Latin America rejects coup in Peru, while US supports unelected regime killing protesters

At least 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have condemned the coup in Peru, backing President Pedro Castillo. The unelected regime, which has killed dozens of protesters, has the staunch support of the US and the region’s right wing.

Ben Norton

Multipolarista | December 20, 2022

More than a dozen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have condemned the coup in Peru and backed democratically elected President Pedro Castillo.

Meanwhile, the US government has staunchly supported the coup regime, which has suspended civil liberties, imprisoned Castillo for 18 months without trial, and unleashed extreme violence on Peruvian protesters, killing dozens and wounding hundreds.

US influence in Latin America is on the decline

Petro’s victory has meant the biggest setback for US influence on the continent

Jesus Inojosa

Últimas Noticias | August 14, 2022

The victory of Gustavo Petro in Colombia and his inauguration as President of the New Granada nation has set off alarms in the United States, where the possible end of the so-called “Washington influence” in Latin America is seen.

“It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has utterly failed, that it has left a million Latin Americans murdered, most of them Colombians, and that it leaves 70.000 North Americans dead from drug overdoses every year; none produced in Latin America”.

These words spoken by Petro During his inauguration speech this Sunday, he directly questions US policy in the neighboring country with the so-called “Plan Colombia”, which could mean the possibility of ending this agreement that has allowed the US to install no less than nine military bases in Colombian territory and guarantee the free action of officials of the DEA, the CIA and its Army, as well as the implementation of the extraterritoriality of its laws in this nation.

2021 Latin America and the Caribbean in Review: The Pink Tide Rises Again

Roger D. Harris

Orinoco Tribune | January 01, 2022

US policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean continued in a seamless transition from Trump to Biden, but the terrain over which it operated shifted left. The balance between the US drive to dominate its “backyard” and its counterpart, the Bolivarian cause of regional independence and integration, continued to tip portside in 2021 with major popular electoral victories in Chile, Honduras, and Peru. These follow the previous year’s reversal of the coup in Bolivia. 

Central has been the struggle of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) countries – particularly Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua – against the asphyxiating US blockade and other regime-change measures. Presidential candidate Biden pledged to review Trump’s policy of US sanctions against a third of humanity. The presumptive intention of the review was to ameliorate the human suffering caused by these unilateral coercive measures, considered illegal under international law. Following the review, Biden has instead tightened the screws, more effectively weaponizing the COVID crisis. 

Xiomara Castro, and the Rebirth of Honduras

Ilka Oliva Corado

RESUMEN | November 29, 2021

The humiliations suffered by undocumented Central American migrants who try to cross Mexico to reach the United States, seeking to save themselves from the institutional violence of the narco-State, in the case of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, have hurt a lot. The famous northern triangle that is so much charged here and there by politicians in the discourse of transnational corporations that in exchange for a crumb that they throw from the rocking chair where they rock; placid and jampones, they take the entrails of the land that they are drying, because it is not theirs, it is that of the peoples sullied for centuries.

‘We’re worse than Venezuela!’: Hondurans in US-backed regime speak out Share

The Grayzone | July 08, 2019

Average Hondurans in the capital Tegucigalpa’s central park tell Max Blumenthal their humanitarian crisis is much worse than Venezuela’s. The US-backed right-wing coup regime of Juan Orlando Hernández kills dissidents and shoots protesters, as it tries to privatize healthcare and education.

Video by Ben Norton

Protests in Honduras intensify leading up to inauguration day

The Dawn News | January 23, 2018

Juan Orlando Hernández, who was “elected” president in Honduras as a result of fraud and corruption, will hold his swearing in ceremony on January 27 in what may be the first closed-door inauguration (although his government has purposely not shared details about the ceremony). Leading up to what many consider will be an illegitimate inauguration, social movements and organization, sectors of the political opposition and members of civil society have been mobilizing across Honduras to show their rejection and indignation to the political situation in Honduras that did not begin with electoral fraud but has also highlighted the impunity and unreeled power of the military and police to repress, detain and kill citizens at an alarming rate.

Honduras: Opposition Alliance Summons More Street Protests

telesur | December 20, 2017

Mobilizations across the country have been organized for three days starting from dawn Wednesday, to demonstrate the opposition’s rejection of the disputed election results.

 

Honduras’ Opposition Alliance party has called for more public protests against the controversial re-election of President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Honduras: Opposition Supporters Hold Nationwide Protests

teleSUR | December 15, 2017

• Opposition supporters during a protest over a disputed presidential election in Tegucigalpa, Honduras December 15, 2017. | Photo: Reuters

  The protests are directed at the probable fraud that has marked the country’s presidential elections.

  Opposition Alliance supporters in Honduras are out on the streets in a nationwide protest after presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla and former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya called for the people to begin a “peaceful” and “permanent” national demonstration and labor strike.

Why the Honduras Crisis Matters to Me

by Rick Sterling

Opposition supporters dance and wave flags during a protest over a contested presidential election with allegations of electoral fraud in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, December 8, 2017. | Photo: Reuters

Just as the 2009 coup in Honduras was a setback for all Latin America, the outcome of the current crisis will have consequences far beyond Honduras.

For seven months in 1969, I hitch-hiked around the US, Mexico and Central America with my best friend from high school. Some class-mates from our school in Vancouver Canada saved their money then travelled to Europe or Australia, but Ollie and I headed south. It was an eye-opening experience for two middle-class Canadians. We had a lot of learning experiences in the US, but today I want to talk about Honduras because it is in crisis as I write this: the Honduran election took place on 26 November, yet the results are still in contention. Will the current right-wing government manage to retain power?

NYT claims U.S. opposed Honduran coup it actually supported

by JANINE JACKSON

The August 14 New York Times reported that the threat by Donald Trump to use the US military against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has brought together Latin American leaders, divided on other things, in opposition to US intervention.  Along the way, reporter Nicholas Casey cites a regional expert who says, “An often ugly history of US interventions is vividly remembered in Latin America — even as we in the US have forgotten.” Which the Times followed thus: