Honduras defaults to old habits
KEEBLE MCFARLANE
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Democracy is something outsiders never associated with
governance in Latin America until quite recently. The typical Latin
country was one where the thin layer at the top of the demographic
pile lived as well as the rich in the most developed countries,
while the vast depressed masses lived in the most squalid
conditions.
Elections were held like clockwork, but no politician ever dared
introduce policies that would benefit the majority. Those who did
were quickly ejected by the military, which existed not to uphold
the constitution or to defend the nation against external
adversaries, but rather to protect the interests of the wealthy and
provide bullet-proof careers for the officer corps. Looking over
their shoulders was the giant from the north, Uncle Sam, who kept
them all in line by economic coercion, political blackmail or
failing that, actual military intervention.
One country, Panama, was practically a creation of the United
States, which just over a century ago encouraged a dissident region
of Colombia to secede and form a new country. The new nation ceded
an important portion of its territory to the US to build a canal
joining two oceans and dramatically reducing the time it takes a
ship to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The US occupied a
strip of land bordering the canal and relinquished its hold only as
the century came to a close.
"Banana republic" was one of the pejorative terms used to
describe some of those countries, and the archetype was the central
American country, Honduras. The term was the creation of the noted
American author, O Henry, who spent a year in Honduras at the end
of the 19th century. His stay produced a book of linked short
stories in 1904 titled Cabbages and Kings using characters and
situations he observed there.
Three American companies - United Fruit, Standard Fruit and
Cuyamel - controlled the country's banana business. They owned the
plantations, packaging operations, railways and ports. They also
owned politicians, who arranged matters to smooth their operations
regardless of how it affected the people.
The United Fruit Company, which older Jamaicans remember - not
necessarily fondly - earned the nickname El Pulpo (The Octopus)
because its tentacles extended into many aspects of Honduran
politics, sometimes violently.
The owner of Cuyamel, Sam Zemurray, hired a bunch of armed
bully-boys from New Orleans a century ago to help stage a coup in
order to secure favourable treatment from the new rulers. A couple
of decades later Zemurray succeeded in a hostile takeover of the
notorious United Fruit, and in the 1930s he was the man from whom
Norman Manley had to wrest concessions for banana workers. In the
1950s, United Fruit was among the organisations which persuaded the
US presidents Truman and Eisenhower to overthrow the government of
Jácobo Arbenz in Honduras's neighbour, Guatemala, because his
policies proposed fairer treatment for workers.
Honduras fit the template with regular military coups to depose
governments the generals or their friends in the oligarchy didn't
like. But in 1982, the country produced a new constitution - backed
by the US - to increase democratic activity. The quid pro quo for
American support was to act as host for the so-called contra rebels
from next-door Nicaragua.
The havoc they wreaked persists in the memories, as well as the
bodies of Nicaraguans.
Political turbulence continued in the 1990s, as Honduras
received loans from the World Bank and the IMF, whose priorities,
as we know from painful experience, hardly ever coincide with those
of national governments. And as they say, bad luck is worse than
obeah - in the middle of all this, hurricane Mitch struck in 1998,
adding to the misery. Yet the democratic trend continued, with
regime after regime chosen freely through the ballot box.
But now, it appears, the country has defaulted to old ways.
Honduras is in the midst of a military coup, which began early on
Sunday when soldiers entered the home of President Manuel Zelaya
and rousted him out of bed. They didn't even allow him to change
out of his pyjamas and whisked him off to Costa Rica. The plotters
produced a letter of resignation purportedly signed by Zelaya, and
upon receiving it the Congress chose the Speaker, Roberto
Micheletti, to succeed Zelaya. He immediately ordered a night-time
curfew and blocked radio and television stations from carrying
anything but the most innocuous programming. This hasn't prevented
Zelaya's supporters from protesting in the streets. As is their
custom, the security forces have responded in force, using tear gas
and batons liberally.
Zelaya became president by a close margin at the end of 2005 and
his term expires next January. According to the constitution, he is
allowed only one term. The coup leaders accused him of undermining
democracy because he had called for a plebiscite on whether to
begin a process to rewrite the constitution. He was asking his
fellow citizens to put a question on the ballot during the
presidential vote in November with a view to establishing a
constituent assembly to examine constitutional options. What could
be more democratic than that?
Among the ideas he was floating was to abolish the one-term
provision and let a president run again. It is true that this
effort resembles similar successful exercises in other Latin
American countries.
Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador recently re-wrote their
constitutions, generally enshrining the rights of hitherto
marginalised people and putting in measures to protect their
economies from the effects of corporate freebooting and free
trade.
Zelaya, a wealthy landowner, is not a natural fit for the club
of left-leaning leaders who have taken power across Central and
South America in recent years. But after he was installed in
office, he began taking on the business community with its
sweat-shop mentality.
He increased the minimum wage by 60 per cent, declaring that it
would "force the business oligarchy to pay what is fair".
His politics have stirred up the ire and resistance of the
political class, including those in his own Liberal party, at the
same time garnering support among the underprivileged, popular
movements and groups promoting a civil society. As his popularity
increased in these sectors, the establishment worked to undermine
him, leading to the coup.
Zelaya has been erratic, divisive and reckless, but it is those
who oppose him who are undermining their country's fragile
democracy. This is why their effort has attracted no serious
support from abroad, and why the Organisation of American States,
the United Nations, the European Union and even the old bad boy of
the region, the United States, have condemned the plotters and are
working behind the scenes to restore a normal state of affairs.
At bottom, the problem with Honduras is the same as many
countries of the region: it is very poor, with 70 per cent of its
seven and a half million people living below the poverty line. What
the perpetrators of the coup fear is that a constitutional assembly
would erode or eliminate their power and bring in radical changes
to the political system, breaking up the comfortable old
dolly-house they have controlled for generations.
Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa have managed to
achieve considerable change in the power structures of Venezuela,
Bolivia and Ecuador through their understanding of the need for
widespread participation and direct appeals to those who have been
ignored and overlooked in the past. The questions that are unclear
is whether Manuel Zelaya is that kind of leader and whether
Honduras is ready for that kind of change.
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