de facto regime have posted at least six videos of one of his comments to YouTube:

Q: Do you think the “gringos,” as you call them, would permit an invasion of Honduras promoted by Chavez?
A: They permit anything. The United States is no longer a defender of democracy. In the first place, the president of the republic, with all due respect to the little black man, doesn’t know where Tegucigalpa is. We’re the ones who know where Washington is and we’re the ones who are obliged, as a small country, a democratic pygmy, to clarify the concepts for him and read to him, maybe in his language, what’s going on.

In his apology, Ortez said the comments were made before he had been officialy sworn in by the leader of the de facto regime, Roberto Micheletti. His comments were made Monday last week, the same day he was sworn in. Ortez said:

In the expression that’s been mentioned, I did not intend to be offensive in any way.

While ignored in the US press, his comments caused a firestorm throughout Latin America, where they seemed to confirm a prevailing impression of Honduras as a backwards country ruled by an overbearing elite business class and a corrupt military. The term negrito del batey refers to immigrant, Haitian sugar plantation workers in the Dominican Republic. Batey is a local word for worker barracks and housing. The term was popularized in Latin America thanks to a song, “El Negrito del Batey,” written for Dominican merengue artist Joseito Mateo in 1942. The song is about a sugar plantation worker who would rather go out dancing than work:

A mí me llaman el negrito del batey
Porque el trabajo para mí es un enemigo
El trabajar yo se lo dejo todo al buey
Porque el trabajo lo hizo Dios como castigo.
They call me the black boy from the batey
Because working is my enemy
I leave all working to the ox,
Because God made work as a punishment.