The Hemispheric Significance of the Honduras Events

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By Teresa Albano, Posted by Teresa Albano (about the submitter) Page 1 of 3 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Posted by Teresa Albano - Writer

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has
announced he will return to his country this weekend, accompanied by a
distinguished group of Latin American and International figures
including Organization of American States Secretary General Jos- Miguel
Insulza and the presidents of Argentina and Ecuador.

He had originally
planned to return on Thursday July 2, but postponed his arrival to
allow for an ultimatum the OAS have given to the acting president of
Honduras to expire. Although the illegal regime set up by the people
who carried out the coup have threatened to arrest Zelaya if he
returns, my guess is that the coup is done for, and that Zelaya's
return will be a march of triumph.

How did the events in Honduras, one of the smallest and poorest
countries in Latin America, suddenly acquire what Marx would have
called "world historical" importance? This was not the first military
coup d'etat to occur in the region, after all, or in Honduras itself.

The Honduran drama has become the stage on which a momentous conflict
is being acted out in miniature, a conflict that has hemispheric and
worldwide implications. The stupid move by the Honduran military to
revert to an old fashioned barracks coup d'etat has made everything
come to a head in Honduras.

The Washington Consensus

Since the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European socialism 18 years
ago, Latin America and the Caribbean, like other poor Third World
regions, has been subjected to ferociously exploitative economic
policies that can be subsumed under the titles of "Washington
Consensus" or "the neo-liberal package".

The Washington Consensus promotes development through free trade and
foreign investment. The "free trade" part is a scam as the trade is not
free, but rigged in favor of the wealthier countries and international
monopoly capital. NAFTA, set up between Mexico, the United States and
Canada, is an example, as DR-CAFTA, set up between the United States
and the Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic, is
another.

This model requires the following from participating poor countries:

That they open up their economies to penetration by foreign
multilateral corporations, changing their laws and even their
constitutions to get rid of not only trade protectionism, but also
labor and indigenous rights, environmental protection, tax laws and
other measures that might be deemed to be prejudicial to the interests
of foreign investors.

*That they privatize their economies in order to permit foreign and
domestic capitalists to realize profits from every aspect of the
nation's economic functioning, including the health care and
educational systems, public transportation, water for drinking and
irrigation, and many other things.

*That they carry out a program of austerity to cut the government's
payroll, this being a special requirement if a country wants help from
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

There have been rebellions against this neo-liberal package since
January 1, 1994, when NAFTA came into force and indigenous farmers in
Chiapas, Mexico, arose in arms specifically to fight against it.
DR-CAFTA has led to major protests in all countries involved. There are
currently big disturbances over the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement. The
big project of the Bush administration, the Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA) has evidently only succeeded in creating unity among
forces in several countries of the area which oppose it.

Resistance to Neo-Liberal Policies Grows

Cuba alone has toughed out this whole period of neo-liberalism, a
tribute to the brilliant historic leadership of the Cuban Revolution,
the fighting qualities of the Cuban people, and the agility of the
Cuban model of socialism in adapting itself to all kinds of internal
and external challenges.

But while Cuba was toughing it out in conditions of great
difficulty and hardship, the "old mole" of class struggle in the rest
of the hemisphere was digging away. In country after country, the cause
of the working class and the masses was reviving strength and moving
toward a series of breakthroughs.

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