Former Honduran first lady Xiomara Castro visits Rafael Barahona in hospital. The municipal councilman and current mayoral candidate was fired upon in an apparent death squad ambush, as the news agency ANNCOL reports:
Individuals driving in a tourism vehicle closed the road to a car driven by a municipal council member of the Honduran political party LIBRE, Rafael Barahona, in a sector of the El Country neighborhood in Comayagüela, firing at least ten bullets at the director, and striking him in the left hand and arm.
Geovanny Ordóñez, Barahona’s assistant, stated that the attack took place near the store “La Fogata”, on a street in El Country, where they were also struck by a car which hit the left side of Barahona’s car and “they fired on him from the car, nearly 10 shots, but he covered himself with his left arm and only two shots hit him.”
“Thank God he fled and ended up at the La Granja post, where the Red Cross came to give first aid and now we’ve brought him to hospital here [at the Hospital San Jorge, La Granja]”, said Ordóñez.
Ordóñez added that the individuals who made the attempt on Barahona’s life were driving a tourism vehicle, and that the violent act took place around 9:10 p.m.
From the hospital centre, information was released stating that the former mayoral candidate and current municipal councillor was out of danger and in stable condition, and of the entire attack by the gunmen against him, there was only one bullet in his left hand and forearm, and that surgery had been performed to remove the projectile, which could affect the nerves of Barahona’s hand.
Former Honduran president and LIBRE deputy, Manuel Zelaya Rosales, along with his wife, former presidential candidate Xiomara Castro, and dozens of directors, arrived at the San Jorge hospital to keep Barahona company.
In a statement to the media, Manuel Zelaya declared that “the wave of violence keeps growing in the land, and that Barahona is a councilman, a mayoral candidate, and that here they don’t respect anyone at all, neither children, nor young people, nor women. It’s lamentable what’s going on in Honduras.”
Asked if the crime might be an attempt against the LIBRE party, Zelaya said that “we can’t make such a judgment yet, but what I can tell you is that we are going to a demonstration against this crime tomorrow. It seems it was to create terror, to intimidate. Tomorrow’s sit-in (Tuesday, May 13th) won’t be stopped, we’re going to the National Congress peacefully, but we’re going to protest.”
The LIBRE party has called upon its base to demonstrate on Tuesday the 13th at the National Congress to demand that magistrate-representatives be named to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) from the two largest opposition political forces, the LIBRE party and the Anti-Corruption Party (PAC).
Former president Zelaya called upon the authorities to “analyze the security problem, as security policies are failing and need to be analyzed. Twice, motions have been presented calling upon the minister of security of the Congress, Arturo Corrales, and he doesn’t want to attend. So it seems to me that we have to analyze everything that’s going on, with the goal of finding solutions, that’s our proposal.”
Asked if the deputies and directors of the LIBRE party felt persecuted, Zelaya replied that “LIBRE feels that the opposition’s rights aren’t being recognized. LIBRE won almost a million votes and they don’t want to give us even one representative in the TSE. That’s the conformation of a dictatorship in Honduras.”
Zelaya stated that the crimes in Honduras, according to human-rights organizations, were in large part due to “death squads who are simply ignored by the state but which exist in the land. That’s worrisome for Honduras, that there’s a culture of death and groups interested in doing physical harm to life. They are applying a de facto death penalty in Honduras.”
Translation mine.
So we can see that there’s still a definite pattern of fascism going on in Honduras. There is no respect for life, for safety, or even for election results. The LIBRE party, in fact, won 80% of the votes in the latest presidential election, but at the last moment there was a sudden reversal of the tendency, and no recount. It’s eerily reminiscent of the situation in Florida in 2000, where the election was flipped at the last moment from Gore to Bush, handing the presidency to that undeserving pretender. It’s also just like what happened in Mexico to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was winning until a sudden last-minute flip — and no recount — handed the election to his right-wing rival.
And to back up this dirty electoral trickery, they’re using that old Central American standby for right-wing political reinforcement: the death squad. Remember the 1980s? They do. Because, in fact, that evil decade never really ended…and neither did the political patterns it set in motion. And when Honduras tried to vote its way out of that made-in-USA crisis during the last decade, Washington decided to throw its support behind the fascists, and backed their coup to the hilt. To this day, there’s nothing to be heard out of there about this but a deafening silence…except, maybe, when the obnoxious Lanny Davis rears his head and starts babbling bullshit about what great friends of democracy the putschists actually are. Meanwhile, the former coup leader is currently making an ass of himself, aligning with the equally fascistic opposition of Venezuela.
It would be more shocking if it weren’t all so painfully predictable.
