THE SPINE NOVEMBER 30, 2009
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When Manuel Zelaya was deposed as president of Honduras with the support of the Supreme Court, the National Congress, the attorney general and most of his own party, much of Latin America went into conniptions about safeguarding the constitution. Of course, that was precisely the issue. Zelaya was about to traduce the constitution, which forbade extension of the chief executive's term, precisely his intention. This is common in the lower part of the Western Hemisphere, and it is the opus operandi of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Zelaya's chosen instrument was a referendum, the tool of tyrants. Interim President Roberto Micheletti, formerly president of the National Congress--and from Zelaya’s party, by the way--put a stop to that.
So the revolutionary left, some of it still intoxicated by the Cuban dictator who stayed for half a century (and was succeeded by his brother), dragged out its shabby slogans and symbols, courting symbolic support from the Organization of American States. When it came to the new presidential elections, which the old guard tried to stop, the United Nations (so sensitive to democratic norms) refused even to watch. Ditto: the Carter Center. That's the loony bin ensconced at Emory University.
Costa Rica and Panama recognized the results of the Hondurans' day at the polls. The 60% of the voters who came out to cast their ballots was higher than in many years. With almost two-thirds of the votes counted, Porfirio Lobo had 52% of the tally, which brought him 16% higher than his closest opponent. (When Zelaya ran in 2005, the turnout was just about a quarter less.)
From the start, the Obama administration condemned the coup. The president spoke, Mrs. Clinton spoke especially shrilly. The government's Latin American professionals supported Zelaya, whose backing seemed increasingly thin. And then quietly the Obamae began its retreat. First it said that it wanted Zelaya to return. But, then, as Elisabeth Malkin reported in the Times, no one in Foggy Bottom was talking about the deposed would-be dictator. And, yes, the U.S. would recognize the election of Lobo.
This shift seems to me to be real. Will Obama and company have the courage to stick with it?
11 comments
Did you by chance see this, Marty? "Guess Whose Fault It Is In Honduras?" Published by Eamonn McDonagh "Readers are no doubt aware that President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown by a coup d’etat on the 28th of June and that he currently languishes in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa. They may also know that the coup leaders organized a national election on Sunday and that - in a paroxysm of stupidity - the government of the United States seems set to recognize it as valid. What readers may not know is that Honduras’s problems are not the fault of dinosaur elements at Foggy Bottom, the maneuverings and ambitions of Hugo Chávez or the eternal cruelty and short sightedness of the Honduran oligarchy. They are in fact caused by a handful of scheming Jews. I know this to be true because I’ve just read this story which appeared in El Mundo of Madrid. Sure, it supports the conservative Partido Popular and opposes the government of José Luis Zapatero but it’s a national newspaper and not the bulletin of some fringe fascist group. Jacobo G. García starts his piece by referring to the common appearance of the slogan “Turks Out!” in Tegucigalpa graffiti before going on to say the following: 'Although everyone refers to them as “Turks” they are in fact Jewish families who arrived from Arab countries in the 1940s and 1950s [… ]. They are the Rosenthals, Facussés, Larachs, Nassers, Kafies and Goldsteins. Five surnames [I make that six, but hey, who’s counting?] that control factories, energy, telecommunications, tourism, the banks and finance, the media, cement works, commerce, airports and Congress. Practically everything. They are the hard core of the 3% of Hondurans who control 40% of national production. They are the chosen few in a country where 70% of the people are poor.' Now I know it’s a waste of time trying to apply logic to arguments like this but Honduras has a population of 7.11 million and 3% of that is 213300. So how do just five or six families get to constitute the hard core a group that size? What special quality constitutes their “hard coreness”? Why is it worth naming them and not any other rich family in Honduras? Well, because they are Jewish and, as everyone knows, while ordinary oligarchs get on with exploiting the poor in a haphazard and inefficient manner the Jews have racial characteristics which equip them especially well for grinding the faces of the most wretched...." Read it all here: http://blog.z-word.com/2009/11/guess-whose-fault-it-is-in-honduras/ Eamonn McDonagh, btw, is one of the sharpest critics of South American and Spanish antisemitism I know.
- jacksondyer
November 30, 2009 at 8:45pm
Help me out here. Where is the shfit by the Obama admn? The Obama admin opposed the coup, but not the elections, right?
- dhurtado
November 30, 2009 at 8:50pm
I literally laughed out loud I read that line about referendums being the tool of tyrants. Let's not get carried away to the point of absurdity here. It wasn't referendums that were shot at the protesting monks in Burma. It wasn't referendums that Saddam's air force dropped on the Kurds. It wasn't a referendum that came for you in the middle of the night in the USSR or China.
- Simon Greenwood
November 30, 2009 at 9:39pm
yeah right Simon, at worst the thing that can be said about referendums is that they can represent the tyranny of the majority (see Maine, gay marriage) The funny thing is that emigdio has put some pretty astute postings about Honduras on TNR's own plank describing it as a genuine victory for Hillary Clinton, and showing us how and why this is so. Now does Marty even read his own website? jackson, good lord that reads like it is a parody, please tell me this is some kind of early April fools joke.
- blackton
December 1, 2009 at 11:27am
You mean the article in El Pais? I wish it were a parody. This isn't the first time the madrileno paper has published such garbage. Eamonn McDonagh has been having a great time taking these articles and some in other mainstream Spanish papers apart on zword blog.
- jacksondyer
December 1, 2009 at 1:02pm
btw: Marty, shouldn't you be posting on Afghanistan just about now?
- jacksondyer
December 1, 2009 at 1:03pm
I do notice, however, that the paper (El Mundo, not El Pais) McDonagh is quoting from is described as conservative, so it does look as if not all the antisemitism nowadays is on the left -- an impression which has been considerably enabled by sectors of the left in Europe, of course, but which is in danger of hiding the more traditional variety from sight.
- ironyroad
December 1, 2009 at 2:06pm
ironyroad "I do notice, however, that the paper (El Mundo, not El Pais) McDonagh is quoting from is described as conservative, so it does look as if not all the antisemitism nowadays is on the left -- an impression which has been considerably enabled by sectors of the left in Europe, of course, but which is in danger of hiding the more traditional variety from sight." You are right, Irony, in Spain, as in Austria, both the right and the left are paranoid about Jews. El Pais, btw, has published its share of antisemitic articles though they tend behind the claim that they are merely antizionists.
- jacksondyer
December 1, 2009 at 2:10pm
you know sometimes (and this is just a fantasy) I wish the Jews in Europe acted like Muslims and protested and rampaged through the offices of El Mundo, but they won't because they are too civilized and value freedom of the press more venting their (in this case reasonable) rage. As anti-semitic as America can be, and it is, at least it is far better than Europe. jackson, in Salzburg they have a word for people whose family was there less than 5 generations, and it ain't flattering. Don't get me wrong, I love Austria, and am half Bavarian myself (my grandfather was from just over the other side of the ubersalzburg) but when I lived there they had some pretty retro attitudes. ie. Austria was Hitlers first victim...etc. I think the US let them get away with that attitude, and their nuetrality also helped their feeling above it all. irony, some of the most anti-semitic people I met were supposedly British progressives when I lived in China. I got into a few heated arguments at a few restaurants (much to the amusment of the uncomprehending Chinese) until I essentially gave up talking politics with any Euroexpat.
- blackton
December 1, 2009 at 2:45pm
Despite your assertion, it is NOT AT ALL clear what Zelaya's intentions were regarding his proposed constitutional amendments or his attempted referendum. From what I have seen, he did not attempt to have his own presidential term extended, but rather he sought to have the one-term limit abolished for the future. His term is ending in January, the election of a new president was scheduled for Nov. 29, and any constitutional or referendum change would not have taken effect until after a new president had been elected. He was not running for another term. While the people and the legislature may have been suspicious of Zelaya's motives, particularly concerning the constitutional amendments, there could be no doubt that the planned referendum -- which was to take place at the same time as the presidential election -- would not have enabled him to remain in office. A relatively persuasive and lengthy article recently appeared in The New Yorker on this subject, and the author takes an opposing view from yours, Marty. At the least, the New Yorker article offers factual and background to back up its assertions, while you have simply made some bald assertions and unsupported assumptions. While referenda may be used as tools by tyrants to give themselves a facade of legitimacy, it is absurd to assume that all referenda are the precursors of tyranny. I, for one, would like to read a good deal more in the way of objective analysis of the events preceding the June "coup" in Honduras -- analysis that does not simply assume the motives of a politician from the nature of his allies (the US/Venezuela) or his political ideology ("conservative"/"reformer").
- rpearson
December 1, 2009 at 5:38pm
Guess Marty disagrees with this evaluation of Hillary Clinton and Honduras: http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/who-came-out-the-honduran-crisis-looking-the-best-hillary
- Lymon1
December 2, 2009 at 4:13pm