Five Central AMerican presidents and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, May 2011
On May 22, Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa and former president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales signed an agreement ‘For National Reconciliation and the Consolidation of the Democratic System in the Republic of Honduras.’
Lobo was elected in November 2009 in a rigged vote organized by the regime installed through the June 28, 2009 military coup that overthrew Zelaya. The majority of Latin American and Caribbean nations refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Lobo government, despite the strong support it received from the United States and Canada.
(See original article for links: http://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/agreement-signed-for-democratic-rights-in-honduras/)
The present agreement, finalized in Cartagena, Colombia, also bears the signatures of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro (on behalf of President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías) as witnesses.
This agreement opens the door to significant changes in the Central American political landscape and to the re-entry of Honduras into the Organization of American States (OAS) and SICA (Central American Integration System).
An earlier article on this website, “Freedom for Joaquín Pérez Becerra!” discussed the context that led Colombia and Venezuelan presidents to join in sponsoring that initiative.
The Resistance welcomes the agreement
In a May 23 statement, the Political Committee of the National Front for People’s Resistance (FNRP), the main organization coordinating popular resistance to the coup inside Honduras, noted that “this agreement for international mediation enables us to put an end to our exile [and] reinforce our process for the refoundation of Honduras.” It issued a “call to all members of the resistance inside and outside Honduras to unite in a great mobilization to greet and welcome our leader and the General Coordinator of the FNRP, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, at 11 a.m., May 28, 2011, at the International Airport.” The statement noted that the agreement complied with the four conditions set by the FNRP.
The FNRP also expressed “thanks for the process of international mediation” carried out by the Venezuelan and Colombian presidents.
By the terms of the Cartagena agreement, the signatories commit themselves to:
* Guarantee the return to Honduras in security and liberty of Zelaya and all others exiled as a result of the crisis. (Over 200 other exiled leaders of the resistance are also now able to return under the terms of the agreement.)
* Assure conditions in which the FNRP can gain recognition as a legal political party.
* Reaffirm the constitutional right to initiate plebiscites, particularly with respect to the FNRP project of convening a National Constituent Assembly. (It was President Zelaya’s move to hold a non-binding plebiscite on calling a Constituent Assembly that the organizers of the 2009 coup cited to justify their action.)
* Create a Secretariat of Justice and Human Rights to secure human rights in Honduras and invite the UN Human Rights Commission to establish an office in Honduras.
* Constitute a Monitoring (Verification) Commission, consisting initially of the Colombian and Venezuelan presidencies, to help assure the successful implementation of the agreement.
U.S. disruption attempt
Notably absent from discussions leading to the Cartagena Agreement was the United States, which has long been the arbiter of Honduran politics. Washington kept silent on the Cartagena mediation process, while in fact attempting to torpedo it.
Alexander Main, an analyst for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted on May 19 that when, as part of the mediation process, Honduran courts dropped charges against Zelaya, the U.S. State Department issued an “exuberant statement” the following day calling for the suspension of Honduras from the Organization of American States (OAS) to be “immediately lifted” – a move that would have cut short the Cartagena mediation process. This suspension, enacted in protest against the coup, was one of the factors driving the illegitimate Honduran regime to seek mediation. (See “What Now for a Post-Coup Honduras“)
“For good measure,” Main says, “the [U.S.] statement noted that ‘since his inauguration, President Lobo has moved swiftly to pursue national reconciliation, strengthen governance, stabilize the economy, and improve human rights conditions.’”
In fact, according to the Committee of Family Members of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH), politically motivated killings have taken the lives of 34 members of the resistance and 10 journalists since Lobo took office. No killers have been prosecuted either for these crimes or for the 300 killings by state security forces since the coup.
Showdown at the OAS
The U.S. canvassed energetically among Central and South American countries subject to its influence for support for immediate reinstatement of Honduras – prior to the conclusion of the mediation process. “In mid-May these divisions came to a head when a diplomatic tussle took place at the OAS,” Main reports.
In Main’s opinion, “the U.S. is not prepared to accept a political mediation in Honduras in which it doesn’t play a leading role. The U.S. has traditionally been deeply involved in the internal affairs of Honduras,” and “the country continues to be of great strategic importance to the U.S.”
The OAS Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, called a meeting of the OAS Permanent Council that was to consider readmitting the de facto Honduran regime. According to a reliable source at the OAS, Main reports, several Latin American countries, apparently including Colombia, demanded cancellation of the meeting on the grounds that it was “premature.” Within hours, the meeting was cancelled.
The failure of this U.S.-inspired maneuver opened the road for the signing of the Cartagena agreement nine days later.
The Cartagena agreement, and the process that facilitated it, marks an important victory for the Honduran resistance. More broadly, it reinforces the process of Indo-Latin American and Caribbean efforts to shape their own national and regional policies free from imperialist domination. (See “Honduras se reintegra al CA-4.”) It developed outside the OAS framework, and will help to strengthen and consolidate the new Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) that will meet this coming July in Caracas, Venezuela, under the joint chairmanship of that country and Chile.
Regional sovereignty
In a joint statement, the four presidents called on the OAS to re-admit Honduras, and new agreements were also announced regarding a Customs Union of the four countries. These measures mark a defeat for those forces in Central America inimical to the regional integration process, including the Costa Rican government and its hostile campaign to isolate Sandinista Nicaragua diplomatically and economically.
Need for continued solidarity
The establishment of the Colombia-Venezuela monitoring commission will be vital to keeping the pressure on the Lobo government. Friends of Honduran democracy in North America will need to do some monitoring as well, as an expression of continued solidarity with the Honduran people.
Further reading:
Toni Solo, “Varieties of Imperial Decline: Another Setback for the U.S. in Latin America,” May 23, 2011 (reprinted below)
Ida Garberi, “El regreso de Mel Zelaya es un deber, el retorno de Honduras en la OEA es indigno,” May 24, 2011
Varieties of imperial decline : another setback for the U.S. in Latin America
By Toni Solo
Published on Tortilla con sal, May 23rd 2011
The NATO system of hypocrisy and sadism is matched by a financial economy dependent on taxpayer-funded bailouts, crude covert market-rigging and money laundering of all kinds. The NATO regimes' growing criminality marks the accelerating pace of their decline. Child-killer-and-family-destroyer-in-Chief Barack Obama seems fated to preside over a decisive phase in the continuing decline of the United States relative to its global competitors.
The latest event marking the particular decline of US political and economic influence in the world took place in Central America on Sunday May 22nd. Presidents Mauricio Funes of El Salvador, Alvaro Colom of Guatemala and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua met in the Nicaraguan capital Managua to formally recognise the government of President Porfirio Lobo of Honduras. These Central American Presidents announced the normalization of relations with Honduras permitting the normal working of the Central American Integration System and the reintegration of Honduras into the Organization of American States.
This historic regional diplomatic breakthrough resulted from months of discussions and negotiations between President Lobo and ex-President Manuel Zelaya over how to reconcile the demands of the Honduran resistance led by Manuel Zelaya and the position of the Lobo's hitherto illegitimate regime. The negotiations were decisively facilitated and backed by Presidents Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Hugo Chavez Frías of Venezuela. They took place against clear displeasure and low-key resistance from the US State Department.
Historic significance
The peaceful return of former President Zelaya to Honduras after almost two years of enforced exile may only be a first flawed step towards healing the deep constitutional wounds caused in Honduras by the military coup of June 28th 2009. But, regardless of events over the next couple of years prior to new elections in Honduras in 2013, the move towards peaceful reconciliation has very deep political and economic significance. It takes place when Latin American and Caribbean governments are due to meet in Caracas in July to form a new regional forum without the United States and Canada.
That July meeting in Caracas may well mark the beginning of the demise of the Organization of American States. Politically, the leadership shown by Colombia and Venezuela to resolve the Honduran crisis has few precedents, especially given the deep ideological divisions between the two governments. It demonstrates a growing awareness in Latin America that dependence on the US government for leadership is counterproductive in terms of the region's political and economic development. In terms of relations within the region, the move by Colombia and Venezuela also sets a marker in relation to the regional political dominance of Brazil.
The political dilemma facing right-wing governments like those of Colombia and Honduras – and, by implication Peru, Chile and Mexico – is that if they do not cooperate with regional neighbours, all they can expect from the United States is moral and increasingly irrelevant and counterproductive military support. That still incipient political dilemma is many times more acute from an economic perspective. One of the key factors influencing the decision of the Lobo regime to cooperate with the Colombian-Venezuelan initiative is the recognition that Latin American economic growth can no longer depend on a strong US economy or on potential new markets in Europe.
The economic perspective
The recent Agreement of Association between the European Union and Central America represents Central America's efforts to maximise potential benefits of trade with the ancien regime North Atlantic powers. However, for oil-import-dependent governments managing small national economies, the prospect of another oil price shock is a sobering reminder of the failure in terms of their economic development of discredited, speaking-in-tongues free-market economics. The corresponding success of the Venezuelan-led Petrocaribe framework, guaranteeing regional countries oil and oil derivatives on highly preferential terms, only emphasises the relative decline of US regional economic leadership.
When Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Perú recently signed a joint Free Trade Agreement on April 28th this year, they were responding to the challenges presented by Mercosur and the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), dominated by Brazil and Venezuela respectively. All these initiatives respond in turn to the increasing trade importance to Latin America of China, India and South East Asia. The normalization of the Central American Integration System is a decisive move along the same lines by the countries of Central America.
Latin American and Caribbean nations are forging a common strategy with different ideological variations on the same theme. They need to get the best they can from existing commercial and financial relations with North America and Europe. They also need to engage effectively with rapidly growing markets in Asia. For both purposes they must integrate regionally so as to negotiate and trade from a position of combined strength.
Central America and the U.S.
For Central America the meeting in Managua on May 22nd was an encouraging sequel to the devastating Honduran coup of June 2009. It seems ever more likely now that the coup will be seen as a kind of last stand by Central America's repressive oligarchies against historical trends they are ultimately powerless to resist. The dominant trend is the relative political and economic decline of the United States and the corresponding impact of global powers like Brazil and China.
That impact entails far-reaching regional diplomatic, commercial and financial adjustments that herald the end of the North American and European ancien regime. Those adjustments reflect a massive continent-wide social and cultural emancipation, a phenomenon far deeper and broader than the glib “pink tide” confection of NATO country propaganda media assets. North American and European politicians will continue for a few more years to parrot ridiculous false beliefs in relation to their non-existent moral authority and their rotten-corrupt democracy.
But in Central America and elsewhere those absurd claims will receive less and less respect and attention. Perhaps for another ten to fifteen years, the US, Canada and their European allies will continue to exert gangster-like extortion on the very weak Central American countries as they have always done. But their ability to do so will diminish as Central America integrates both inwardly and regionally.
The threat of military intervention, of punitive immigration measures against Central American migrants in the US, of economic sanctions, of commercial and financial skulduggery – all these will diminish as Central America consolidates. That consolidation, effectively halted by the Honduran military coup, was boosted by two declarations at the May 22nd meeting in Managua. One declaration confirmed moves towards a regional customs union. The other confirmed a range of measures on security cooperation and organised crime.
Central America and Nicaragua
The meeting was definitive in fixing the determination of the Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan and Salvadoran authorities - the CA-4 bloc - to advance towards integration at their own pace. As the CA-4 countries' integration progresses, pressure will increase on Costa Rica and Panama to integrate as well. For Nicaragua, the May 22nd meeting confirms the abysmal failure of Costa Rican diplomacy to isolate the Nicaraguan government over the dispute in relation to the two countries' common border at the delta of the Rio San Juan.
The meeting categorically prioritized peaceful diplomacy, assigning the armed violence that characterized the Honduran coup the status of an illegitimate aberration. For President Porfirio Lobo, the price of regaining legitimacy has been some degree of acceptance of the demands of Manuel Zelaya. By defending Manuel Zelaya while facilitating a successful political deal, President Daniel Ortega has enormously strengthened his own government's legitimacy in the region as well as that of the Venezuelan and Cuban led ALBA economic bloc.
The United States government and its allies will continue in their constant efforts to discredit the Nicaraguan government as illegitimate. Once back in Honduras, Manuel Zelaya will face ruthless and relentless opposition from the US government backed Honduran oligarchy. But Nicaragua's forthcoming elections in November this year are likely to deal a further blow to the regional credibility of the US, Canadian and European governments. At some point, those governments are bound to consider some kind of military aggression to compensate for their categorical loss of political and economic influence in the region.
Announcement by the Political Committee of the National Front for Popular Resistance on the signing of the Cartagena Accord
Today in the city of Cartegena de Indias, Colombia was signed the Accord for National Reconciliation and Consolidation of the Democratic System in the Republic of Honduras by Porfirio Lobo Sosa and Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales for the Republic of Honduras and as witnesses/facilitators the presidents of the Republic of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos and Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
With respect to these recent events we announce the following:
* We appreciate the process of international mediation developed by the presidents mentioned above because we have always held that the civilized mechanisms of humanity including international diplomacy, conciliation, and healthy tolerance are the proper methods for human coexistence and an exit to the crisis generated by the coup d’état en Honduras.
* With respect to the agenda raised by former President of the Republic of Honduras (2006-2010) and General Coordinator of the National Front for Popular Resistance Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales relevant to the four points set out in the mediation:
a. The return of Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales and the exiled associates.
b. The respect for human rights in Honduras.
c. The recognition of the National Front for Popular Resistance as a political and belligerent force.
d. The national constitutional assembly.
The first point mentioned in the agenda will be completely obtained with the return of Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales and exiled associates when they return this Saturday, May 28, 2011 at 11am at the Toncontin International Airport.
In the human rights sphere there is no progress because the Lobo regime is not committed to it, neither guaranteeing the application of justice to the violators of human rights, nor the trusteeship of the human rights of the people in resistance. This is a challenge for the National Front for Popular Resistance.
As far as the recognition of the National Front for Popular Resistance as a political and belligerent force, it is progress in the sense that the regime is committed to fulfill the registration of the FNRP by the Supreme Electoral Court in the light of the laws for democratic participation in the electoral political processes of Honduras and so that it can integrate official electoral political organisms in conditions of equality.
On the subject of the constituent assembly that is one of the great objectives of the National Front for Popular Resistance, the right to the consultation for the National Constituent Assembly has been achieved. In this way we affirm that with the strength of sovereign principles and ideas, we triumph over the petty interests of the power groups that have denied us the right to participatory democracy.
It is due to all of that mentioned above that this internationally mediated accord permits us to end the exile, strengthen our process for the refounding of Honduras and go on to recover our homeland, that we are able to make, in the name of all the members of the resistance at the national and international level, a united call for a great mobilization to receive and welcome our leader and General Coordinator of the FNRP Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales this Saturday, May 2011 at 11am at the Toncontin International Airport.
We Will Resist and We Will Win
Political Committee , National Front for Popular Resistance
unofficial translation by Chuck Kaufman, Alliance for Global Justice