by Marvin Ramírez
Horacio Dominguez, of Honduras, protests the destitution of the honduran president. (photo by by Marvin Ramírez)
Protests around the U.S.A. have been held to denounce and reject the coup d’état in the Republic of Honduras that ousted down President Manuel Zelaya, whose mandate was elected by popular vote.
In San Francisco, several dozens people marched on the sidewalk of the building where the Consulate of Honduras is located on June 29, rejecting the new “government of facto ” instituted by the military after the removal of Zelaya, whose term in office ends in six months.
“The military coup that removed from power the elected president of Honduras, provoked unanimous repudiation on a global scale. But the response of some countries has been more reluctant than that of others and the ambivalence of Washington has begun to arouse suspicion about what really the American government is trying to accomplish in this situation,” wrote Mark Weisbrot for The Guardian Unlimited.
According to his comment, the first declarations from the White House in response to the coup d’ etat were weak and evasive.
In them the coup was not denounced, but rather it was calling to “all the political and social actors in Honduras to respect1the democratic norms, the Constitutional state and the principles of the Democratic Inter-American Letter.”
The neighbor governments of Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador did the first warnings by announcing a suspension of commerce for 48 hours.
Meanwhile, the armed forces were still occupying the main arteries of the country, taking control of the press, paralyzing the country, while the Organization of American States was considering the expulsion of Honduras from this organization.
At this very moment, rifles M-16 paid with American dollars, and with labels “ Made in the USA,” point at thousands peaceful, wrote Weisbrot.
“General Romeo Vásquez and other military leaders, received training in counter-insurgency in the Institute for the Security and Hemispherical Cooperation previously known as the School of the Americas, which is responsible for the training of many who perpetrated atrocities in the Americas.”
Zelaya was removed from his house at gunpoint by soldiers and fl own to exile on June 25, after trying to lead a referendum that would permit reelection. At present a president only can be elected for a period of four years.
With the coup d’état, it has been unveiled the pretention that Latin America has stopped being a semicolony of the Yankee imperialism and that a series of diplomatic instances, like the Summit of Rio – the Unasur or even the ALBA -, has emancipated it from the tutelage of the fi nancial international capital, commented, Jorge Altamira, of the Working Press.
At press time of this edition, it was expected that President Zelaya would return to Honduras accompanied by several Latin-American presidents to reinstate himself in power, despite of threats from the military that he would be arrested and prosecuted.
