by Todd Gordon
The Tegucigalpa-San José Accord thus posed no threat of a return of genuine democracy to Honduras, however much Canadians may have presented it as a fair and balanced effort to do so. Canada’s interests lay elsewhere, summed up by then Ambassador Neil Reeder, who reported to Ottawa after witnessing the Accord’s signing that, “as a longstanding aid, trade and investment partner with Honduras, we were delighted with this outcome.”201 Tellingly, although Zelaya reluctantly decided to negotiate within its frame of reference, it was unpopular with leading figures of the resistance because it was an attack on the Zelaya government’s modest reform agenda, a fact of which Canadian officials on the ground in Honduras were cognizant.202 Ottawa’s promotion of the Accord was in part likely also a response to the growth of the resistance and its struggle for the return of democracy. One embassy report, for instance, notes that the “Growth of street demonstrations in various parts of the country is a dangerous development that argues for every effort being made to bring two sides together,” and adds, with some alarm, that “Pro-Zelaya rallies appear to be bringing together campesinos and rural poor, unionists, university students and members of small parties on the Left of spectrum including socialist and former communist parties.”203 The Accord, it was hoped, would accomplish the nominal return of democracy and thus diffuse a potentially explosive social situation by drawing Zelaya into the negotiations and safely permitting his return to the presidency, without allotting him any real power.
Although Canada’s Honduran mission is relatively small (the embassy in San José is actually accredited to Honduras), it was bolstered by the temporary addition of personnel from other missions. Ambassador Reeder was very active in various facets of negotiations, while Canadian representatives, including Kent, participated in two high-level OAS missions to Tegucigalpa in August and October 2009 to help advance a resolution when negotiations for the original San José and the subsequent San José-Tegucigalpa Accords began to stumble. The Canadians were also in contact with Oscar Arias—the key mediator and Costa Rican president (who was subsequently linked to a graft scandal involving the Canadian mining company, Infinito Gold)—throughout the negotiations. The Canadian and U.S. goal was to have the San José-Tegucigalpa Accord in place, and Zelaya back in the presidency without meaningful presidential authority, not long before the November election. Canada could then, along with its American counterparts, present the restoration of Honduran constitutional democracy to the international community, making the recognition of the election of Lobo—and the portrayal of his regime as representing the end of the coup period—an easier public relations task. Confident it would eventually be accomplished, Canadian officials initially maintained that the Accord needed to be ratified in order for Canada to provide assistance to the election.204
The Accord was signed but never ratified, as Micheletti and his supporters in the end refused even to concede the position of figurehead president to Zelaya, inciting the latter to denounce the Accord and declare it dead. As it turned out, however, Canada’s commitment to the Accord’s ratification, and thus the ostensible return of constitutional democracy, ultimately proved sufficiently flexible not to interfere with the recognition of the newly elected government. Indeed, the Canadian government offered it unfailing support. While Canada preferred that the Accord be ratified, as that would make defense of Lobo’s election and Honduras’ readmission into the international arena easier, it would not let that failure interfere with its plans for Honduras (principally, the expansion of Canadian capital), and so it proceeded to take a leading role in defending Honduras’ return to “democracy” and to argue for its reintegration into the international community. Although Kent expressed “disappointment” that the Accord was not implemented in time for the election, and confirmed that Canadian election monitors, like their international counterparts, would not participate in any observation teams, he was quick to praise the election. Ignoring the repression and the accusations of fraud surrounding the elections, Kent eagerly announced with a straight face that
Canada congratulates the Honduran people for the relatively peaceful and orderly manner in which the country’s elections were conducted. While Sunday’s elections were not monitored by international organizations…we are encouraged by reports from civil society organizations that there was a strong turnout for the elections, that they appear to have been run freely and fairly, and that there was no major violence.205
Lurking behind this weak defense of the elections was a clear recognition, according to an internal FAIT report (with contributions from both Ottawa and embassy officials), that “On the economic side, Lobo is expected to try to favour macroeconomic stability and be open to foreign investment. His election is a positive development for present and future Canadian investment in the country.”206 Lobo was Canada’s guy, soon to prove himself a trusted ally and responsible political leader—that is, symapthetic to the interests of Canadian capital—thus his election was democratic and fair.
Canada’s flexible position towards the election of a government in the context of a coup would also receive ex post facto justification by Reeder, who blamed Zelaya for the failure of the San José-Tegucigalpa Accord. Defending Canada’s strong relationship with a government elected outside the frame of a constitutional democracy to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (SCFAID) on March 21, 2011, Reeder argued that, “the actions and rhetoric of President Zelaya, prevented a compromise solution from being reached.”207 Reeder is presumably referring to Zelaya’s criticism of, and withdrawal from, the Accord process after initially signing it, after Micheletti refused to allow him to return to the presidency even as a lame duck president and the Canadians and Americans continued to push him publicly to support it nevertheless. Yet the reasons Zelaya had for being reluctant about initially signing the Accord—the weak position in which it left him and his presidency, the recalcitrance of Micheletti and the other protagonists of the coup, and the eagerness with which countries like Canada pushed him to sign it—were quickly borne out afterwards.
Obviously what Reeder and Kent had been pushing Zelaya to support was never, even at the beginning of negotiations, fair or balanced; and the ease with which Canada supported the elections after its push for a negotiated settlement in advance of those elections failed, suggests again that Canada’s real goal was not a return to genuine constitutional democracy. It is unlikely that this was lost on Zelaya. It was also clear to anyone following the Honduran political situation that the Honduran dictatorship had the power to implement the Accord if it wished to but explicitly chose otherwise. Seeing this, Zelaya decided there was no point in negotiating as he would have gained nothing at that point. To place responsibility on Zelaya for the Accord’s failure—an Accord that was an affront to (even liberal) democracy and which he probably would not have signed had the balance of forces in Honduras been more in his favour—is simply disingenuous.
What Reeder and the Canadians were really angry about was Zelaya’s display of independence by refusing to fall in line with Canadian (and American) demands. Reeder himself visited Zelaya in the Brazilian embassy in October 2009 and “delivered strong messages to…refrain from calling…for his supporters to go out into the streets to protest” and “to publicly and explicitly support the November elections.”208 Zelaya did neither of those things, opting not to lend himself to the imperialist charade that constitutionality had been restored and give the presidential election a legitimacy to which it was clearly undeserving. As a result, Zelaya was a target: a source of ire for the Canadians for his streak of independence, his reputation was besmirched as a deserving target of a violent coup, while Canadian efforts to build ties with the new Lobo government proceeded apace.
Zelaya, it is worth noting, was not the sole source of frustration for the Canadians. Reeder did acknowledge to the SCFAID during his testimony in March 2011 that the “de facto government” (that is, the Micheletti dictatorship) helped
to undermine the compromise itself. This was certainly on the minds of Canadian representatives in Honduras in the fall of 2009. Communiques from the embassy in Tegucigalpa suggest that the embassy and Kent were concerned with and frustrated about the intransigence of Micheletti and his backers in the negotiations and implementation of the Accord.209 But this should not be taken as a sign of neutrality on Canada’s part in relation to the efforts to achieve a resolution. Canada’s aim was, first and foremost, the containment of democracy, and its relationship with Micheletti was predicated upon that. To the extent Micheletti’s hardline towards Zelaya and the opposition was seen as containing a popular uprising and blocking Zelaya’s return to power, he was playing a useful role in Canadian eyes. But that hardline could be a double-edged sword. From Canada’s perspective, the refusal of Micheletti and his backers to fully implement the Accord meant that the dictatorship was quickly outliving any usefulness it may have had in thwarting Zelaya’s return to the presidency with any real power. For Canada, despite allowing him to return to the presidency, the Accord was a defeat for Zelaya and his supporters. Micheletti’s ongoing stubborness as the elections neared would only make it harder for the likes of Canada to sell the Accord internationally and offer public support for the election; and, indeed, it would not be until June 2011 that the Lobo government would gain recognition from the majority of Latin American states and the OAS.
Attached to this was an awareness that the political impasse, feeding the frustrations of the pro-Zelaya movement, was damaging the economy and was potentially threatening to internal stability. That was certainly the view conveyed by Honduran business leaders who saw Canada as a trustworthy ally in the situation, contributing suggestions to advance a settlement to Arias that involved Canadian participation in the resolution to the constitutional crisis.210
SANITIZING STATE VIOLENCE
The failure of the San José-Tegucigalpa Accord, however, raised inescapable questions about the Lobo government’s legitimacy that would not disappear with the granting of recognition by the likes of the U.S. or Canada. Lobo was elected under a dictatorship without even the fig leaf of constitutional restoration via the Accord, while suggestions of electoral fraud by Lobo’s supporters swirled around Honduras. Ongoing repression against resistance members fuelled international concerns further. Most Latin American countries and the OAS refused to recognize the new Honduran government. The Honduran resistance argued that the Lobo regime represented not the end of the coup but its consolidation under the veneer of democracy. Canada (and the U.S.) could not ignore the poor reputation of the Lobo regime; its efforts to build stronger political and economic ties, and score a victory for the retrenchment of democracy in the region, would require a defense of the Lobo government’s legitimacy in the face of its detractors if Canada were to maintain the credibility of its claims of promoting democracy and human rights.
Part of this effort, it seems, was to sanitize what happened on June 28, 2009 and in the months that followed. If doubts, however small, could be raised about Zelaya’s reputation as an undeserving victim of a coup, then perhaps the Honduran and international opposition to Lobo’s government would seem less credible. Canada, we have noted, played down the repression following the coup and argued that Zelaya bore responsibility for the coup itself and the demise of the San José-Tegucigalpa Accord.
In his testimony before the SCFAID on March 21, 2011, Reeder would add to the rewriting of the fate of Zelaya by suggesting that the “de facto government…took over power after President Zelaya left [our emphasis] the country,” as if the latter left of his own accord and was not forcefully removed at gunpoint by the military—led by General Vásquez, who would later be named by Lobo to lead the state telecommunications company, Hondutel.211 “Exile,” which evokes the political persecution of someone fighting for human rights and social justice, is replaced with simply leaving the country in what could be, as implied by Reeder in his testimony, a voluntary act. During the discussion on Honduras’ readmission to the OAS on June 1, 2011, Canada’s representative to the OAS, Alan Culham, took the sanitization a step further, studiously avoiding the descriptor “coup,” referring instead to the “political crisis” of June 2009.212 “Political crisis” is obviously much muddier than “military coup,” which expresses more clearly, and accurately, how and by whom the Zelaya government was violently deposed.
Canadian representatives also continued the heightened engagement with Honduran leaders that was initiated following the coup with the new Lobo government. In its 2009 Honduran Country Strategy Process FAIT had already identified its “strategic objective” as “expanding Canada’s engagement with the political leadership through regular visits and dialogue.”213 The Harper government’s new Americas policy advocated stronger engagment throughout the region, and in Honduras the lack of clarity around mining was an abiding source of concern (mining policy is discussed in more detail below). But in the context of Honduras’ post-electoral international isolation, “expanding…engagement with the political leadership” took on added significance. On top of regular communications and meetings between embassy representatives and Honduran political leaders, Kent visited Honduras and met with Lobo and key cabinet ministers in high profile encounters before American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the country, travelling twice (February and August) in the first seven months following Lobo’s inauguration. These meetings should be read in part as a public display of support for the isolated and embattled government, a visible communique to international observers that things were back to normal in Honduras and Canada saw Lobo as a legitimate democratic leader and interlocutor.
The Harper administration’s defense of the Lobo government was predicated on the grounds that it was leading a process of national reconciliation. National reconciliation was a stock talking point for Canadian officials whenever discussing Honduras. During his trip to Honduras in late February 2009, one month after the inauguration, Kent was all praise for Lobo and his administration, ignoring the ongoing repression of anti-coup activists, including the murder of union activist and resistance member Julio Fúnez Benítez on February 15, two days before his arrival. Instead, Kent noted his pleasure that, “President Lobo is beginning the process of national reconciliation, including supporting the formation of a truth commission.”214 During his testimony to the SCFAID on March 21, 2011, Reeder insisted that, “President Lobo has taken a number of important steps towards re-establishing democratic order and achieving national reconciliation.” 215
By far the biggest showpiece for claims to national reconciliation is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). First raised during the San José-Tegucigalpa Accord negotiations, the TRC was established in April 2010 with an international panel of commissioners; its stated aim was to investigate the events of June 28, 2009 and move Honduras forward by providing an opportunity for its people to gain closure on this chapter in their history and reconcile the divisions engendered by the coup. From its inception, however, the Commission was a farce, taking place as it did not in the aftermath of a violent conflict in which various actors were seeking peaceful resolution of differences in good faith (as occurred in South Africa and Guatemala), but while unidirectional military and paramilitary repression of unarmed civilians continued unabated. Alongside Washington, Canada was one of the lynchpins in the small clique of Lobo backers working to normalize the regime’s international relations and lend it credibility by supporting the TRC. A “successful launch” of the Commission, a FAIT report argues, “will…be seen by many countries as an important precondition for Honduras’ re-integration into the regional and international community.”216 Serving a key role in the effort to present the Lobo government as one amenable to reconciliation, the Commission found in Canada an enthusiastic advocate. A Memorandum for Action written by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Kent notes that contributing to the Truth Commision is for Canada an opening not to be missed, providing the o
pportunity of “continuing its leadership role in Honduras.”217 Kent agreed and FAIT and CIDA together provided upwards of C$400,000 to the Commission as well as a commission member, former diplomat Michael Kergin, who happened to be employed by one of Canada’s biggest corporate law firms, Bennett Jones, which also specializes in, among other things, investment law and mining.218
Sensing a charade for the benefit of the international community, members of the resistance refused to participate. The leading Honduran human rights organizations responded with their own truth commission. Predictably, while acknowledging a coup d’état had occurred, the official Commission, which reported its findings in early July 2011, blamed Zelaya for breaking the law by disregarding a Supreme Court ruling to cancel a straw poll referendum that asked Hondurans if they wanted to hold another referendum during the November 2009 election. As mentioned above, the second referendum would have enabled Hondurans to decide whether or not to replace a constitution written during the days of military dictatorship. Rewriting the constitution remains a very popular idea with many Hondurans. Ten percent of the document remains classified, safely tucked away in a library in Ottawa for a decade.
As farcical as it was, the Honduran government and its backers used the TRC as a platform to continue pressuring for the normalization of its international relations on the grounds of national reconciliation. Predictably, Canada praised the Commission for its efforts towards “strengthening the country’s political institutions and helping Hondurans gain greater confidence in their democratic institutions.”219 It also publicly demonstrated a concrete commitment on Canada’s part to democracy in Honduras as the expansion of Canadian capital—in maquilas and tourism—entered a new phase in post-coup Honduras, serving as a deflection of possible criticisms that Canadians may be doing business with and benefiting from an authoritarian regime.
