- I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked
with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the
democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered
by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president
were not standing up for democracy.
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- Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc.
(formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya
for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras's minimum wage, claiming
that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a
coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on
cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.
-
- Memories are short in the US, but not in Central America.
I kept hearing people who claimed that it was a matter of record that Chiquita
(United Fruit) and the CIA had toppled Guatemala's democratically-elected
president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that International Telephone &
Telegraph (ITT), Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile's
Salvador Allende in 1973. These people were certain that Haiti's president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed
a minimum wage increase, like Zelaya's.
-
- I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president, "Every
multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly rate, the rest of
Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras
have always set the bottom line for minimum wages. The big companies are
determined to stop what they call a 'leftist revolt' in this hemisphere.
In throwing out Zelaya they are sending frightening messages to all the
other presidents who are trying to raise the living standards of their
people."
-
- It did not take much imagination to envision the turmoil
sweeping through every Latin American capital. There had been a collective
sign of relief at Barack Obama's election in the U.S., a sense of hope
that the empire in the North would finally exhibit compassion toward its
southern neighbors, that the unfair trade agreements, privatizations, draconian
IMF Structural Adjustment Programs, and threats of military intervention
would slow down and perhaps even fade away. Now, that optimism was turning
sour.
-
- The cozy relationship between Honduras's military coup
leaders and the corporatocracy were confirmed a couple of days after my
arrival in Panama. England's The Guardian ran an article announcing
that "two of the Honduran coup government's top advisers have close
ties to the US secretary of state. One is Lanny Davis, an influential lobbyist
who was a personal lawyer for President Bill Clinton and also campaigned
for Hillary. . . The other hired gun for the coup government that has deep
Clinton ties is (lobbyist) Bennett Ratcliff." (1)
-
-
- DemocracyNow! broke the news that Chiquita was represented
by a powerful Washington law firm, Covington & Burling LLP, and its
consultant, McLarty Associates (2). President Obama's Attorney General
Eric Holder had been a Covington partner and a defender of Chiquita when
the company was accused of hiring "assassination squads" in Colombia
(Chiquita was found guilty, admitting that it had paid organizations listed
by the US government as terrorist groups "for protection" and
agreeing in 2004 to a $25 million fine). (3) George W. Bush's UN
Ambassador, John Bolton, a former Covington lawyer, had fiercely opposed
Latin American leaders who fought for their peoples' rights to larger shares
of the profits derived from their resources; after leaving the government
in 2006, Bolton became involved with the Project for the New American
Century, the Council for National Policy, and a number of other programs
that promote corporate hegemony in Honduras and elsewhere.
-
- McLarty Vice Chairman John Negroponte was U.S. Ambassador
to Honduras from 1981-1985, former Deputy Secretary of State, Director
of National Intelligence, and U.S. Representative to the United Nations;
he played a major role in the U.S.-backed Contra's secret war against Nicaragua's
Sandinista government and has consistently opposed the policies of the
democratically-elected pro-reform Latin American presidents. (4) These
three men symbolize the insidious power of the corporatocracy, its bipartisan
composition, and the fact that the Obama Administration has been sucked
in.
-
- The Los Angeles Times went to the heart of
this matter when it concluded:
-
- What happened in Honduras is a classic Latin American
coup in another sense: Gen. Romeo Vasquez, who led it, is an alumnus of
the United States' School of the Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation). The school is best known for producing
Latin American officers who have committed major human rights abuses, including
military coups. (5)
-
- All of this leads us once again to the inevitable conclusion:
you and I must change the system. The president whether Democrat
or Republican needs us to speak out.
-
- Chiquita, Dole and all your representatives need to hear
from you. Zelaya must be reinstated.
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- FOOTNOTES
-
- (1)
-
- "Who's in charge of US foreign policy? The coup
in Honduras has exposed divisions between Barack Obama and his secretary
of state, Hillary Clinton" by Mark Weisbrot http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/
- 2009/jul/16/honduras-coup-obama-clinton (July 23,
2009)
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- (2) http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/21/from_arbenz_to_zelaya_chiquita_in
(July 23, 2009)
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- (3) "Chiquita admits to paying Colombia terrorists:
Banana company agrees to $25 million fine for paying AUC for protection"
MSNBC March 15, 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17615143/ (July 24,
2009)
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- (4) Fore more information: http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2009/07/eric-holder-and-chaquita-covington.html (July
23, 2009)
-
- (5) "The high-powered hidden support for Honduras'
coup: The country's rightful president was ousted by a military leadership
that takes many of its cues from Washington insiders." by Mark Weisbrot,
Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2009
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- http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-weisbrot23-2009jul23,0,7566740.story (July
23, 2009)
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