Shine the Light of Truth on Poor Honduras

As the United States chooses a new president, consider a little conceptual exercise. Imagine a US special ops unit controlled by angry free-market Republicans jacking up President Obama one morning and flying him quickly from the south lawn to a secret location in Texas, telling the nation and the world in a carefully prepared announcement that, because Mr. Obama was so controversial, for the sake of good order, a unified military institution was convinced the duly-elected president had to be removed and new elections would be set up. Also imagine the extended "mopping up" operation that would follow -- ie, an extended dirty war -- since liberals and progressives would not stop advocating what they had been pressing, and working with, the ousted president to accomplish.

In the mind of very successful North Americans like Hillary Clinton, the lives of poor people struggling for dignity mean nothing beyond their rhetorical value; the comfort of moneyed interests and good elite-driven order is what counts. Like Donald Trump, she has said she's not a politician. But what she did after the Honduran coup was a classic case of politicking by an artist in the accommodation with power. It's clear she's embarrassed by what she did or didn't do; it has been pointed out that a reference in her memoir Hard Choices to a conversation with Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa was edited out in the paperback. Here's part of what was cut: "We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot." Why isn't kidnapping a duly-elected president and making him "moot" a softened version of "disappearing" the man?

Clearly Ms. Clinton wants to censor the record, here. Still, that doesn't address the problem. As we used to say in the reporter business, nothing is covered in the mainstream until it becomes a "pissing contest" among political elites. The only people in America sympathetic to the many murdered Honduran activists are on the marginalized left, which I'm a proud, card-carrying member of. This means there's no pissing contest. The story gets lost in the media obsession with scandal and personality.

Berta Caceras' crime was clear: She was a dedicated and effective voice for the marginalized poor vis--vis industrial interests like mining and the building of the Agua Zarca Dam along the Gualcarque River, an area that is sacred to the native Lenca people. In 2014, Caceres spoke about US meddling and Secretary Clinton's double-talk following the coup:

"The return of the president, Mel Zelaya, became a secondary issue. There were going to be elections in Honduras," she said. "And the international community -- officials, the government, the grand majority -- accepted this, even though we warned this was going to be very dangerous and that it would permit a barbarity, not only in Honduras but in the rest of the continent. And we've been witnesses to this."

I've harbored a soft spot for Honduras ever since I was deported from there in 1984. I was part of a five-man team of US unionists (I was along as a photographer/reporter) there to talk with union leaders about murders and disappearances under the military government of the time. Honduras was then known sarcastically as "Aircraft Carrier Honduras" and effectively under the rule of US Proconsul John Negroponte, officially known as the US ambassador to Honduras. This was during Ronald Reagan's Contra War against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua next door. That war was being run by Negroponte from Honduras. Our little band of gringo unionists rocked the boat by speaking in public in Tegucigalpa against the Contra War and US intervention in Honduras. I tried to return to Honduras, but my name was on a list, and a rather nasty police official told me either get on the plane waiting for me on the tarmac -- or I was going to jail.

Honduras means depth in English. My Spanish-English dictionary gives the following phrase as an example: meterse en honduras -- to go beyond one's depth. In some cases, honduras is translated more specifically as ravine or gulch. The name may be attributable to some Spanish conquistador with a bad first impression. For much of its history Honduras has vied with Haiti as the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. Being so poor means you are a resource-rich plaything of the rich and powerful.

Following the coup, the United States tricked up the nation with a network of US bases, some large, some small, all focused on interdicting shipments in the Drug War. At least that's the public line. Since the failed War On Drugs has linked with the permanent War On Terror, the result is a runaway militarist train that even concerned North Americans are powerless to curb. Though they struggle hard, poor Hondurans don't fare any better. The really committed ones are targets.

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