THE DOMINO OF HONDURAS

Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  It is an overwhelming, inspiring experience to be here.  There are no people in the world more worthy of our admiration and respect right now than Hondurans.

For the initial background on the situation here, see The Bravest Country In The World from last July.  This is what’s happening now.

First, the description of Honduras in the State Department Travel Warning is a lie.  The US ambassador, Hugo Llorens, is the most despised man in Honduras for his bootlicking of Mel Zelaya, and insists on warning Americans not to come here.

This country is at peace.  There are no roadblocks, no problems of any kind that I saw.  Everything is normal.  There are no demonstrations.  I went to all four entrances to the Brazilian embassy where Zelaya is holed up.  They were blocked by concrete barriers and armed police guards – who couldn’t be more bored for there was absolutely nobody, not one single lone demonstrator for Zelaya to be seen.

The only thing you do see is a fair amount (not lots) of spray-paint graffiti saying stuff like "viva Mel," "fuera golpistas" (out with coup-perpetrators), and "no elecciones" (no elections).  No one is paying attention.

The economy did indeed suffer thanks to the US and international boycott after Zelaya’s ouster on June 28.  Hotels like the Real Intercontinental (the best in town), which had 80%+ occupancy before went down to 40%. 

But starting this month, November, business has improved dramatically across the board – here in the capital, in the main business city of San Pedro Sula, in resorts like Roatan, and throughout the country.  The shopping malls – some as large and nice as any in the US – are now filled with shoppers.  I found a complete absence of pessimism – everyone seems upbeat, pleasant, and at ease.

From taxi drivers to businessmen to shoppers in the malls to folks on the street, Hondurans are extremely proud of how their country stood up to the bullying of the world.  "We are the little country that could," is an expression you hear often.

"We are a small poor country," I was informed more than once (Honduras is the size of Virginia, or 43,000 square miles, with 7.8 million people), "and the giants of the world – America, the EU, the UN, Brazil and the OAS – all told us we must violate our constitution, destroy our democracy, and put this communist back in power.  We said no.  They tried to force us.  They tried to subvert us.  They tried to trick us.  We said no.  And now the giants have backed down.  We have a right to be proud."

The story that emerges from a series of conversations with knowledgeable Hondurans is fascinating.  Zelaya is known as a "hacienda caudillo," raised as a prince by his wealthy landowning family who never earned any money in his life.  He got a government job as Minister of Investment when Hurricane Mitch devastated the country in 1998, running the agency dispensing the foreign aid pouring in to help.

He built his popularity by showing up everywhere he gave away foreign governments’ money and claiming loud credit for it.  Although married with four children, he had a mistress, Patricia Rodas, a rabidly, fanatically, Marxist-Leninist Communist who had her friends Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega start stroking his ego.

Elected president in late 2005 with the disguise of a "center-right" pro-business platform and accomplishing nothing in 2006, Zelaya disturbed a lot of folks by going to Managua for Daniel Ortega’s inauguration in January 2007 (see Kafka in Nicaragua) and embracing Hugo Chavez, while Patricia Rodas – now Zelaya’s Foreign Minister – smothered Ortega in endless hugs and kisses.

Soon thereafter, Zelaya announces Honduras is joining Chavez’s communist ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), and the country is flooded with hundreds of Venezuelan teachers in rural communities propagandizing their students and hundreds of Cuban doctors doing the same for their patients.  Zelaya acquires a Venezuelan special forces bodyguard.

In August of last year, Zelaya invites Chavez with other ALBA leaders (Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Ecuador’s Rafael Corera) to Tegucigalpa, where Chavez delivers an incredibly insulting speech at the National Congress building, calling Hondurans "pitiyanquis" (little Yankee imitators). 

Hondurans hate Chavez now more than ever and are transferring it to Zelaya.  This boils over in January of this year, when Zelaya tries to replace the Supreme Court with his communist followers who have no legal qualifications.  Over a thousand women protest in front of the Congress reading the constitution out loud.  Congress votes no to Zelaya’s demands.

So there was a long buildup to the breaking point.  The night before his ouster (July 27), Zelaya calls all foreign ambassadors for a meeting in his office and goes on an incoherent tirade, telling them that nobody can do anything to him, he is "invincible."  For all the ambassadors (except for the worshipful Llorens), it is obvious that what everyone else in the capital knows is true:  that Zelaya’s addiction to cocaine is making him lose his mind.

After his removal, an inspection of the Ministry of Statistics, to which Zelaya had assigned the vote count for his "referendum" allowing him to change the constitution so he could become president-for-life, found the computers pre-programmed to register an overwhelming vote of "yes."

The subsequent anti-Zelaya demonstrations were huge, with the demonstrators wearing white, massively outnumbering those pro-Zelaya who wore red bandanas – yet  the violence of the latter got all the media attention.  The bias of the media was so bad – particularly by CNN – that hundreds of signs appeared in the seas of anti-Zelaya demonstrations saying "CNN: Communist News Network" and "CNN: Chavez News Network."

CNN responded by carefully editing out any shots of the signs and reporting that those wearing white were supporters of Zelaya.

Chavez agents arrived soon after Zelaya’s ouster with $5 million in cash to pay for demos, protests, riots, graffiti – all of which happened but immediately stopped once the money was spent.

A group of business and intellectual leaders supporting Honduras’ constitution, called the Union Civica Democratica or UCD (in Spanish but its video in English describing Zelaya’s ouster is here), figured out when the pro-Zelaya riots were coming, as they were preceded by a such a flood of dollars from Hugo Chavez that the value of the dollar would drop. 

That’s how the Micheletti government always knew when to order a curfew and shut the violent protests down in advance.  It wasn’t long before the pro-Zelaya violence was minimal.

It’s been the longest five months in the history of Honduras, but finally, with elections ten days away (11/29) and Zelaya still imprisoned in the Brazilian embassy, Hondurans think they may have pulled off the impossible. 

Their conviction is that if Honduras had buckled and reinstated Zelaya, then all faith in their institutions would collapse – faith in their constitution, laws, Congress, elections, democracy – resulting in just the sort of chaotic depression that would allow Zelaya to seize power for life as Chavez has and Ortega is trying to do next door.

Hondurans have exhibited true heroic patriotism and civic virtue – especially by those of the UCD who risked everything they had, for Zelaya would have taken all their wealth, property, and possibly their lives if he were put back in power.

As of this week, Llorens has capitulated with the US announcing that it will recognize the results of the Nov. 29 elections and the new government even if Zelaya is not reinstated as he won’t be.  Zelaya is now a prisoner in the Brazilian embassy, bitterly denouncing Zero for betraying him and leaving him the "the middle of the river."

It was always absurd for the US to even hint it would reject the Nov. 29 elections, as the date and the candidates were set before Zelaya’s ouster.  The race is between Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo of the National Party, a long time politician (age 62) who’s a wealthy landowner, and Elvin Santos of the Liberal Party, young (age 46) and handsome, a civil engineer and successful businessman.

While Santos is more pro-capitalist, Lobo is not a bad guy, and it’s not who wins that matters but that the election and new government is internationally legitimized.  Panama’s president Ricardo Martinelli has announced his government will recognize Honduras, as has Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe and Peru’s Alan Garcia.  Of course, US recognition makes it hard for Europe not to follow.

The consequences of such legitimacy, of a Honduran triumph, will be intensely interesting.  Hugo Chavez and the International Marxist Left intended for Honduras to be the next Latin American domino.  Now the dominos may fall in the opposite direction.

Honduras will now be a beacon for freedom and democracy in Central America, a rallying point against Chavez communist imperialism.  The first Chavez domino to fall may be El Salvador.

Last June, the country elected the candidate of the communist FMLN guerrillas (yes, they have a political party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front), Mauricio Funes.  But he was popular TV journalist, not really a FMLN guy, and he is itching to break from his commie supporters and Chavez.  The triumph of Honduras may give him the chance.

Next may be Guatemala.  Rather than Chavista Marxist, it’s run by a criminal gang led by president Alvaro Colom, a murderer who has ordered the deaths of several critics.  There is no law in Guatemala.  The police have a list of people they can’t arrest, and any lawyer who doesn’t play ball with Colom’s gang gets a phone call asking if he wants his kids to stay alive.

There were mass protests against Colom last May following Colom’s murder of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg, but they died off with Guatemalans resigned to their fate.  Watch how the triumph of their Honduran neighbors reignites them.

Then there is Nicaragua, where little Danny Ortega is furiously attempting to make himself president for life.  This weekend, protests against Ortega may number in the hundreds of thousands in the capital of Managua.  Legally as of now, he cannot run for reelection in 2010.  The Honduran triumph may make it impossible for him to rewrite the constitution, with the Sandinistas trounced out of power next year.

Call it dominos in reverse, dominos for freedom.  But the game isn’t over until it’s over.  Chavez operatives are in El Salvador right now with briefcases full of dollars buying enormous amounts of weapons to be smuggled into Honduras.  Huge violent disruptions of the Nov. 29 election are planned in an attempt to invalidate them.

By contrast, over 400 international observers will be in Honduras to validate the election, including the leader of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel.  Pray for Honduras on November 29.

The story of Honduras is one of the great heroic sagas of our day.  Let’s hope the Hondurans seize the opportunity they have now to create a rule of law/free market society with low tax incentives that opens Honduras up for foreign investment.

If so, Honduras may be an ideal place for that vacation or retirement hideaway you’ve dreamed about.  My pick is Half Moon Bay at West End on Roatan Island.  It’s as funky idyllic as you get.  Sure would be a completely cool place to have a Rendezvous someday.  We could all conspire, over piña coladas watching the sunset in the ocean, to construct a TTP Community in Paradise.  What do you think?