Vigil for peace in Honduras
Posted by Thomas Nephew on August 11th, 2009
Nell points to this notice at Adrienne Pine’s blog:
Hondurans for Democracy, School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), CODE PINK and several human rights organizations and groups opposed to the military-led coup of June 28, 2009, will hold a VIGIL FOR PEACE IN HONDURAS. The vigil is being held in light of the brutal acts of violence perpetrated by the de facto regime in Honduras such as assassinations of protesters/critics, disappearances, kidnappings, and multiple violations of human rights.
What: Vigil for Peace in Honduras
Where:Reflecting pool on west side of the US Capitol Building
Time: 8:30 - 10:30 PM
Date: Tuesday, August 11, 2009
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For the occasion, more stirring words from President Barack Obama, this time from his June 4 speech in Cairo:
I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.
That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.
…there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.
It turns out that was addressed only to Hugo Chavez, not to Roberto Micheletti; if you change your mind and decide to obtain and maintain your power through coercion, not consent, and to ruthlessly suppress the rights of others, that’s cool too; far be it from the Noninterference States of America to be too hasty in the defense of our erstwhile democratic brethren.
Mr. Obama said those complaining that America has not done enough following the military coup that resulted in the overthrow of the government of President Manuel Zelaya on June 28 “can’t have it both ways.”
“The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we’re always intervening and the Yankees need to get out of Latin America,” said Mr. Obama.
The president said the U.S. has done everything it could, including condemning the coup and calling for an immediate reinstating of President Zelaya.
“If these critics think that it’s appropriate for us to suddenly act in ways that in every other context they consider inappropriate, then I think what that indicates is that maybe there’s some hypocrisy involved in their — their approach to U.S.-Latin American relations,” said Mr. Obama.
It seems to me this is one of the most specious, even hypocritical things I can recall Obama saying.* Whoever these unnamed critics are, there’s nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in opposing unilateral U.S. overthrows of democratically elected leaders like Allende, while supporting vigorous multilateral efforts with the OAS to restore a democratically elected leader like Zelaya. (Meanwhile, in Afghanistan and Iraq, we’re sparing no expense to shore up shaky democratic regimes grafted onto those two countries.) No one I know of is arguing we should send in the Marines or the CIA –just that we should take many of the other effective means at our disposal to do so: ending all aid, freezing assets, revoking more visas.
And there’s another option. Obama complains that he can’t just push a button and restore Zelaya to power. In truth, he probably could: if the Bush administration could plausibly threaten El Salvador with cutting off remittances from emigrants to the U.S., so could the Obama administration with Honduras. Honduras is reputedly hugely dependent on such remittances; even short interruptions might make it clear to the Micheletti regime that the jig was up.
This isn’t just about Honduras. It’s about what we stand for, and what we’ll not stand for — either that, or at least recognizing what we’ve become. Obama isn’t the only person I’ve run across spinning the slightly daft notion that peacefully defending democracy from a coup is somehow similar to violently ending democracy with a coup. The equation is all wrong: not defending democracy from usurpers, when you can, is equivalent to assisting those usurpers.
As Nell commented at my previous Honduras post, “Opposition and resistance to the coup isn’t about Zelaya; it’s about respecting elected governments, and about the possibility of removing a corrupt elite’s monopoly on power through participatory democracy.” Americans could do with the example; someday the democracy we save may be our own.
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* A purely Obama-related aside: this also seems surprisingly sensitive, even thin-skinned on his part. It reminds me of his reaction at a meeting prior to his May 21 “preventive detention” speech when an unnamed human rights/civil liberties activist groups said he was “allowing President Bush’s policies to become his own.” According to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Obama was “demonstrably not pleased”. (Via Brian Beutler, Talking Points Memo). It’s a bit worrisome, because it seems like a blind spot: Obama can’t conceive of himself as less than noble and in control. On the big things, he can have just about as much trouble recognizing his own mistakes as Bush did. (I guess he should be more like me: always right, always humble.)
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August 11th, 2009 at 10:22 am
On the big things, he can have just about as much trouble recognizing his own mistakes as Bush did. (I guess he should be more like me: always right, always humble.)
{LOL!} Well done.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Went to the vigil, it was nice. Adrienne Pine translated various short speeches a paragraph at a time, as about 60 or 70 of us (holding paper cup + candle torches) circled a display of crosses, candles, and poster sized photos of seven people who’ve died because of the coup. There was an ongoing weird counterpoint to the vigil all evening: closer to the Capitol, on the steps, an Army rock/pop band cranked out one cover after the other all through the evening (”Message in a bottle” at one point: “sending out an SOS”). It was a curiously soulless thing to have to listen to, compared to what was around me.
I spoke a bit with Mark Weisbrot after the event was over — didn’t know him, but he was talking with Ms. Pine about how to approach the upcoming election. There appears to be serious division on the [Honduran] left whether to boycott it. Ms. Pine supports a boycott. It seems to me like winning that election with an anti-coup leader would be the best outcome, but that would presuppose a fair campaign on a level playing field — newspapers, radio, and TV open and uncensored, no violence. That may well not be the case even this fall.
I also asked Weisbrot why he (and others) kept referring to Hillary, why not Obama. He said he’d just published a piece in the NYT criticizing Obama — here it is: “Obama’s Continuance of Bush Policies in Latin America is a Serious Mistake.” Not every day you get that as a comeback.
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[UPDATE - On reflection, I've changed "appears to support" to "supports" for Ms. Pine, that was weasel-wording on my part. To clarify my remarks above -- and my thinking to myself: I don't think a fair election is possible in a climate of violence, censorship, and intimidation; at least the intimidation would remain a factor even if Michiletti were to reverse the censorship and end violence. Were Zelaya reinstated and the military and civilian leaders of the coup clearly powerless, the election of an anti-coup leader would be the best outcome -- but that all seems unlikely at this point.]
August 12th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
This offensive dig that Obama thinks is so clever was first used by Obama enthusiast Al Giordano. He deployed it early on against left commenters who were skeptical-or-worse about the U.S. relationship and response to the coup.*
Al’s take was that the Obama administration was uninvolved in the coup, committed to restoring Zelaya, and was reversing the grim U.S. history in Latin America, and that people who refused to acknowledge that were stuck in the past. I bought in, did my own share of such chiding, and have since acknowledged that I was wrong and my critics right. Ten years of following Giordano’s work, most of which I respect immensely, encourages me not to hold my breath waiting for him to do that.
Another wrinkle to his disagreements with people who were calling on the Obama administration to do more is his emphasis on the Honduran popular movement as the engine of events. That’s Al’s greatest contribution to discussion of the situation, a necessary corrective to the tendency of most other commenters to see the only important actors as those at the top (pols, diplomats, military, businessmen).
He took it a step further, though, actively discouraging and criticizing calls for an aid cutoff, withdrawing the ambassador, or any diplomatic initiatives — on the grounds that they wouldn’t be effective and that those calling for them were promoting the view that U.S. action was the be-all and end-all of events in the hemisphere).
At the same time, he proposed a list of legal and military actions that the U.S. government could take to put pressure on the coup backers (based on his description of the coup government as fueled by drug profits and criminal enterprises), that would be seen by most coup supporters and opponents as new levels of U.S. intervention. Given the importance this admin puts on moderation, they were also mostly pure fantasy.
Another commenter to make the offensive dig before Obama is centrist Latin America blogger Boz, who appears to think he was first (among many other indications that he’s not a reader of Al’s).
*Countervailing facts they cited: Amb. Llorens’ role during the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela, the continuous USAID funding to coup-supporting Honduran organizations in the “Civic Union”, the extremely close working relationship between the U.S. and Honduran military and tensions about the future of the U.S. airbase at Soto Cano/Palmerola, the State Department’s and military’s unchanged hostility to Chavezian initiatives anywhere in the hemisphere and their view, not challenged at all by the new administration, that his government poses a regional security threat.
Not at all irrelevantly: thanks very much for the pointer to the Klein-Aristide interview about privatization. In the murky background of this coup is a similar whip-up about Zelaya’s reversal of his predecessor’s privatization of the Honduran telecommunications company, Hondutel.
August 12th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Giordano’s position may be evolving: Too Cute by Half on Honduras, Mr. President. I’ve saved it in my “delicious” stream.
– Re Klein/Aristide: yes, I came across that while reading about the Hondutel business, I think in the course of following various links from the Machetero posts on “Arcadia Foundation”’s ‘anti-corruption’ campaign. I’m also now reading more about the Millennium Challenge Corporation angle. Now *there’s* some hypocrisy — cut off Nicaragua for irregularities in municipal elections, keep the money going for Honduran coupsters. There’s a post in all of that, I think, though much of it’s already said by Giordano and the reporter guy (Conroy, something). Common thread, perhaps: mistaking neoliberalism for democracy, and using ‘corruption’ whisper campaigns as a stick to beat leftists with when they find ways to get cheaper services. I say “perhaps” because it’s also plausible (at least to someone like me who’s unfamiliar with Honduras) that there really *was* corruption: maybe Chimirri (Hondutel guy, Zelaya ally) did siphon off something for himself.
[UPDATE - links added]
August 12th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Thanks so much for the report from the event, and for going. I’m gathering info about the elections and will post soon on the topic, since it’s pretty clear that the U.S. government is prepared to let things slide until then and pretend that the elections will wash things clean.
The popular movement, left parties, and liberal Liberal Party members are going to have to hash out their approach(es) to the elections, especially since Carlos Reyes, a highly respected, long-term leader of the popular movement, made it onto the ballot as an independent candidate. There’s also Cesar Ham for the left UD party.
A hint that the right fears the delegitimizing effect of a boycott is that an article seemingly talking up an unofficial progressive voting coalition appeared today — in coup-supporting newspaper Heraldo. (Via RAJ.)
August 12th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Familiarity with Honduras would only increase your willingness to consider corruption charges plausible. It’s rampant.
Yeah, I saw the new post at the Field reacting to Obama’s insult before I wrote the comment above. Positions there evolve and even rotate with nary an acknowledgement that they’e changed; notice the theme that the do-nothing-more policy is still somehow primarily down to HRC. Whatever; best just to take in the useful info and let the bombast roll past.
August 15th, 2009 at 8:02 am
I’ve written a post on the Honduran elections — more as a way of laying out the landscape for North Americans than taking a position on what the popular movement and coup opponents should do. Though I do offer a suggestion…