Who's Behind the Coup in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

Who's Behind the Coup in Honduras

Another sign that the coup in Honduras ain't got the blessing of the Yankees, the New York Times did a fairly even handed piece on it and described who is behind it:

Armida Villela de López Contreras, a lawyer and former vice president, has become one of the most visible critics of the ousted Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya. And Hedme Castro is one of the thousands of teachers who have banded together to demand Mr. Zelaya’s return.

To Ms. López Contreras, a prominent member of this country’s small upper class, Mr. Zelaya was ousted because his blossoming leftist alliance with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela had become a threat to Honduran democracy.

She is a founding member of a coalition representing some of the most powerful business and political forces in the country. And she says the coalition members are willing to do, or spend, whatever it takes to keep their country afloat in the face of mounting economic pressure resulting from the rest of the world’s condemnation of the coup.

“Zelaya was suffocating all other powers of government,” Ms. López Contreras said. “Now that he’s gone we are breathing the air of freedom. This is a conquest we are not willing to surrender.”

....

Most of the news media, both in print and over the airwaves, offer a steady drumbeat of vague accusations of corruption, drug trafficking and insurrection against Mr. Zelaya and his cabinet.~~~
~snip~
The importance of cellular communications
in coup resistance was underscored when Zelaya spent his July excursion into Honduran territory talking on his mobile before retreating back to Nicaragua. Resistance operations in Olancho have meanwhile included sending anonymous text messages encouraging support for legitimate governments and making mobile phone videos of impediments to travel in Honduras, such as the military shooting of school bus tires in the town of Limones. The bus had been transporting persons opposed to the coup to Tegucigalpa; a text message depicting a school bus full of abracitos y besitos might endow the Honduran armed forces with a more sentimental outlook vis-à-vis civilian vehicles.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman enthusiastically endorsed the role of technology in secular revolutions in an article dated June 16, in which he reviewed the opportunities that Facebook and text messaging provide for revolutionary mobilization “outside the grip of the state.” Friedman nonetheless cautioned that “guns trump cellphones,” a trumping the US State Department is less likely to condemn when it occurs in non-Islamic states such as Zelaya’s bedroom, where he was told to drop his mobile phone or be shot on the morning of June 28.

~snip~
Millennium Challenge Corp. poured millions into Honduras
Bill Conroy

The coup d'état that rocked Honduras in late June and removed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from office, sending him into exile in Costa Rica, was preceded by a multi-million dollar build-up of foreign aid from a U.S. agency that includes on its board of directors the president of the International Republican Institute as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

That taxpayer-funded agency, called the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), oversees a multi-billion dollar foreign-aid fund called the Millennium Challenge Account. It was established in 2004 under the Bush administration as means of combating terrorism by funding development in poor nations under a strict neo-conservative free-trade model.

A review of publicly available financial records reveals that between April 1 and July 31 of this year, nearly $17 million in aid was disbursed to Honduras through the MCC program. That money flowed into Honduras after President Zelaya called for a national referendum in March to decide whether a ballot question should be included in that nation’s November 2009 general elections — which would have asked voters to decide if a national assembly should be convened to amend the Honduran constitution.

More:
http://agonist.org/nat_wilson_turner/20090810/whos_behind_the_coup_in_honduras