Here is the America of the future

Via Adrienne, Belén Fernández has an essay in Jacobin on what it is like to live under constant threat, as in Honduras:

The most harrowing event took place one night when I awoke to discover that a man had gotten into my second-story pension room after cutting away the screen and removing the glass window slats. My strategic response was to scream maniacally, run into the hall in my underwear, and abstain from sleep for another two years.
…
By pinning the blame for Honduras’ violence on gangs, leaders have obscured the state’s role in creating a climate where extrajudicial police execution of tattooed people and other alleged potential gang members is relatively common. Also obscured is the state’s role in overseeing the socioeconomic deprivation that boosts gang membership.
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A decade after Jahangir’s report mentioning the allegedly detrimental impact on investment and tourism of the ugly surplus of street children in Honduras, the coup has paved the way for the establishment of aseptic neoliberal enclaves called “special development regions” or charter cities. These city-states will be severed from Honduran territory without the consultation of the nation’s citizens and will be unaccountable to Honduran law, governed instead by foreign corporate interests.

See also Todd Gordon and Jeffrey R. Webber:

“We are rotten to the core,” former [Honduran] congressperson and police commissioner Gustavo Alfredo Landaverde told the Miami Herald just weeks before being silenced by motorbike assassins at a traffic light in Tegucigalpa on 7 December 2011. According to Landaverde’s conservative estimate, one out of every ten members of the Honduran Congress is tied to drug cartels. The Honduran national police force is linked to death squads and traffickers, and judges and prosecutors are likewise implicated in complex and overlapping networks of power. According to Franck, “drug trafficking is now embedded in the state itself, from the cop in the neighborhood all the way up to the very top of the government.”
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The democratic delusion on offer here has been a staple of US-Honduran relations since the late nineteenth century. If Lobo is the latest emblem of that delusion in practice — having apparently re-established law and order after the unseemly interruption of Micheletti — he also exposes its ruthless center: elections as theater, direct rule by capital, and unmediated violence in civil society. We have seen much of this before, and we’ll see it again.

The US is headed this direction.

Update on Honduras, 4/12/13

Adrienne Pine is on fire (metaphorically-speaking, of course), posting half a dozen links to substantive articles or her own analysis about Honduras in the last two days.

Jeremy Kryt (via Quotha):

Rights Action director Russell is not impressed by this largesse.

“It is controversial, to put it mildly, that the World Bank claims they sold land to the government that many campesino communities are claiming is their land to begin with. Furthermore, it is irrelevant with respect to the allegations that the Bank’s partner, Grupo Dinant [owned by Miguel Facusse], is linked directly and indirectly in the killings of some 90 campesinos in the region.”

Russell said he believes the World Bank has a responsibility to thoroughly investigate potentially shady clients, especially in a place like Honduras, which, with its per-capita murder rate of 91 per 100,000 is one of the most violent places on Earth.

“The World Bank should have a very clear understanding of how Honduras has become the ‘murder capital of the world’ and the ‘repression capital of the Americas’….
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“The World Bank [remains] indirectly if not directly complicit with the extraordinarily high levels of repression and killings in the Aguan region,” Russell said.

Greg McCain expands on how Grupo Dinant hires paramilitary groups, amounting to death squads, to inflict terror on Aguan–and then the oligarch-owned national press tells Hondurans that the paramilitaries are being run by the Nicaraguans as a hostile act against Honduras. It’s purely amazing that all the casualties of these death squads are farmers who oppose Grupo Dinant (via Quotha)

Pine:

There are several US military installations in the Moskitia as part of the militarization of the region justified by the so-called “War on Drugs,” which has been more of a war on the local population in terms of the victims it claims. Miskito people … have organized boldly…. But their organization has not yet been sufficient to stop the Honduran Congress, with the support of the US military controlling the region, from giving away the Miskito peoples’ subsoil (and therefore topsoil) rights to the British BG Group [for oil drilling].

Pine:

[Left-wing political party] LIBRE can’t be blamed for disowning Chepe [Handal] now, just as they can’t really be blamed for not disowning him earlier. It’s not like he became a narco two days ago when the Treasury Department announced it. Honduran electoral politics (all the parties) is just so full of narcos, and they’re so powerful, that it would have been politically complicated for LIBRE to reject him as a supporter, or even candidate (supposing they wanted to). What were party leaders going to say? “You’re a narco, so we won’t let you in”? Slander. Risky. Not just losing money risky, but party leaders getting killed risky. You don’t turn down a socio of Chapo Guzmán in Central America. Come. On. But once the U.S. picks sides by attacking a LIBRE-identified narco (but not a Liberal or Nacional, of which there are boatloads), LIBRE does indeed have to take the moral high ground.

There’s more at Quotha, but that gives a flavor for the important news on Honduras being aggregated and produced at that site.

Death squads in Honduras run by the police, funded by US/updated

Adrienne links a video report from Al Jazeera on the Honduran death squads. The case that Bonilla is running these kidnappings/murders is circumstantial, but that’s not exactly surprising. Most of the witnesses are dead.

Meanwhile, as we have posted, the State Department continues to dissemble and distract. As Adrienne notes, the State Department is describing its handling of the allegations against Bonilla as “internal deliberations.” Under the Leahy Law, funding death squads is illegal. My suggestion: arrest the State Department. Most Latin American countries would be very grateful.

El Heraldo (amazingly) posted video from November of the operation of one of the death squads (via Mark Weisbrot, The Guardian).

Weisbrot’s description:

The video (warning: contains graphic images of lethal violence), caught randomly on a warehouse security camera, is chilling.

Five young men walk down a quiet street in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. A big black SUV pulls up, followed by a second vehicle. Two masked men with bullet-proof vests jump out of the lead car, with AK-47s raised. The two youths closest to the vehicles see that they have no chance of running, so they freeze and put their hands in the air. The other three break into a sprint, with bullets chasing after them from the assassins’ guns. Miraculously, they escape, with one injured – but the two who surrendered are forced to lie face down on the ground. The two students, who were brothers 18- and 20-years-old, are murdered with a burst of bullets, in full view of the camera. Less than 40 seconds after their arrival, the assassins are driving away, never to be found.

Wonder if Juan Carlos Bonilla, the Honduran police chief, was among the killers.

Bertha Oliva of COFADEH also states her view of the return of the death squads here (via Adrienne). Excerpt:

The death squads of the past were never really dismantled. What we’re witnessing is a reactivation of these death squads. And we’re seeing it quite clearly. We’ve seen videos of incidents in the street where masked men with military training and unmarked vehicles assassinate young people. There is the recent case of the journalist Julio Ernesto Alvarado who gave up his news program from 10pm to midnight on Radio Globo because members of a death squad came to kill him, and to save his own life he had to stop doing his program.

More Honduran follies

The issue is how much money the US is giving to Juan Carlos Bonilla, head of the Honduran police, who is accused of running death squads.

Basically, the State Department spokesman refuses to answer a simple question (how much money does the US give to Honduras for security), provides data that are completely unhelpful ($500 million to Central America over 5 years, with half going to countries including Honduras), and refuses to provide any information on when the last review was done that concluded that US money was not flowing to entities that Bonilla controls [added: they also have a figure of zero for security aid to Honduras on their website].

To read the actual bafflegab, click below.

Folies State Department, 3/25/13

For full context on this story, see Dan Beeton at Upside Down World. But for now, simply marvel at the State Department’s response to a question about Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla, a fugitive in 2003, now Honduras’s head of the National Police.

Yikes.

Patrick Ventrell
Acting Deputy Spokesperson [State Department]
Daily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
March 25, 2013
…
QUESTION: Okay. And I have a question about Honduras, if I may.

MR. VENTRELL: Okay.

QUESTION: If you were about to close the book, I’ll stop you right there.

MR. VENTRELL: Okay.

QUESTION: We had a story about the U.S. support for Honduran police –

MR. VENTRELL: Yeah.

QUESTION: — which you’d long said had nothing to do with the police chief Bonilla, and we’re saying that every single one of the units you claim was vetted reports directly to Bonilla. How do you square that with what you told Congress and what you’ve said publicly about this?

MR. VENTRELL: Just to say, first of all, Brad, that we remain concerned about high levels of impunity and corruption in Honduras, and we’re working in partnership with the Honduran Government and civil society to address these challenges, advance citizen security, build capacity within the rule of law and judicial institutions, and protect the human rights of all Hondurans.

I can tell you right now that there is a review process undergoing. It’s standard practice for the U.S. Government to form working groups and review and evaluate institutions that receive U.S. assistance. So we review all relevant information that may affect assistance the United States can provide to Honduras, including under the provisions of the Leahy Law. So I can’t comment on the internal deliberations, but we remain in close communication with the U.S. Congress, in compliance with the legal requirements of the Leahy Law.

QUESTION: How did you vet these people if – I mean, they are police units under the police chief, and you say they have no – nothing to do with the police chief.

MR. VENTRELL: I mean, again, I can’t get into the actual vetting procedures other than to say we absolutely comply with congressional mandates and congressional requirements.

QUESTION: Are you urging the Honduran Government to relieve Mr. Bonilla of his duties, since you’ve essentially raised the allegations of extrajudicial killings and various human rights violations by him and his alleged death squads?

MR. VENTRELL: I’m not aware that we’ve taken a position before this review is finished, so I think we’re going to conduct a thorough review and then take a look and be back in communication not only with Honduras but with the U.S. Congress.

QUESTION: You specifically said that you’re withholding money from anything that he touches.

MR. VENTRELL: Right, but –

QUESTION: So I would wonder why you would not urge that he then be removed if he’s an obstacle of your cooperation.

MR. VENTRELL: We’ve got to get to the bottom of this through our review before we make any decisions.

QUESTION: Do you know how much – I can’t seem to find anywhere that says how much money you guys are actually providing the Honduran security sector. According to, I think, like, the State Department/USAID website it was zero, which can’t be correct since –

MR. VENTRELL: Yeah, we have large security cooperation with a number of Central American partners.

QUESTION: Could you get back to me with how much you provide?

MR. VENTRELL: I will endeavor this afternoon to get you –

QUESTION: I imagine it’s more than zero.

MR. VENTRELL: I will endeavor to get you an expert this afternoon.

QUESTION: Thank you.

Your tax dollars at work.

Unfortunately, probably not

When one runs across items such as the following, one realizes that there are far worse papal candidates than Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI.

Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, 62, Honduras. Rodríguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is widely seen as a rising star in the Latin American church. He served as president of CELAM, the federation of Latin American bishops’ conferences, until 1999. A Salesian, he speaks near-perfect Italian and English (along with passable French, Portuguese, German, Latin and Greek), plays the piano, and has taken pilot training. He is ferocious on social justice issues. He was part of a small group that met German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in Cologne to hand over the Jubilee 2000 petition for debt relief. “Neoliberal capitalism carries injustice and inequality in its genetic code,” he said in 1995. However some say his rhetoric is not matched by a command of policy details. His theological training came in the post-Vatican II period. He studied at the Alfonsian Academy in Rome where he took classes from the legendary liberal moral theologian Bernard Häring, whom Rodriguez calls an “idol.” He has a reputation for being unusually open on ecumenical questions for a Latin American bishop, many of whom have little experience in religiously pluralistic settings. Rodriguez has a warm smile and a ready sense of humor.

Rodriguez Maradiaga, of course, supported the coup against Manuel Zelaya, and is the head of Opus Dei in Honduras. As the previous link makes clear, Opus Dei is fundamentally a political organization that undermines Christian teaching in order to support authoritarian governments and plutocracy. For National Catholic Reporter to gloss over this serious issue, not even mentioning the Cardemal’s support for the coup, just goes to show how much control Opus Dei exerts over conversation within the Catholic Church.

Rodriguez Maradiaga is only one of the papal candidates who is a member or supporter of Opus Dei. Among others mentioned is Cardinal Juan Cipriani Thorne. More troubling, Betty Clermont at Daily Kos explains how Opus Dei members exert control over who becomes the next Pope.

What happens when you tolerate/aid coups

Via Adrienne, AP’s Alberto Arce reports that Honduras is “no longer functioning” in the words of Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy. Street surveillance cameras turned off for non-payment, with threats of cutting off police radio as well. Teachers unpaid for six months. Soldiers unpaid. The Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court not in session because it has been screwed over by the Congress, in a move so brazen even the US mentioned it (though did not condemn it).

Adrienne reports a conversation with a “local cop,” by which I assume she means a DC policeman:

He told me about the interesting couple weeks he spent in Honduras (San Pedro area, mostly) at the behest of the State Department in 2010, giving trainings in community policing. He also did the same in El Salvador and Panama on the same trip. He was mostly impressed by the Honduran police force’s lack of basic supplies—gasoline, etc. But he also noticed a total lack of internal mechanisms for accountability, and framed things in terms of corruption, using a version of that argument that “if you don’t clean things up, it’s easy for criminals to infiltrate the police”—as if criminality were not intrinsic to [Honduran] policing, and as if criminality were a permanent state of being or character trait (the NRA argument) and not something that is defined through one’s actions. Although in Honduras, of course (as well as here in the U.S., in various contexts), it is legally a state of being…He had also gone to the COBRA training facility and appeared as a guest on Frente a Frente with Renato Álvarez, where he was invited to talk about corruption and the work he was doing, cop-to-cop trainings. How did he respond to questions about human rights abuses by the Honduran police? I asked. Oh, that was the one thing that the State Department made clear—he said—I wasn’t allowed to say anything about human rights.

Venezuela may be on path to crisis/updated

Newly-elected president Hugo Chavez is in Cuba getting treatment for cancer. He developed a lung infection, which means he can’t travel back to Venezuela for the inauguration. The Venezuelan Constitution specifies (see Art. 231) that the swearing in must be done on the 10th, either before the Legislature or the Supreme Court. So the right wing is trying to force new elections in the hope that they can split Chavez’s successors in a new election. Their argument is flawed, because Art. 234 specifies detailed procedures to declare a president-elect permanently disabled, and those procedures are under the control of Chavez proteges. (Something similar, by the way, happened during the coup d’etat against Honduras’s Zelaya, where he was declared permanently disabled to hold the presidency because the right-wing wouldn’t let him return).

The danger of the US considering this an opportune moment to meddle in Venezuela’s affairs is, in my opinion, significant. And, of course, there’s no guarantee that Chavez will survive this most recent health crisis, meaning that we could be seeing new elections in a few months. But the real problem is that the factions within the Chavez bloc have serious strains, and there is no figure of his stature and cleverness to hold it all together and keep infighting from weakening the coalition. It is good to see other Latin American countries rallying around to try to prevent the right-wing seizure of power through their mischievous interpretation of the Constitution.

This is a tragic situation. I think Chavez made a mistake by running again, because he has been drifting toward authoritarianism to try to overcome seemingly intractable problems. I have also said that the greatest failure of the Bolivaran “revolution” is the failure to develop leaders who could continue the process of change after his passing. There’s no doubt that a significant majority of the population believes that Chavez was on the right track, even if they disagreed with specific policies. If their will is denied, it will be a tragedy for democracy, and it will leave Venezuela ripe for crisis. Democracy only works when most people want it to, and it’s pretty clear that neither the US nor the Venezuelan oligarchy want it to.
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Update: Greg Palast has a piece on Chavez, as well as a DVD. Palast thinks Nicolas Maduro can, and deserves to, survive the coming storm.
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And right on cue, the Catholic Church lays down markers with the opposition. Jonathan Watts and Virginia Lopez, The Guardian:

“The nation’s political and social stability is at serious risk,” said Bishop Diego Padrón, the conference’s president, reading a statement from the Venezuelan bishops’ conference.

They never learn.
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And Mark Weisbrot rebuts fear-mongering on the Venezuelan economy.

Honduras: what we’d like to say

Press session at the State Department:

QUESTION: I actually have one more Latin American question.

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION: And if you don’t have anything on it, maybe you could take it. It’s on Honduras.

MS. NULAND: Okay.

QUESTION: Political intimidation, repression – apparently, I believe, a litany of recent events, mainly directed towards one opposition party. Do you have anything to say about those incidents specifically or more broadly about just the political environment in Honduras right now?

MS. NULAND: I don’t have anything on the political environment in Honduras. Let me take it and see if we have anything we’d like to say.

Thanks.

I know what I’d like to say.

Made possible by your tax dollars/updated

DemocracyNow:

A prominent human rights lawyer known for defending peasants in Honduras has been assassinated. Antonio Trejo [Cabrera] was attending a wedding when he was shot to death just outside the church. Trejo represented several peasant rights groups in their struggle against wealthy Honduran landowners. Hours before his death, he had spoken out publicly as part of his vocal opposition to plans for privately-run cities in Honduras with their own police and tax system.

Doesn’t your chest just swell with pride knowing that US influence is the only reason that the murderous oligarchy is in charge?
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Update: Well, well. The State Department is “saddened and outraged” enough to issue a statement expressing sadness and outrage at the murder of Trejo.

Tangible steps to solve the murder, like dispatching the FBI, no.