Common Sense Political Thought

Let’s see, deposed President Manuel Zelaya has left the country, and the freely elected President, Porfirio Lobo has been inaugurated; Roberto Micheletti, the interim President has retired. I guess that means Americans can just forget about Honduras now, right?

Well, La Gringa (an expatriate American living in Honduras) doesn’t think we should, and she forwarded this article of hers to me. It seems that, now that the media’s attention has gone away, the Obama Administration is still trying to lean on Honduras:

Meet the new Prime Minister of Honduras

What, you say? You’ve been doing all this reading about Honduras and didn’t know that Honduras had a Prime Minister? Even worse, you are Honduran and didn’t know that you had a prime minister? Who Dat?

Meet the new Prime Minister of Honduras:

US Ambassador/Honduran Prime Minister Hugo Llorens
Photo: La Tribuna

Dat’s who! Don’t feel too bad. Honduras did not have a prime minister, that is, until US Ambassador Hugo Llorens unofficially assumed that position.

President Pepe Lobo met with Llorens to get his marching orders in the morning of his first full day in office. Government officials meet to decide the formula for setting gas prices, and there is Hugo Llorens to make sure they do it right. The Truth Commission is discussed, and there is Hugo Llorens to make sure that everyone understands what ‘truth’ is required by the USA.

The Congress meets, and there is Hugo Llorens to tell them what they need to get done.
(Photo: Juan Orlando Hernández, President of the Congress with Hugo Llorens, La Tribuna. Note the faces as they listen to the “we’re just here to help you” speech.)

Llorens has met with the two most powerful mayors in Honduras and held out the carrot (aid). He gives us his conditional blessing: He sees that Honduras is headed in the right direction, but in the judgment of the Imperialist, there is much kowtowing to do in order to return to the fold of the international community. “We’ll be working jointly,” he says.

La Gringa is not exactly pleased with what she is seeing, and this line of hers really got to me:

I’ve seen more of Hugo Llorens face on the news than the new Honduran president in the past two weeks. He never fails to sound condescending in his press conferences as he discusses what “Honduras needs to do”.

Now, it is perfectly reasonable for American aid to be conditional, and in fact it should be conditional. What we don’t really know — or, if La Gringa does know, she didn’t tell us — what conditions Ambassador Llorens has been communicating to President Lobo. I certainly don’t object to humanitarian conditions being imposed, or certain accounting measures required to try to prevent American funds going to simply line the pockets of politicians. But in a country which is, and has been, a working democracy, we shouldn’t be imposing nit-picky conditions concerning how Honduras conducts its government. We provide aid to countries like Egypt, a one-party semi-dictatorship, to Jordan, to Pakistan, to several countries where we believe it is in our interest to provide aid, countries which aren’t exactly free and democratic states.

Honduras is a poor country, and Honduras needs the assistance. We can put conditions on it, but we need to remember one thing: Honduras has been a better friend to the United States than, unfortunately, the United States has been to Honduras.