Choloma

Cortes, Honduras. The US embassy in Tegucigalpa will soon stop issuing visas to most applicants in its efforts to pressure the current Honduran government to reinstate its ousted president, Manuel Zelaya.  This on top of the suspension of $18 million in military aid the US provided annually. 

Zelaya was deposed on June 28 by the military, the Honduran Congress, the monied elites, and with the support of the Honduran Supreme Court, all of which were afraid that Zelaya was too far into Venezuela President Hugo Chavez left wing orbit, allocate more reresources to the poor and rewrite the Constitution to allow him to seek a second term.  (Full disclosure: I own a small chicken farm in Honduras but could hardly be considered part of the monied class.)

The night time curfews that were put in place immediately after the coup have been lifted and life on the streets is relatively normal. 

But here in Choloma, many of the humongous factories (maquiladoras, or maquilas for short) that normally employ thousands of female workers earning $10-$12 a day are silent, victims of the worldwide global recession. 

In many ways, Honduras represents quintessential US policy towards many Latin American nations.  Since the 1800s, the Caribbean and Central and South America have been viewed quite clearly as resources to be exploited by US commercial and political interests:

• By 1913 US banana companies owned most of the banana plantations in Honduras.
• Honduras was invaded by US troops in 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924, 1925 and 1931 in order to protect US corporate interests.
• Hondoruas was turned into the classic banana republic during the early 1900s on behalf of the United Fruit Company, which operated as a state within a state.
• Located right in the middle of Central America, Honduras was actively used as a staging ground for the Bay of Pïgs invasion into Cuba in 1961 and other anti-left interests during the Cold War (particularly the Nicaraguan Contras and Salvadoran death squads of the 1980s).
• Now, US-owned maquilas produce billions of dollars worth of export goods for US markets, making companies rich while paying workers practically nothing. US companies with maquilas in Honduras include Nike, Adidas, the Gap, Fruit of the Loom, Oshkosh Bgosh, Hanes and others (check the labels on your clothes to see where they are made).

If there is any doubt that corporate interests dictate US policy in Honduras, consider this: as recently as July 27, US clothing manufacturers issued a setter to Secretary of State Clinton urging the restoration of democracy in Honduras. This is the baldfaced old world order, where corporate interests dictate US policy in the region.  In 1909 the United Fruit Company influenced US policy in the Honduras, in 2009 it is Nike! 

But examples of US interference in other Latin American countries  abound, from US invasions into Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba to land grabs in Panama and Mexico to  US government support in overthrowing democratically elected governments in Guatemala and Chile. 

Now that the Cold War is over and in the face of a global recession the value of Honduras to US interests is lessened.   In fact it is not inconvenient to throw Honduras under the proverbial bus.  After all, we ousted Spain from the Caribbean when we needed a base of operations there, made Puerto Ricans citizens when we needed additional soldiers for World War One, supported dictatorships in countries as long as they served our interests, took land from independent nations such as Mexico and Panama as we needed it and supported the appropriation of hundreds of thousands of acres of land throughout Latin America by US corporate interests for well over 200 years.

Doesn't the US owe more to Honduras and other Latin American nations?

http://www.nikebiz.com/responsibility/2009SecretaryClintonHondurasLetter...