Honduras defaults to old habits
KEEBLE MCFARLANE
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Democracy is something outsiders never associated with
governance in Latin America until quite recently. The typical Latin
country was one where the thin layer at the top of the demographic pile
lived as well as the rich in the most developed countries, while the
vast depressed masses lived in the most squalid conditions.
Elections were held like clockwork, but no politician ever dared
introduce policies that would benefit the majority. Those who did were
quickly ejected by the military, which existed not to uphold the
constitution or to defend the nation against external adversaries, but
rather to protect the interests of the wealthy and provide bullet-proof
careers for the officer corps. Looking over their shoulders was the
giant from the north, Uncle Sam, who kept them all in line by economic
coercion, political blackmail or failing that, actual military
intervention.
One country, Panama, was practically a creation of the
United States, which just over a century ago encouraged a dissident
region of Colombia to secede and form a new country. The new nation
ceded an important portion of its territory to the US to build a canal
joining two oceans and dramatically reducing the time it takes a ship
to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The US occupied a strip of
land bordering the canal and relinquished its hold only as the century
came to a close.
"Banana republic" was one of the pejorative terms used to
describe some of those countries, and the archetype was the central
American country, Honduras. The term was the creation of the noted
American author, O Henry, who spent a year in Honduras at the end of
the 19th century. His stay produced a book of linked short stories in
1904 titled Cabbages and Kings using characters and situations he
observed there.
Three American companies - United Fruit, Standard Fruit
and Cuyamel - controlled the country's banana business. They owned the
plantations, packaging operations, railways and ports. They also owned
politicians, who arranged matters to smooth their operations regardless
of how it affected the people.
The United Fruit Company, which older Jamaicans remember
- not necessarily fondly - earned the nickname El Pulpo (The Octopus)
because its tentacles extended into many aspects of Honduran politics,
sometimes violently.
The owner of Cuyamel, Sam Zemurray, hired a bunch of
armed bully-boys from New Orleans a century ago to help stage a coup in
order to secure favourable treatment from the new rulers. A couple of
decades later Zemurray succeeded in a hostile takeover of the notorious
United Fruit, and in the 1930s he was the man from whom Norman Manley
had to wrest concessions for banana workers. In the 1950s, United Fruit
was among the organisations which persuaded the US presidents Truman
and Eisenhower to overthrow the government of Jácobo Arbenz in
Honduras's neighbour, Guatemala, because his policies proposed fairer
treatment for workers.
Honduras fit the template with regular military coups to
depose governments the generals or their friends in the oligarchy
didn't like. But in 1982, the country produced a new constitution -
backed by the US - to increase democratic activity. The quid pro quo
for American support was to act as host for the so-called contra rebels
from next-door Nicaragua.
The havoc they wreaked persists in the memories, as well as the bodies of Nicaraguans.
Political turbulence continued in the 1990s, as Honduras
received loans from the World Bank and the IMF, whose priorities, as we
know from painful experience, hardly ever coincide with those of
national governments. And as they say, bad luck is worse than obeah -
in the middle of all this, hurricane Mitch struck in 1998, adding to
the misery. Yet the democratic trend continued, with regime after
regime chosen freely through the ballot box.
But now, it appears, the country has defaulted to old
ways. Honduras is in the midst of a military coup, which began early on
Sunday when soldiers entered the home of President Manuel Zelaya and
rousted him out of bed. They didn't even allow him to change out of his
pyjamas and whisked him off to Costa Rica. The plotters produced a
letter of resignation purportedly signed by Zelaya, and upon receiving
it the Congress chose the Speaker, Roberto Micheletti, to succeed
Zelaya. He immediately ordered a night-time curfew and blocked radio
and television stations from carrying anything but the most innocuous
programming. This hasn't prevented Zelaya's supporters from protesting
in the streets. As is their custom, the security forces have responded
in force, using tear gas and batons liberally.
Zelaya became president by a close margin at the end of
2005 and his term expires next January. According to the constitution,
he is allowed only one term. The coup leaders accused him of
undermining democracy because he had called for a plebiscite on whether
to begin a process to rewrite the constitution. He was asking his
fellow citizens to put a question on the ballot during the presidential
vote in November with a view to establishing a constituent assembly to
examine constitutional options. What could be more democratic than that?
Among the ideas he was floating was to abolish the
one-term provision and let a president run again. It is true that this
effort resembles similar successful exercises in other Latin American
countries.
Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador recently re-wrote their
constitutions, generally enshrining the rights of hitherto marginalised
people and putting in measures to protect their economies from the
effects of corporate freebooting and free trade.
Zelaya, a wealthy landowner, is not a natural fit for the
club of left-leaning leaders who have taken power across Central and
South America in recent years. But after he was installed in office, he
began taking on the business community with its sweat-shop mentality.
He increased the minimum wage by 60 per cent, declaring that it would "force the business oligarchy to pay what is fair".
His politics have stirred up the ire and resistance of
the political class, including those in his own Liberal party, at the
same time garnering support among the underprivileged, popular
movements and groups promoting a civil society. As his popularity
increased in these sectors, the establishment worked to undermine him,
leading to the coup.
Zelaya has been erratic, divisive and reckless, but it is
those who oppose him who are undermining their country's fragile
democracy. This is why their effort has attracted no serious support
from abroad, and why the Organisation of American States, the United
Nations, the European Union and even the old bad boy of the region, the
United States, have condemned the plotters and are working behind the
scenes to restore a normal state of affairs.
At bottom, the problem with Honduras is the same as many
countries of the region: it is very poor, with 70 per cent of its seven
and a half million people living below the poverty line. What the
perpetrators of the coup fear is that a constitutional assembly would
erode or eliminate their power and bring in radical changes to the
political system, breaking up the comfortable old dolly-house they have
controlled for generations.
Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa have managed
to achieve considerable change in the power structures of Venezuela,
Bolivia and Ecuador through their understanding of the need for
widespread participation and direct appeals to those who have been
ignored and overlooked in the past. The questions that are unclear is
whether Manuel Zelaya is that kind of leader and whether Honduras is
ready for that kind of change.
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