The Road to Zelaya’s Return: Money, Guns and Social Movements in Honduras

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Bertha Cáceres, a leader of COPINH, the Front Against the Coup, and a mother of four children, spoke of the importance of the constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution. It was partly this push for constitutional reform, which Zelaya backed along with broad support from the Honduran people, that led to the coup. When speaking of the assembly, Cáceres says, "For the first time we would be able to establish a precedent for the emancipation of women, to begin to break these forms of domination. The current constitution never mentions women, not once, so to establish our human rights, our reproductive, sexual, political, social, and economic rights as women would be to really confront this system of domination."(14) 

Cáceres discussed the work of the women’s movement for the new constitution “to dismantle this belief that others have the right to make decisions about our bodies, to start guaranteeing that women are the owners and have autonomous rights to their bodies. It is a political act; a political proposal. … The ability to have and guarantee access to land, territories, cultures, health, education, art, dignified and decent employment for women, and many other things, are elements that we must guarantee in this process of a new constitutional assembly that leads to a real process of liberation.”(15)

Gilberto Rios, from the Front Against the Coup spoke of how the coup has galvanized a broad movement in the country. “In the past, when we called for people to protest in the streets, they came out, but not in the same numbers as what is happening now. In recent days, we have had protests that start in the morning and stay in the streets all day. At night, there are convoys of cars in major cities. It shows that the workers are participating, and the middle class is also coming out.” He also affirmed that the movement is entirely grassroots. “The leftist political parties recognize they do not control any part of the popular movement.”(16)

Leticia Salomón, the Director of Scientific Research for the National Autonomous University of Honduras said, “It doesn’t matter who wins the elections in November, the next government will have to deal with this important social force if it hopes to even minimally govern the country.”(17)

World Isolates Coup Regime

At the North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico in August, President Barack Obama said "critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we’re always intervening and the Yankees need to get out of Latin America. You can’t have it both ways."(18) But as New York University history professor and author Greg Grandin points out, all many are asking is for the US to act multilaterally with the OAS – it did the opposite by defying the OAS and appointing Arias as the mediator between Michelleti and Zelaya. In addition, through its financial support to the regime, the US has been far from taking a neutral stance.(19) Indeed, Washington has been acting unilaterally since the beginning by not refusing to follow the lead of other nations in putting more pressure on the coup government.(20)

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However, US State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said on September 3rd that “At this moment, we would not be able to support the outcome of the [November] elections [in Honduras].”(21) Zelaya was happy to hear this news from Washington. He said the move "puts the United States in line with Latin America, because it was not said before."(22)  

In addition to the US, the EU, the OAS, union leaders in Honduras and members of the Front Against the Coup say they will not recognize the election results.(23) Honduras business owners have devised their own plan to increase voting; they’ll be giving discounts to everyone who casts a ballot and then comes into their business with ink on their fingers, showing that they’ve voted.(24)

The US State Department did end up revoking the US visas of over a dozen officials in the coup government, including Michelleti.(25) But the US could go further by blocking members of the regime from using US banks.(26)

Various levels of funding to Honduras from the US and other governments and institutions have been cut since the coup took place. “On Sept. 3, the State Department announced the termination of $33 million dollars, including $11 million in Millennium Challenge Funds and approximately $22 million in State Department funds,” according to Latin American analyst Laura Carlsen. The IMF said that due to the coup, Honduras won’t have access to $150 million in assistance.(27) A spokesperson from the IMF said the institution cut off all aid to the country three days after the coup.(28) 

On July 2, the US cut the following spending: $1.9 million from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and $16.5 million in military funding.(29) The Inter-American Development Bank, and the Central American Bank of Economic Integration all cut lending to the Honduran government.(30) The UN has cut off various forms of aid to Honduras.(31) In addition, the EU froze $92 million in aid and the OAS froze aid and began trade blocks against the coup government.(32)

However, “For legalistic reasons, [the US State Department] continued to fall short of calling the coup a ‘military’ coup,” explained Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy. “This means that some anti-poverty aid is being maintained, soldiers whose training was already paid for won’t be sent back to Honduras, and State can flexibly restore aid once democracy returns.”(33)

“State Department officials closed the door on determining legally that a military coup took place in Honduras and requiring application of Section 7008 of the Foreign Operations law,” Carlsen explained. “They assured reporters that all funds that could be suspended under Section 7008 have now been suspended … The State Department has admitted that $70 million in aid-over twice the amount suspended-will still flow to the coup.”(34)

The Kansas City-based Cross-Border Network went on a delegation to Honduras after the coup and reported that "We met the U.S Ambassador who agreed it was a military coup even though the State Department won’t call it that, thus invoking the law requiring cut off of all remaining aid."(35)

Declaring the coup a coup, according to Grandin, “would automatically trigger certain cutoffs, financial cutoffs, it also would have to be certified by Congress. And that’s a fight that I think Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton don’t want, because the Republicans, led by Connie Mack and other foreign policy conservatives, regime change conservatives, Republicans, have seized on this issue to basically try to link Obama with Hugo Chavez and the Latin American left. And they certainly don’t want to kick it into Congress, where it’ll be debated, because to call it a coup would have to be certified by Congress.”(36)