La Jornada, July 27, 2009, p.19.
Obama and the Cunning Micheletti
by Carlos Fazio
The oligarchical-military coup in Honduras represents an Obama-Clinton Administration strategy which is designed to push
back the advances of democratically elected governments so that its imperial power can be maintained and consolidated in
some “hot zones” of the planet. Such a strategy operates from a several prong political base, combining direct military
intervention (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Irak) with clandestine and destabilizing operations (Venezuela, Iran, Honduras,
Bolivia, Ecuador) and a two way diplomacy, that seeks to utilize the instruments and initiatives inherited by Barack
Obama from the Bush Administration
The classist attack on the weakest Latin American link was undertaken to turn back the democratic government of Manuel
Zelaya so that a new de facto client regime could be imposed in the empire´s back yard. The coup hopes to reinforce the
conservative militarized pole of the Plan Puebla Panama/Merida Initiative, led by Mexico and Colombia. The progressive
advances in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador complicated Washington´s geopolitical plans, that sought to bring an
interventionist platform in South America into line focusing upon hydrocarbons in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and the
immense Amazon and the Guarani water resources. In that sense, it was also a blow against ALBA, the Bolivian Alternative
for the Americas (la Alternativa Boliviana para las Americas).
To carry out the conspiracy, the State Department and Pentagon used the Honduran military high command that has been
structurally penetrated by US security and intelligence organisms. The coup´s general, Romero Vázquez, its cunning
adviser Roberto Micheletti and the founder of the 1980´s squadrons of death Billy Joya Améndola, were “exemplary
students” in the US School of the Americas (la Escuela de las Américas). The military coup participants acted like an
occupying army in their own country. But Honduras is also occupied by the United States which controls the Soto Cano (or
Palmerola) military base where the force of the Tarea Conjunta Bravo can be found, consisting of half a thousand
military personnel with advanced espionage and interventionist equipment including air combat equipment such as the
HU-60, the Black Hawk and the CH-47 Chinook.
That base is part of a network of Advanced Operating Posts (FOL) of the Pentagon, integrated by Comalapa in El Salvador,
Guantánamo in Cuba, Arruba, Curazo and Manta, in the Ecuadorian Pacific. Similar to Ecuador´s president´s decision about
the Manta base, Zelaya had told the White House of his intention to convert Soto Cano into an international commercial
airport which would be financed by Alba and Petro-Caribe. In substitution for Manta, the Pentagon succeeded in
convincing Álvaro Uribe to put (Colombian) military bases at its disposal in Palanquera (Cundinamarca) Apiay (Meta) and
Malambo (Atlántico) which will convert Colombia into the Israel of Latin America.
The hawks in the Department of State and the Pentagon also fell back upon their old connections with the primitive
Honduran oligarchy which controls Congress and the Supreme Court and they (also) counted upon the legitimization of
Cardenal Oscar Rodríguez Madariaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa. What we witnessed, then, was a civic-military coup of US
design, with the consensus of the fascist powers.
But, the other evil coup which got support in Honduras was the media war. (The coup) sought its legitimacy via the media
which is under private monopolistic control. In particular, the Honduran newspapers La Prensa de San Pedro Sula and El
Heraldo of Tegucigalpa, whose proprietor is Jorge Anahuati, a dealer of State arms and drugs and director of the
Inter-American Press Society (SIP) an old arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ever since the cold war days; the
daily La Tribuna of San Pedro Sula, run by the conservative businessman Carlos Roberto Facussé, ex-president of Honduras
(1988-2002), the daily Tiempo of Tegucigalpa which belongs to Jaime Rosenthal Oliva, businessman, banker and Secretary
General of the Liberal Party (Partido Liberal); the network of television channels of José Rafael Ferrari, and with
involvement in the HRN radio chain. Likewise, the coup counted upon the support of US CNN which, from the first moment,
looked for a way of legalizing the putchistas and incriminating Zelaya as well as upon the other large Latin American
media tied to SIP.
The backward strategy of the Clinton clan and the institutional apparatus at the service of the energy military
industrial complex, that ends up with a policy of events that would be endorsed by Obama, owes much to the key role
played by the actual ambassador in Tegucigalpa, the Cuban-US citizen Hugo Llorens. Connected to the ex intelligence czar
John Dimitri Negroponte and the ultra conservative Otto Reich, protector of the Cuban-US mafia in Miami, Llorens
coordinated the expulsion of Manuel Zeylaya. He is part of a network of diplomats named in the last days of the Bush
Administration, all of whom are experts in undercover operations and psychological warfare against Cuba and Venezuela:
Robert Blau in the El Salvador Embassy: Stephen McFarland in Guatemala and Robert Callahan in Managua, Nicaragua.
With her formal ambiguities, Hillary Clinton has legitimized the new privatized Micheletti and Company regime, and via
the conduct of Öscar Arias, an old Washington lackey, has pushed forward a “negotiation-trap” to give the coup leaders
time to strengthen their power and to wear down the heroic popular Honduran resistance. Obama will have to decide to
label what has happened a coup d´etat, recall Ambassador Llorens and cut US assistance to Honduras or continue backing
down before the hard wing of the imperial system.
Translated by William S. Stone: wstoneoax@yahoo.com
To read the original version in Spanish, please see the following link:
ENDS