Varieties of imperial decline - Honduras and Miranda
by Toni Solo
Maybe it was always unfair, comparing President George W. Bush Bush to Captain Queeg, Herman Wouk's fictional crackpot
destroyer captain.. Bush's condition in fact reflects a truly royal, breakneck-speed dementia. In less than a decade,
his reign has re-enacted over a hundred years of Spain's colonial decline and mutation from despotism to dictatorship,
though the determination of King Carlos Alfonso Bush to destroy the Republic has not yet provoked civil war. To judge
the accuracy of the comparison, consider the undeniable collapse of US influence in its former Latin American colonial
backyard, its catastrophic foreign colonial wars, its funny-money economy and the wholesale executive tyranny now
effective in the United States itself.
Despite the neat independence dates, fixing the precise moment at which Spain lost its colonial grip on Latin America is
almost impossible. The same is true now of the United States. Was it the electoral Dien Bien Phu of the 2004 Venezuelan
recall vote? Or the 2005-2006 election round that saw Evo Morales take power in Bolivia, Rafael Correa win in Ecuador
and Daniel Ortega get elected again in Nicaragua? Or was it when Venezuela made two mega-refinery deals with Nicaragua
and Ecuador respectively, worth a total of nearly US$10bn just this July? Or was it when President Manuel Zelaya signed
up to ALBA?
Real-world history : make-believe corporate media mirror
That last event has yet to happen, more on that later; first, those refineries. On July 17th, Ecuadoran energy Minister
Jorge Alban announced agreement with the Venezuelan government to build a refinery in Ecuador worth US$5.5bn, capable of
processing up to 300,000 barrels of oil a day. The project will put an end to Ecuador's humiliating neo-colonial status
as a major petroleum exporting country incapable of refining its own crude oil. Minister Alban said, "The
Ecuadoran-Venezuelan commitment is solid, all that's missing is to work out procedures."(1)
On July 20th Presidents Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega Saavedra of Nicaragua laid the foundation stone
for a US$4 billion oil refinery called "El Sueño Supremo de Bolívar" - the Supreme Dream of Bolívar. The refinery,
located on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, near the university city of Leon, will be capable of processing 150,000
barrels of oil a day. All told, the project will create over 3000 local jobs and is projected to generate profits of
US$700 million a year. A joint venture company - ALBANISA - formed by the two State oil companies of Venezuela and
Nicaragua, with 55% and 45% holdings respectively, will run the project. (2)
This epoch-making event in Latin America's history puts the mean, self-serving, debt-plus-aid development cooperation
model of the United States and its allies into perspective. Like so much real-world news, it was ignored by much of the
international corporate media. Where it was reported, by Fox News or CBS for example, the usual anti-Chavez spin
obscured its real meaning. Media like the UK's Guardian newspaper and the BBC ignored the historic inauguration of the
refinery. They chose instead to squeeze yet more sour Americanist we've-heard-it-all-before shock horror out of the
living-dead RCTV media saga.
Their reports isolated remarks from one of Chavez's six-hour Alo Presidente television programmes, warning visiting
foreign politicians like Mexico's PAN party President Manuel Espino not to exploit Venezuela's democracy to make
interventionist political attacks on the Venezuelan government. (3) Neither the Guardian nor the BBC mentioned that, in
Mexico, Espino's PAN party functionaries are applying official advertising boycotts to media they dislike, for example
the "A.M" newspaper in Guanajuato and the widely respected "Monitor" radio current affairs programme, which has been
forced to close. (4)
ALBA marches on
Regardless of the robotic Americanist auto-pilot propaganda marketed by corporate media perception managers, the ALBA
(Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) integration initiative, led by Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua,
continues to develop momentum. The latest sign of its potential reach was the presence of Honduran President Manuel
Zelaya and Panama's President Martin Torrijos of Panama at the July 19th celebration in Nicaragua of the 28th
anniversary of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship and the victory of the Sandinista Revolution. They shared the
platform with Daniel Ortega and with Hugo Chavez.
Panama already has an agreement with Venezuela for a gas pipeline planned to run from Venezuela's Maracaibo gas lakes to
the Panama Canal. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya's rapprochement with ALBA results directly from Ortega's election to
a second presidential term, in 2006. Nicaragua's immediate integration into ALBA following Ortega's presidential
inauguration opened up Central America to ALBA's 21st Century Socialism after the US State Department and then-US Trade
Representative Robert Zoellick - now President of the World Bank - thought they had sewn up the region with the Central
American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) at the end of 2005.
One self-evident reason Manuel Zelaya is interested in better relations with Venezuela is clear if one asks who will
resolve urgently pressing Central American energy problems, not just in terms of high oil prices, but in terms of
electricity generating capacity. Is the US government offering solidarity-based, preferential oil deals and help with
electricity generation? No. But Venezuela is. Here's a press release on a meeting President Bush held with Manuel Zelaya
back in September 2006.
"Zelaya and Bush also discussed the energy situation in Honduras. Honduras is one of the Western Hemisphere nations most
dependent on imported oil, including oil to generate electricity, (Dan) Fisk said. "This is something of great concern
to President Zelaya and Hondurans," he explained, "President Zelaya wanted to give the President a brief on his thinking
on how to proceed on this and to offer (President Zelaya's) proposal to create a mechanism to try to lower energy
costs." The White House official said that Bush's response to the Honduran leader stressed the importance of relying on
market mechanisms and of limits on government interference. Bush also reaffirmed his strong interest in considering
alternative sources of fuel and energy, discussed ethanol and other fuel alternatives, and encouraged Central Americans
to explore how sugar cane can be converted into ethanol." (5)
Translation: "Bush said to Zelaya, "Forget US help with your energy difficulties. Turn your maize and sugar into fuel.
Let the people eat cake (baked from genetically modified US grain)."
No wonder, then, that in January this year Zelaya's government took temporary control of oil terminals belonging to
Chevron and Esso.(6) The move broke up a service station cartel that was costing Honduras over US$60 million a year
courtesy of the deregulated "free market". In March this year, Honduras renewed diplomatic relations with Cuba. (7)
President Zelaya is likely to visit Cuba in August, the first Honduran president to do so in decades. (8) Against Bush
regime wishes, Zelaya has also appointed Jorge Arturo Reina, a leading centre-left Liberal Party politician, as Honduran
ambassador to the UN.
Tegucigalpa tantrums
The pro-Bush regime Honduran ex-ambassador to the UN, Enrique Ortez Colindres, declared that by going to Managua, Zelaya
"is installing an anti-yankee government and provoking division in Central America". Charles Ford, current US
ambassador-proconsul in Honduras, condemned President Zelaya's presence in Managua accompanying Hugo Chavez for the
anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution , saying: "I think the (Honduran) government in a very clear way has defined
its interests and has defined the people with whom it wants to be." (9)
Not just energy difficulties are making President Zelaya drift into the ALBA camp. The same report cites President
Zelaya claiming the US has deported 40,000 Hondurans just this year - women and men desperately seeking a better life in
the US so as to be able to support their families back home. Zelaya and Chavez face other criticism, apart from that of
the US ambassador. Influential Honduran Catholic Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga opined recently that, "Chávez thinks he is
a God with the right to trample on everyone's rights, with an arrogance that one has seen in history already in other
dictators".
Rodriguez Maradiaga received a typically caustic response from President Chavez who called the Cardinal an "imperialist
parrot". Still, Manuel Zelaya managed to persuade Hugo Chavez to offer Rodriguez Maradiaga an apology - though Chavez
insisted on inviting the Cardinal to Venezuela so he can have learn some facts before voicing his jaundiced opinions.
(10) Manuel Zelaya announced the Cardinal's acquiescence to Chavez's apology at the airport where he was seeing off over
100 Hondurans heading for Caracas to receive free medical treatment as part of Venezuela's cooperation programme with
the Honduran government.
The Miranda motif
Signs are that the Honduran government at the very least will sign up to a preferential energy deal with Venezuela, even
if it does not immediately join Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua in ALBA. This has been on the cards ever since
CAFTA was railroaded through the "Finlandized" Central American parliaments by their respective US puppet regimes. Only
Costa Rica has yet to ratify CAFTA, a sell-out investment treaty dressed up as a trade deal. It overwhelmingly favours
US corporations. The benefits for Central American businesses and agriculture have so far turned out to be minimal or
negative, offering zero solutions to the region's fundamental energy problems, hence the relevance of ALBA's integrated
trade, energy and social investment model.
King Carlos-Alfonso-Bush and his Ministro de Indias, Thomas Shannon, known more prosaically as Assistant Secretary of
State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, seem dumbly to play out the self-same roles as their Carlist predecessors in
Spain. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias reincarnates and surpasses the role Francisco de Miranda lived out for
the Spanish kings, Carlos the Third and Carlos the Fourth. Those monarchs dogged Miranda's efforts to mount a republican
revolution in Latin America against their empire. Attacks from Catholic Church hierarchs in Venezuela and foreign
prelates like Rodriguez Maradiaga echo Miranda's persecution by the Holy Inquisition.
In November 1785, Spain's ambassador to Paris, the Count of Aranda wrote about Miranda to the Spanish Prime Minister of
the time, "He is getting the world into such a state and in America there may well be so many sparks that, if care is
not taken, a man like this on his own could cause more damage than a very great number." (11) Little has changed after
over two hundred and twenty years. Once-loyal imperial satrapy, Honduras - John Negroponte's former death-squad terror
stomping ground - is feeling its way out of the imperial dark and into ALBA's new dawn. Another downward ratchet in the
US empire's decline.
Notes:
1. "Ecuador y Venezuela acuerdan construir refinería", Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias,17/07/07
2. "Un megaproyecto para salir de la megamiseria en que nos dejóel neoliberalismo" Radio La Primerisima, Managua
21/7/2007
3. "Criticise me and you're out, Chávez warns foreigners" Rory Carroll, Guardian, 24/7/2007 - and - "Chavez to expel
foreign critics", bbc.co.uk, 23/7/2007
4. "Periódico mexicano, víctima de boicot publicitario", CERIGUA, Argenpress.info, 20/07/2007 - and - "Se cierra
'Monitor', otro golpe a la libertad" Julio Pomar, Argenpress.info, 01/07/2007
5. "Bush Meets with Salvadoran, Honduran Presidents in New York" Scott Miller, Washington File Staff Writer, September
19th 2006, http://useu.usmission.gov Brussels, Belgium
6. "Honduras temporarily grabs Exxon, Chevron terminals", Reuters, January 14th 2007
7. "Honduras sends first ambassador to Cuba in decades" Caribbean Net News, March 02, 2007
8. "Presidente Honduras irá a Cuba por primera vez en casi 50 años", www.cubaverdad.net, July 20th, 2007
9. "Bush molesto con Zelaya" El Nuevo Diario, Managua, 22/7/2007
10. "Honduran church protests against Chavez insult to cardinal"
http://english.eluniversal.com/2007/07/24/en_pol_art_honduran-church-prot_24A905039.shtml - and - "Cardenal acepta
disculpas de Hugo Chávez", http://www.laprensahn.com/ediciones/2007/07/27/cardenal_acepta_disculpas_de_hugo_chavez_dice_presidente_zelaya - and - "Chávez ofrece disculpas a Card. Rodríguez Maradiaga pero pide que se rectifique" http://www.aciprensa.com/noticia.php?n=17787
11. Note to p.131of "Francisco de Miranda : precursor de las independencias de America Latina" by Carmen L. Bohórquez
Morán. Fundación Editorial El Perro y la Rana. Caracas. 2006. ISBN 980-396-238-8 taken from A. Grisanti, "Miranda
juzgado por los funcionarios españoles de su tiempo. Grisanti Editores. Caracas. 1954
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Toni Solo is an activist based in Central America - toni.tortillaconsal.com