The official narrative is that the supreme court in Honduras in June 2009 gave orders to the Honduran military to oust Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras, from power over a referendum that was scheduled to take place.
However, deeper invitigation reveals that the coup wasn’t about the referendum and that US players with ties to the Clintons were involved in it.
Here are a few reports for more details.:
Antiwarhttps://original.antiwar.com/justin/2018/06/27/honduras-is-a-hellhole-whos-responsible/.com:
“The Reagan years saw the apex of US intervention in the region, with fear of Communist “infiltration” motivating massive US aid to local despots and right-wing death squads throughout Central and South America: the fear of Cuban and Soviet influence drove US policy. In El Salvador, a raging civil war between rightist landowners and a leftist insurgency cost tens of thousands of lives and billions in lost income. In Guatemala, with a long history of US support to a callous and violent elite, a 36-year civil war between conservative landowners and Communist-led guerrillas devastated the country. Honduras is the scene of a recent US-backed coup, and also of a short story by O. Henry wherein the phrase “banana republic” was coined. A more appropriate phrase describing this Central American country could hardly be imagined, what with bananas looming large as the national product and source of wealth, and lots of political intrigue – periodic coups, assassinations, incredible corruption, all of it presided over by the warlords of Washington and their corporate favorites.”
The intercept:
FORT MCNAIR, ONE of the oldest U.S. military posts in the country, is nestled on an outcropping of land where the Anacostia and Potomac rivers meet in Washington, D.C. There, within the National Defense University, is the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, where hundreds of Hondurans took courses over the years. In mid-July 2009, Honduran military officials sought the center’s help to solve a problem that had recently arisen.
The Honduran military had just dispatched of its previous problem, President Manuel Zelaya, with a military coup. Now, the Central American military was facing international and regional condemnations for a brazen display of 1970s behavior in the 21st century. The military officials needed friends in the U.S. to rally behind it, but the Americans were wary of open shows of support. The U.S. had just revoked visas from top Honduran civilian and military officials, and suspended some security assistance.
New details of how the coup and its aftermath unfolded— based on unpublished government records and dozens of interviews with high-ranking U.S. and Honduran military officials, policymakers, and other key sources as part of an in-depth investigation by The Intercept and the Center for Economic and Policy Research — offer a glimpse into how the U.S. foreign policy apparatus dealt with the crisis. The new information paints a picture of an American government with no single policy, but rather, of bloated bureaucracies acting on competing interests. Hidden actors during the crisis tilted Honduras toward chaos, undermined official U.S. policy after the coup, and ushered in a new era of militarization that has left a trail of violence and repression in its wake.
Honduran soldiers stand guard behind a fence at the presidential palace following a coup d’etat that saw President Manuel Zelaya ousted in Tegucigalpa on June 28, 2009. Photo: Jose Cabezas/AFP/Getty Images
EARLY IN THE MORNING on Sunday, June 28, 2009, Honduran Special Forces escorted President Manuel Zelaya from his residence at gunpoint. Hours later, a dazed Zelaya appeared on the tarmac of the airport of San José in Costa Rica. He was still wearing his pajamas. Back in Honduras, the military cut off power across the country, blocking media from reporting on the unfolding coup d’état.
For months, Zelaya had engaged the country’s elite-controlled institutions in a risky game of chicken over a non-binding referendum on reforming the country’s constitution. Honduras’s traditional power brokers saw the referendum as means for Zelaya to consolidate power at their expense and were prepared to go to great lengths to prevent it from happening.
On June 25, Honduran legislators were prepared to vote in favor of deposing Zelaya, a power they did not have. Alerted to the machinations, U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens intervened, warning that the U.S. would oppose to the unconstitutional action. The Honduran legislators pulled back and the coup was put on hold — but not for long.
By the next day, Zelaya’s powerful opponents were stepping up pressure on the Honduran military to act to prevent the referendum from taking place on June 28, as scheduled. A top adviser to the Honduran military high command told me that that evening they called the U.S. embassy in order to make clear that Zelaya should withdraw the referendum, “or we would be forced to act.” But this time, according to the Honduran military adviser, the warning was met with indifference. “The embassy was too naive,” the military adviser, who requested anonymity because they are still involved in Honduran political and military affairs, claimed. “They believe everything that their sources tell them.”
Arcos, the former U.S. ambassador, agreed. He told me he spoke with Llorens the morning of Zelaya’s ouster. While Llorens had been working to avoid a coup, Arcos argued that the ambassador “gave [Hondurans] space because he thought some of his political interlocutors would prevail and stop these guys.” In the end, said Arcos, “he lost control.” Llorens did not respond to a request for comment.
But, similar to the microcosm of the U.S. government, embassies are composed of representatives from an alphabet soup of agencies, each with their own contacts, interests, and chains of command.
Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya arrives in Las Manos, a border post between Nicaragua and Honduras on July 24, 2009. Photo: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images
AFTER THE COUP, the State Department told the press that U.S. officials had been “almost constantly engaged” to find a peaceful solution and had been in regular contact with the Honduran military. In fact, the two militaries were so close that the night before the coup, American military officers and diplomats were at a party at the U.S. defense attaché’s house, with their Honduran counterparts.
The closeness was demonstrated in the timeline established by multiple interviews and an official record obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by independent researcher Jeremy Bigwood. At 9 p.m., while at the party, Col. Kenneth Rodriguez, the U.S. Military Group commander in Honduras, received an urgent call asking him to meet with the head of the Honduran military, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez. The Military Group, which operates outside the embassy’s chain of command, works directly with CHDS to oversee training programs and security assistance.
Rodriguez agreed to meet, and later advised Vásquez and other top officers present to remain within the bounds of the constitution. There was no discussion of what was about to occur, according to the official record. At 10 p.m., Vásquez allegedly received a call asking him to come to the Supreme Court. Vásquez invited the American officer, who declined the offer and returned to the attaché’s party.
The defense attaché was told of the meeting, but according to email records Bigwood obtained through FOIA, it wasn’t reported to the U.S. ambassador for 12 days. The attaché, Col. Andrew Papp, told me that when he heard about the meeting, it didn’t raise any concerns. He, as well as Rodriguez, insisted that the U.S. had no advanced knowledge of the coup.
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