The Military Coup in Honduras - Part I

[Carlos Marentes]

The limits of Nicaragua and Honduras, at a border town called Las Manos. July 3, 2009.
THE MORNING of Sunday June 28, I was at home when I received a call of a friend from Central America. My friend told me with an anxious voice that the military had violently kidnapped president Manuel Zelaya and had seized the government of Honduras. “It's a military coup!” he said. The call was brief. He promised to keep me informed about the outcome of the incident.

I immediately turned on the TV, tuned in to all the channels, English and Spanish, digital and analog, and found no news about the coup. The same thing with radio stations. Nothing. Honduras is too far and too alien for the border. Besides, the attention of the media was on the death of Michael Jackson.

I turned on the pc and connected to the internet. It took me some time to finally connect to a site reporting live from Honduras - TeleSur.

Then I started to receive calls and text messages and got a general idea of what happened that Sunday morning in Honduras.

At about 5:30 a.m., a military squad of about 200 soldiers arrived to the home of president Manuel Zelaya. After firing some rounds of shots into the air to scare the Zelaya's family, the officers broke into their home and captured the president who was still in bed. The president, in pajamas, was violently taken outside and boarded into a military vehicle. From there, he was driven to the airport, then to a military base, forced to board a plane, and taken to Costa Rica.

Once president Zelaya was “deported,” the military, under the command of general Romeo Orlando Vásquez Velásquez, took control of the government and with the complicity of Congress and the Supreme Court appointed Roberto Micheletti, the president of Congress, as the new president of Honduras.

Once the news of the Military Coup spread all over the country, people began to react. The same Sunday, thousands of persons where called by leaders of La Vía Campesina of Honduras, trade unions and social movements to congregate outside the National Palace, to seek more information and protest the military removal of the duly elected president. The protest was spontaneous and peaceful, but the coup plotters responded violently. However, in a few days, the spontaneous demonstrations at the nation's capital, Tegucigalpa, grew into massive and well organized protests all over the country. The demand: The return of president Zelaya and restoration of democracy.

Three days after the coup, I joined an international delegation of La Vía Campesina to Central America to assess the situation and to plan actions of solidarity. The delegation was headed by Alberto Gómez, a Mexican peasant leader who is the co-coordinator of the North American Region of La Vía Campesina. We stayed in Managua because the coup mongers restricted entrance to Honduras. Honduras was sealed and cellular phone service was shut down. The Honduran citizens where unable to enter or leave and to make or receive calls for a couple of days. Once in Managua, we joined the solidarity efforts initiated by our sister organization the Farm Workers Association or ATC (Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo) which in the 80's played a major role during the Sandinista revolution that overthrow dictator Anastacio Somoza.

From that mission, I was able to gather information and details about the cruel military coup. I learned a lot, something that would have been impossible if I had relied only on the American media. In fact, to this day, many Americans, including some of my friends who are smart and well-informed persons, don't really know what happened in Honduras and most important, why? A close friend told me that he understood that the president was removed by the people because “he was attempting to convert Honduras into a communist country.” This confusion (or ignorance) is the reason why I am posting this piece made from my notes.

This is also an updated and edited version of the presentation that I gave to the border farm workers on August 11, because the situation in Honduras is now very different. (Zelaya has returned and is inside the Brazilian Embassy while the resistance is still in the streets increasing its fight against the coup.) The presentation was scheduled to last only one hour because it was held during the evening when the tired farm workers returned from the chile fields ready to take a shower, to eat a hot meal and to rest for a few hours before going back to work. But they where so interested and had so many questions and comments that it lasted more than two hours.

THE PLANNING OF THE COUP

Honduran army officers during a training session at Palmerola Air Force Base. U.S. Army photo, April 23, 2008.

THE MILITARY coup was originally planned for June 25, 2009. That was the decision made by a small group of conspirators in secret meetings held mainly at the Enrique Soto Cano Air Base (also called Palmerola), which also serves as the headquarters of the Joint Task Force Bravo or JTF-B.

The Palmerola military base is the same base used for many years to conduct military activities and counter-insurgency operations in Central America and the Caribbean with the support and the knowledge of the US military and intelligence sector. The objective was to wipe out insurrections and popular uprisings in the region and especially in El Salvador, Guatemala, Panamá and Nicaragua, through illegal covert operations. During the Reagan administration, this base was used to train and assist the “contra” squads against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The base is more famous because in the 80's, it was used by colonel Oliver North to channel cocaine into the United States in order to raise funds for weapons and war materials for the “contras.” 150 tons of cocaine where introduced. The drug ended in the poor black neighborhoods of Los Angeles. The cocaine was purchased from Pablo Escobar Gaviria who was alive then and was the closest friend of the Mayor of Medellín, Alvaro Uribe, who is currently the president of Colombia and a very good friend of the US.

Prominent members of the oligarchy such as Carlos Flores Facussé, Miguel Facussé Barjúm, Jorge Canahuati, Rafael Leonardo Callejas, and Rafael Ferrari, among others, participated in the planning along with ambitious politicians like Roberto Micheletti, then president of the National Congress and fellow congressman José Alfredo Saavedra and other elected officials. The group included Tomás Arita from the Supreme Court and Ramón Custodio, the flamboyant Human Rights Commissioner. And of course, the military elite; generals Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, Luis Javier Prince Suazo, Miguel Angel García Padget and other high ranking officers. The group of plotters also included military veterans like “El Tigre” (The Tiger) Amaya and Santos Isaac Aguilar, and experts in national security (or repression and torture) like Billy Joya and Alexander Hernández.

US Ambassador Hugo Llorens and another US diplomat participated in the talks according to different sources. Finally, the conspirators had the blessing of cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Madariaga, president of the Episcopal Conference and constantly cited candidate for the Roman Papacy.

But the coup was delayed because the military, and particularly general Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, expressed doubts and minor disagreements with the plan. One of the disagreement was regarding the assassination of president Zelaya, which was part of the plan. Another was the question of who would be designated as the new president. The lack of consensus caused the postponement of the coup. But then two matters finally convinced general Vásquez to continue with the coup: A payment of 30 million Lempiras (about 19 million dollars) and a public declaration by Hugo Chávez who called him a “coward.”

(TO BE CONTINUED)