Honduras 2009 Coup

A NACLA syllabus to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the coup d'état in Honduras.   

A decade later, U.S. resolve to greenlight and back the coup d'état in Honduras remains one of the most shameful U.S. foreign policy decisions in recent memory. 

A reflection on the ousters of presidents Manuel Zelaya, Fernando Lugo, and Dilma Rousseff—and the emergence of the "parliamentary" or "soft" coup as a new technique to thwart the consolidation of social and economic rights in the region.

Since Honduras' 2009 military coup, the United States has been increasing its military presence in Honduras.

As a careful examination of the language and coverage of nearly four years of New York Times articles reveals, concern for freedom and democracy in Latin America has not been an honest concern for the liberal media institution.

The following is an interview with Carlos Amaya, son of the renowned Honduran novelist, Ramón Amaya Amador, and a grassroots activist in the Honduran National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP). He speaks on the past, present, and future of the Honduran resistance.

Over the past few weeks U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and latter-day media "experts" have hailed Manuel Zelaya's return to Honduras and the pending reintegration of the country into the OAS as a restoration of democracy. Here in Honduras, it is clear that such claims could not be further from the truth. Honduras today is no closer to reconciliation than it was in the months following the June 28, 2009 military coup.

We have collected in this Report a series of articles analyzing these 21st-century coups in the Americas—in Venezuela (2002), Haiti (2004), and Honduras (2009)—against the backdrop of popular movements for democracy and economic justice. The fight to overcome neoliberalism in the region has produced not only left-leaning governments but, perhaps more significantly, a widespread, commonsensical respect among citizens for transparent, democratic norms and institutionality. Coups are seen as an extra-legal retrogression to a barbarous past. The dark days of the region's late-20th-century military dictatorships, which came to power through U.S.-sponsored coups, comprise a sinister legacy that continues to inform how leaders and social movements in the region frame current events. Coups, and the threat of coups, are still a part of the Latin American reality, even in the 21st century.

Ongoing U.S. efforts to secure Honduras's international recognition depend on a narrative that says that the country has achieved stability and reconciliation since president Porfirio Lobo took office in January. However, Honduras is anything but stable and reconciled, and opposing narratives carry the weight of the bloody evidence accumulated in the months since Lobo's inauguration. These tensions, and Honduras's deep wound of conflict that persists, show much is at stake on this first anniversary of the military coup that ousted former president Manuel Zelaya on June 28, 2009.

The first anniversary of the June 28, 2009 military coup in Honduras might just slide under the international radar, timed as it is right after the Honduran national team kicks off at the World Cup. The Honduran business community could hardly have planned it better themselves. After all, Honduras's most powerful families who make up the local machinery of the neoliberal economic model thought to be at the center of the country's post-coup struggle, are also the ones accused of being the "visible face" behind the ouster of former President José Manuel Zelaya.

Soon after the June coup in Honduras, the de facto government unleashed a vigorous PR campaign against ousted president Manuel Zelaya, accusing him of being involved in drug trafficking. This linking of Zelaya to drugs remained a prominent feature of the coup government's propaganda during its seven-month reign, and offers an insight into the the many political uses of the drug war in the Americas, even to justify the overthrow of a democratically elected president.

February and March have been especially brutal months in the state-sponsored repression of the popular resistance in Honduras. In just the past two weeks, three journalists have been assassinated and numerous activists have been detained, tortured, and raped. This repression comes in as the National Front of Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) pushes for the organization of a national constitutional assembly to "refound" Honduras, while the United States, international lending institutions, and countries participating in the regional economic development plan known as the Plan Puebla Panama extend recognition to government of President Porfirio Lobo, restoring loans, and renewing plans for economic and security integration.