By Catherine Revland
Berta Caceres was a prominent human rights and environmental activist, a co-founder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and the 2015 winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. In the early hours of March 2, 2016, unknown assailants broke into her home and murdered her in her bed. Two weeks later, unknown assailants gunned down her colleague, Nelson Garcia. Within a month, a total of six COPINH leaders had been murdered in Honduras.
Much has been published about these killings in the international and so-called “alternative” media. Some major U.S. media outlets initially covered the story of the Caceres murder, but it was treated as a local matter, just another example of the cycle of violence in the Third World. What was missing was the backstory—the indirect role the U.S. government played in the horrific escalation of violence in Honduras since 2009. The following is that backstory.
The Coup: When timber baron Manuel Zelaya was elected president of Honduras in 2005, no one was prepared for a member of the ruling elite to start promoting a populist agenda, but he quickly became a polarizing figure. His demand for a 60 percent increase in the minimum wage, “to force the business oligarchy to start paying what is fair,” incurred the wrath of local billionaire CEOs. He infuriated the Honduran far-right when he forged an alliance with ALBA, an organization of left-leaning Latin American governments. But when he started threatening powerful interests beyond his borders—challenging the unfair practices of the International Monetary Fund, or criticizing the Central American Free Trade Agreement (“us small nations need to stick together”)—he went too far.
In the early morning hours of June 28, 2009, the Honduran military took the capital by force, shut down communications, arrested Zelaya at gunpoint, and flew him out of the country, still in his pajamas. The response from world leaders was a virtually unanimous condemnation of the coup, including the Obama administration, with calls for Zelaya’s immediate return to office. But in the days following the coup, the U.S. State Department began to equivocate. Instead of working with the OAS (the 35 independent states of the Western Hemisphere) for Zelaya’s reinstatement, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought out supporters of the coup government and their Beltway lobbyists for an alternative solution, which is spelled out in the hardcover edition of her book, Hard Choices (The section on the coup was deleted from the paperback edition.):
“We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
The success of this strategy to undermine the efforts of OAS appears in one of the emails released from Mrs. Clinton’s private server: “OAS meeting turned into a non-event—just as we hoped … We will keep at it.”
That November, the candidate of the far-right National Party won the presidency in a widely boycotted election, monitored by the Honduran military. In 2010, the U.S. resumed and then increased military aid to the coup government, consolidating its power.
Aftermath: In the five years since the coup, Honduras has become one of the world’s most dangerous countries to live in, especially for activists. Here are some of the findings by human rights groups that are monitoring the situation: 91 targeted killings of human rights lawyers since 2009; more than 100 environmentalists murdered (The coup government claims that they are killing each other.); eight journalists killed in a single year (2010). And that’s just a documentation of the murders, 80 percent of them unsolved. It doesn’t include the repressive laws that make protesting a crime, or the land grabs, or the pillaging of the country’s rich resources, or the tens of thousands who have fled the country, fearing for their lives.
Serious questions remain unanswered. Why was it necessary to render Zelaya “moot?” And who is to blame for the consequences of these “hard choices?” In a 2014 interview, Berta Caceres gave a forthright answer. “We warned the State Department when they pushed for elections, that this would be very dangerous, that it would permit barbarity. And that is what happened.”
Another stinging indictment comes from the Global Research Project, which focuses on conditions in the developing world: “Documentation of Washington’s role is unequivocal. Combined with the fact that one of the principal parties responsible for the regime change is currently running for president, the international context could hardly be more relevant.”
A more nuanced explanation comes from Rudolph Pastore, Zelaya’s minister of culture: “The American government did not, as such, order or mount or stage the coup. It just dances along with its monsters.” No matter how people may view what has already happened, what happens next surely must be clear by now: It’s time to stop the dancing.
For a complete list of Internet news sources researched for this article, email the author at crevland(at)nyc.rr.com. You may also visit her website at catherinerevland.com.
