Havana.  July 30, 2009

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2009/julio/juev30/31honduras-i.html

HONDURAS
Now it is the people who have the say

Nidia Díaz

MORE than one month has passed since constitutional order in Honduras was interrupted by a coup faction representing the economic, political and military right wing of that country, in open complicity with similar sectors within the U.S. establishment. Time that should serve to make world public opinion – even the most ingenuous – understand that double standards and the double discourse are inherent to the politics of the empire, whoever the White House incumbent might be.

Some people will say: "Everything goes back to the beginning," and there are arguments to sustain such an affirmation. Let us recall the many times that, in reference to U.S. politics, academics and analysts talk of the "differences" between Democrats and Republicans and how governments of the former are hypothetically "better" than those of the latter and even "more beneficial" when it comes to relations with Latin America.

We Cubans are well aware of that theme. One glance at recent history takes us back in time and we can see how, while the Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion of April 1961 was organized by a Republican administration against the youthful Cuban Revolution, it was a Democratic president who gave it the green light.

The Helms-Burton Act, that further turn of the screw of the economic, commercial and financial blockade of our country, which in itself summed up all the proclamations and regulations of systematic genocidal aggression, likewise received the green light after being signed by the Democratic president who occupied the White House at that time. The same leader who introduced himself to Latin America with the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a neocolonial and annexationist project designed to detain the changes taking place in the region.

There are many examples and few exceptions.

The case of Honduras is once more laying the fallacious treatise on the table.

There is no doubt that the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, which aroused so many expectations, is actually acting against expectations and promises, with ambiguity and in a Machiavellian manner in relation to the shameful and internationally condemned civil-military coup in Honduras. There is no doubt that, while joining the universal criticism it is promoting deceptive maneuvers with the objective of gaining time to oxygenate the coup perpetrators and to debilitate President Zelaya who, on more than a few occasions, has been described as "imprudent" and "irresponsible" in relation to his decision to return and, together with his people, restore their country’s trampled constitution.

It is clear that the U.S. government is playing on both sides, and that that of the coup members –nobody is in any doubt of that – is the one that suits it, because it must be tirelessly repeated: the coup d’état against democracy in Honduras is a imperial rehearsal for forcing back into the fold those nations in Central America that have tired of role of docile servants assigned to them by Washington. For many years Honduras was a total example of a country in which sovereignty, self-determination and independence were hollow words, to the point that it became a carnal ally of U.S. policies for the sub-region, serving as a training camp for mercenaries against sister peoples. The expression "banana republics," a pejorative identifying abjection to the empire, was coined there.

The coup d’état against President Manuel Zelaya and the participative democracy that he was trying to build is, equally but in first place, an attempted blow to the ALBA. That is why Honduras’ incorporation in this integration mechanism of solidarity and social justice infuriated the Latin American and U.S. right wing which, in passing, is reining in President Barack Obama on the supposition that he might begin to put his campaign rhetoric into practice.

This is the manner in which the U.S. hawks have elected to send a message to the first African-American president of the United States, to his historical audacity. At the same time, the coup is intended to warn those who believed the tale that the empire would change, would put on the velvet gloves, would have relations of respect with its equals, that they are mistaken, that the road is full of traps and Obama is falling into one of them by not assuming a firm stand against those who violated the constitution and trampled over democracy in Honduras.

A coup on the part of the white revolution from which not even the current president will be safe if he persists in maintaining his ambiguous position in relation to events in Honduras. The days to come could oxygenate the Honduran coup faction, perhaps delay the restoration of the constitution in Honduras and, without any doubt, will wrest credibility from the White House resident.

But of what there can be no doubt is that Honduras, however hard the empire comes down on it, is another Honduras post June 28, and that they probably didn’t think of that when, in the dawn of that morning, they cowardly pulled barefoot from of his bed the sole constitutional president recognized by the people. A people who have grown stronger, who have united, who are organized and whose struggle now is not only for the return of the country’s leader, but for the constituent assembly and everything that it signifies.

Once again they got it wrong. Now it is the people who have the say.•

Translated by Granma International