Five Years Since Honduras Coup

Five years ago today I wrote a post entitled, "Coup in Honduras" and then wrote about the wretched, twisting, and some outright strange saga throughout the summer. It made Hondurans worse off, further damaged an already weak Honduran polyarchy, undermined the Obama administration's rhetorical commitment to democracy, reasserted the military's overtly political role, and opened up more space for drug trafficking organizations.

Sadly, no one mentions the coup in the context of unaccompanied Central American crossing the U.S. border illegally, but it matters. Honduras was already fragile and the coup ripped it up even more, intensifying the incentive to leave. Or at least to find a way to have your children leave. In the United States, though, I don't know how many people even remember it happened, much less what long-term effects it fostered.

Tweeting the Honduran Election

Tweeting a photo of yourself praying thanks to God for winning an election that you have not yet won is perhaps the best visual of how messed up the Honduran election is. Juan Orlando Hernández's Partido Nacional also tweeted how thankful his wife was to God (who must truly work in mysterious ways) for early vote counts. So there was Hernández tweeting he won while Xiomara Castro tweeted that she is the new president of the country. Her Partido Libre tweeted that (at least for now, I guess) it wasn't recognizing any official results. It was doing that in part because the TSE had tweeted that Hernández was leading. I'm actually a bit surprised that Nicolás Maduro has had nothing to tweet about it at all.

Funny how Twitter became the medium of choice and as far as I can tell also became the primary source for the mainstream media. When more results are released a few hours from now, you can bet Twitter will be aflame.

Honduras: Who Do Coup Supporters Support?

Via Just the Facts (which always has a good collection of news stories and sends a selection by email) maybe a Central Americanist can help me out with this story from Honduras:

Líderes empresariales hondureños que estuvieron en las primeras filas del golpe de Estado que derrocó en 2009 al presidente Manuel Zelaya consideran ahora a Xiomara Castro, candidata de la organización Libre y esposa del exmandatario derrocado, como una opción de cambio para Honduras en las elecciones del 24 de noviembre. 

El presidente de la influyente Asociación Nacional de Industriales (ANDI), Adolfo Facussé, quien se manifestó a favor del golpe del 28 de junio de 2009, ha dado la sorpresa: declara simpatías hacia la aspirante del partido Libertad y Refundación (Libre), fundado por Zelaya. 

"Tenemos empresarios de todos los partidos. Libre tiene algo que me atrae mucho a mí que es la promesa del cambio. El país definitivamente tiene que cambiar", afirmó a la AFP el influyente empresario, quien calificó al actual gobierno de Porfirio Lobo como "un desastre".

To sum up: business leaders who supported a coup to make sure that nothing really changed now support the wife of the man they overthrew in 2009 because she represents change.

And it gets weirder:

Zelaya fue derrocado por una alianza de militares, políticos y empresarios bajo el argumento de que estaba proponiendo hacer una consulta para cambiar la Constitución para reelegirse en el cargo, algo prohibido por la misma Constitución hondureña. Los golpistas alegaron que esa parte de la normativa primaria de Honduras era intocable, pero ahora ya hablan abiertamente de la posibilidad de modificarla para abrir esa puerta.

To sum up: in 2009 we screwed the country by overthrowing a president because he proposed reforming the constitution. Now we think we might want to reform the constitution.

There must be something I am missing here.

Alvaro Uribe on Democracy

Alvaro Uribe testified before the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House. The title was "Challenges to Democracy in the Western Hemisphere." It is pretty much what you would expect: ALBA countries are bad, most other countries are pretty good, and Juan Manuel Santos is a jerk for negotiating with the FARC.

One unstated but very clear theme is that "democracy" must involve "good investment climate." That is especially prominent in the brief discussion of Honduras:

In Honduras, the 2010 elections that followed the 2009 exile of President Manuel Zelaya, which resulted in the election of Porfirio Lobo as a Honduras’ new president, have allowed the country to undergo a reconciliation process among political groups and create a more stable investment climate. 

That's a warped view, to say the least, and it is not widely shared. Even conservatives who hate Mel Zelaya are not necessarily fond of Porfirio Lobo. Meanwhile, the Honduran way of attracting foreign investment has been to propose bubble cities that can help foreigners forget they're in Honduras.

The point is, though, that democracy should not have investment climate as part of its definition, though implicitly it often does for policy makers.

Honduras Travel Warning

There is a new U.S. State Department travel warning for Honduras. It is frank, especially in terms of directly implicating the police in crime.

Members of the Honduran National Police have been known to engage in criminal activity, including murder. The Government of Honduras lacks sufficient resources to properly investigate and prosecute cases, and to deter violent crime. In practice, this means police may take hours to arrive at the scene of a violent crime or not respond at all.

Similar language was used in November 2012, but go back to 2009 and you don't see the reference to police criminal activity. This in part can help explain why 21 senators have called on the Obama administration to review its security aid to Honduras. At the very least, the administration has cut funds for police programs that don't work, but resistance to broader cuts may be presaged by the following bit from the warning:

The Honduran government is in the early stages of substantial reforms to its criminal justice institutions.

I don't know how long the "early stages" last. See Just the Facts for a survey of U.S. aid to Honduras. It's pretty small compared to aid to the rest of the region, but obviously Honduras is a small country and even "pretty small" adds up.
Here is Human Rights Watch's take on the police:

In December 2011, Congress established an independent body, the Directorate for Investigation and Evaluation of the Police Career, to evaluate police performance and remove officers implicated in corruption and criminal activity, including human rights abuses. As of October 2012, the unit had referred only two police officers—including a former director of the police criminal investigation division—to the attorney general’s office for prosecution for their alleged involvement in the escape of four officers accused of the 2011 killing of two university students. 

In June 2012, President Lobo established an independent commission consisting of three Honduran and two foreign experts to propose wide-ranging reforms of the police, the attorney general’s office, and the courts.

The Directorate for Investigation and Evaluation of the Police Career is the one the U.S. stopped funding.

This is a terrible situation. Sending more aid to a corrupt and violent organization only serves to exacerbate human rights abuses in Honduras. Cutting aid entirely probably means accepting the status quo because we cannot expect that action to prompt democratic reform. But is there any realistic way of sending aid that actually contributes to reducing police violence?