U.S. military takes on Honduras

On May 11 in Honduras‘ Mosquito Coast region, helicopter gunfire killed two women and two men, and seriously wounded four more people, including children. They were targeted as drug traffickers. The helicopters belonged to the U.S. State Department. On board were agents of the U. S. Drug Enforcement Administration in military uniforms, plus Honduran soldiers. Many Hondurans say the U.S. agents did the shooting.

The drug “war” is used to justify U.S. military intervention in Honduras, now a way station for drugs moving from South America to U.S. consumers. The United States has posted 600 soldiers to Honduras and operates an Air Force base and three new so-called forward operating bases there. Meanwhile, political and social deterioration has led to calamity.

Intervention is hardly new in Honduras. U.S. troops invaded in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924, and 1925, usually at times of political turmoil. They were “protecting U.S. interests” like banana plantations, banks, and railroads. In the 1980’s Honduras was a U.S. staging area for Contra troops fighting Nicaragua’s leftist government.

The United States backed the Honduran government formed by plotters who had arranged the military coup overthrowing President Jose Manuel Zelaya in June, 2009. Now the U.S. government supports a successor regime headed by President Porfirio Lobo, elected under dubious circumstances. Lobo’s visit to Washington in October, 2011, got red carpet treatment.

Zelaya experimented with land reform and called for a minimum wage, thereby enraging local political bosses. The U.S. government was offended by his having led Honduras into the anti-imperialist ALBA alliance of Latin American countries.

The wealthy elite behind the coup are prospering. The family of Miguel Facussé is emblematic of ten families which “control everything, telecommunications, electrical generation, marketing of petroleum products, the financial market, construction, food, etc.” Facussé’s 42, 500 acres in Lower Aguan grow African palms, the oil of which Facussé’s Dinant Corporation converts into biodiesel.

A deadly struggle is playing out in Lower Aguan and may soon intensify. Dinant Corporation announced that if by June 1 Facussé has not received government payment for land small farmers are occupying, Dinant would evict farm families. Already private security forces have murdered 48 land reform activists there since September, 2009. The occupations are in fulfillment of land reform measures revived during the Zelaya era.

The United States overlooks landowner repression even though Facussé properties are dotted with traffickers’ landing strips. Social catastrophe – 70 percent poverty and 40 percent unemployed – and terror likewise seem to be acceptable. Honduras’ is the highest murder rate in the world – 6723 murders in 2011. Political repression has taken the lives of 25 journalists during the Lobo presidency. The body of popular broadcaster Alfredo Villatoro was found on May 15, that of LGBT activist Erick Martinez, two days earlier

U.S. interventionists tolerate governmental corruption. California academician Dana Frank maintains, “[D]rug trafficking is interlaced with the post-coup government…even the Minister of Defense has talked about the so-called Narco Congress people, the Narco judges…The police regularly kill people… None of these people have been prosecuted.”

Trafficking bolsters wealth and power. A local Chamber of Commerce official reported drug lords “have bought tremendous tracts, ranches, farms (and) coastlands.” The McClatchy story suggests, “Drug profits have filtered into sectors such as banking, construction, sports teams, restaurants, auto sales and private security.”

So there’s more to U.S. military intervention than just war on drugs. According to an Argentinean analyst, “The Southern Command of the Pentagon throughout Central America is backing ‘failed states’ in order to justify interventions in the name of national security.” Col. Ross Brown, a U.S. commander in Honduras, told a reporter that the U.S. military mission is expanding because of “the potential nexus between transnational organized criminals and terrorists who would do harm to our country.”

Uruguayan solidarity activists demand President Lobo take steps “to avoid new bloodshed.” They seek United Nations and European Union intervention to protect human rights in Honduras. Representatives of 12 Latin American and European countries joined United Nations officials in Lower Aguan in late May to deal with conflict there.

The people’s forces are mobilizing. Formed after the 2009 coup, the National Front for Popular Resistance established the Broad Front of Popular Resistance, which looks toward a constituent assembly and is preparing for presidential elections in 2013. The Front’s “social struggle” entails agrarian reform, popular organizing, defending human rights, and opposition to privatization and foreign control of natural resources.

Given the experience of the Chile’s socialist government with U.S. intervention in 1973, this is perilous business. Yet the promise is real. Seven years ago social and economic indicators for Bolivia and Honduras were similar: GDP – $10 billion, average annual per capita income – $700 – $800, international financial reserves – $1.5 billion, and rate of extreme poverty – 40-50 percent. In Honduras, these figures have not changed substantially. By contrast, the current GDP in socialist oriented Bolivia is $20 billion, the average annual per capita income was $1833 in 2010; international financial reserves exceed $12 billion; and the rate of extreme poverty is 25 percent.

Photo: Clara Wood Rivas, right, at the grave of her 14-year-old son, who was killed in a recent drug raid. Rodrigo Abd/AP