There were a couple of alarming news stories from Honduras
in recent days. A past blog post
of mine, “The Hillary Clinton/WikiLeaks Email Scandal That Was Neglected by the
Media: The Honduras Coup,” provides a lot of background about the political
situation in that country and our nation’s role in its chaos.
Long story short, Honduras has become a “narcocracy” after a
military coup in 2009, which was supported by the U.S. State Department under
Hillary Clinton. Honduras is now run by a
brutal right-wing regime that has unofficial police death squads. Some would
suggest that such drastic measures are necessary in a country such as Honduras,
which has one of the highest rates of gang violence in the world. However, corruption
is rampant and these death squads are
often acting as enforcers for rival drug trafficking organizations.
Furthermore, numerous high-level Honduran government officials have clear links
with drug trafficking.
That leads us to a recent story
by the Associated Press. A Honduran
drug lord, Devis Rivera Maradiaga, testified on Monday that the former
President of Honduras, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, accepted bribe money in exchange
for protection and government contracts for money laundering. Devis Rivera
Maradiaga was a leader of one of Honduras’ most powerful drug trafficking
organizations, the Cachiros, which has acted as transshipment service for
various Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel.
Devis Rivera Maradiaga made these accusations during his
testimony in a pre-sentencing hearing for Fabio Lobo (the son of Pepe Lobo),
who pled guilty
to arranging a multi-ton shipment of cocaine to U.S. last year. Naturally, the
former President, Pepe Lobo denied this claim. However, it is undeniable that
there are numerous links between the Cachiros and the Honduran economic and
social elite, including the former and current President. This report
by InSight Crime goes into extensive detail. Remarkably, this group was a
listed by the U.S. government as a known crime organization at a time when they
didn’t face any charges in their home country.
Bear in mind, the
Obama administration was a strong supporter of the Lobo even though our government
was fully aware of his administration’s corruption
and human rights abuses. In fact, our government went to great lengths to avoid
using the word “coup” to keep sending foreign
aid to their country.
Why would our government fund such atrocities? The answer is
simple. Honduras is a military ally. (You can read about this in more detail,
“The Hillary Clinton/WikiLeaks Email Scandal That Was Neglected by the Media:
The Honduras Coup.”) In short, the U.S. government provides military aid for
“counternarcotics” to various Latin American countries. In many cases, this aid is counterproductive with its anti-drug
mission, but the real purpose is to expand our military forces abroad without
declaring war. In other words, the drug war serves as a pretense for various
geopolitical/military purposes. (You can
read about this type of scenario in Mexico
and Colombia.)
It’s important to know the origin of the 2009 Honduran coup.
The official justification was that the former Honduran President, Manuel
Zelaya, was trying to amend the constitution
to allow himself to run for re-election. The economic elite feared that Zelaya
would then abuse his power to stay in office indefinitely. However, that same
group of oligarchs helped the current President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez,
amend the constitution to allow him to run for re-election.
Hernandez is certain
to face waves of protests when the next election occurs. Then again, the
Honduran government passed a controversial law last week that will suppress
their free speech rights. This law was posed
as a way of combating the country’s gang activity by barring any “illegal
association” in public. By law, any form of vandalism
that takes place during a political protest can lead to the demonstrators and
organizers being charged with “terrorism”
and facing 30 years in prison.
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(Protest of 2009 Honduran military coup-Photo-Wikimedia Commons)
It turns out that the Honduran government has used the
pretense of the drug war for subversive purposes in a similar way to the U.S.
government.
