Honduras moves to the left

author : Marco Rosaire Rossi topic : ALBA

by Marco Rosaire Rossi

In late August, inside a capital city in Central America, a giant banner was hung portraying Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s President Evo Morales. The banner advocated the signing of ALBA—which in English stands for the Bolivarian Alterna-tive for the Americas and means “dawn” in Spanish. ALBA is a trade agreement between Latin American countries that supports the principles of solidarity, non-interference, respect for independence, complementarity, and fair trade, a trade agreement that the United States is strongly opposed to. In the streets, tens of thousands of supporters gathered to support ALBA. They waved their national flag, but also the Venezuelan one, and held banners supporting the Sandinistas and the FMLN. Social-ist and anti-imperialist rhetoric was on the lips of both the speakers and the supporters.

This capital wasn’t Managua, or Havana—traditional places where one would hear such remarks—it was Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The people were celebrating President Zelaya’s signing of the ALBA agreement, making Honduras the sixth member of the fair trade alliance. This past October, Honduras’ congress approved the deal, solidify-ing the membership.

Twenty years ago, the idea that Honduras would sign a trade agreement that the United States was so adamantly opposed to would have been unthinkable. Historically, Honduras has been one of the United States’ strongest allies in the region. The country was used as a jumping point for the 1954 CIA coup against President Abrenz in Guatemala.

In the 1980s, the country was used as a contra training ground and military base during the United States’ war with Nicaragua. Many of the “disappeared” during that war “disappeared” over the border into Honduras. However, in the rapidly changing political landscape of Latin America, traditional alliances are breaking. At the signing of the ALBA agreement President Zelaya announced that “Honduras did not ask permission from any imperialist country to join ALBA” giving a slight not-so-covert jab towards the United States. He went on “Today, we are taking a step towards becoming a government of the center-left, and if anyone dislikes this, we’ll just remove the word ‘cen-ter’ and keep the second one.”

Honduras’ move from far right to center left has been a long time coming. According to legend, the last words of infamous North American filibuster William Walker (who invaded Central America and attempted to annex it on behalf of the southern slave- holding states) were, “What the United States does not conquer through the gun, it will be able to conquer through the dollar.” Walker was executed by a firing squad in Honduras. His legacy still looms there. For most of Honduras’ history, Walker’s prophecy has been true. As far back as Woodrow Wilson, and perhaps even further, Honduras’ economy has been partial to the desires of the United States. The country’s fate was essentially determined by how well the US State Department and the United Fruit Company could compromise on a given issue. Today, the United States receives almost 40% of the country’s exports (while the rest of Latin America only exports 27% to the U.S.).

Its agricultural industry is designed to produce mostly niche luxury goods such as bananas, coffee, shrimp and melons instead of staples like corn, rice, or beans. It ranks 115 out of 177 on the United Nations human development index, and is the fourth poorest country in the Americas. It’s this poverty that has been the chief engine driving change in the country.

Even though Honduras has seen a 6-7% economic growth, (a figure that has recently slowed) its wealth has been restricted to the upper classes. The country still has not fully recovered from the ravages of Hurricane Mitch, which wiped out 70–80% of the nation’s transportation infrastructure. And, like all poor nations, it is suffering under the rapidly rising cost of food. Meanwhile, other countries in Latin America that have adopted the fair trade model continue to see not only economic growth, but also an end to poverty. Cuba’s welfare programs have made it a leader in human development for Central America—second only to Costa Rica. Since 2004, Venezuela’s eco-nomic growth has not only bordered on double digits, but the country has also experienced increases in literacy, education, and health. “We are open to association proc-esses among States to achieve development, eliminate inequalities, overcome asymmetries and share knowledge and resources,” President Zelaya told the newspaper, Prensa Latina, on the day he signed the ALBA agreement.

These alternative economic models have become attractive to Honduras, which has grown frustrated by the United States for not doing more to help the country out of poverty. Even before joining ALBA, President Zelaya signed the country up for Petrocaribe, a program started by Venezuela that offers cheap oil to 18 countries around the Caribbean basin. Now, under ALBA, Honduras hopes to strike even better deals and catch up to some of its counterparts. Venezuela has already offered to buy $100 mil-lion worth of Honduran bonds, whose proceeds will be spent on housing for Honduras’ poor. Venezuela has also offered to buy $30 million worth of credit for farming, 100 tractors, and 4 million low-energy light bulbs—which will be installed by Cuban technicians—in order to promote energy conservation.

In exchange, Honduras has offered up the right to look for oil in and around the country to an ALBA run company, whose findings will be shared by the member states collectively.

Economic development is definitely a priority for the Zelaya administration, but the true hope in signing ALBA is greater independence. Zelaya’s signing speech in August was full of remarks on the greater sovereignty that the country will gain through the trade deal, commenting how signing ALBA is “an act of freedom, because we are a free and sovereign people” and that “we [Latin American nations] are not born slaves nor to have masters.”

Economically, part of this sovereignty means closing the trade deficit and converting to a more self-sufficient economy. Currently, Honduras exports $100 million to ALBA countries, while importing $170 million. Politically speaking though, sovereignty may be more difficult. The influence of the US still looms large in the country, so much so that after the passing of ALBA, Enrique Flores Lanza, an advisor to Zelaya, had to reinforce the notion that Honduras was the first “non-aligned country” –meaning it won’t be too outspoken about US intervention in the region.

Either way, the signing of ALBA and the support it has from grassroots movements indicates that the prophecy of William Walker on the conquest of the dollar in Latin America may be coming to an end. Simón Bolivar, the 19th Century revolutionary who led Latin America towards its independence from Spain once remarked that, “The United States seems destined by Providence to plague the American continent with misery in the name of liberty.” It is to everyone’s benefit that the people of Latin Amer-ica seem just as destined—and able—to resist that misery.

Marco Rosaire Rossi is a graduate of the University for Peace, in Costa Rica.