Who Killed Berta Cáceres?. Nina Lakhani
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pacts between the two parties, or at least its uppermost cliques. In practice this meant that whoever won at the ballot box, politics continued to serve the interests of the country’s economic elites. Why? Because campaign finances and political careers depend on the same powerful families, who, despite superficial differences, are bound together by the shared political project of making money.
In such a context, how did Berta find herself standing for vice-president? The best person to tell this story is Carlos H. Reyes, a burly, forthright man with an infectious laugh and shiny bald head, whom I interviewed over breakfast in his glorious back garden. Reyes, born in 1940, is the straight-talking leader of what’s widely considered the country’s most principled and belligerent union, STIBYS, representing the workers in beer and soft drinks factories. In 2009, Reyes was nominated by the Bloque Popular to stand for president, with Berta, Carlos Amaya (son of the revolutionary writer Ramon Amaya) and teacher Maribel Hernández as his running mates.22 The objective was to break the bipartisan system and open up spaces to new leaders from outside what they regarded as the cesspit of party politics. The Bloque Popular took off in Tegucigalpa at the end of the 1990s as an attempt to halt the privatization juggernaut circling round public services like ENEE, egged on by the IMF and World Bank. Similar blocs or alliances between unions, campesino and indigenous groups, students and teachers sprang up across the country, organizing huge rallies which were frequently met with force.23 Reyes recalled one particularly thuggish encounter back around August 2004, when thousands marched on Congress, blocking the four entrances into the capital. ‘The army surrounded us, but Berta stood up to them face to face. That kid [cipote] never backed down, not once in the twenty years I knew her,’ he said. Berta was reluctant to stand at first. Back then she wasn’t as well known as Salvador Zúñiga, who was the face of COPINH at home while she focused on international work. She accepted the nomination after touring the country, consulting communities: it emerged that people wanted genuine representation, not empty campaign promises, and they wanted deep, genuine, lasting change. They believed Berta could help make that happen.24
The Cuarta Urna: Dictator or Democrat?
The first legislation Zelaya sent to Congress was a citizen participation law. This envisaged a Cuarta Urna, or fourth ballot box, at the November 2009 general elections, enabling voters to decide whether a National Constituent Assembly should be convened to amend the 1982 Constitution.25 The Bloque Popular saw the Cuarta Urna as the opportunity for change. Here, finally, was the chance to create a constitution which recognized the country’s diverse cultural and ethnic groupings, as in Ecuador and Bolivia. They believed this could open up democratic spaces for genuine community participation and the redistribution of power. It was the Cuarta Urna that convinced Berta that Zelaya was sincere about constructing a new, fairer, more equal Honduras through a social pact between the state and the mass of ordinary people.
But to the country’s elites, who had no interest in sharing anything, the Cuarta Urna represented a ticking time bomb. As a sop to their concerns, a popular non-binding vote was scheduled for Sunday 28 June to determine whether or not the Urna would be introduced six months later, concurrent with the general elections.
However, with just over six months left of his term, Zelaya had no friends in high places, and the yes–no vote was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and outlawed by Congress a few days before it was scheduled. In response, Zelaya ordered army chief General Vásquez to provide logistical support to distribute the ballot boxes. He refused. Zelaya sacked him on Tuesday 24 June, which prompted the commanders and defence minister to resign in protest. A few hours later, troops descended from their barracks into cities across the country. Vásquez was soon reinstated by the Supreme Court justices, who ruled their decision could not be challenged. The electoral tribunal judges likewise declared the consultation illegal and, together with the Attorney General’s Office, confiscated all the ballots and locked them inside the Hernán Acosta Mejía airbase. ‘There’s a coup under way,’ Salvador Zúñiga warned Zelaya, but the president refused to believe it. Instead Zelaya led a group of supporters to the base and seized the confiscated ballots, ordering all hands on deck to ensure the materials were delivered and the vote went ahead. It was frenetic.
The first plan to get rid of Zelaya, hatched in Congress, involved mustering a political consensus to declare him mentally unfit for power. When US Ambassador Hugo Llorens cottoned on to this strategy,26 he called Roberto Micheletti, Carlos Flores and other powerbrokers to make clear it was unconstitutional, and the US would not support it. ‘Llorens tried to stop them, but they stopped returning his calls,’ said Víctor Meza, the softly spoken former interior minister. ‘Them’ meant the economic elites, who in the weeks leading up to the Cuarta Urna were busy trying to raise money to finance the coup, and persuading high-ranking judges, politicians, prosecutors and the clergy to play their part in time for the grand finale.
While Micheletti was no coup mastermind,27 he played an important role as president of Congress in aligning the right-wing section of the Liberal Party with the opposition Nationalists to execute it. The coup made him the most powerful man in Honduras for seven months, during which he defended it like a Cold War victory. Former president Carlos Flores, who helped Zelaya win the presidency, admits orchestrating a campaign against Zelaya in the run-up to the coup, and also a campaign to stop his return to the country, yet denies any direct involvement in the coup! A private jet belonging to his uncle Miguel Facussé was used to fly Zelaya’s foreign minister Patricia Rodas out of the country on 28 June, though without his knowledge, Facussé claimed.
General Vásquez had refused to participate in the ‘mentally unfit’ plot – so what changed his mind?
I interviewed him at the end of 2018 at his gated mansion on the south-westerly edge of the capital.28 It was here, Vásquez said, that he invited Zelaya, nine days before the coup, to explain his intentions and resolve the Cuarta Urna crisis. But Zelaya came accompanied by his so-called political rival Pepe Lobo, and the evening ended in stalemate. ‘Mel said, “It’s just a poll.” Pepe said, “You want to stay in power.” Mel said, “No, I just want change,” and it went on like this.’ According to Vásquez, Zelaya was more upset by the idea that his own vice-president, Elvin Santos,29 could be the next ruler than by the looming constitutional crisis. It was just a poll, a non-binding poll, I reminded him. ‘You say that, but this little poll had turned everyone against Mel: politicians, and not just the National Party, half of his own party, Church leaders, businessmen, everyone came to this house asking me to find a solution,’ Vásquez told me. ‘The empresarios, the business people, were scared of twenty-first-century socialism. They wanted me to solve the problem with a military coup and restore order to the country, but I said no, even after he sacked me, because I’m not ambitious and Mel was my friend. But when he insulted the armed forces during a television interview, that was too much, we were angry, and the Supreme Court saw an opportunity. Until then, they were all too scared to make a move.’
On Saturday 27 June the mansion was full of ambassadors, congressmen, functionaries, commanders, dealing with the crisis, according to Vásquez. At 11 p.m., sitting in the formal lounge on spotless cream sofas, Vásquez and his commanders made the decision.30 ‘I felt very bad, we were good friends, like brothers, but there was no other option to avoid a huge crisis, perhaps even civil war. It was only a poll, but it had set all the people against one another.’ Any regrets? I asked at the end of the interview.
‘The truth is, Mel wanted to stay in power. In 2008 Chávez told me, soldier to soldier … and my intelligence sources in Venezuela confirmed it, that Chávez saw Honduras as the gateway to Central America for his Bolivarian political project.’ Even if true, that doesn’t mean Chávez would have got his way.
Uncle Sam
The soldiers deployed to execute the coup were from the 1st Battalion, with which US special forces were conducting a training operation. Zelaya had told me that he saw US soldiers milling about at Palmerola as the plane refuelled. Did the Pentagon know, and if so, were they in on it? I asked Vásquez. No, he said, they weren’t. US military and diplomatic bigwigs were at a party that Saturday night, so had no idea about the final plans.
Víctor