Courting Disaster in Honduras

I don't believe Zelaya is all he's cracked up to be by the left, but I find this article somewhat disturbing. Despite reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that suggest otherwise, Casas-Zamora insists that the Michelletti government has not been "engaging in systematic harassment against opposition leaders or the press". According to who? The reports do reveal a pattern of somewhat guarded persecution - neither they nor I are suggesting that the de facto government is mercilessly slaughtering its opponents - but this does NOT mean that the instincts and instruments of oppression have not been amplified in Honduras since the coup.

The military is clearly in league with the "golpistas", and between them, the police forces, and Michelletti's propensity to suspend constitutional rights when there's risk of popular action, opposition figures and supporters are not free to engage in active democracy without feeling threatened. This has been evidenced by thousands of arbitrary arrests, a number (ranging from a few to several dozen, depending on who you ask) of deaths and "disappearances", the exile of politicians supportive of Zelaya, both in Congress (partly self-imposed), and in other positions of authority like state governors (almost always not self-imposed), and the continued harassment - and in some cases outright closure - of independent media outlets and human rights organizations. What's more, 80's relics like Billy Joya - a notorious former death squad leader, who admittedly was a minor part of Zelaya's extended cabinet - are now directly advising Michelletti on security matters, and the right wing of the clergy has again resorted to spiritual manipulation to back the coup.

These are not conditions under which an authentic democratic election can take place. Moreover, it begs the question - are there any conditions possible in the foreseeable future that would allow such an event to take place? A top military lawyer told the Miami Herald in July that as the genesis of the modern Honduran military was precisely to fight against leftists, it's impossible for a leftist government to avoid clashing with the military's agenda. This is not surprising - indeed, these are the seeds that were very purposefully planted in Honduras and other parts of Latin America during the Cold War - yet it doesn't mean its not an issue that must be addressed for Honduras to have an authentically democratic future.

Redressing the constitution via referendum, as Zelaya was pushing for, is not simply "in vogue" in Latin America - and it's most certainly not just about extending term limits, as has been misreported by almost every American news outlet. It is an evolution of the relationship between constituted power and constituent power, and is unlikely to just go away, like the current vested interests want it to. If no precedent is established here for the peaceful evolution of constitutional mandates, other crises will follow. This much at least I think Casas-Zamora has gotten right.

The reason we haven't seen more draconian forms of oppression (as if putting an entire population of people who mostly survive day-to-day under house arrest for two straight days isn't severe enough) is not because Michelletti and the other coup leaders are terribly concerned with the virtues of democracy. As the Washington Office on Latin America points out, the political establishment had rendered Honduras a "captive state" (beholden to a small group of interests), not terribly concerned with democracy, even before the coup.

Rather, I believe the main factor in their hesitation to employ the full force of their security apparatus is the overwhelming international condemnation of the coup. Michelletti is already floundering in the wake of bad decisions; he's smart enough to know that a more salient mistake, like a massacre, could be fatal for his government. The strong censure coming from the entire region, coupled with the more muted but no less real condemnation coming from the US, is a check against such sorts of barbaric actions - and an important indicator of the current geopolitical dimensions in Latin America.

There are no solutions that could be put in place now that will satisfy all parties. I believe that trying to find one is pointless. What Casas-Zamora calls the "rigidities" of the Honduran Constitution is a source of tension that can only now be resolved by changing that Constitution according to the will of the Honduran people - or, by an inordinate, violent persecution of those who would push for that change. I think there is no question as to which is more desirable.