The Civil Democratic Union of Honduras, a network of Honduran NGOs funded by the US Agency for International Development, voiced public support for the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of President Manuel Zelaya on June 28, 2009. The group described the military ouster of a democratically elected President as “democratic regime change,” and welcomed the removal of the President as essential for the protection of the Honduran constitution.[i] Meanwhile, the US State Department under President Barack Obama refused to legally classify the regime change as a coup d’etat.[ii] Instead, State Department officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, argued that both the Honduran military and the ousted government of President Manuel Zelaya shared blame for the events leading to the removal of the Honduran head of state.[iii] The US preference was for a mediated solution to the political crisis, led by President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, who urged both parties in the conflict to accept a power-sharing arrangement in the months leading to the next presidential elections in Honduras. While the Organization of American States condemned the military coup as a blatant violation of international law, and insisted on the return of President Zelaya to power without conditions, the US government negotiated with the coup leaders and Zelaya over the terms of Zelaya’s return to power. The Obama Administration also supported the disbursement of $70 million of assistance to the Honduran government in the aftermath of the military coup, over twice the amount of money that the US had suspended.[iv] These events pose questions about whose interests are being protected by the Honduran military, the US government, and the largest US-funded NGO network in Honduras?
The US role in the aftermath of the Honduran coup illustrates the politics of deep intervention that has guided US foreign policy strategy from the early 1980s to the present. While publicly criticizing the coup as a violation of democratic norms, US foreign policy makers have worked closely with Honduran political and economic elites through an NGO network that is closely linked to transnational business interests. In fact, the Civil Democratic Union is an umbrella group of NGOs that includes Honduran business associations long funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), including the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise and the National Federation of Commerce and Industry. The same NGO groups that applauded the coup against Manuel Zelaya include representatives of telecommunications firms and export assembly companies that are members of the Civil Democratic Union of Honduras.[v] The Honduran opposition to Zelaya is based on his support for policies that threatened the political agenda of significant sectors of Honduran and transnational capitalists represented by this NGO network, which opposed Zelaya’s decisions to raise the minimum wage, to block the sale of the state-owned telecommunications sector to private transnational firms, and to take control of foreign-owned petroleum storage facilities in an effort to check profiteering and to lower the price of gasoline.[vi] As a justification for the coup, Honduran coup leaders were joined by the US-funded coalition of NGOs, the Honduran Supreme Court and the Honduran Congress, in charging Zelaya with violating the Honduran constitution by going forward with plans to have a referendum placed on the November ballot. The referendum in question would have asked Honduran citizens whether or not they supported the convening of a National Constitutional Assembly to change the current Honduran constitution. Opponents of the referendum characterized it as an unconstitutional power-grab that would have extended the presidency of Manuel Zelaya beyond the four-year term limit specified in the Honduran constitution. Defenders of Zelaya contend that the referendum was non-binding and only sought to authorize a constitutional convention after Zelaya left the office of the Presidency.
President Zelaya was moving toward political alliances with the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica and Cuba, epitomized by his decision to join the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA), a regional trade group formed in 2004 that has sought to counteract the corporate friendly regional trade agreements supported by the United States.[vii] Prior to the coup, Zelaya was in the process of organizing the removal of the US military presence from the Soto Cano airbase, using a fund from the ALBA countries to convert the Pentagon base into a commercial airport. These moves threatened the US-Honduran strategic relationship, and the stability of the Honduran constitution that had been drafted by the Honduran military under US direction in 1982. The US role in crafting the Honduran constitution was central to US geostrategic objectives in Central America during the 1980s, including the use of Honduran territory by the CIA and the Pentagon to finance paramilitary missions against the left throughout the region. At the same time, the constitution provided the Honduran government with a political legitimacy that allowed the dominant Honduran parties to share power within an institutional framework that discouraged the emergence of populist or leftist coalitions that might otherwise challenge the political and economic interests of the Honduran elite.[viii] As sections of the Honduran elite became more closely tied to transnational firms with strong links to the US State Department, the US Agency for International Development began supporting a network of NGOs that have long advocated a neoliberal agenda in Honduras, defined as a deeper integration of the Honduran economy with sectors of transnational capital supported by the US government.[ix]
The US-financed NGOs in Honduras were opposed by a grassroots Honduran NGO network that consisted of labor unions, teachers’ organizations, farmer associations, and professional groups that supported Zelaya’s populist policies. These grassroots organizations were largely cut off from international funding and access to the foreign media enjoyed by the US-sponsored NGOs, which orchestrated an international propaganda campaign on behalf of the provisional Honduran government and in support of the coup. In US newspapers, the pro-Honduran coup supporters were given much more editorial support than their domestic counterparts in Honduras that opposed the coup. Reports by international NGOs such as Amnesty International, which condemned the violence perpetuated by the coup government, were given very little attention in the US media, which focused instead on what US columnists called the “illegality” of the actions of President Manuel Zelaya, whom coup supporters insisted had violated the Honduran constitution and left the government little choice but to react strongly to his transgressions.
The extent to which the pro-coup political bloc was able to exert a dominant position in the global propaganda battle surrounding the interpretation of the coup was a reflection of their superior financing, and their connections to US business interests that had a vested stake in opposing Zelaya. In contrast, the grassroots organizations in Honduras had relatively little resources, were vulnerable to a campaign of intimidation and terror in Honduras waged by the coup government, and, as a result, were relatively isolated in opinion pages in the United States, where the political weight of the pro-coup faction was clearly superior. In Latin America, however, the pro-Zelaya interests were much more successful in getting their voices heard, namely due to the strong backing from the Venezuela, Bolivian and Brazilian governments. When Zelaya returned to Honduras in the aftermath of the coup, Brazil allowed the deposed President to use its embassy in Honduras as a sanctuary from the Honduran authorities.
There are considerable tensions between competing NGO networks in an age of deepening political rivalries over the terms of the globalization process and over the expansion of the US Empire. The US state, alongside the European Union and Japan, has lent support to a global network of NGOs that favor a globalization process that includes greater incentives for foreign direct investment, protection of intellectual property rights for transnational firms, greater integration of domestic and foreign capital in the global production process, and anti-statist policies that allow more privileges and rights for foreign investors against tighter regulations and controls promoted by populist states in Venezuela and Bolivia. The battle over the future shape of the globalization process is illustrated in microcosm by the different orientations of NGOs, with NGO networks funded by the US state often working to facilitate US-backed trade agreements such as NAFTA and CAFTA-DR, while grassroots groups in Mexico and Central America, linked to domestic NGO networks, have been the loudest critics of these agreements. At the same time, there is a very robust tension between international NGOs who are working closely with the US in its military intervention in Afghanistan, and the grassroots NGO networks who are generally opposed to the US escalation of the war, but receive little funding and have much less access to the foreign media. In this framework, the NGO networks have a complex and differentiated relationship to governments and localities, with even some international NGOs emerging as critical of US interventionist tactics, and the US struggling to maintain influence over an NGO network that is utilized for the delivery of aid to warzones in places such as Afghanistan.
The task for students of global politics, and for activists, will be to examine the political economy of NGO networks to ascertain their location within transnational power structures. Where NGOs get their funding is an important place to start, as is their relative dependence on the US, and the political context in which they operate. Powerful states increasingly rely on NGO networks, as do transnational classes who use them as a conduit to achieve greater market privileges and power. The extent to which these NGO networks are opposed by civil society organizations or even competing NGO structures are an important manifestation of socioeconomic and class conflict within the new globalization.
[i] Robert Naiman, “US Media Fail in Honduran Coup Reporting,” NACLA, Vol. 42, No. 6, November 2009.
[i] CNN Interview with representative from Grupo Paz y Democracia, July 28, 2009.
[ii] Mary Beth Sheridan, “US Condemns Coup in Honduras But Makes No Firm Demands,” Washington Post, June 30, 2009.
[iii] Greg Grandin, “Democracy Derailed in Honduras,” The Nation, June 30, 2009.
[iv] William Aviles, “The Political Economy of Low-Intensity Democracy: Colombia, Honduras and Venezuela,” in Ronald W. Cox, Corporate Power and Globalization in US Foreign Policy, Routledge Press, 2012, 148.
[v] Michaela D’Ambrosia, “The Honduran Coup,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Sep. 16, 2009.
[vi] Robert White, “Why the Coup in Honduras Won’t—and Shouldn’t—Succeed,” Americas Program, July 14, 2009.
[vii] Laura Carlsen, “High Noon in Honduras,” Americas Program Commentary, July 3, 2009.
[viii] Kent Norsworthy with Tom Barry, Inside Honduras. Inter-Hemispheric Resource Center, 2004, 7-14
[ix] William Robinson, Transnational Conflicts: Central America, Social Change and Globalization. Verso Press, 2003, pp. 118-132.