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Summary:
This episode is an overview of the June 28, 2009 coup d’état in Honduras. Why did it happen? Who supported it? Featuring voices from Hondurans in the streets of Tegucigalpa on June 28, 2009 & examining the role of the U.S. and Canadian governments in an event that sparked the on-going economic, social and humanitarian crisis in Honduras.
Transcript:
Today is a special day. It’s the 11th anniversary of the 2009 coup in Honduras.
On June 28, 2009, many Hondurans didn’t realize that a coup d’état was unfolding in the early hours of the morning. There was lots of confusion and lots of rumors. Many couldn’t rely on the large media stations that are owned by families that supported the coup.
The following are testimonies of unidentified Hondurans in Tegucigalpa describing the morning of the coup:
“That morning when I woke up, I heard planes flying over the neighborhood where I lived. People were running and scared on the street close to my house. A bunch of people came by and asked me if I knew what was going on. Information started coming out that a coup d’état happened. That the President had disappeared but we didn’t know what had happened to him. There were rumors that he had been killed. There was a general sense of uncertainty. There were military everywhere.”
Another unidentified Honduran from Tegucigalpa, who was 16 years old at the time of the coup vividly remembers June 28, 2009:
“After the lights came back on, then we went to a peaceful gathering outside of the Presidential Palace. We were a group of around 20 people and when we got there, there were fences and a large number of soldiers, theoretically protecting the Presidential House at that time. The military began to try to disperse us with tear gas. I think it was the first time I felt the effects of tear gas. We started running, because there was practically a war breaking out near the Presidential House.”
The Fourth Ballot Box (Cuarta Urna)
Many Hondurans were excited to wake up that day. They were supposed to go to the polls to participate in a national referendum. The referendum was asking whether Hondurans wanted to add a cuarta urna or a fourth ballot box to the elections happening in November 2009.
The fourth ballot would have been added to the three other usual ballots where Hondurans voted for a President, their Congressional representatives, and municipal authorities. The fourth ballot was going to ask voters whether they wanted to hold a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution.
This was a major political project of President Zelaya. Many sectors of Honduran society supported it. These were sectors of Honduran society that had traditionally been excluded from the political decision in the country. Many saw hope in the rewriting of the Honduran Constitution.
But some Hondurans, specifically the wealthy 10-12 families that hold major economic and political power in the country, did not like this idea.
So on the morning of June 28, instead of waking up to participate in a referendum, Hondurans discovered that their President had been overthrown in a coup.
U.S. Role in the 2009 Coup
Now, President Zelaya wasn’t perfect and many doubted his intentions. Zelaya, after all, was from a wealthy family in eastern Honduras. He was part of the traditional Liberal Party with a past of defending the interests of the powerful and wealthy.
So what did happen to President Zelaya that morning?
President Zelaya was taken to the Soto Cano or Palmerola military base located in Comayagua in Central Honduras. Then he was flown out of the country to Costa Rica.
President Zelaya describes when he realized he was in the Palmerola base in an article written by Fred Alvarado and published by PEN Canada:
“The first stop the plane made was at Palmerola. When they seized me in my house and took me to the plane, they threatened me both verbally and with their guns. As I arrived in Palmerola, I looked out the window and saw troops moving, people running. I couldn’t tell if they were Honduran or foreign troops, but I knew I was in Palmerola.”
Its hard to believe the U.S. military, State Department, and the U.S. government didn’t know that a coup was going to take place that morning. 500-600 U.S. military soldiers are stationed at the Palmerola base at any time.
If you drop by the front gates of the Palmerola base, U.S. military soldiers are in charge of who can enter. Honduran soldiers stand at the front gates but to the right of the gates, there is an air-conditioned office. That is where you will find the U.S. soldiers at the base’s entrance. Its really clear who is in charge.
A year after the coup, Zelaya spoke to TeleSUR about his certainty that the U.S. was involved in the coup. Watch the TeleSUR interview here
“We can say clearly that after all the analysis, the proof, the evidence that we have one year later, we can affirm categorically that the US was behind the coup. They continue to cover it up, protecting the people that are usurping the the civil power of our country with the force of arms and continue covering it up and seeking impunity for them.”
Legitimizing the 2009 Post-coup Elections
If you ask me, the U.S. absolutely knew the coup was going to happen, if not participated in it. There isn’t much direct proof of that. But 5 months later, it became CRYSTAL CLEAR when Secretary of State Hilary Clinton wanted to brush the coup under the rug and legitimize a completely illegitimate election.
Then the US proceeded to dump millions of dollars into training, arming, and expanding the intelligence capabilities of the Honduran police, military, and intelligence structures of Honduran state security forces.
I don’t think there is one Honduran social movement leader that believes the U.S. was not involved in the June 2009 coup.
Before her murder, indigenous activist Berta Cáceres denounced the role of the U.S. in the coup. Berta mentioned Hillary Clinton’s book (the paperback version) called Hard Choices.
Berta spoke about this to Resumen Latinamericano in an interviewed aired by Democracy Now (at minute 1:40). Watch that interview here
National Front of Popular Resistance
Now, I was on the streets with Honduran people in protests every single day from mid-July when I first got to Honduras right up until the 2009 elections.
After the coup, the largest social movement – first the National Front Against the Coup D’état was formed. It then grew into the National Front of Popular Resistance or the FNRP by its Spanish acronym.
Now the FNRP was huge. It was tens of thousands of people.
And they were in the streets, every single day protesting, getting shot at, tear gassed, arrested, and hunkering down when the coup regime imposed military curfews
Reasons for the Coup
When I first got to Honduras, I wondered why wealthy and powerful Honduran families and politicians, or the golpistas as they were called, and the U.S. and Canadian government wanted President Zelaya out of power.
It would take me a few years to really understand this.
In his time in office, President Zelaya took baby steps to support the country’s poor and working class.
He raised the minimum wage and began negotiating with small farmers that had been fighting for years to recover land taken from them by large, internationally-financed African Palm companies. Zelaya gave Honduran teachers better benefits and wages and joined ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our Americas. To some, this signaled a closer relationship with Venezuela and Cuba. This was not welcomed by the United States.
And there were other things President Zelaya did that had very practical, every day impacts on people’s lives.
I remember moving into a new house in Honduras in 2013 and changing a burnt out light bulb in my house. When I removed it, I was told that it was one of the light bulbs that President Zelaya’s administration had handed out in mass numbers during his administration.
His government wanted people to use energy efficient light bulbs to help cut down their electrical costs.
Now to justify the coup, the golpistas (or coup supporters) were saying that Zelaya wanted to change the Honduran constitution to modify Presidential term limits. He allegedly wanted to do this so he could stay in power. Seeking a second President term in power is forbidden by the Honduran Constitution – in fact, up until a few years ago, it was a crime to even talk about it.
So with this justification, the Western media began to paint Zelaya as a dictator.
But 11 years later, that media scheme used to justify the 2009 coup is laughable. Because the U.S. government, corporate media in the US and the Honduran oligarchs said nothing when the current President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH), ran for an illegal second term in 2017.
Canada’s Role in the 2009 Coup
Canada and the United States were the biggest supporters of the defacto government of Honduras. The post-coup regimes would plunge the country into a deep political, economic, and humanitarian crisis.
I remember being disgusted by the Canadian and US response.
In 2009, the then Canadian Minister of State Peter Kent consistently repeated that “all parties” needed to show restraint and negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis in Honduras.
A peaceful solution? When a democratically elected President is rushed out of the country by gun point? Then when protesters hit the streets to protest, they are shot at, killed, and tear gassed?
The Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper reported that Canada was providing training to members of the Honduran army despite the military coup. The Canadian National Defense confirmed that the Canadian government maintained its military training assistance program with Honduras.
Until the next episode, thank you so much for listening.
Resistance music used in this episode:
Karla Lara, the New Resistance Hymn (Himno de la Resistencia) Listen here
Musician unknown, the other Resistance hymn (himno de la Resistencia) Listen here