I was sitting in Juan Miguel’s living room in Denton, Texas when the news came on the television. I was in graduate school pursuing studies in ecofeminism at Texas Woman’s University at the time. A few weeks prior I had received an invitation from Sacramento Labor Council Secretary Bill Camp to join him in Honduras. I couldn’t go because of school, and I wish I could have been there to lend my voice in protest.
Reports meandered in that the Honduran military had
kidnapped then President Manuel Zelaya from his home in his pajamas in the
middle of the night in an illegal coup d’état.
The Republic of Honduras had in that moment rejoined the ranks of
military juntas running nations left developing by the world’s superrich. Things could have been different over the
last twelve years, but in that moment, when Honduras needed the United States
to call foul play, then President Obama did not. Instead of standing up for democracy, Obama
neglected to call the military takeover a coup.
Had Obama used the term “coup” then the United States would not have
been able to continue business as usual in the original “banana republic.” I was not able to be in Tegucigalpa in 2009
to protest “el golpe del estado,” but I made it in time to celebrate the end of
it.
The Obama Administration under Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton allowed the coup to take place and then elections to be held by the
coup government so that democracy appeared to have taken place. It didn’t.
Pepe Lobo (I do not use the term “President” with the illegal
government.) gained power as Honduras had become the murder capital of the
world. Almost overnight, Honduras became
a lawless den for corruption and crime to fester like a wound left unclean. Environmentalists who stood in the way of mines
and power plants were murdered. The
journalists who tried to tell the story were left for dead. Police who tried to do the right thing were
removed from power and their families threatened. The land of small farmers and indigenous
groups was stolen. Men, women, and
children faced consequences unknown at the prospect of not being able to pay gang
members for the right to walk down the street.
Every aspect of life became more difficult due to the corruption. People’s close friends got rich finding the
price at which they were willing to sell their morals while the rest of the
country either tried to survive in the worst of times or fled for the U.S.
border. Obama and Clinton didn’t sit by
and do nothing. The Honduran people
would have been better off if they had. The
United States not only supported the overthrow of the Honduran government in
2009, they have been arming its illegitimate government ever since!
That was even before the Juan Orlando Hernandez regime began. Hernandez, held by many as the political
force behind the coup, was president of the Honduran National Congress before being
named president. Midway into his first term,
JOH (yes, like the pejorative term for a prostitute) made a secret arrangement
with the Congress and Supreme Court of Honduras to allow him to run for a
second term. It was previously illegal
for the president of Honduras to serve more than one term and the justification
for removing Zelaya from office (for attempting to take a poll on the matter). Thus began the chant “Fuera, JOH!” or “Get
out of here, JOH!” He would serve four
more years. Ironically, by avoiding the
use of the term “coup,” the United States gave Honduras a dictator. More ironic indeed was the fact that this
dictator was so deep in the pockets of narcotraffickers and even facilitated
the movement of cocaine from Central America to Europe all from his desk as
president. Obama and Clinton enabled JOH
to seize power, and Trump kept it going.
JOH was the first international guest for U.S. Vice President Mike
Pence.
So when I heard, when we all heard, that Xiomara Zelaya
Castro, the former First Lady of Honduras whose husband Mel Zelaya was removed
from power twelve years earlier, had won the election and was soon to be the
first woman president of Honduras, a collective sigh of relief blew across the
picturesque Honduran landscape. When I
arrived to San Pedro Sula on January 25th, I could feel people
breathing again. Streets were packed but
not hostile. Things seemed cleaner than
usual. People appeared happy with upward
facing smiles eager to speak about the days ahead. Previously, it might seem like the 2/3 world was
a bad place to talk politics, but everyone we encountered was happy to talk
about Castro’s victory. We encountered
people on the street who were excited our international delegation had come to
celebrate the end of the coup. Many were
confused that there were U.S. citizens who cared enough about Honduran politics
to be informed. Fellow patrons at Power
Chicken made jokes about what the names of inauguration day specials on the
menu would be. Even security guards
opened up ever so slightly to conversation about life with the LIBRE party in
power. Mostly though, everyone was
talking about what was next for them personally. It wasn’t that people were finally free to
openly talk about the failed coup government, it was that Honduran families
finally felt free to talk about something else.
Before departing, Sister Larraine of Water With Blessings
asked me to consider saying the prayer of Michael the Archangel for “the
Honduran government wasn’t so great before the coup either.” The last words my step-dad, Tom, said to me
before I left for Honduras were “Watch, but do not be seen. Listen, but don’t speak.” They didn’t have to explain. I knew what they meant. The fact that the United States sent a group
from the Department of State to deliver an ultimatum to the Honduran military before
the election – there will be free and fair elections this time, or we will cut
off the money immediately.” – reminds me that additional forces are at
work. With JOH’s brother sitting in jail
for trafficking cocaine in the United States, the U.S. may have needed to
control the narrative that their long game on the coup worked where stepping in
in 2009 may not have. The pending
extradition of JOH certainly favors taking steps to help Hondurans heal, but
the country is not healed yet. Larraine
and Tom did not have to explain their message to me because it was right there
on the consent form to attend the inauguration.
After name and address and a few more identifying details, the
application, as plain as day, asked me to list my blood type. There was only one reason my blood type would
need to be on file during the events of the inauguration … in case something
went wrong..
These are the events which ran across my mind in the early morning
of January 26th in the back of a van travelling from San Pedro Sula
to Tegucigalpa as Pink Floyd’s “We don’t need no education” began to play on
the radio.
