March 6, 2010, by Annie Bird, Rights Action
After about two years and almost two coups … another high level State Department visit to Guatemala. The results of State Department visits to Central America are sometimes not seen for many months. What will come from Clinton’s?
The last high level State Department visit to Guatemala was the June 2008 visit from the then Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, who visited Honduras in the same trip.
Negroponte was already infamous in Honduras; he was the US ambassador who turned Honduras into “USS Honduras” – the launching point for US support of repressive military regimes in Central America.
In 2008, Negroponte visited Honduras and Guatemala as tensions grew between the US Ambassador to Honduras Charles Ford and Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. The newly installed Guatemalan President, Alvaro Colom, whom some consider to be left leaning, was struggling to get his footing amidst massive violence including a terror campaign of organized killing of bus drivers.
Hillary Clinton will now visit Guatemala to promote the same anti-drug initiative that was the pretext for John Negroponte’s visit, the “Merida Initiative”. She arrives in the shadow of the March 2, 2010 arrest of the Director of the Guatemalan police force (PNC) and the chief of the anti-drug agency (DAIA) by CICIG, the UN affiliated commission to prosecute organized crime in Guatemala.
The arrest of two principal partners of the Merida Initiative in Guatemala calls into question the impact of the Initiative, which in 2009 designated $16 million for programs in Guatemala, largely with the PNC and DAIA.
Does the Obama Administration not know that ‘staying the course’ in partnership with the militaries and police forces of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador will only strengthen organized crime, result in crimes against humanity, and foster instability…, or is that the objective?
The last time Hillary Clinton visited Guatemala, her husband, then President, officially apologized for the US support of the military dictatorships that carried out genocide in Guatemala. What was seen then as an insincere apology remains so today, since the US has decided to continue supporting repressive military regimes in Central America.
THE US HAS CHOSEN SIDES IN THE DRUG WAR– THE WRONG SIDE
There is no doubt that Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are in crisis. Extreme violence terrifies every day life. The structures of power in these countries, originating from the historically US supported militaries and oligarchies, but affecting all levels of life, from the Congresses to the justice administration to the municipal governments, are being devastated by influence from organized crime, and in some cases are controlled by it.
The Obama administration is following the drug war blueprint - the Merida Initiative - designed in 2008 by the Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and George W. Bush. This initiative relies on the security structures so deeply implicated not only in grave human rights abuses but also in the organized crime activities the Initiative purports to combat.
In February 2010, the White House asked congress to appropriate another $410 million to support the Merida Initiative.
On January 22, 2010, Guatemalan President Colom inaugurated the Antinarcotics Base of the Pacific, in Escuintla. The construction and operation of the base is funded by the Merida Initiative, and it will be a base of operations for the US Drug Enforcement Agency to coordinate joint operations with their Guatemalan counterpart, the Antinarcotics Analysis and Informacion Division (DAIA) of the National Civil Police.
In a telling and interesting turn, on March 1, 2010 President Colom fired the Minister of Governance, charged with overseeing security forces (police, etc). On March 2, 2010, the new minister of Governance, accompanied by representatives of CICIG, arrested the Director of the PNC, Baltazar Gómez Barrios, and the head of the DAIA, Nelly Bonilla, on drug trafficking charges.
There are alternatives to the ‘staying the course’ in the drug war, like the CICIG initiative in Guatemala, a UN sponsored commission to investigate and prosecute organized crime.
The political instability in Central America, like the coup in Honduras, is inextricably linked to the networks of economic and military power in which organized crime plays a key role, and with which actors in the US government have a long, sordid and well documented history.
COLOM’S FAVORED GENERAL TORTURED & KILLED AFTER 2008 US EMBASSY VISITS
In the years leading up to Colom’s election as president, he knew that cleaning out the organized crime controlled military could make or break his presidency, so he cultivated a relationship with a small group of generals, led by General Mauro Antonio Jacinto Carrillo.
Though Jacito Carrillo was Colom’s favored candidate for Minister of Defense, in the political maneuvers that any president must undertake, and that are the real test of their leadership, Jacinto and the group he had cultivated to purge the military of organized crime were pushed aside in the conformation of the new government in 2008.
When Jacinto Carrillo then approached the editor of one of Guatemala’s major papers terrified for his life, the editor insisted he speak to the US embassy. Just days after a couple of meetings with the US embassy, on August 14, 2008 the tortured mutilated body of Jacinto Carrillo was found.
A few days after Jacinto Carrillo’s gruesome murder, the newspaper editor who facilitated the US Embassy meetings was victim to an attempted assassination, which he claims the attackers attempted to disguise as a suicide.
MAY 2009, A COUP ATTEMPT IN GUATEMALA?
Less then a year after Negroponte’s visit, Colom’s administration was rocked by a bizarre murder scandal that many savvy Guatemalan political observers diagnosed immediately as a coup attempt. On May 11, 2009 a video was released the day after the murder of Rodrigo Rosenberg, a right wing political activist and lawyer, which showed the victim accusing Colom of his murder.
The video, which quickly appeared in every major international media outlet, was taped and distributed by figures known to have been associated with Guatemalan military intelligence during and after Guatemala’s period of massive military repression which included genocide, torture, killing and disappearance of over 250,000 Guatemalans.
They are also figures associated with Colom’s presidential rival in the 2007 elections, former General Otto Perez Molina. Perez Molina was the perceived favorite 2007 Presidential candidate of the US embassy and has been directly implicated in massacres and torture during the 1980s. He and those responsible for distributing the video were known to have a long history of a tight relationship to the US embassy.
Many suspect Perez Molina of ongoing ties to organized crime and the campaign of killing of bus drivers, which erupted during his presidential campaign in which he promised a ‘hard fist’ against crime, and then dramatically escalated in the first months of Colom’s term. Following Rosenberg’s murder, Perez Molina promoted marches and media campaigns calling for Colom’s resignation.
Interpreting the Rosenberg murder as a political destabilization attempt is an intricate conspiracy plot hard for North Americans - untrained in the machinations of US-backed counter-insurgency tactics from the 1980s - to swallow, while the narrative of a Latin American president ordering a murder to cover up corruption is much more palatable.
However, in January 2010, CICIG made public its investigations into Rodrigo Rosenberg’s killing, in which at least part of the conspiracy was confirmed as investigators demonstrated, through video footage, and cellular phone and bank records, that the murder was actually a suicide in which Rosenberg hired hit men to kill him.
US ROLE IN THE JUNE 28 COUP IN HONDURAS
The coup against Honduran president Manuel Zelaya on June 28, 2008 has been the subject of widespread media coverage, though there is still much to be clarified with respect to the role of the United States in that coup.
Figures such as career State Department official Otto Reich and his associate Venezuelan lawyer Robert Carmona have been accused of fabricating or exaggerating corruption charges to destabilize the Zelaya administration.
The plane that kidnapped Zelaya made a stop at the Palmerola military base that serves as the base of operations for the US Southern Command Task Force Delta. Though just a fifteen minute flight from the Honduran airbase in Tegucigalpa, which maintains adequate fuel supplies, Honduran military officials, who carried out the coup, explained the plane stopped for refueling.
Irrespective of whatever direct role the US agencies and individuals may have played, the Obama administration applied virtually no pressure to the coup government when there were still hopes it could be reversed, even continuing training for Honduran officers in the infamous “School of the Americas” - WHINSEC. The administration then went on to recognize fraudulent and undemocratic elections, lobbying for the international community to restore recognition of Honduras.
The Honduran military coup occurred following years of building tension between the US government and Zelaya’s administrations. Many reforms enacted by Zelaya challenged US business interests.
Highlights include the suspension of the issuance of all US tourist visas in the US Embassy in Honduras after Zelaya announced that the process for importing gasoline to Honduras would be subject to an open bidding process, which meant Venezuela beat out US companies - though the visa suspension was justified in other ways.
In September 2008 Zelaya delayed receiving the ambassador designate from Washington, Hugo Llorens, in reaction to a range of diplomatic issues and pressures from the US.
The May 2008 OAS meeting held in Honduras was ripe with tension between the US and Honduras. The OAS examined the proposal to invite Cuba to join the OAS, which was approved. As yet, Cuba has not accepted. The Miami Cuban lobby made a strong presence to counter the Cuba proposal. It was reported that Ambassador Ford had early in his administration proposed to Zelaya that Honduras become a safe haven for the former CIA operative and terrorist bomber Posada Carriles, currently in the US which defies a request for his extradition to Venezuela to stand trial for the terrorist bombing of the civilian plane in the 1970s that killed close to 80 civilian passengers.
During the OAS meetings, Hillary Clinton was reported to be offended by the reception she received from her Honduran counterpart Patricia Rodas, and in Honduras it was understood that the US delegation left early.
HISTORY OF CENTRAL AMERICAN DRUG TRAFFICKING - DID NEGROPONTE’S MEN HELP START IT?
The pretext for Negroponte’s 2008 visit to Honduras and Guatemala was to promote the Merida Initiative package of support for Central American and Mexican anti-drug policing forces.
Negroponte’s promotion of the initiative is disturbing given that people he was key in supporting during his 1981 to 1985 stay as ambassador to Honduras have been implicated in drug trafficking.
US aid to Honduras skyrocketed during Negroponte’s stay, as he was key in setting up US support for the Honduras-based “Contra” force dedicated to militarily and economically overthrowing the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. He was heavily implicated in illegal efforts to facilitate arms to the Contras - the “Iran-Contra Affair”. The Kerry Commission in the US Senate further documented the participation by US sponsored actors in drug trafficking in Central America and Colombia.
The intersection between the death squads sponsored by US agencies and drug trafficking has had a tremendous impact on Central America. Since the consolidation of the so-called peace processes formally ending the conflicts in Central America, violence has consistently grown, to the degree that today Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras compete for the highest murder rate in Latin America and possibly the world.
INTERNATIONAL PROSECUTION OF ORGANIZED CRIME
The CICIG initiative in Guatemala provides a glimmer of hope that the organized crime can be controlled, through prosecution. Though the US has provided symbolic levels of financial support to CICIG, it has provided millions to the PNC and to the DAIA, an agency constantly implicated in drug trafficking.
Interestingly, this year the mandate of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, the only international body with the mandate to investigate, prosecute and try international criminals, will be reviewed to determine whether the mandate will be expanded to include organized crime and terrorism. Since it began in 2002 the ICJ has had very limited activities, acting in only four situations, all in Africa, issuing only 18 arrest warrants and imprisoning only four.
On September 24, 2010, President Manuel Zelaya presented a complaint before the ICC for the June 28, 2008 military coup in which he was expelled from the country. In response, the ‘de facto’ regime controlling Honduras presented a complaint against Brazil for housing the deposed president. Though the de facto regime’s complaint will undoubtedly not be reviewed, how the ICC acts in response to Zelaya’s complaint will be important to watch.
As efforts for international investigation and prosecution of drug trafficking advance, we may get some answers to the question: Is the US war on drugs akin to the Opium wars of the 19th century in which Britain forced China to open up to the British trade in opium?
Hillary Clinton's Latin America tour is turning out to be about as successful as George W Bush's visit in 2005, when he ended up leaving Argentina a day ahead of schedule just to get the hell out of town. The main difference is that she is not being greeted with protests and riots. For that she can thank the positive media image that her boss, President Obama, has managed to maintain in the region, despite his continuation of his predecessor's policies.
But she has been even more diplomatically clumsy that Bush, who at least recognised that there were serious problems and knew what not to say. "The Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful conclusion," Clinton said in Buenos Aires, adding that "it was done without violence."
This is rubbing salt into her hosts' wounds, as they see the military overthrow of President Mel Zelaya last June, and subsequent efforts by the US to legitimise the dictatorship there as not only a failure but a threat to democracy throughout the region.
It is also an outrageous thing to say, given the political killings, beatings, mass arrests, and torture that the coup government used in order to maintain power and repress the pro-democracy movement. The worst part is that they are still committing these crimes.
Today nine members of the US Congress – including some Democrats in Congressional leadership positions – wrote to Clinton and to the White House about this violence. They wrote:
"Since President Lobo's inauguration, several prominent opponents of the coup have been attacked. On 3 February, Vanessa Zepeda, a nurse and union organiser who had previously received death threats linked to her activism in the resistance movement, was strangled and her body dumped from a vehicle in Tegucigalpa. On 15 February, Julio Funes Benitez, a member of the [water and sewage workers] trade union and an active member of the national resistance movement, was shot and killed by unknown gunmen on a motorcycle outside his home. Most recently, Claudia Brizuela, an opposition activist, was murdered in her home on 24 February. Unfortunately these are only three of the numerous attacks against activists and their families … "
Clinton will meet on Friday with "Pepe" Lobo of Honduras, who waselected president after a campaign marked by media shutdowns and police repression of dissent. The Organisation of American States and European Union refused to send official observers to the election.
The members of Congress also asked that Clinton, in her meeting with Lobo, "send a strong unambiguous message that the human rights situation in Honduras will be a critical component of upcoming decisions regarding the further normalisations of relations, as well as the resumption of financial assistance."
This was the third letter that Clinton received from Congress on human rights in Honduras. On 7 August and 25 September members of Congress from Hillary Clinton's own Democratic party wrote to her to complain of the ongoing human rights abuses in Honduras and impossibility of holding free elections under these conditions. They did not even get a perfunctory reply until 28 January, more than four months after the second letter was sent. This is an unusual level of disrespect for the elected representatives of one's own political party.
For these New Cold Warriors, it seems that all that has mattered is that they got rid of one social democratic president of one small, poor country.
In Brazil, Clinton continued her cold war strategy by throwing in some gratuitous insults toward Venezuela. This is a bit like going to a party and telling the host how much you don't like his friends. After ritual denunciations of Venezuela, Clinton said "We wish Venezuela were looking more to its south and looking at Brazil and looking at Chile and other models of a successful country."
Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim responded with diplomacy, but there was no mistaking his strong rebuff to her insults: he said that he agreed with "one point" that Clinton made, "that Venezuela should look southwards more … that is why we have invited Venezuela to join MERCOSUR as a full member country." Clinton's rightwing allies in Paraguay's legislature – the remnants of that country's dictatorship and 60 years of one-party rule – are currently holding up Venezuela's membership in the South American trade block. This is not what she wanted to hear from Brazil.
The Brazilians also rejected Clinton's rather undiplomatic efforts to pressure them to join Washington in calling for new sanctions against Iran. "It is not prudent to push Iran against a wall," said Brazilian president Lula da Silva." The prudent thing is to establish negotiations."
"We will not simply bow down to an evolving consensus if we do not agree," Amorim said at a press conference with Clinton.
Secretary Clinton made one concession to Argentina, calling for the UK to sit down with the Argentine government and discuss their dispute over the Malvinas (Falklands) Islands. But it seems unlikely that Washington will do anything to make this happen.
For now, the next crucial test will be Honduras: will Clinton continue Washington's efforts to whitewash the Honduran government's repression? Or will she listen to the rest of the hemisphere as well as her own Democratic members of Congress and insist on some concessions regarding human rights, including the return of Mel Zelaya to his country (as the Brazilians also emphasised)? This story may not get much US media attention, but Latin America will be watching.
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