Honduras is a small country in Central America with only seven million inhabitants, but it has been embarked on a programme of growing democracy of its own. In 2005, Zelaya ran promising to help the country's poor majority - and he kept his word. He increased the minimum wage by 60 percent, saying sweatshops were no longer acceptable and "the rich must pay their share."

The tiny elite at the top - who own 45 percent of the country's wealth - are horrified. They are used to having Honduras run by them, for them.

But this wave of redistributing wealth to the population is washing over Latin America.

- HUFFPOST, Saturday, July 4, 2009

The poor Central American republics to the west and south of Belize - Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador, have a similar history. They gained independence from Spain in 1821, and powerful oligarchies emerged in all of them, buttressed by a professional military. The rich elite of these republics tended to be light-skinned, Hispanic, and neo-European. The poor masses tended to be indigenous and darker-skinned. The Roman Catholic establishment in these republics have traditionally been allies of the rich and the military.

After the communist Russian Revolution in 1917, those in the republics who agitated for improved conditions for the poor masses, were branded as "communist" by the rich, the military and the Church. After World War II ended in 1945, the United States and Russia, who had combined with Great Britain to defeat Germany, Italy and Japan in the war, became enemies, because the U.S. was capitalist and the U.S.S.R. was communist, and both sought world hegemony.

About twenty years ago, Russia communism collapsed, and almost two decades of relatively untrammeled neoliberal capitalism ensued in our region, except in Cuba, briefly in Nicaragua, and finally in Venezuela. But in the last few years, there has been a reaction against neoliberal capitalism in South and Central America. The surge in so-called leftist government in Latin America, "leftist," to this newspaper's mind, meaning "representative of the poor," increased when world capitalism, beginning on Wall Street in New York, collapsed last year.

In Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Salvador, the rich elite, along with the military and the Church, retained power during the Cold War by arguing to American politicians and the Pentagon that, by fighting communism, they were committed allies of the United States, defenders of democracy, Christianity and Western civilization, and therefore deserved unqualified American support. The rich elite were, of course, enemies of true democracy, because they exploited the masses of their own people.

A modicum of electoral democracy has crept into all four of our neighboring republics - Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Salvador. That electoral democracy is contingent upon the military remaining in their barracks and not overthrowing the electoral order of things. The decision by the Honduran military, in collusion with the Honduran oligarchy, to throw constitutionally elected president, Jose Manuel Zelaya, out of office on Sunday, June 28, is an ominous development. It has been condemned by all the nations in the Organization of American States (OAS), because this return to military rule in Honduras implicitly threatens democracies throughout Latin America.

In the United States, there is a strong militaristic element, normally led by the Republican Party, who believe in supporting strong arm, pro-business, oligarchical governments in this Western Hemisphere. Under the Republicans, this is a part of American foreign policy.

Democratic president Barack Obama is under pressure from the American militarists to ignore the military ouster of Jose Manuel Zelaya, and support the military-business alliance in Honduras.

HUFFPOST wrote on Saturday, July 4 - "Yet the military-business nexus have invented a propaganda-excuse that is being eagerly repeated by dupes across the Western world. The generals claim they have toppled the democratically elected leader and arrested his ministers to save democracy. Here's how it happened. Honduras has a constitution that was drawn up in 1982, by the oligarchy, under supervision from the outgoing military dictatorship. It states that the president can only serve one term, while the military remains permanent and 'independent' - in order to ensure they remain the real power in the land. Zelaya believed this was a block on democracy, and proposed a referendum to see if the people wanted to elect a constituent assembly to draw up a new constitution. It could curtail the power of the military, and perhaps allow the president to run for re-election. The Supreme Court, however, ruled that it is unconstitutional to hold a binding referendum within a year of a presidential election. So Zelaya proposed holding a non-binding referendum instead, just to gauge public opinion. This was perfectly legal. The military - terrified of the verdict of the people - then marched in with their guns."

There is a crisis in Honduras because the "military-business nexus" under appointed president Roberto Micheletti, having ejected Zelaya violently on June 28, cannot allow him to return peacefully at any time in the near future. This has become a macho showdown in Tegucigalpa. It is a return to the past.

The sanctions being imposed on the rogue Micheletti government in Honduras will mostly hurt the poor. In addition, there will always be "Western" countries which will ignore the sanctions imposed by their "Western" allies. For example when U.S. president Jimmy Carter suspended military aid to Guatemala in 1977, Israel, Taiwan and Belgium eagerly stepped in to assist the Guatemalan military dictatorship. When South Africa was being ostracized in the West for her apartheid racism, Israel and Portugal and other "Western" countries cooperated with South Africa.

In conclusion, we point out to you that there is a "color question" in Honduras, which is a very close neighbor of Belize's. Many Belizeans have relatives in Honduras, and vice versa. We have our problems in Belize, but we enjoy a functional electoral democracy. Apart from that, there is no manifest official discrimination in Belize where race, color, ethnicity and so on are concerned. We Belizeans hope that Honduras finds a way to return to electoral democracy. After that, we hope that they move forward to equal rights and justice.

Power to the people.
http://www.amandala.com.bz/index.php?id=8852