This marks the first step in the reversal of the Honduran coup of 2009. Mel is back, and dialogue is ON, babies:
Part 1 of several; keep clicking through for the rest.
Note that Mel’s plane is one from the fleet of the Venezuelan national airline, Conviasa. Chavecito and his neighbor, Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, have worked hard to broker this return. Which is, I reiterate, only a first step, and does not mark the definitive end of the coup just yet.
Don’t miss the excellent analysis from Fr. Roy Bourgeois (head of School of the Americas Watch; article by Lisa Sullivan of SOA Watch here) and Piedad Córdoba, Colombian senator and longtime progressive peace advocate, who has been supporting Zelaya and urging dialogue from the outset. Fr. Roy points out that Barack Obama’s shameful failure to condemn and reverse the coup (which was entirely within his power and rights to do) is the direct result of putschists within his own government, derailing any effort to get the US to do the right thing in Central America for a change. He doesn’t mention Lanny Davis by name, but everyone knows just how close that little snake is to the State Dept. (and Her Royal Clintoness.)
The first interview is also important; exiled progressive Hondurans are still unable to return, and this is an ongoing problem. It’s going to take a lot more than the return of Mel Zelaya to resolve this matter. 107 Honduran organizations are still protesting the coup and demanding further steps to guarantee the safety and human rights of prisoners and exiles. So far, their demands have not been met.
And let’s also not forget that Mel Zelaya is the last legitimate elected leader of Honduras, and that he was thrown out for trying to put a democratic question to his own people — namely the “Fourth Ballot”, the one that would have started the process of convoking an elected assembly to rewrite the Honduran constitution. Real democracy won’t return to Honduras until an honestly elected leader (and that’s NOT Pepe Lobo!) receives the sash from a legitimate president.
And it won’t be guaranteed until the people of Honduras have a constitution written by their own democratically elected representatives. The current constitution was written by a military dictatorship, and still contains provisions that would allow coups and illegitimate so-called régime change. Surely it’s no coincidence that those who deposed President Zelaya did so as he was moving to have it scrapped in favor of something more clearly democratic, and used its most undemocratic provisions to justify their doing so!
And finally, on a shameful note, the major English-language media remain complicit in their role as lackeys of the coup. When I googled “Honduran constitution, coup”, the overwhelming preponderance of top articles consisted of slimy, flimsy attempts to cast the coup as a “triumph of democracy”. How “democracy” can “triumph” by way of persecution, death squads and autocrats like Gorilletti, the media coup apologists won’t say. That’s not surprising either, since what’s been reigning for the past two years in Honduras is not democracy at all, but the usual, tiresome CIA/SOA-backed fascist putschism, nada más. There is no legal defence for that, and the media secretly know it. They, too, should be held accountable — but what are the odds, since crapaganda is generated by a consortium of corporatist fiefdoms in private hands, rather than anyone who is answerable to the general public? None of it surprises me, but it never fails to utterly disgust.
Mel, here’s hoping you kick some culo now that you’re back, man. Or, as the activists would say: Adelante, adelante, la lucha es constante!
Great news! Crickets from the MSM on this, naturally 🙁
Not too surprising…they cheerled for the coup, after all. Probably still too ashamed to show their faces.
I do differ and think its shameful the role Venezuela has played in this whole affair concerning Honduras not listening to the grassroots and the opposition to the coup their while it does a backroom deal to keep Honduras in the OAS.
“Foreign policy is a extension of domestic policy” and Venezuela is still a contradiction stuck on the road to socialism by a bureaucracy and many state structures and functionaries, sabotaging and putting up road blocks against the workers, peasants and grassroots who want to move forward to it.
Venezuela’s policy as professed by the Foreign Ministry, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro and most of the diplomatic corps is a bourgeois nationalist model of the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and besides being a appeasement to imperialism, it is giving cover to despots, murderers and hurts the Bolivarian revolution in the long run.It has nothing in common with a what socialists know as “proletarian internationalism”.
All one has to do is look at mistake after mistake made whether its the recent debacles with the arrest in Venezuela of Colombian political refugee Joaquín Pérez Becerra and his hand over to Colombia and illegal extradition of him to working with the coup mongers in Honduras while repression continues and will remain unabated.
It’s Venezuela right to trade and deal whom they want with but giving cover to Colombia and the US plus making out there is nothing wrong with how groups are oppressed in Iran, Syria, Libya, China, Sri Lanka and many others are just in a long road of this type wrong headed policy.
I would also suggest you visit ADRIENNE PINE website below for other views:
http://quotha.net
Press Release: OAS Voting on Honduras, But There’s “Neither Reconciliation nor Democracy”
Wed, 06/01/2011 – 11:52 — AP
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
OAS Voting on Honduras, But There’s “Neither Reconciliation nor Democracy”
Interviews Available
The Los Angeles Times editorializes today: “Nearly two years after former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a military coup, he returned home Saturday.
His arrival clears the way for the Organization of American States to reinstate Honduras, which had been expelled from the group, during a special session Wednesday.”
SUYAPA PORTILLO, (323) 637-7812, lavidagris@gmail.com
Portillo is assistant professor at the Central American Studies Program at California State University, Northridge.
ADRIENNE PINE, pine@american.edu [email for Skype interview]
Pine recently wrote the piece Zelaya’s Return: Neither Reconciliation nor Democracy in Honduras.
She is assistant professor of anthropology at American University specializing in Latin America. She is the author of “Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras” and has been writing about Honduras and other issues at: http://quotha.net . Pine was featured on Democracy
Now this morning, which has been interviewing Zelaya and others in Honduras.
JOHN LINDSAY-POLAND, 510-282-8983, johnlp@forusa.org
Lindsay-Poland is research and advocacy director for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which recently released a statement titled Construction Companies Urged Not to Bid on ‘Violent Outcomes’ in Honduras.
JESSE FREESTON, [in Houduras] 011-504-8914-4580, jesse@therealnews.com,
http://therealnews.com
Freeston is a reporter for The Real News who has produced several segments on Honduras since the June 2009 coup. His latest is Massive Turnout for Zelaya Launches New Chapter of Honduran Struggle.
ALEXANDER MAIN, (202) 293-5380 ext 123, cell: (202) 531-7585, main@cepr.net, http://www.cepr.net
Senior associate for international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Main said today:
Following the June 2009 coup d’etat that forcibly removed President Zelaya from power, Honduras’ participation in the OAS was suspended by unanimous decision of the 33 member states. Today, nearly two years later, there appears to be nearly unanimous support for Honduras’ readmission, with only Ecuador indicating that it is still opposed.
Though the U.S. administration lobbied intensely for Honduras’ return to the OAS ever since the coup regime held flawed elections in late 2009, today’s vote is the direct outcome of an agreement mediated by the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela.
The agreement allowed, among other things, for Zelaya and other deposed officials to return from exile without immediate fear of prosecution, a key demand for the majority of South American countries that were opposed to lifting Honduras’ suspension.
However, Honduran human rights organizations and social movements argue that it is too early to normalize Honduras’ relations with the hemisphere, as politically motivated killings and attacks continue with complete impunity and many of the key actors in the coup still occupy key positions in the government.
The deplorable state of human rights and democracy in Honduras has been further highlighted by a letter sent yesterday to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 87 members of Congress.
Citing the ‘threats and violence reportedly directed against human rights defenders, activists, opposition leaders, members of the LGBT community and journalists’ the letter calls on the U.S. administration to suspend all police and military assistance to Honduras.
Congressional letter available here.
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Cort, Chavez and his government seem to be playing ‘reale politique’ with respect to unfolding events in the Americas.
The success of the coup, is a reminder that capitalism still remains the name of the game that is being played.
More, the US would likely use Colombia as a launching point for any aggressive action against Venezuela. Chavez is hedging his bets–playing cards so as to avoid any short-term attack against the country (which could, foreseeably, reach levels of Vietnam if events spin out of control).
No, politics in the real world is pretty nasty business—and with an apathetic and moribound left faction in Western Europe and the US, we can be sure that the grotesque framing of events with respect to Venenezuela and peoples’ movements in the region will be distorted so as to create what we see now happening in Lybia.
Where is power? What is the dominant belief system among the world’s populations?
Passive consumerism is the dominant attitudinal gesture that holds sway in these times, and this creates a situation where the critical thinking capacity of the populations in the imperialist countires is addled to a severe degree. The populations are fearful and ignorant, they/we are disengaged from the flow of events.
Given this reality, for a country like Venezuela there are always compromises that have to be made so as to remain in the game.
Politicians gauge the distribution of power at any given point in time, and they/we engage the situation according to the force of the cards that are in the hand.
The attitudinal condition of the masses under this current configuration of how our collective consciousness is constructed (*as passive consumers) is a tremendous hurdle that the progressive, left forces have to contend with, and this is no easy task.
Nasty business, indeed.
For other perspectives on this please read articles below;
http://www.marxist.com/mel-zelaya-returns-to-honduras.htm
Mel Zelaya returns to Honduras – reconciliation or class struggle?
http://quotha.net/node/1809
COPINH: We Condemn the Legalization of Coups d’État in Our America
http://quotha.net/node/1810
Dana Frank: Zelaya Returns to Honduras, But Justice Is Still Not Done