In January 2009, President Manuel Zelaya decided, despite the opposition of the business elites, to increase the country’s minimum wage, which was until then the lowest of the region. The country’s elite and the powerful media organs began an intense campaign to discredit and vilify the president and his cabinet. President Zelaya was accused of wanting to make a ‘new Venezuela’ (Naiman, 2011; Benjamin, 2009). Therefore, when he planned to change the constitution, following a strong popular demand to revise it, the opposition accused him of wanting to do so to make it possible for him to run again for the elections (in Honduras a president can be elected only once)(Ruhl, 2010). On June 28, soldiers stormed into the presidential palace and sent …show more content…
Indeed, the U.S. corporate interests in Honduras are important, with multinationals such as Dole and Chiquita employing 11,000 people as well as manufacturers in apparel, auto part and mining and hydroelectric investment (Frank, 2012). However, in the two first years of his mandate, he moved to the left, especially towards Venezuela, taking in part in 2008 in the ALBA initiative (Cannon & Hume, 2012; Ruhl, 2010; Maher 2012). Therefore, after the coup, the de facto government retrenched to its obsequious behaviour towards the oligarchy, what some refer to as the ‘second coup’, a push for the agenda of transnational investors and Honduran elites (Cannon & Hume, 2012; Frank, …show more content…
It first condemned what happened, however without actually naming it a ‘coup,’ probably because if it did it would have forced Washington to terminate its aid programme to Honduras. However, after the coups in Madagascar and Mauritania, the U.S. did not hesitate to immediately and totally stop their aid (Main, 2010; Weisbrot, 2011; Chomsky, 2010). It did not withdraw its ambassador from Tegucigalpa as the European countries did. The U.S. continued training Honduran officers and the IMF, after withdrawing loans to the Zelaya government following disagreements over his economic policies, provided a loan of 150$ million to the coup regime (Chomsky, 2010). Nonetheless, the U.S. did take some measures. They suspended their non-humanitarian aid, cancelled the visas of the leading members and supporters of the interim government but they did not resort to the most effective trade sanctions and slowly but surely diminished their support for Manuel Zelaya (Ruhl, 2010). They supported an agreement between him and Roberto Micheletti, the interim president, that would create a unity government and reinstate Manuel Zelaya. However, when this turned sour, the Obama administration did not move an inch (Ruhl, 2010). Washington then announced that the U.S. would recognise the November elections, giving very little hope to President Zelaya’s of ever coming back to power (Rulh, 2010; Main, 2010). The negotiations proposed by
No, Honduras has engaged in commercial activities within the United States that has a direct effect in the United States. This lawsuit is based upon commercial activity of a foreign state. A foreign state is not immune from jurisdiction of the US courts in the following situations: Waiver, Commercial Activity and Violation of international
Reading the book Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez, has been very informative to me and has changed my perspective on U.S. foreign policy. Each account of the families from the different Latino countries has similar underlying trends that can be found because of the U.S. involvement in their countries. Every single instance of U.S. involvement in Latin American countries seems to evolve around the idea of greed and profit. The U.S. is like a business that only cares about the income of money and not about the morality of their actions. On top of all the injustice the U.S. government has employed, they don’t bother to own up to their mistakes and they tend to sweep their involvement under the rug. For example, the Iran-Contra scandal mentioned in the book of the Reagan administration was the result of using drug money from Iran to buy weapons for the Nicaraguan contra rebels against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It infuriates me that the U.S. would support a dictator that suppresses the rights of its citizens and all the while they want to take down the established, popular Sandinista government. The U.S. wants to do all this so that the new government will support U.S. interests in Nicaragua. When the scandal was uncovered, all Reagan could say was “I’m sorry” and “It won’t happen again” even though our involvement had the result of many lives lost in that war/rebellion. Unfortunately, this theme did not only occur in Nicaragua
This report provides information on Honduras which includes the geography, its society, and government conditions. It offers facts about Honduras’ natural resources and ethnic groups. In addition, the article examines its military and transnational issues including, international conflicts, refugees and drug trafficking. The article provides insight to what controls the economy of Honduras. This article will be useful for my final project because it offers background facts on the level of development.
“When officials come together to take some action, the result will most often be different from what any of them intended before they began interacting a group” (Allison and Philip, 1999, p. 258). On March 2007, George W. Bush made a visit to the Mexican state of Yucatán to meet the recently elected Mexican president Felipe Calderón. Moreover, in this state visit, Calderón made a point about the US’ lack of cooperation in the fight against drugs and “asked the United States to help fight the criminal mafias based in his country of his neighbor’s drug habit” (The Economist, 2008). The Merida Initiative (MI), made public on 2007, proposed aid for Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The aid, of an economic nature, had the objective of bringing security to developing countries and for the US, the protection of their national
The United States was in favor of democracy in Latin America; however, the reforms made by these “democracies” had to stay within the limits imposed by the US. Therefore, Arbenz became a communist threat after legalizing the communist party and moving to nationalize the plantation of the United Fruit Company . By nationalizing the United Fruit Company, the US and the land owners in Guatemala were going to lose money; therefore, they shared common ground, and were against it. They did not agree with the empowerment of the indigenous people of Mayan descent, and were always discriminated upon. The dictators from neighboring countries were afraid that the reforms being made in Guatemala were going to influence their “respective oligarchies” (Rabe, Stephen G.) and helped organize a possible coup with the United States (Miller, Talea). The CIA desperately searched for any ties between the USSR and Arbenz, but could not find anything. The CIA in Guatemala reported a list with names of communists that they wanted to eliminate when an anti-communist coup was taken place (Document 2), and the killings
This article talks about Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro wanting to rewrite the country’s constitution, originally written in 1999. The exact changes that would be made to the document are not known, but citizens and leaders of both Venezuela and the United States, including President Trump, believe it will make the government too much like Cuba’s. Cuba has a communist government that controls everything. There will be a vote that many people plan on boycotting, and there have been many protests from all the people who do not want the President of Venezuela to go through with the changes. These strikes are dangerous and have ended up killing many people.
The State Department notes that the Honduran government is actively trying to better its investment climate. However, the State Department also points out that foreign companies looking to invest in Honduras “continue to face significant challenges (State Department).” The investment climate is negatively affected by “high levels of crime, a weak judicial system, corruption, low educational levels, and poor transportation and other infrastructure (State Department).” I find it particularly interesting that the first problem that the State Department lists is the fact that Honduras a significant problem revolving around high levels of crime – as I touched on heavily above and stressed that it would have substantial consequences for the economy at
Pinochet was put into power . This is a perfect example of how the US foreign policy replaced genuine democracy with dictatorship for their own benefit, and again, supposedly in the name of National Security. Latin America was a victim of US foreign policy and corporate greed.
Before addressing the contemporary concerns surrounding immigration and undocumented immigrants, it is fundamental to address the historical antecedents to today’s widespread undocumented immigration population as well as the elicited political response carried out by the Reagan Administration during the 1980s. In the heart of the Cold War, the United States actively supported and funded the El Salvadorian government — a military government that ran
Located on the Pacific Coastline, El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, and the most populated. The United States of America foreign policy on El Salvador is best explained by President Obama’s approach on Latin America where the United States is focused on economic growth and equality, energy and climate control, and regional and citizen security (Foreign Policy, 2012). This is best explained using the international level of analysis and neo-liberalism where the global structure and economic interdependence provides the foundation of America’s foreign policy. To ensure that one can see the transparency in United States methodology I will provide the history of El Salvador, the creation of United States interest in El
Galeano portrays this moment in Latin American history as the instant U.S investors took control over the industries. He details the dangers they went through when producing one item to export for the benefit of foreigners, and how they later imported the processed goods from those same foreign countries, injecting money only overseas. The fact that Latin America needed imports to survive initiated the imperial link the U.S has upon it. As stated by Galeano, “The growing dependence on foreign supplies produces the growing identification of the interest of U.S. capitalists operating in Latin America with U.S. national security”11, bluntly showing the relationship between the United States and Latin America. “With petroleum, as with coffee or meat, rich countries profit more from the work of consuming it than do poor countries from the work of producing it”12. Because profit was not being retained in the Latin American countries, nationalization of the industries became of importance. The United States offered intervention in order to protect everyone’s interests with the proposal of free trade, but this was no more than another manipulation to continue having power over Latin America and its resources: “Latin America’s big ports, through which the wealth of its soil and subsoil passed en route to distant centers of power, were being built as instruments of the conquest and domination of the countries to which they belonged, and as conduits
"Fueled by the Cold War and transnational corporate interests, the U.S. has covertly tinkered with the governments of Latin American countries since World War 2, producing an extremely violent and unstable political climate."
"Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system, capitalism is the realm of injustice and tyranny of the richest against the poorest' (Chavez, 2000) – This statement was made by Hugo Chavez president of Venezuela in a BBC1 interview. The president of Venezuela from 1999-2013 leader of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution' a socialist political program leading the fight for independence for Latin America. Chavez vision was to free the interference of foreign power with revolutionary Marxist ideology. Chavez strived to create a Latin American alliance to expel U.S. influence to compete politically and economically with the European Union. Chavez died on 5th March 2013 at the age of 58. Throughout his rain, Venezuelan people were deeply divided with the
The lectures in class this week and the article “10 of the Most Lethal CIA Interventions in Latin America” by Olivier Acuña has opened my eyes to the U.S.’s international political connections. The U.S. has proved throughout history to be self serving and has proven to intervene in nations that will lead to its own economic and political advantages. I find it unfortunate that the CIA and American government tries to pride itself on our democratic system, but will support corrupt dictators and absolute rulers
The United States government has had a long history of playing a dirty hand in the overthrow of foreign nations governments, through economic, militaristic, and clandestine ways. Since, the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani, the US government has been meddling in world affairs in countries thousands of miles away. America's leaders have always labeled meddling in the affairs of other countries, the ones the public knew about, as restoration of freedoms to the peoples of that nation, or trying to stop the spread of communism. The result of this paper is to explore the reasons that the US government chose to validate their interference in the governments of foreign nations, and the effects those decisions had on the current worldly situation.