Honduras: The ball’s still rolling

By Lorenzo Gonzalo

The moment that President Manuel Zelaya declared that the proposal for an accord made by the putschist government led by Roberto Micheletti was “a dead letter,” the conflict reached a point where no real solution can be found.

The complexity of the problem extends beyond the current proposals for a solution to a conflict that should never have been created.

The difference between the small group of families that constitute the Honduran oligarchy and the rest of Latin America’s oligarchy is the reduced number of its components.

While in South America and the Caribbean the families that control the productive media and process information differ from each other, not only because of their particular interest in profit and power but also because of their approach to the management of government, the situation is not the same in Honduras, where the small size of the group allows them to share the privileges without major conflict.

Ever since President Zelaya said he would organize a referendum to modify the Constitution, and the Congress claimed it was an unconstitutional decision, according to Honduran law, all of those interests agreed to eliminate the president.

The sign was clear. Congress met to enforce that clause and passed a law prohibiting public opinion polls 180 days before and after Election Day.

That law was a response to the chief executive’s decision to carry out a sampling of opinion (because a plebiscite was forbidden) for the purpose of finding out the citizens’ opinion regarding a presidential reelection.

We don’t know what might have happened if the poll had favored the wishes of the chief executive.

Most likely, Zelaya would have asked Congress to consider such an opinion and permit the legislative branch to discuss a constitutional amendment. But the de-facto powers in Honduras didn’t want to wait.

The problems with Zelaya had heated up when he posited Honduras’ incorporation into the ALBA. This institution, launched by Venezuela and Cuba, also includes Nicaragua, Bolivia, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The spirit of its founding is the creation of an instrument of regional integration that can deal with aspects beyond trade and convert the bloc into a powerful economic front capable of issuing a common currency and protecting the weak economies of its members from the vagaries of the dollar.

The United States assumed toward Zelaya’s government the same attitude of low-intensity hostility that it had maintained from the start with the 10-or-so countries that opted for socioeconomic reform.

The possibility of rescuing Honduras from the militaristic and oligarchic past in which the putschists have plunged it vanished after the Micheletti government promised a solution whereby Zelaya would presumably be reinstated. However, the promise included a government of national unity that does not envision such a reinstatement.

Just so the deception could be total, the American Ambassador to Honduras, Cuban-born Hugo Llorens, declared that the United States will support the elections of Nov. 29, in opposition to international opinion. That statement from the Cuban-American Llorens represents a full endorsement of the coup d’état.

After the United States involved itself, and after several months when their voices were imperceptible at the meetings of the Organization of American States, the few survivors of that past of genuflections bet that a solution in Honduras was imminent.

Today we know (and always imagined) that it was just another maneuver to extend the convulsion in that misfortunate country and increase the risk of a social upheaval that Washington could probably be unable to contain.

This is the most serious aspect of the situation. The Capitol hawks, the Secretary of State, the Pentagon and the members of that specter called Homeland Security (a name that brings to mind Orwell’s predictions) still think that they have a property deed to Latin American territories.

The movement in Paraguay that seeks to impeach President Lugo, the military pact with Colombia (which is nothing but the Plan Colombia in a different language) and the coup in Honduras constitute the only card left to the aggressive spirits and the opponents to change to halt the stream of renewal that is finally coursing through South America and the Caribbean.

This hope of the Washington warriors would surely clash with the hope of that spirit of renewal. The consequences would be deadly and the end could be a big surprise for those who always bet on force.

Honduras will be a trigger that will propel the necessary changes even farther. The difficulties in solving something as basic as the violation of the established order by a group of families and a handful of medieval soldiers indicate that the regional organizations also have to be subjected to reform.

For its part, the United States will learn that the era of unilateral decisions is past.

Evidently, a new era, born many years ago, has grown and only shared affairs are part of it. And while it’s true that in Honduras the itch spreads, the new changes in Latin America spread and consolidate.

The outcome of the efforts toward a political solution in Honduras (a solution concocted in Washington) demonstrates that everything was a big show to facilitate the putschists’ wish. And that wish was to conduct the elections without previously reinstating democratic order in the country.

Lorenzo Gonzalo is deputy director of Radio Miami.