Zelaya's Return: Neither Reconciliation nor Democracy in Honduras

Source: NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America), 28 May 2011.

by Adrienne Pine,

Over the past few weeks U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and latter-day media "experts" have hailed Manuel Zelaya's return to Honduras and the pending reintegration of the country into the OAS as a restoration of democracy. Here in Honduras, it is clear that such claims could not be further from the truth. Despite the triumphal language of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, Honduran president Porfirio Lobo, and even Zelaya himself following their signing of the Cartagena Accords, Honduras today is no closer to reconciliation than it was in the months following the June 28, 2009 military coup.

As Dana Frank points out in The Progressive on May 27, the Cartagena Accords ensure the reinstatement of Honduras into the OAS in return for only one "concession" that is not already ostensibly guaranteed: that the trumped-up charges, leveled against Zelaya by the same court that legitimated his unconstitutional expulsion from the country, be dropped. That this should be sufficient for Honduras's return is perplexing, given that the country was expelled under Article 21 of the OAS Democratic Charter, which reads in part:

When the special session of the General Assembly determines that there has been an unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order of a member state, and that diplomatic initiatives have failed, the special session shall take the decision to suspend said member state from the exercise of its right to participate in the OAS by an affirmative vote of two thirds of the member states in accordance with the Charter of the OAS.

Today, the same businessmen, politicians, and military officials who funded, engineered, and carried out the coup are in power, having been guaranteed impunity for their crimes by a coup-supporting president who came to power through an illegal, fraudulent election that was legitimated by the U.S. government. Human rights abuses committed by police and military forces, rather than decreasing with the Lobo presidency, have surged in recent months to levels at or above those just after the coup.

COPINH on Zelaya's return to Honduras

COPINH declaration & call to action upon return of Zelaya
Source: Quotha.net, 27 May 2011,
Translated by Adrienne Pine.

Welcome General Coordinator of the FNRP Compañero Zelaya Rosales

COPINH expresses our happiness to have ex-president and General Coordinator of the FNRP Manuel Zelaya Rosales back on Honduran soil; at the same time we issue the following call to action:

To the Honduran people, to mobilize in order to provide a warm welcome to you, who symbolize the struggle of the Honduran people to create a participatory and human democracy.

To deepen all our efforts at denouncing the criminal dictatorship led by Porfirio Lobo Sosa, peon of the oligarchy and of North American imperialism.

To the entire Honduran population to NOT rest until we have dismantled the structures [and authors] of the coup, that continue to hold power enjoying complete impunity nationally and internationally, against whom we will continue to fight because we are a dignified people who are not disposed to retreat, and who with the strength of our legitimacy energetically condemns the imminent incorporation of the regime into the OAS, to whom we declare: if you think you will wipe the board clean and start over, you are mistaken; you are mistaken in your cold economic calculations, in your political pragmatism, in your urgent desire to serve imperialism in its project of rearranging the continent; you are mistaken in your hypocrisy of recognizing a murderous regime that is the inheritor of a coup d'état and that has not complied with the conditions for return imposed by the OAS itself, for which it was expelled in the first place.

COPINH reaffirms its conviction to fight, alongside the nation, against impunity, and to do everything possible to ensure that there will be punishment for the authors and actors of the criminal coup, in addition to continuing with the historic struggle that we have been undertaking in our communities defending our natural resources, our sovereignty, our self-determination and the creation of a new society, refounded from below, capable of achieving decolonization, emancipation, and a dignified life.

We will not forget, We will not forgive, and WE WILL NOT reconcile!!

With the ancestral force of Lempira Mota and Etempica we raise our voices full of life, justice, liberty, dignity and peace

Issued in Esperanza,
Intibucá, Honduras,
May 27, 2011