Letter From Zelaya on the Cable by Fomer US Ambassador to Honduras
by Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales, 25 December 2010.
Source: ResistenciaHonduras.net
Translated by Fry Warwick.
A new embarrassment in the foreign policy of north America has been exposed. This time, it concerns my persona as the constitutional President of Honduras that does not reflect my status, but rather is designed to make rash criminal accusations that constitute criminal defamation and calumny, and constitutes an affront to the dignity of the people of Honduras.
Over a year has gone by; 18 long months since the coup, in which groups of the extreme right in Honduras, so called friends and partners of "USA” took over the country. It is odd that so far they haven't been able to demonstrate a single connection with organised crime, nor of a connection with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, in the alleged acts of corruption I was supposed to have committed during my mandate.
The author of this absurdity is Charles Ford allegedly a diplomat, the ambassador in Honduras when I took on the top position in that country. Supposedly a diplomat, he was revealed here as a liar and instigator, and reveals the hidden nature of north American diplomacy to all countries of the world.
This is the same ambassador who demanded that I give a visa of political asylum to the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles; the same who said publicly in the media that president Chavez had tainted and corrupt business relations and attacked my friendship with him; the same who, when I won the Presidency gave me a list of the people whom I had to nominate for my cabinet, and who very quickly became furious with my refusal.
He is the same man who accompanied me to the White House to attend a meeting with President Bush, with part of my cabinet, where Bush ranted against my friendship with the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and attacked my friendship with him. The same who, during my entire term committed himself to defending the fraudulent activities of the north American transnational petrol companies in Honduras, something strangely absent from this cable, as though avoiding mention of the matters over which we had problems and differences.
These serious and baseless accusations of Ambassador Ford, full of mockery of my person as head of state, bring to light the capricious methods used by diplomats of the self proclaimed oldest democracy in the world; like lying, manipulating in a malicious way to justify crimes and attacks on power that they promote throughout the world. The cable of Mr. Ford, made public by Wikileaks and remarked upon by all the media in the world, as well as being offensive, shows the manner in which the United States, in its imperial capacity, manufactures its enemies.
By disparaging people personally they seek to stigmatise those of us who struggle with dignity and independence against the imposition of subjugation that US diplomacy is accustomed to exercising.
The nerve! These actions of theirs - evident most of all to those whom they offend and accuse - doesn't authorise them as presumed "saviours" of the world to accuse presidents of other countries of being crazy, megalomaniacs, mythomaniacs, erratic, corrupt and sinister; especially those who won't follow their orders. With this we can identify a ‘patron’ and it shouldn't surprise us if these kinds of profiles continue to emerge.
And it should draw our attention strongly to the fact that the words of Ford have been the same that were published for three and a half years by those who attacked me persistently from Washington, from the Arcadia Foundation directed by Otto Reich and Robert Carmonaq. And they continue to be used by those who conspired and carried out the coup in Honduras.
This document makes cynicism a spectacle when it unashamedly states that they can intervene in the choice of cabinet members of a government, consult with Cardinals and find even a public event suspicious; like when the this ambassador declared that in my speech about the role of the US fleet (or something like that), "in spite of the fact that I highlighted the good commercial relations with the empire, I spared no effort to extol the exploits against the North American invader William Walker"; a freebooter who invaded Nicaraguan and Honduran territory and who was shot and buried in the Port of Trujillo in Honduras. So the fact that a hero to them is a bandit to us is indicative of the interference and intervention of groups from the United States in our nations since the 19th Century.
In his note Ford has a mental lapse and neglects to mention my intention to make commercial use of the airport of Palmerola, a north American military base whence thousands of conspiracies have been forged, many of them fatal, and which is stuck in the very heart of our territory; and whose last fateful deed was the Coup of June 28 2009. In his perfidy he has omitted mention of his boycott of my initiative and his support for the most reactionary forces in the country who argued in favour of Tocotin, one of the ten most dangerous airports in the world. And the fact is, Charles Ford, and the empire are not at all interested in anyone's safety or progress, only in their military bases to safeguard their supremacy.
The Honduran people know me and support me. I regret none of my actions, which I implemented and promoted as president. I think they were very concerned about my level of popularity, and because I achieved the best results in the history of Honduras in terms of the environment, socially, and in economic growth - between 6 and 7 percent maintained annually. For the first time poverty was being reduced, largely due to Petrocaribe and ALBA; facts which can be verified in the statistics of CEPAL and the World Bank. They were worried that in one year of working with Chavez and Lula we obtained support for projects that would have taken us ten years to get from the United States. They were upset that I was the only President who passed a law of transparency to eliminate confidential government documents, which directly affected the structure of subjugated lackeys that the empire maintains in the country, and the only one in recent history who left accountable spending down to the last cent in public hands and controlling organizations.
We don't know what the Cardinal whispered in his ear about my family history; he forgot to tell Ford that my family prevailed for more than 400 years (as the same ambassador made evident) thanks to its extraordinary relations with the people, and that in arriving at the presidency of the Republic I had at my disposal a legacy of many generations and a rural heritage generated by the work of centuries for which is known by all Hondurans, like an enormous intellectual and political fortune inherited by the most illustrious sons of the homeland.
It is obvious that the pro consul looks down on our culture and our customs, saying that we behaved like animals to "mix" ourselves with the "Moorish class". There are certain things a barbarian without any culture cannot understand. This is the case; we go back for generations to colonial Spain changed now into a proud latin american identity, mixed indigenous and black. Why degrade the emotional relations of my sons and daughters to common grubby deals? Thus the empire conducts itself; we are human and we answer to values and principles that they wouldn't be able to understand for another two centuries.
Ford says that it is necessary to "save what can be saved" of the Honduran system. He says that I'm willing to make a martyr of myself, trying to leave an unfinished legacy, with the argument that they have kept me away from powerful influences that can't be named. The people know that we have unmasked time and time again such influences in my own speeches in the United Nations and in all the forums across which our struggle continues. It is not martyrology that they imposed on me by overthrowing me and then digging me up again; it is the struggle of the people in resistance, it is a legacy, it is the moral, libertarian strength of our men and women in building a new history.
What narrow-mindedness this ambassador demonstrates to justify himself to his superiors after his failure to subjugate us in Honduras. For his destabilising role he was sent to the southern command, where he still remains, and from where he hatched and executed the Coup. It is impossible to put aside the fact that he literally regards me as an enemy of the interests of the United States, and blames me for my sovereign and honourable actions. Actions that he confirmed absolutely while I express my friendship and admiration for the American people - even their country, at the same time that I declare myself anti-imperialist, a struggle in which I would prefer to die than yield.
He reproaches my appointees on the UN and expresses annoyance because we did not cease to make state decisions in spite of his machiavellian manipulation associated with an entire oligarchy, a band of mercenaries who never ceased to conspire in keeping me away from the people and contribute to a sense of patriotism and struggle and put paid to their supine actions.
When sub secretary of state John Dimitri Negroponte, together with Ambassador Ford accused me in Washington of nominating a communist to the United Nations - the ex-Rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras - and indicated that as a terrorist he was denied an American visa, I strongly pursued this violation of the statute of this international organisation, and felt obliged to take a firm protest up to the White House to get through to them that these gentlemen were stuck in the cold war, sectarian, fundamentalist, and that they should understand that the world has changed and that the United States too, has to change.
The cable of falsehoods, like many which earlier were used to justify wars and the massacre of children, women, and old men on various parts of the planet; slanders, degradation and rudeness used to smooth the way to barbarity and exploitation by a system that has no limits. Except for those that have always been set by the transnationals, previously the banana companies, and today the financial and petrol companies, against my people. These notes from the Ambassador serve only to leave the destiny of my homeland in the hands of those who have lost honour and dignity, to be humiliated to secondary interests. There is no doubt. The problem is the same, the method is the same, and the motive is the same; perfidious and cowardly practices that sacrifice generations to their fat businesses. I could continue dealing with the opinions of Mr. Ford one by one, emphasising my own image to refute his tall stories, but I think the basic problem is something else; this document highlights the agents of the coup; it indicates what the empire was thinking in May 2008; it makes it clear that the coup is not accidental, that it was prepared, and that they also conspired, and it makes clear how long they were preparing to overthrow me and to destroy democracy in Honduras.
In this cable of Ford is the history of the Coup; for them it is unforgivable that in the decade of the eighties I would raise my voice against the irregular armed forces of the central American counterrevolutionaries when I was a representative in the National Assembly, demanding explanations of why they were threatening brother and sister countries like Nicaragua and El Salvador, where they committed a brutal genocide from our territory, while our beloved homeland Honduras was used as an aircraft carrier for the north Americans. The empire is not interested in my personal life, but they destroy it so long as they can prevent my political actions from contributing to the liberation of my people.
Finally, what Charles Ford is effectively saying is, that the North American Empire only makes me bigger as a human being, as a politician and as one of the actors of the 21st Century, and makes the struggle of the Honduran people greater and invincible, which continues to resist the return of the military castes to the civic life of our nation, so that the murdering and intense blaze from criminals, from here and from there, moved by the same old puppeteers, has to stop one day and they have to think that it is better to coexist with us, rather than try to rob us of what belongs to us.
Once more, we see the actions of the United States, as the world policeman; tribunals of the Holy Inquisition of the 21st Century, more barefaced and bloodthirsty than ever in the history of humanity. Today we see that they don't have double standards of morality, they don't have any standards of morality at all; they only function at the level of parameters, numbers, and interests. I will continue to struggle against this brutal and sinister power that denies revolution of thought and solidarity to impose barbarity and infamy that does not cease for a single moment, in their effort to subjugate and enslave us.
Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales,
Constitutional President 2006-2010
General Coordinator of the The National Popular Resistance Front.
