| Elvin asked to sign the Agreement of San Jose |
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: Tegucigalpa : Tegucigalpa
A call to the signing of the San Jose Agreement was made yesterday by liberal presidential candidate, Elvin Santos Ordonez, before supporters at a hotel as a prelude to the start of the campaign from this day.
While giving a speech, outside the building the leaders and party members were waiting, who shouted "golpista" and asked him to renounce the nomination.
Inside the hotel, Santos insisted that the signing of the agreement is the best way to end the political crisis in the country.
One sector of liberalism remains blaming an alleged betrayal of ousted President Manuel Zelaya Rosales and for not speaking out against his ouster.
"We say with conviction that we support the San Jose Accord," the candidate said.
He said his hope is that no further polarizing in the country's population takes place, "and that there is no division among us."
The presidential candidate said he supported the referendums framed in law, but not so in election periods, adding that he told that to Zelaya Rosales, before his overthrow.
His message was extended to proposals for job generation, infrastructure investment and in seeking party unity and the general population.
A day earlier in Lake Yojoa Liberal dissidents, including current members, congressional candidates and mayors, also called for the resignation of Santos Ordonez.
Fotos: TIEMPO/Carlos Guillén Photos: TIME / Carlos Guillen
"A DIVIDED NATION"
CID-Gallup.Public Opinion Poll
Honduras
July, 2009
According to Public Opinion Poll No.71 conducted by CID-Gallup Latin America just two days following the ouster of President “Mel” Zelaya, Hondurans are divided as to whether he should have been removed.
�� A Divided Nation
46 percent of respondents disagree with the removal whereas 41 percent are for it. The remaining 13 percent of undecided reflect the mixed sentiments of many Hondurans. However, the division is less pronounced within the Liberal party, where the majority believes Zelaya should not have been removed from the presidency. In general, the more educated the respondent, the less likely they agree with the removal of the first commander.
However, residents of the two primary cities, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula,for the most part believe Zelaya deserved to be ousted.
http://www.cidgallup.com/Documentos/Boletin_OP_HONDURAS_71%20Englishv2.pdf
How the international media lied:
"The CID-Gallup poll carried out between June 30 and July 4 found 28 percent of those interviewed opposed the coup." - Reuters Article
According to results of a Gallup poll published here Thursday, 41 percent of Hondurans think the ouster was justified, with 28 opposed to it. Washington Post Article
"Complicating matters, Honduran media published a CID-Gallup poll that showed 41% of Hondurans said the coup was justified, while 28% were opposed. The survey, conducted between June 30 and July 4, supported anecdotal evidence of anger at Mr. Zelaya." The Wall Street Journal Article(Their cynical and lame excuse to lie in here )
| Gallup Poll: Honduras Ousted President More Popular Than Replacement |  |  |
AP: More results from a Gallup survey in Honduras were published Wednesday, showing ousted President Manuel Zelaya remains more popular than his interim replacement Roberto Micheletti.
The nationwide survey _ which was done after Zelaya was sent into forced exile in a military coup _ shows Zelaya with 46 percent favorable and 44 unfavorable, compared to 30 favorable and 49 unfavorable for Micheletti.
Earlier findings from the same poll were released to The Associated Press by Gallup after La Prensa, a leading Honduran newspaper, published some of the results on Thursday. They showed that 46 percent of Hondurans opposed Zelaya's removal, 41 percent approved of it and 13 percent were unsure or declined to answer.
The face-to-face survey of 1,204 adults in all but two states showed Hondurans evenly divided on Zelaya himself, close to findings of a similar poll four months ago in which positive views outpaced negative by 4 percentage points.
The survey also asked Hondurans whether they felt Zelaya's removal was justified because he had pushed to add a question on a national ballot about whether to have a constitutional assembly, which the nation's highest court had ruled to be unconstitutional. Forty-one percent of respondents said this did justify his removal, while 28 percent said it didn't and 31 percent were unsure or declined to answer.
The survey was done from June 30 to July 4 and had an error margin of 2.8 percentage points, according to CID-Gallup, which is based in Costa Rica.
"Honduras can not leave the ALBA"
: Tegucigalpa : Tegucigalpa by Diario El Tiempo
Maduro asks Chávez to consider regional oil financing scheme - Central America, Venezuela
On Tuesday former National Party Congressman Carlos Kattan proposed to the Legislature to break the agreement with the argument that fails to meet the interests of the country.
Bulnes noted that all countries have trade relations with different nations regardless of ideology, and an example is Chile in the Cold War that had relations with mainland China.
There is also the case of Colombia despite their ongoing struggles trade relations with Venezuela have not been permanently severed.
He said that if there is any political interference by Venezuela in Honduras "the issue should be treated at other levels because trade should never stop."
"There are countries that need others to buy food, medicine and other goods, and that should not interfere with any political position," he said.
The entrepreneur said that under the ALBA Honduras exported to Venezuela several products, including milk and processed meat.
FREDY PERDOMO FREDY PERDOMO
Foto: TIEMPO/Archivo Photo: TIME / Archive
SPIEGEL: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is one your key supporters. That's why you are suspected of trying to create a populist regime similar to his. How much influence does Chavez have on your government?
Zelaya: Absolutely zero. These accusations are just a trick to divert attention away from the coup leaders' true motives. Chavez is the scapegoat. In fact, the USA is the one intervening in Honduras. Seventy percent of Honduran exports go there. We have a military, trade and immigration treaty with Washington.
SPIEGEL: But Venezuela supplies discounted oil to Honduras, which makes you dependent on Chavez.
Zelaya: That's another of those lies. Venezuela covers only 15 percent of our oil needs. American oil companies bring in 85 percent.
SPIEGEL: You are also considered an admirer of Fidel Castro. How is your relationship with Cuba?
Zelaya: We have very good relations, just as we do with Europe and the United States. I have no problems with any country in the world, only with the economic elite in Honduras, which is getting rich at the expense of the poor. I don't want to drive them out. I just want them to change their attitude. The wealth must be more evenly distributed. The political parties that have ruled Honduras for the past 100 years are merely defending the economic elite.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,639791,00.html
INTERVIEW-Honduras left behind by Washington, turns to Chavez
Source: Reuters
By Gustavo Palencia and Anahi Rama TEGUCIGALPA, Aug 26 (Reuters) -
TEGUCIGALPA, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Honduras, a longtime ally of the United States in Central America, says a lack of international support to tackle chronic poverty has forced it to seek aid from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.On Monday, Honduras joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, an alliance of leftist leaders in Latin America headed by Chavez, a staunch U.S. foe. President Manuel Zelaya, a logging magnate seen as a moderate liberal, told Reuters that oil-rich Venezuela's offer to double international aid to the country, one of the poorest in Latin America, is unrivaled.
"I have been looking for projects from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, Europe and I have received very moderate offers ... that forces us to find other forms of financing like ALBA," Zelaya said in an interview at his presidential palace.
Chavez, a self-styled socialist who wants to build up opposition to U.S. influence in Latin America by offering oil and cash to poor countries, pledged $400 million a year in aid to tiny Honduras. In a suit and cowboy boots, Zelaya spoke just hours after Chavez, flanked by other Latin American leftist leaders, told a cheering crowd of thousands on Monday that Honduras would have energy security "for the next 100 years."
Honduras was a Cold War ally of the United States and allowed U.S.-backed "Contra" rebels from Nicaragua to operate from its soil in the 1980s. Honduras still hosts U.S. troops at one of its military bases. "Our decades-long relationship of dominance by the United States has not benefited all Hondurans," Zelaya said. "The war between communists and right-wingers is over, and if what we have now is not giving results, we have to turn to alternatives like ALBA," which also includes Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Dominica, he said. Honduran businessmen are against Zelaya's move, afraid it will hurt relations with the United States, the country's principal trading partner. Honduras is a member of a free trade pact between Central America and the United States, and sends the bulk of its coffee, bananas and manufactured goods exports to the U.S. market. (Editing by Kieran Murray)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26346596.htm
"Suddenly, in 2007, he (Zelaya)declared himself a socialist and began to establish close ties with Venezuela. In December of that year, he incorporated Honduras into Petrocaribe, a mechanism set up by Hugo Chávez for lavishing oil subsidies on Latin American and Caribbean countries in exchange for political subservience. Then his government joined the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA), Venezuela's answer to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, ostensibly a commercial alliance but in practice a political conspiracy that seeks to expand populist dictatorship to the rest of Latin America." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/01/AR2009070103210.html
Clinton Considers Move to Suspend U.S. Aid to Honduras
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's staff has recommended that she sign a determination that the ouster and forced exile of President Manuel Zelaya on June 28 meets the legal definition of a coup d'etat. That would trigger suspension of $215 million in U.S. aid under an anti-poverty program run by the Millennium Challenge Corp.
| Exitosa Reunión de Pepe Lobo con Hillary Clinton |  |  |  |
| miércoles, 24 de junio de 2009 | |
 En el marco de la Asamblea de la OEA, el presidenciable Pepe Lobo tuvo un positivo intercambio de opiniones con la Secretaria de Estado de los Estados Unidos, Hillary Clinton. El candidato del Partido Nacional comentó con la señora Clinton los pormenores de su visita a Washington donde, entre otros temas, tuvo oportunidad de presentar ante el BID su propuesta, parte de su plan de gobierno, llamada “Bono Diez mil”, la cual consiste en una transferencia directa de esa cantidad en Lempiras a las familias más pobres y desprotegidas, la cual recibió de inmediato el visto bueno del organismo. Tema relevante en el encuentro fue el caso de los migrantes hondureños en Estados Unidos, los cuales deben ser protegidos con un estatus legal que les permita trabajar sin problemas, para enviar las remesas a sus familiares en Honduras. El proceso democrático en Honduras se encuentra bajo la amenaza del continuismo, lo que empieza a provocar una gran división entre los hondureños. Sobre el particular Lobo Sosa manifestó que, sobre todas las cosas, debe prevalecer el diálogo entre todos los sectores y en encontrar una salida legal al problema, la cual es coincidente con la propuesta hecha ante el Congreso de la República por el Partido Nacional. Muchos analistas consideran que la propuesta del Partido Nacional ofrece la oportunidad de consultar al pueblo dentro de un marco democrático, legal y constitucional y que Pepe Lobo, con su reconocida actitud hacia el diálogo y la conciliación es un factor importante para sacar a Honduras del estancamiento y conducir a la nación por mejores vías de desarrollo, conservando la libertad e institucionalidad que ha mantenido la nación durante los últimos 30 años. “Me sorprendió lo bien informada que se encuentra sobre los problemas de Honduras la Secretaria de Estado y lo mucho que le interesa a los Estados Unidos una solución democrática y legal a la consulta popular” –manifestó Pepe Lobo. Un tema de suma importancia es el del narcotráfico; “Honduras se encuentra en la ruta de los narcotraficantes, el crimen ha llegado a tocado nuestras tierras y está afectando la seguridad y la tranquilidad, necesitamos toda la cooperación del gobierno norteamericano para, juntos, combatir ese flagelo”. |
(It was the Nationalist Party candidate for president Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who ran against Zelaya in the last presidential election and will reportedly try again for that post this year.)
Center for Economic Policy Research: http://www.cepr.org
U.S. Continues to Provide Honduran Regime With MCC Aid Money, Despite Having Cut Off Other Countries Following Coups
For Immediate Release: August 25, 2009
Contact: Dan Beeton, 202-239-1460
Contact: Dan Beeton, 202-239-1460
Washington, D.C. – The U.S. continues to provide the coup regime in Honduras with tens of millions of dollars in aid money through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), despite having cut off MCC assistance to Mauritania and Madagascar following coups d’etat in those countries, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) describes in a new issue brief. The brief notes that while the U.S. suspended MCC money within days following coups in both Mauritania and Madagascar, MCC commitments in Honduras, worth more than $190 million, have not been put on hold after over 57 days following the coup. The U.S. also cut MCC aid to Nicaragua this year following what the U.S. alleged were electoral irregularities in municipal elections.
“There appears to be a double standard regarding MCC assistance following coups,” CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said. “It is unclear why the U.S. has not cut MCC funds to Honduras, considering its stated opposition to the ouster of President Zelaya and its stated intentions to pressure the coup leaders.”
There has been growing pressure on the Obama administration to enact further sanctions on the regime. On August 7, 16 Democratic members of Congress wrote President Obama urging him to freeze the assets of coup leaders and deny them entry into the U.S. The administration has not responded to the letter, nor has it made a legal determination as to whether a coup d’etat took place in Honduras, almost two months after Honduran military forces broke into President Manuel Zelaya’s home and rousted him from his bed at gunpoint before flying him out of the country. A legal determination that these events did constitute a coup would trigger a suspension of aid under the Foreign Assistance Act.
“This has been a violent coup, with a wave of repression including assassinations of Zelaya supporters, beatings and physical assaults, mass detentions, and attacks on media outlets critical of the coup,” Weisbrot said. “The U.S. government could quickly end the coup with serious economic pressure, but it hasn’t even frozen the coup leaders’ assets.”
The MCC is a U.S. government-run corporation created in 2004 and tasked with managing the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a fund whose mission is to provide development assistance to low-income developing countries. A country’s eligibility to receive assistance from the MCC is based on a series of “selection indicators” related to “Ruling Justly”, “Investing in People” and “Economic Freedom”. Its board of directors is chaired by the U.S. Secretary of State and includes cabinet officials such as the Treasury Secretary and the U.S. Trade Representative, who oversee stewardship of the MCA.
The brief notes that the MCC froze all assistance to Nicaragua following alleged irregularities in its November 9, 2008 elections. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then announced in June that the MCC would terminate all but one of the Nicaragua programs, costing Nicaragua $62 million.
The full issue brief can be found here.
WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - U.S. State Department staff have recommended that the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya be declared a "military coup," a U.S. official said on Thursday, a step that could cut off as much as $150 million in U.S. funding to the impoverished Central American nation.
The official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said State Department staff had made such a recommendation to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has yet to make a decision on the matter although one was likely soon.
Washington has already suspended about $18 million aid to Honduras following the June 28 coup and this would be formally cut if the determination is made because of a U.S. law barring aid "to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree."
The official said that $215 million in grant funding from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation to Honduras would also have to end should Clinton make the determination that a military coup took place.
http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed1/idUSN27328207
Clinton Considers Move to Suspend U.S. Aid to Honduras
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's staff has recommended that she sign a determination that the ouster and forced exile of President Manuel Zelaya on June 28 meets the legal definition of a coup d'etat. That would trigger suspension of $215 million in U.S. aid under an anti-poverty program run by the Millennium Challenge Corp.
WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is considering action against Honduras in the wake of its military takeover, a move that could lead to suspension of millions in U.S. development aid, a senior State Department official said Thursday.Her staff has recommended that she sign a determination that the ouster and forced exile of President Manuel Zelaya on June 28 meets the legal definition of a coup d'etat, the official said.
That would trigger suspension of $215 million in U.S. aid under an anti-poverty program run by the Millennium Challenge Corp.
The official briefed reporters on condition of anonymity because a decision on the recommended action is still pending.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/27/clinton-considers-suspend-aid-honduras/
Pro-Coup Honduras Presidential Candidate Elvin Santos Is a Key Beneficiary of Continued US Government Funding by magbana
(Double-Click on the title above to read article)Al and Bill have an excellent story here. Oh, what a tangled web it is. About ten days ago, anti-golpista Cholusat Sur TV covered this story. Perhaps their coverage was one of the reasons that the station got knocked off the air.
The Narco News article includes a photo that I’m sure the State Dept. wishes had never been taken and, the fact that it was taken in JUNE 2009, makes it even worse. Although for a guy “running” for president, it’s not a bad photo to have sitting on your desk.
Looks like Santos had no problem getting an audience with the Secretary of State. On the other hand, President Zelaya had to work at it a bit, didn’t he?
Toppling a Coup, Part VII: A School of Leaders in Honduras
Posted by Al Giordano - August 31, 2009 at 6:19 am By Al Giordano
75 young Afro-Honduran community organizers gathered this weekend in La Ceiba and issued a call for a November 2010 referendum for a new Constitution. D.R. 2009 Samuel Molina.
AUGUST 30, 2009, LA CEIBA, HONDURAS: Scratch the surface of the de facto Honduran coup regime and its architects can’t help but demonstrate, again and again, that one of its unspoken reasons to exist is their unbridled racism toward considerable sectors of the national and international community. The July comment by its make-believe “foreign minister” that referred to US President Barack Obama as “that little nigger” was not an isolated gaffe: Coup “president” Roberto Micheletti has additionally installed the country’s most infamously bigoted politician, Rafael Pineda Ponce, as his very own chief of staff.
As the de facto regime’s “minister of government,” Pineda Ponce has suddenly found new relevance in Honduran political life. Before the coup plotters rescued him from obscurity, Pineda Ponce was a disgraced and largely forgotten 2001 presidential candidate on the Liberal Party line who lost to President Ricardo Maduro largely due to the total rejection Pineda Ponce faced from the Afro-Honduran population after he referred to those citizens sneeringly as “monkeys” that hang from trees.
Rafael Pineda Ponce, “government minister” for the Honduran coup regime, has portrayed Afro-Hondurans as “monkeys” hanging from trees.
“We can’t spend our lives contemplating the sunsets and the palm trees with monkeys hanging from them,” he had complained in front of a reporter for a national daily newspaper in 1998, in reference to the Garifuna and Afro-Honduran communities that populate much of the northern coast. That was the region that Pineda Ponce sought to open to foreign investment and tourist mega-resorts. And although the Liberal Party has traditionally received healthy support from Afro-Hondurans, who are ten percent of the population, Pineda Ponce did not win in a single municipality with significant Afro-Honduran presence in the 2001 elections, a vote he lost by eight percentage points nationwide.
Pineda Ponce’s 1998 racist gaffe came in the context of his crusade then to change the Honduran Constitution to eliminate article 107, which says:
“State lands, communal farms or private property located in the border regions with neighboring states, or along the coasts of both seas, extending 40 kilometers inland, and those of the islands, keys, reefs and sand banks can only be acquired, possessed or deeded to Hondurans by birth, by companies governed entirely by Honduran partners or by State institutions, and any act or contract to the contrary will be declared null and void.”
Pineda Ponce’s point was that development by foreign companies of hotels and tourist attractions along Honduras Caribbean coast was, he felt, somehow inhibited because of the preponderance of black Hondurans who live and work near the beaches. (The apparent desire of some North American expats to enable or overlook the race hatred of top coup leaders may also have something to do with their own fixations on owning villas and manses near the beach while Article 107 remains inconveniently in place, as journalist Belén Fernández explores in her story today, The Parable of the Honduran Congresswoman and the Gringa Blogger.)
Community organizer Celeo Alvarez Casildo remembered this history while speaking to the 70 young adults who had been selected to represent their communities at the XVIII National Gathering of Afro-Honduran Youth held this past weekend in La Ceiba.
ODECO strategist Celeo Alvarez Casildo speaks to the National Gathering of Afro-Honduran Youth about the art of community organizing. D.R. 2009, Samuel Molina.
During a Friday morning plenary session, Alvarez had recounted the history of how the national Organization of Community and Ethnic Development (ODECO, in its Spanish initials) has influenced presidential candidates over the past three elections to sign detailed campaign promises. “In 2001, four of the five national candidates came to sign our pledges. But the Liberal Party candidate who is now government minister didn’t come. Why didn’t he come?”
A young man stood up to answer: “He made comments about how we have to remove the monkeys from the beaches. That’s something we could never stand.”
It’s a part of their history that the young Afro-Hondurans, most of whom were still children when it happened eleven years ago, remember very well, for the collective shock and polemic it generated at the time and for the gains won by ODECO when it organized around and against Pineda Ponce’s remarks. Not only was the candidate’s presidential campaign hung by his own words, but his proposed elimination of Article 107 – against which tens of thousands of Afro-Hondurans and others organized and mobilized, knowing that the proposal was principally aimed at taking away their coastal and communal lands – went crashing down to defeat with him.
Despite or perhaps because they must live daily with such prejudiced attitudes by the white and Ladino Hondurans that dominate the country’s institutions (paradoxically, the most powerful business magnates in the country are themselves part of ethnic minorities of Arab or Jewish descent), the Afro-Honduran population has made giant strides in the past two decades since ODECO formed in 1992 and applied a community organizing model to its anti-discrimination efforts.
“Our history is one of racial, political, economic, cultural and environmental racism and discrimination,” Alvarez told the assembled youths. “We had to organize ourselves. Nothing that we have today fell from the sky. All of it is the result of an organized struggle.”
The building where the gathering was held is living testimony to the fast growth of ODECO as a force in Honduran life. It indeed did not fall from the sky but was constructed, one floor at a time, from the ground up. The lot it stands upon cost $34,000 dollars, donated by a Norwegian human rights NGO. The foundation was laid in May 2004 and the first floor completed that October. The third floor assembly hall was inaugurated on September 30, 2006. The entire building, including dormitories with 64 beds, cost about $210,000 US dollars to build, much of that donated by human rights NGOs from Ireland. Construction contractors have estimated that the structure would have cost more than one million dollars to build commercially, but ODECO was able to do it on a relative shoestring thanks to the donated labor by hundreds of Hondurans during its construction.
Community Organizer Celeo Alvarez Casildo at the Satuye Cultural Center that ODECO rose up from a vacant lot in the Isla barrio of La Ceiba. D.R. 2009 Samuel Molina.
Alvarez – who directs a staff of thirty from the complex, each of whom, in addition to their titled duties is required to also be a “promotor,” the word they use for community organizer – continued his talk on Friday morning: “In 1992 – raise your hand if you were already born then – everyone thought we wouldn’t go out into the streets because we were afraid. But we went door-to-door, neighborhood-to-neighborhood, community-to-community. We called it ‘ant’s work.’ I didn’t think more than a hundred people would come to our first demonstration. All I could promise is that I would show up with my family. When the day came, more than 5,000 marched down San Isidro Avenue. The street turned black.”
“Who led the march?” he asked, then answering: “The young people, and also children and senior citizens did. We went into the streets with our drums. Our drums have accompanied this process since the beginning. Last night at this event’s inauguration the energy was high because our culture was here with us, and with us the voices of the ancestors, as we go forward constructing the new nation, the new community. A better future for the community depends on each one of you.”
Alvarez frequently points out that his organization participates in only three marches a year: Each April 12 commemorating the arrival of Garifunas to Honduras after winning their freedom from slavery on the island of San Vicente; each May 1 when it marches with the country’s workers for Labor Day; and each October 12, together with indigenous peoples, on the anniversary of the arrival of Colombus to the New World. “The rest of the year we do the real work,” he noted: “that of organizing.”
“You have to keep on moving,” he urged the youths. “If you stand still, nothing happens. You have to move. The power to negotiate is born from mobilization.”
Advancing in Times of Retreat
During two decades when labor unions and other progressive forces in Honduras and elsewhere have suffered declining membership, and while the electoral left has won only a couple handfuls of congressional seats, the community organizing model of the Afro-Hondurans has brought them a unique power in Honduran society to obligate politicians and institutions to address their grievances.
A milestone of this emergent power came last March 19 when each of the presidential candidates nominated by the five national political parties signed a written list of thirty campaign pledges that ODECO had put before them. So well organized is the community that the politicians didn’t dare not sign.
Among the promises now unanimously made by the presidential candidates: To budget $12 million US dollars to complete the process of regularizing land titles in Afro-Honduran and indigenous communities, $2 million in economic development funds, $8 million for improvement of electricity, potable water and telecommunications systems in their communities, $10 million for development of tourism in Afro-Honduran communities (many of which are along the north coast beaches) and the construction of a Garifuna Tourism School with an annual budget of $1.5 million, $20 million for local municipalities to democratically plan community development, a $500,000 annual budget for the National Commission Against Racism, $265,000 to support Afro-Honduran History Month activities each July, $5 million for a new government department for Afro-Honduran and Indigenous Development, a $2 million annual budget to treat HIV-AIDS patients, $25 million to improve public schools in minority communities, $500,000 a year toward the creation of the International Afro-Descendent Institution (including the School of Formation of Afro-Descendent Leaders in Human Rights, Communications and Investigation, ODECO’s “School of Leaders”), $2.5 million for the collection and preservation of ancestral song, dance and arts, $1.2 million annually for learning institutions the preserve Garifuna tradition, a fifty percent increase in the budget of the Garinagu Cultural Center of Honduras, $2.5 million to construct an International Garifuna Museum in La Ceiba, $2 million for the Indigenous House of Culture, $10 million annually for environmental clean up and preservation in Afro-Honduran and indigenous communities.
That $104.9 million dollars in specific commitments was signed by National party candidate Pepe Lobo, Liberal party candidate Elvin Santos, Democratic Unity candidate Cesar Ham, Democratic Christian party candidate Felicito Avila Ordóñez, and Bernard Martínez Valerio of the Social Democratic party. (The sixth presidential candidate, Independent Carlos Reyes, had not yet qualified for the ballot last March when the pledge signing ceremony was held.)
And that’s not all. Beyond the $104 million US dollars in specific budgetary promises, the organization extracted the following additional pledges from the abovementioned presidential aspirants: Protections for indigenous and Afro-Honduran populations in the DR-CAFTA “free trade” agreement between Central America, the Dominican Republic and the United States, government supported advertising and communications campaigns against racism and intolerance, ratification by Honduras of the Inter American Convention Against Racism, Discrimination and Intolerance, stronger laws to guarantee proportional representation in national, state and local government, a commitment that Afro-Hondurans and indigenous will constitute at least thirty percent of the next president’s cabinet, diplomatic and other top positions, support for public safety and housing construction in minority communities, better use of the Census to accurately measure minority populations, 500 scholarships per year for Afro-Honduran and indigenous secondary education, 500 scholarships per year for the same in universities, reform of the laws establishing the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History for it to better recognize and preserve Afro-Honduran and indigenous culture, and adhesion by Honduras to international labor, environmental and anti-discrimination treaties that its governments have so far failed to sign.
D.R. 2009, Samuel Molina.
ODECO’s reach extends to judicial and military authorities, too. When some years back soldiers of the Armed Forces killed four Garifuna fishermen for allegedly floating their boats into a nature preserve, the organization made such a noise that military General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez – more infamous today as the executor of the June 28 coup d’etat – and his joint chiefs of staff had to head up to La Ceiba to try to calm the storm: ODECO organized hundreds of citizens to meet them in a public assembly and demand justice. The offending soldiers were prosecuted for their crime.
The June 28 coup and its aftermath have created a new set of challenges for ODECO. Prior to Thursday night’s inauguration of the national youth gathering, the de facto government’s vice minister of youth, Randy Garcia, who is Afro-Honduran, asked ODECO for an invitation to attend. The request was declined. “We won’t have anything to do with that government,” Alvarez told Narco News.
During the Friday morning session, Alvarez passed the wireless microphone to the youths, seated in a large circle in the third floor assembly hall, and asked them to take turns reading aloud the 30 numbered campaign pledges signed by the presidential candidates. When one young woman struggled with the pronunciation of some government agency titles in the text and some other youths laughed, Alvarez interrupted: “Companeros, ¿que pasa? We learn to swim by swimming and we learn to read by reading. Do not worry if you trip over the words. This is how we move forward, learning.”
He spoke to the youths of the importance of reading, citing historic leaders like Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Marcus Garvey, Nelson Mandela “and Malcolm X, who said ignorant people don’t win any battles. What did these leaders all have in common? They were studious people. You have to read. You have to form yourselves. He who claims to be a leader and doesn’t know anything just ends up tricking the community.”
School of Leaders
A show of hands revealed that about half of the 70 youth delegates are already graduates of ODECO’s School of Formation of Afrodescendent Leaders in Human Rights, popularly known as the “School of Leaders.”
Founded in July of 2006, the School of Leaders has graduated 360 Hondurans and another 40 or so Afrodescendents from neighboring Central American nations and Mexico. A slight majority of the graduates to date have been women. The program is offered in four courses that are held one week each month for four months, with 30 to 40 students in each session and professors from Honduras, Guatemala, Perú, the United States and elsewhere. Local community organizations choose the students – who range from ages 12 to 30, most of them around 19 or 20 years old - and graduates participate in raising the travel funds for new students from their communities to go to future sessions in La Ceiba where ODECO’s assembly hall and dormitories are host to the school.
The first week’s course, “Afrodescendent Presence in América,” includes history from slavery through abolition to the present. Labor leader and author Pedro Brizuela of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, wrote the teaching text, titled “Leadership,” that is the basis of the first lesson. The text cites quotations from such diverse commentators on the theme as Evangelical author John C. Maxwell, Conrad Hilton and Plato. Today we translate it to English and publish it in Spanish to make it available worldwide. (Many of its planks apply equally to journalists as to social leaders, and it will surely be incorporated into the curriculum of next February’s Narco News School of Authentic Journalism in Mexico.) It speaks of the difference between a “leader” and a mere “boss,” and lists 21 indispensable qualities of a leader: Character, charisma, commitment, communication, ability, bravery, discernment, focus, generosity, initiative, listening skills, passion, positive attitude, problem solving, relationship cultivating, responsibility, self confidence, self discipline, service, capacity to learn, and vision.
D.R. 2009 Samuel Molina.
The second weeklong course is titled “The Philosophical Conception of National and International Laws that Protect Human Rights.” The third is, “Struggle and Daily Life of Afrodesendents.” And the fourth is, “Defense of the Rights of Afrodescendent Communities.”
The School of Leaders’ 191-page textbook, its second print run published in 2008, provides texts and source documents on the abovementioned themes. With ODECO’s permission we make that textbook available today in its original Spanish for free downloading. It also contains the texts of national and international laws and treaties in the areas of human rights, racial equality, labor and land law, as well as detailed study of the Honduran Constitution. It teaches how to organize to influence municipal, state and national governments, as well as a focus on how organizers can address specific problems in communities: racism, xenophobia, discrimination, intolerance, violence against women, HIV-AIDS, substance abuse, child abuse, and the nuts and bolts of participatory democracy.
Grupo de Danza ODECO, at the Thursday inaugural session of the National Gathering of Afro-Honduran Youth in La Ceiba. D.R. 2009 Samuel Molina.
The seriousness and sense of purpose of the young leaders was evident all weekend at the national youth gathering: participants agreed to abstain from alcohol or drugs during the session, keep their cell phones on vibrate, and listen carefully whenever any of them speaks. Virtually every intervention by a participant is applauded, no matter how short or long the statement. The participants received three delicious meals a day from head chef Sonia and her kitchen staff. The students participate in trust building exercises and social events such as a presentation of dance and song in the Garifuna language on Thursday:
Añahei gurigia mafiñehaña luagu wanichiguWanichigu wedeweseWanichigu wedeweseHigarugu, Higarugu, Higarugu, HigaruguHigarugu niburetiñu garinago
The song – a call to the youth to believe in the knowledge of the ancestors and the power of the young; the chorus sings, “Come, Come, Come Garifuna Youth” - was not an ancient traditional ballad but, rather, an original composition by Guillermo Tómas, one of the youths at the gathering who works teaching Garifuna language classes for ODECO.
Subjects, Not Objects
Alvarez, in his Friday presentation, explained that the thirty campaign promises signed by the presidential candidates were themselves the result of a democratic process among Afro-Hondurans at the grassroots level.
“Did ODECO invent these demands?,” he asked aloud. “No. This was the result of a lot of work, meetings in the communities where the people put forward ideas. They were elaborated and put on paper.”
“These demands are not exclusive to afrodescendant communities. They also include the indigenous. We need to construct alliances with other sectors. The indigenous have similar problems to our own,” he stressed. “Nothing falls from the sky! You need to light the torch to continue with organized struggle to accomplish anything.”
Alvarez then explained that a big task will come to force the next president – product of the scheduled November 29 election that has been stained by the fall of constitutional order in the country – to comply with those promises. “Once elected, then comes the job of vigilance, of insistence, so that they keep these campaign promises. Someone once said that nothing is achieved without the people’s will. But nothing is maintained without a push from the institutions.”
He then outlined the kind of process that will be needed to force the government to comply with the presidential pledges, inventing the names of three Hondurans to tell the story. “It will look something like this: ‘Chepe Martinez’ and ‘Filomena Castro’ and ‘Candido Garcia’ form a commission to monitor and evaluate compliance with the promises. But to get to Tegucigalpa, Filomena, Candido and Chepe need transportation, lodging and food. They need to get from their communities to the capital and then must be able to move inside the capital. They’ll need to be able to pay the telephone bills. They need certain conditions. If they don’t have them they won’t be able to arrive, speak on telephone, or follow up on the promises. It takes an organization to make that happen.”
“What comes next?” he asks. “That depends on the responsibility and capability that we have. Are you subjects or objects? What are we?”
“Subjects!” chant the youths.
“You, what are you?”
“Subject!”
“We have voice. We think. We act. We feel. We want them to see us as subjects. Very few communities in Honduras have what we have. We already have this commitment. We are not the object of anyone.”
During the Saturday session of the national youth gathering, the assembled watched the second half of a Spanish language translation of the PBS documentary, A Force More Powerful, about nonviolent action, civil resistance and strategic planning. At the closing event, a group of youths offered a theater performance portraying a courtroom scene in which the HIV virus was put on trial – his defense waged by “Attorney Ignorance” – and the Grupo de Danza ODECO culminated the conference in red, gold and green vestments offering a traditional dance.
The trainings and lessons taught both inside and outside the Satuye Cultural Center are evidently relevant to the situation that all of Hondurans, not just its Afrodescendent population, are living today under the impositions of a coup regime.
In the past three years, Celeo Alvarez Casildo and ODECO have quietly risen up a peaceful army of almost 400 highly trained community organizers who go about their work with seriousness, dedication and also great joy and camaraderie. In a decade of reporting on the social movements throughout the hemisphere, we have seen no other Latin American community organizing training program as advanced as ODECO’s School of Leaders and, as word spreads about it and its resulting field organizing, it seems only than a matter of time until the art of community organizing that it teaches comes into popular demand throughout the rest of Honduran population, particularly among the youth.
When Leaders Lead
Not content to merely title themselves leaders with a diploma, the youths gathered for the conference to actually lead. They discussed their views of the current political crisis in Honduras and then delegated half a dozen from their ranks to draft a declaration based on their collective conclusions.
The declaration denounced the “violation of human rights” by the coup regime that stole power on June 28. It offered support to the Arias plan to restore President Manuel Zelaya to the post to which he was elected. But the youths’ interpretation of that plan may differ significantly from that of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: their most prominent demand was that on the last Sunday of November in 2010, the people of Honduras vote in a national plebiscite to create a process to write, democratically, a new Constitution for the nation. (The conditions of the Plan Arias that is backed by Washington prohibit President Manuel Zelaya from promoting a constitutional convention upon his negotiated return to the presidency. With this declaration, the Afro-Honduran youth – organized at an advanced level that surely ought to impress and prick the conscience of the community organizer that currently occupies the White House - have made it crystal clear that no such deal applies to them or their aspirations for a more democratic Honduras. With or without Zelaya’s return, they’re organizing for a new Constitution.)
Many groups and individuals make declarations, but this one comes from a network of highly trained organizers with the capacity and infrastructure to mobilize a lot of noise and light upon its demand. Higarugu niburetiñu garinago… The Garifuna youth is coming to make sure that the popular demand for a new Honduran Constitution shall not be lost in the maneuvers by the powers up above.
After the youths read aloud and unanimously approved of the declaration, Celeo Alvarez addressed the youths. “This declaration will surely go around the world,” he said, expressing pride in their “coherence” and passion for justice. Alvarez said he would take the declaration of the youths next month to Washington DC where he and other Afrodescendent leaders from throughout the hemisphere will meet from September 21-25 under the banner of ONECA, the Central American Black Organization, which has deep connections with US Civil Rights organizations, leaders, community organizers and the Congressional Black Caucus. Alvarez was ONECA’s president for its first 14 years, and is a member of its governing board. While in Washington, he will be available for interviews and meetings, and may be contacted via email at calvarez@caribe.hn
So that no one around the world, in Washington or anywhere else, will need his or her spectacles to read it, here’s the money ‘graph - the only part of it for which they wrote some words in ALL CAPS, for emphasis - of the youths’ declaration, when they call for:
“The convocation of a PLEBISCITE so that the citizenry can vote on the writing of a NEW CONSTITUTION, with clear guarantees for wider and more representative participation among all sectors of the Honduran people. This plebiscite should be held on the last Sunday of November of 2010.”
And that you are reading the youths’ declaration – here is the full text translated to English and here in Spanish, including the signatures of the 75 young community organizers that co-authored it – is evidence that their call for a November 2010 national referendum for new Constitution has already begun its journey across the planet and throughout the larger School of Leaders that is a country named Honduras.
Preliminary Report Regarding the Coup d'Etat
Tue, 09/01/2009 - 12:42 — APRather than trying to format the whole darn thing, footnotes and all, I am including a link to the pdf version of the document titled Preliminary Report Regarding the Coup d'Etat from the Government of President José Manuel Zelaya. This rushed translation (please forgive any errors) is the result of many of hours of last-minute labor by Charles Utwater, Doug Zylstra and myself. Below are the conclusions of this epic document:
- The coup d’Etat in Honduras is a reaction of the forces of the establishment to impede the progress of the social reform process and to perpetuate its traditional commercial and economic interests with strong external ties.
- The coup d’Etat has brought the return to fascist practices that have installed in Honduras a criminal dictatorship that is carrying out assassinations, rapes, torture and political persecution, as has been confirmed by the international community.
- With the coup d’Etat, it became clear once again that the existence of the Armed Forces in Honduras has only served to perpetrate coups d’Etat and to promote a system of repression against human rights and democratic order.
- The coup d’Etat is an affront to the democratic hopes of the nations of Latin America, to its governments and its presidents, and has shown that despite the public condemnation offered by President Barack Obama, conservative groups in the United States who support the coup d’Etat still hold a monopoly on power in that nation.
- The resolutions of multilateral organisms like the United Nations and the OAS, condemning the coup and refusing to recognize the de facto regime, like the proposal of Secretary Hillary Clinton of mediation, have been mocked and ineffective in the face of the intransigence of the coup regime and the lack of international mechanisms forcing it to comply with said resolutions and efforts.
- We affirm that the government of President Zelaya, with the objective of reestablishing democracy by peaceful means, has reiterated its acceptance of the Accord proposed by President Oscar Arias and has expressed its decision to sign it in the city of Tegucigalpa before the first of September of 2009.
- We reiterate that the people have a constitutional right to insurrection when a usurping government is imposed on them. The Honduran people who resist today will never accept a dictatorship, nor will they participate in an election that aims to confer impunity of the coup leaders and consolidate their power, nor will they concede their constitutional right to insurrection.
- Our principles in defense of our nation, of social reform and of the rights of the people are non-negotiable; as such, WE WILL FIGHT WITHOUT CAPITULATING UNTIL WE ARE SUCCESSFUL.
Fuente: quotha.net
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U.S. Involvement in Honduran Coup
The International Republican Institute talks of “coup” in Honduras, months beforeBy Eva Golinger, Postcards from the Revolution, July 6, 2009
The International Republican Institute (IRI), considered the international branch of the U.S. Republican Party, and one of the four “core groups” of the congressionally created and funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), apparently knew of the coup d’etat in Honduras against President Zelaya well in advance. IRI is well known for its role in the April 2002 coup d’etat against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and its funding and strategic advising of the principal organizations involved in the ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti in 2004. In both cases, IRI funded and/or trained and advised political parties and groups that were implicated in the violent, undemocratic overthrow of democratically elected presidents.
After the 2002 coup d’etat occured in Venezuela, IRI president at the time, George Folsom, sent out a celebratory press release claiming, “The Institute has served as a bridge between the nation’s political parties and all civil society groups to help Venezuelans forge a new democratic future…” Hours later, after the coup failed and the people of Venezuelan rescued their president, who had been kidnapped and imprisoned on a military base, and reinstalled constitutional order, IRI regretted its premature, public applause for the coup. One of its principal funders, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was furious that IRI had publicly revealed the U.S. government had provided funding and support for the coup leaders. NED President Carl Gershman was so irritated with IRI’s blunder, that he sent out a memo to Folsom, chastising him: “By welcoming [the coup] – indeed, without any apparent reservations – you unnecessarily interjected IRI into the sensitive internal politics of Venezuela”. Gershman would have much preferred that NED and IRI’s role in fomenting and supporting the coup against President Chávez have remained a secret.
IRI, chaired by Senator John McCain, was created in 1983 as part of the National Endowment for Democracy’s mission to “promote democracy around the world”, a mandate from President Ronald Reagan. In reality, one of NED’s founders, Allen Weinstein, put it this way in a 1991 interview with the Washington Post, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." IRI’s own history, according to its website (www.iri.org), also explains that its original work was in Latin America, at a time when the Reagan administration was under heavy scrutiny and pressure from the U.S. Congress for funding paramilitary groups, dictatorships and death squads in Central and South America to install U.S.-friendly regimes and suppress leftist movements. “Congress responded to President Reagan’s call in 1983 when it created the National Endowment for Democracy to support aspiring democrats worldwide. Four nonprofit, nonpartisan democracy institutes were formed to carry out this work – IRI, the National Democratic Institute for International A ffairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS).”
“In its infancy, IRI focused on planting the seeds of democracy in Latin America. Since the end of the Cold War, IRI has broadened its reach to support democracy and freedom around the globe. IRI has conducted programs in more than 100 countries.”
In its initial days, IRI, along with the other coup groups of the NED, funded organizations in Nicaragua to foment the destabilization of the Sandinista government. Journalist Jeremy Bigwood explained part of this role in his article, “No Strings Attached?”, "’When the rhetoric of democracy is put aside, NED is a specialized tool for penetrating civil society in other countries down to the grassroots level’ to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals, writes University of California-Santa Barbara professor William Robinson in his book, A Faustian Bargain. Robinson was in Nicaragua during the late ‘80s and watched NED work with the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan opposition to remove the leftist Sandinistas from power during the 1990 elections.”
The evidence of IRI’s role in the 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela has been well documented and investigated. Proof of such involvement, which is still ongoing in terms of IRI’s work, funding, strategic advising and training of opposition political parties in Venezuela, is available through documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act posted here: , and also available in my book, The Chávez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela (Olive Branch Press 2006). None of the claims or evidence regarding IRI’s role in fomenting and supporting the April 2002 in Venezuela and its ongoing support of the Venezuelan opposition has ever been disclaimed by the institution, primarily because all evidence cited comes from IRI and NED’s own internal documentation obtained under FOIA.
Hence, when the recent coup d’etat occured in Honduras, against democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, there was little doubt of U.S. fingerprints. IRI’s name appeared as a recipient of a $700,000 Latin American Regional Grant in 2008-2009 from NED to promote “good governance” programs in countries including Honduras. An additional grant of $550,000 to work with “think tanks” and “pressure groups” in Honduras to influence political parties was also given by the NED to IRI in 2008-2009, specifically stating, "IRI will support initiatives to implement [political] positions into the 2009 campaigns. IRI will place special emphasis on Honduras, which has scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections in November 2009.” That is clear direct intervention in internal politics in Honduras.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) also provides approximately $49 million annually to Honduras, a large part of which is directed towards “democracy promotion” programs. The majority of the recipients of this aid in Honduras, which comes in the form of funding, training, resources, strategic advice, communications counseling, political party strengthening and leadership training, are organizations directly linked to the recent coup d’etat, such as the Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, the Honduran Private Enterprise Council (COHEP), the Council of University Deans, the Confederation of Honduran Workers (CTH), the National Convergence Forum, the Chamber of Commerce (FEDECAMARA), the Association of Private Media (AMC), the Group Paz y Democracia and the student group Generación X Cambio. These organizations form part of a coalition self-titled “Unión Cívica Democrática de Honduras” (Civil Democratic Union of Honduras) that has publicly backed the coup against President Zelaya.
IRI’s press secretary, Lisa Gates, responded to claims that IRI funded or aided (which also involves non-monetary aid, such as training, advising and providing resources) groups involved in the Honduran coup as “false reports”. However, there are several interesting links between the republican organization and the violent coup d’etat against President Zelaya that do indicate the institute’s involvement, as well as to the above mentioned funding that exceeds $1 million during just this year. In addition to its presence on the ground in Honduras as part of its “good governance” and “political influence” programs, IRI Regional Program Director, Latin America and the Carribean, Alex Sutton, has recently been closely involved with many of the organizations in the region that have backed the Honduran coup. Sutton was a featured speaker at a recent 3-day conference held in Venezuela by the U.S.-funded ultraconservative Venezuelan organization CEDICE (Centro para la Divulgación de Conocimiento Económico). CEDICE’s director, Rocío Guijarra, was one of the principal executors of the 2002 coup d’etat against President Hugo Chávez, and Guijarra personally signed a decree installing a dictatorship in the country, which led to the coup’s overthrow by the people and loyal armed forces of Venezuela. The conference Sutton participated in, held from May 28-29 in Venezuela was attended by leaders of Latin America’s ultra-conservative movement, ranging from Bolivian ex president Jorge Quiroga, who has called for President Evo Morales of Bolivia’s overthrow on several occasions, Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa and his son Alvaro, both of whom have publicly expressed support for the coup against President Zelaya in Honduras, and numerous leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, the majority of whom are well known for their involvement in the April 2002 coup and subsequent destabilization attempts. The majority of those present at the CEDICE conference in May 2009, have publicly expressed support for the recent coup against President Zelaya.
But a more damning piece of evidence linking IRI to the Honduran coup, is a video clip posted on the institute’s website at http://www.iri.org/multimedia.asp. The clip or podcast, features a slideshow presentation given by Susan Zelaya-Fenner, assistant program officer at IRI, on March 20, 2009, discussing the “good governance” program in Honduras. Curiously, at the beginning of the presentation, Zelaya-Fenner explains what she considers “a couple of interesting facts about Honduras.” These include, “Honduras is a very overlooked country in a small region. Honduras has had more military coups than years of independence, it has been said. However, parodoxically, more recently it has been called a pillar of stability in the region, even being called the U.S.S. Honduras, as it avoided all of the crisis that its neighbors went through during the civil wars in the 1980s.”
Important to note is that what Zelaya-Fenner refers to as “U.S.S. Honduras” and “avoid[ing] all of the crisis that its neighbors went through during the civil wars in the 1980s” was because the U.S. government, CIA and Pentagon utilized Honduras as the launching pad for the attacks on Honduras’ neighbors. U.S. Ambassador at the time, John Negroponte, and Colonel Oliver North, trained, funded and planned the paramilitary missions of the death squads that were used to assassinate, torture, persecute, disappear and neutralize tens of thousands of farmers and “suspected” leftists in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Zelaya-Fenner continues, “Thus, Honduras has been more recently stable, and it’s always been poor, which means that it’s below the radar, and gets little attention. The current president, Manuel Zelaya and his buddies, the leftists in the Latin American region have caused a lot of political destabilization recently in the country. He is a would-be emulator of Hugo Chavez and Hugo Chavez' social revolution. He has spent the better part of this administration trying to convince the Honduran people, who tend to be very practical and very 'center' that the Venezuelan route is the way to go. Zelaya's leftist leanings further exacerbate an already troubled state. Corruption is rampant, crime is at all time highs. Drug trafficking and related violence have begun to spill over from Mexico. And there's a very real sense that the country is being purposefully destabilized from within, which is very new in recent Honduran history. Coups are thought to be so three decades ago until now (laughs, audience laughs), again.”
Did she really say that? Yes, you can hear it yourself on the podcast. Is it merely a coincidence that the coup against President Zelaya occured just three months after this presentation? State Department officials have admitted that they knew the coup was in the works for the past few months. Sub-secretary of State Thomas Shannon was in Honduras the week before the coup, apparently trying to broker some kind of deal with the coup planners to find another “solution” to the “problem”. Nevertheless, they continued funding via NED and USAID to those very same groups and military sectors involved in the coup. It is not a hidden fact that Washington was unhappy with President Zelaya’s alliances in the region, principally with countries such as Venezuela and Nicaragua. It is also public knowledge that President Zelaya was in the process of removing the U.S. military presence from the Soto Cano airbase, using a fund from the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA – Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua, St. Kitts, Antigua & Barbados and Venezuela) to convert the strategically important Pentagon base into a commercial airport.
IRI’s Zelaya-Fenner explains the strategic importance of Honduras in her presentation, "Why does Honduras matter? A lot of people ask this question, even Honduran historians and experts. Some might argue that it doesn't and globally it might be hard to counter. However, the country is strategic to regional stability and this is an election year in Honduras. It's a strategic time to help democrats with a small “d”, at a time when democracy is increasingly coming under attack in the region.”
There is no doubt that the coup against President Zelaya is an effort to undermine regional governments implementing alternative models to capitalism that challenge U.S. concepts of representative democracy as “the best model”. Countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, are building successful models based on participatory democracy that ensure economic and social justice, and prioritize collective social prosperity and human needs over market economics. These are the countries, together now with Honduras, that have been victims of NED, USAID, IRI and other agencies’ interventions to subvert their prospering democracies.
http://www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2009/100014.pdf
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/122513.pdfhttp://www.iri.org/multimedia.asp
http://www.iri.org/newsreleases/2009-03-20-honduras.asp
INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE
Agency for International Development
Cooperative Agreement Number
160-A-00-01-00104-00
CROATIA
CLOSEOUT REPORT
July 2001 – June 2004
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
With USAID funding through CEPPS, the International Republican Institute (IRI)
opened its Croatia office in July 1998 and began a program to help the six main
opposition parties improve their communication tactics and strategy, while encouraging
them to form electoral coalitions. The program’s success was measured not only by the
victory of the democratic parties against an authoritarian regime established by Franjo
Tudjman and his party, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), but also by the informed
and intelligent way the six major opposition parties led their campaign and the advanced
arrangements they made for the future government of Croatia. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACG853.pdf
Honduras receives 150 million IMF despite coup
Honduras said today that it has received $ 150 million International Monetary Fund as part of a program to soften the impact of the global crisis, although other international agencies suspended their aid to the country after the June coup.
Honduras's central bank said on Aug. 28 received an allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) for 96 million, equivalent to 150.1 million dollars as part of a scheme to assist members of the IMF.
http://ecodiario.eleconomista.es/flash/
International Republican Institute (IRI)
$550,000
To promote and enhance the participation of think tanks in Mexico and Honduras as “pressure groups” to impel political parties to develop concrete positions on key issues. Once these positions are developed, IRI will support initiatives to implement said positions into the 2009 campaigns. IRI will place special emphasis on Honduras, which has scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections in November 2009.
http://www.ned.org/grants/08programs/grants-lac08.html
International Republican Institute (IRI)
$400,000
To provide elected officials with practical institutional management skills that will facilitate good governance practices, policies, and initiatives. IRI will partner with municipalities in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Honduras to equip elected officials with practical institutional management skills to foster good governance practices, policies, and initiatives, and improve the quality of service delivery at the municipal level.
International Republican Institute (IRI)
$300,000
To provide public officials in multiple countries with skills that will facilitate good governance policies, practices, and initiatives. IRI will support the development of a small corps of retired local government leaders to comprise an IRI Democratic Governance Corps and serve as mentors for local government practitioners abroad. IRI Democratic Governance Corps mentors will contribute to the growth and development of good governance practices, policies, and initiatives abroad through extensive consultations, trainings, and other support with their local government counterparts.
http://www.ned.org/grants/08programs/grants-lac08.html
NO GOOD GOVERNANCE IN HONDURAS, says the IRI
… To describe the events of June 28 as nothing more than a modern version of the old-style coup d’état is misguided. The coups that came to characterize much of 20th century Latin American history generally followed a common script in which the military declares martial law, discards the constitution, deposes the executive, shutters congress and the courts, and installs military officers to govern in their stead. However, in Honduras, the military acted on orders from the Supreme Court to detain a president intent on thumbing his nose at the court’s constitutional authority.
And following Zelaya’s removal from power, Honduras’s democratic institutions—its legislature, judiciary, and other government institutions—continued to function as normal. The constitution remained in force and an interim president succeeded Zelaya as the constitution mandated.(Interamerican Foundation of Electoral Systems
http://www.ifes.org/features.html?title=Honduras%25%20Chronology%20of%20a%20%25Coup%25
http://www.ifes.org/features.html?title=Honduras%25%20Chronology%20of%20a%20%25Coup%25
U.S. Assistance to Honduras
Office of the Spokesman
Thursday’s announcement means we are suspending, as a policy matter, military assistance programs and a few development assistance programs that are for the Government of Honduras. The dollar amount associated with the military assistance that has been suspended, including Foreign Military Financing, International Military Education & Training, Peacekeeping Operations, and 1206 assistance, is approximately $16.5M. We are halting activities related to basic education and some environment and family planning programs, as well as support to the Government of Honduras for CAFTA-DR environmental standards. The assistance suspended by USAID thus far totals approximately $1.9 million
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/july/125762.htm
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
USAID Administrator to Speak at the International Republican Institute
WASHINGTON, DC 20523
PRESS OFFICE
http://www.usaid.gov/
(202) 712-4320
2003-029
November 12, 2003
Contact: USAID Press Office
WASHINGTON, DC - On Thursday, November 13, 2003, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Andrew S. Natsios will deliver remarks at the International Republican Institute (IRI). Administrator Natsios will discuss local governance efforts in Iraq. The event is being sponsored by IRI, the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI).
http://www.usaid.gov/press/mediaadvisories/2003/ma031112.html
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