How to read Daniel Altschuler

By Adrienne Pine

The article "Honduras's Truth Commission Controversy" in Americas Quarterly and The Huffington Post by political-scientist-in-training Daniel Altschuler is getting a lot of uncritical circulation. Apparently his professors aren't giving his papers adequate critique, so I'm doing what I can to help with editing/factcheck below:

The Truth Commission mandated by last year's Tegucigalpa / San Jose Accord now appears ready to get to work in Honduras, but controversy has already ensnared it. Supporters of last year's coup are demanding that the government let sleeping dogs lie, while their opponents fear that the commission will fail to deliver an honest account of the coup.

Okay, first of all, they don't fear; they know. And beyond not providing an honest account, the clear and firm position of the human rights platform (made up of all the major human rights organizations in Honduras) and the FNRP is that the truth commission as designed enables and encourages death squads. But hey, why fuss over details?

Meanwhile, the commission already appears to be hedging on how much truth it will deliver, another troubling sign for a country where sunlight has never been in greater demand

Honduras and darkest Africa, together at last (at least metaphorically)

Signed on October 30, 2009, the Tegucigalpa / San Jose Accord once promised the end of Honduras' political crisis

Actually, no. It didn't. Not to anyone except the U.S. State Department and WOLA. That's why the resistance's representative pulled out in protest before an agreement was signed. To the golpistas it promised a continuation of power, and to Zelaya's camp it promised a brief return to power, until Tom Shannon ended that by reneging on the U.S. end of the deal. But none of them saw it as an end to the crisis.

The accord failed, however, because it did not stipulate a deadline for the congressional vote on Manuel Zelaya's restitution, which ultimately led then-President Zelaya to pull his support.

No, again, it failed because Shannon invalidated it by stating the U.S. would recognize the elections with or without Zelaya, because he was facing DeMint blocking his appointment as ambassador to Brazil, and was willing to appease him by sacrificing Honduras.

Meanwhile, de facto President Roberto Micheletti and key international players -- including the U.S. government -- clung to the accord, claiming it was still in effect. Since President Porfirio Lobo took office in late January, he has maintained this line and worked tirelessly to restore international recognition to the Honduran government. The formation of the Truth Commission represents a crucial, final step along this path, and the eight-month process stands ready to begin on May 4.

Aren't you missing the government of reconciliation theater that thus far has failed miserably to take hold, thanks to the steadfast opposition of the Honduran resistance and Human Rights Platform and their allies working in solidarity here in the U.S. (and against the efforts of Llorens and WOLA to force it through)

But Lobo's government faces significant pressure from various sectors of Honduran society. Coup supporters have already said that they have no faith in the process, arguing that it is nothing more than a show for the international community. As has been true since last year's coup, the Honduran Right continues to call for "national unity" and "consensus," which in this case appears to mean a Truth Commission that does not rock the boat. Right-wing opponents have also lobbied to exclude human rights violations from the Commission's purview, which have continued after Lobo took office

Okay, making a little bit of sense...

Opposition to a full inquiry has found allies among those on the Right in the United States, as well. Most notably, U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who visited Honduras and argued that the "book should be closed" to avoid further division. Wall Street Journal columnist Mary O'Grady seems to have joined this side, as well, shamelessly using her Wall Street Journal column to harangue Democratic congressional staffers for a visit to Tegucigalpa, during which they likely reinforced their commitment to the Truth Commission.
Meanwhile, opponents of the coup fear that the Commission will not go far enough. First, following Lobo's granting of amnesty to coupsters and the Supreme Court's dismissal of charges for the military figures involved with Zelaya's ouster, they believe that the official Commission report will go soft on the armed forces. This would be consistent with decades of precedent in Honduras and throughout Latin America, where civilian forces have long deferred to the military.

While this is not incorrect, it is incomplete. Lobo has not just granted amnesty; he has rewarded the military figures involved by giving them some of the most powerful positions in the country. SOA-trained General Romeo Vasquez Velásquez, for example, is currently enjoying his position as head of Hondutel, celebrating the fact that the telecom industry is once again back in the hands of the military and can be openly used for intelligence purposes (and yes, he has stated this openly). And "decades of precedent...throughout Latin America"? Please, a little historical awareness here. Hondurans fought valiantly to demilitarize civil society in the 1990s, and succeeded in ending the draft and wresting the telecommunications industry away from the military, among other things. There was no "deferring" there and this is not a question of culture. This is the result of a violent military takeover of a government.

Second, opponents will likely question the international additions to the Commission. The members hail from countries quickest to support last year's controversial election -- Guatemala, Canada and Peru. Among these countries, Guatemala is the only country with a left-of-center president, but Eduardo Stein was vice-president of Guatemala under the previous president, Oscar Berger, from the right-of-center GANA party.
Former Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, the Commission's coordinator, has now given critics of the coup further cause for concern. Recently, he declared that "there will be sensitive information that will be classified, especially confidential testimony provided by certain individuals during the investigation process." This statement has raised red flags for seekers of historical truth in Honduras.

Hondurans who critique the truth commission from the left are not "seekers of historical truth." The resistance movement is not comprised of some kind of "truth will set you free" hippies. Those Hondurans have demanded justice, and an end to a violently undemocratic system of government, supported by an undemocratic and completely invalidated constitution.

To be fair, there can be various reasons to keep certain information confidential in truth commissions. These commissions, in addition to the daunting task of constructing a coherent account of complex, controversial events, can face many other practical and ethical obstacles, including getting key players to talk, getting honest answers and being able to protect those who provide testimony. Especially in the absence of the same legal protections that would be afforded to witnesses in a court of law, it makes sense for the Honduran Truth Commission to afford certain protections for informants.

The Truth, cipote, is not actually as complicated and obtuse as you are making it out to be here. The events may be controversial, but so is the question of the earth being round or evolution v. creation, depending on whose wacko view you choose to privilege. It would not be that hard for the truth commission to arrive at an accurate analysis of what has happened in the past year; in fact, Amnesty International and the IAHCR have already done so. Look it up. Unfortunately, accuracy is not the purpose of the truth commission, and whitewashing the coup is.

The problem, then, is not that information will be withheld, but what information will be withheld.

Not according to all the human rights organizations in Honduras and the Resistance movement (see above).

To remain credible, the commission needs to be clear about the nature of these protections and the scope of the "sensitive information" to which Stein referred. Vague statements suggest arbitrary decisions and will only undermine the commission. The commission also needs to demonstrate that these restrictions will not jeopardize its final report's objectivity and completeness. Otherwise, those in favor of a full accounting of the 2009 political crisis will remain convinced that the commission will do nothing more than whitewash the coup and the roles of the military and the country's political leaders in creating and perpetuating that crisis. In the absence of an honest and complete report, observers may have to look to the findings of an "Alternative Truth Commission," which could be similar to parallel inquiries previously set up in other Latin American countries.

This whole paragraph creates the illusion of a legitimate dilemma when no such dilemma exists. A truth commission endorsed and formed by a state that is actively and daily murdering its non-violent opponents is not an appropriate vehicle for investigation of the state. Period.

What remains at stake in all of this is Honduras's historical memory.

See above, on memory vs. justice.

For those who hope the Truth Commission will fail, this endeavor evidently does not matter -- instead of worrying about the past, these critics may argue, Honduras should focus on increasing economic growth, re-opening the aid spigot and reducing the country's horrific crime level.

No understanding here of the social manipulation and uses of said "horrific crime level" in Honduras as justification for state violence under the rubric of "mano dura" or "zero tolerance" policies against a population of young poor men rendered excessive by the violent policies of the neoliberal coup state, or how it fits in with the preceding two fallacies...

All of these issues are critical, but this ahistorical stance misses a central point: The truth must be known, both for its own sake and "to avoid that these events repeat themselves in the future."

If you knew your Honduran history you'd know that knowledge of the violent past does nothing to prevent a violent future, when that past is one of U.S. trained and supported death squads. It's not a lack of knowledge that's the problem- those documents were declassified in the 1990s (the parts that weren't painstakingly blacked out at the CIA, anyway). Impunity is the problem. Impunity is why the U.S.-trained death squad leaders of the 1980s are leading death squads once again, right now, with U.S. support.

The latter justification comes directly from the Tegucigalpa / San Jose Accord, signed by negotiators from both sides of last year's crisis. The demand for the truth, far from an international imposition, is Honduran in origin, and this demand must be honored.

And this last statement is perhaps the most offensive of all. "Both sides," Daniel? Both sides? Really? Did you not happen to notice the entire resistance movement, much bigger than the Zelaya camp, boycotting those accords? Did you not notice the guns of the one of the two "sides" you recognize trained on the other? Are you so naïve as to think those are possibly conditions for honest negotiation or agreement?
Final Grade (with inflation, and mostly because the grammar's pretty good and that's worth a lot these days): C-

http://quotha.net/node/903