SOA\WHENSIC and the Coup in Honduras

History is a witness to a century long American hegemony and a barbaric CIA counterinsurgency in Latin America. This influence has been supported by a pseudo-academy,the School of Americas ( SOA) - today its new name the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation( WHENSIC) - which has trained and continues to inculcate right-wing military candidates in techniques of torture, execution arbitrary arrest, kidnappings, extrajudicial processes, and the overthrow of democratically elected officials. The most current coup d'etat is of Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras on Sunday, June 27.

The School of the Americas was first established in Panama in 1946; however, it was evicted in 1984 by the Panamanian governement and it re-positioned itself in Fort Benning, Georgia ( visit: www.soaw.org). Here, the school has trained approximately 60,000 Latin American soldiers in a variety of counterinsurgency techniques to either destabilise democratically elected officials\governments or practice coup d'etat with the support of the CIA and members of the DOD.

The Obama Administration has failed to identify this illegal action as a coup d'etat. The US Administration must articulate more forceful language, as well as publicly rebuke the SOA which has trained the officials that participated in the putsch. Moreover, in the past, especially during the nineteen eighties, the US Reagan Administration had established very intimate relations with the Honduran military elite.

The Honduran military government permitted American supported Nicaraguan paramilitary groups, the Contras, to wage a counterinsurgency to overthrow the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortiega. The Contras were trained, supplied and aided by the Reagan Administration. Furthermore, there had been a number of clandestine activities, one the Iran-Contra Affair; this covert military activity provided the Reagan Adm. to channel funds and procure arms for the Contras or Counter- revolutinaries. One important agent was Colonel Oliver North who performed a leading role in this clandestine event.

An infamous battalion, Battalion 316, trained by the CIA terrorised Hondurans and civilians of Central America. It is evident that there is a barbaric link between the CIA and the Honduran military. It is important to ponder how many of the soldiers of this battalion are presently engaged in the military coup today in Honduras. There were thousands of Hondurans that were executed and tortured by Battalion 316.

There is another salient link to the military junta of Honduras during the 1980s, this association is with the former USA ambassador to Honduras, Mr John Negroponte, who was a conduit for funds, logistical support, arms caches in order to permit the Nicaraguan Contra forces to engage in their counterinsugency via Honduras and sanction the Honduran Battalion 316 to sustain their human rights abuses against alleged "subversives.

One key feature that the American corporate media neglects in this seminal event of American dominance over Latin America is the corporate association. Chiquita, formerly United Fruit Company and United Brands- an American MNC which cultivates bananas and pineapples for export to North America- has had historically a significant influence on the Honduran political and military apparatuses- as well as terrorist cells or paramilitary death forces- since the 1920s. Moreover, this fruit company controls-since the early 20th century- an infinite amount of land in Honduras, approximately 650, 000 acres of arable terrain, as well as an intricate network of infrastructure: rail and road. Chiquita- as well as Dole- was disappointed with President Zelaya's labour reform practices, increasing the minimum wage for the plantation labourers by 60 %. These MNCs expressed concern to Tegucigalpa that they would lose millions of dollars of profits pursuant to these new labour reforms( Kozloff 1).

Why has the mainstream media failed to proffer this salient footnote? Does this silence also reveal the reason behind the Obama Administration's omission of identifying this change in Honduran leadership as a "military coup?" What role does the Chiquita corporate lobby have on USA foreign policy? Which members of the present American administration have affiliations with these fruit companies- Dole and Chiquita- and, more critically, receive inducements?

Today, a new strategy is required by the Obama Administration, but especially by the international community, in order to deconstruct and dismantle the American hegemony in Latin America. However, it is difficult to deconstruct American foreign policy in Honduras and other South and Central American countries, if this former nation-state refuses to prosecute those American officials that were responsible for torture, extraordinary rendition, secret sites, and a denial of habeas corpus to the many alleged enemy combatants in Bush's 'War on Terror'. The Western post-industrialised nation-states must divest themselves of all the sanctimonious praxis and dialectic in order to inaugurate a fresh relationship with Latin America that respects the sovereignty of all nation-states and the human rights of its citizens.