In a letter to President Barack Obama Saturday (full letter text here, in Spanish), ousted Honduran President Mel Zelaya said he is no longer willing to accept any deal that will restore him to office if it means recognizing the results of upcoming November elections. “As the elected president of the Honduran people, I reaffirm my position that starting today, no matter what, I will not accept any agreement on returning to the presidency of the republic to cover up this coup d'etat,” said Zelaya, reading the letter on Honduran radio. As the AP writes, Mr. Zelaya also sharply criticized the United States for changing its position on whether or not to recognize the Nov. 29 vote. “The future that you show us today by changing your position in the case of Honduras, and thus favoring the abusive intervention of the military castes ... is nothing more than the downfall of freedom and contempt for human dignity,” Zelaya wrote. “It is a new war against the processes of social and democratic reforms so necessary in Honduras.”
As McClatchy writes, such a change in position can be read as a “foreign policy coup” for Sen. Jim DeMint and his ultra-conservative allies in the U.S. Congress. “DeMint's role has been disproportionate to his interest in Latin America,” the Americas Society’s Christopher Sabatini says. “He chose to take a stand on this, and he plunged headlong into it. He drew a line in the sand.” McClatchy also adds a word on Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky’s recent three-day fact-finding trip to Honduras, focused on human rights abuses committed since the June 28 coup. Accompanying COFADEH coordinator, Bertha Oliva, Rep. Schakowsky—the first Democrat to visit the country since the coup—said she saw evidence of widespread abuses under the de facto regime. “I myself was filmed as I left the Brazilian embassy by a uniformed soldier in a ski mask,” Schakowsky told reporters in a conference call from Miami International Airport. The Center for Justice and International Law has documented recent abuses, including the recent persecution of anti-coup judges. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission on Friday once again called for the restoration of Mr. Zelaya to power. And in a letter last week to the Obama administration, over 240 Latin American scholars called on the President to denounce such abuses. But on Thursday, DOS spokesperson Ian Kelly claimed the Department had no knowledge about any rights abuses in the country: “I think that we would need to have more details about it for us to really comment.”
In other Honduras news, Reuters reports that the coup regime continues trying to convince international election observers to monitor November elections while freezes in aid are increasingly affecting the country’s poor. EFE reports that Panama has joined the U.S. in saying it will recognize the winner of upcoming elections. And in the Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady is in Honduras where she writes about her recent discussion with anti-Zelaya Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga.
Around the region this weekend:
· The Wall Street Journal reports that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s possible re-election bid may be all but over. The National Electoral Council ruled late Thursday that Uribe supporters who obtained signatures in favor of holding a referendum to end term limits had spent about six times the legal limit in their campaign. Supporters of the president say they will appeal the decision. But as the paper writes, “Thursday's ruling is sure to make Mr. Uribe's race against the electoral clock that much harder.”
· In Nicaragua, the New York Times writes about the recent Supreme Court decision that ended term limits in that country. As the paper’s Blake Schmidt reports, Magistrate Sergio Cuarezma, a member of the Supreme Court and its constitutional chamber, was never informed of an afternoon session of the court’s constitutional chamber on Oct. 19 when six pro-Ortega judges unanimously decided a ban on re-election was unconstitutional. The ruling may be read as part of a broader crackdown against the Nicaraguan opposition. Among other recent worrying events, opposition protests last week were “met by Sandinista caravans that chased protesters into a Managua police station, shattering its windows with rocks,” says the paper.
· The Times also reports of a new phenomenon being seen in U.S.-Mexico relations: the wiring of pesos north to the U.S. (rather than dollars south) as the economic crisis and unemployment continue to hit migrant communities particularly hard.
· In Singapore, Peruvian President Alan Garcia pulled his delegation from an Asia-Pacific Summit over the weekend, alleging that neighboring Chile had paid a Peruvian military official to act as a spy. Garcia had been scheduled to meet with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet before the incident. For its part, the Chilean government rejected the spying accusations on Saturday. Peru filed suit against Chile last year at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, disputing their maritime border and demanding more of the rich Pacific Ocean fishing waters between them.
· The Colombia-Venezuela border feud may be weakening in intensity as Colombia returned four Venezuelan national guardsmen captured in Colombian territory over the weekend, saying the gesture was aimed at lowering diplomatic tensions between the neighboring countries.
· Finally, in weekend opinions, the Miami Herald goes after Hugo Chavez’s economic policies in an editorial. The paper says recent calls for rationing of water and electricity are “just the latest indication of how badly Mr. Chávez continues to mismanage the economy of energy-rich Venezuela, which should be one of the most prosperous nations in the world to judge from its vast hydrocarbon reserves.” And the paper’s Andres Oppenheimer attacks the “piquetero” culture in places like Argentina and Mexico.” He argues: “The wave of street blockades is more than a nuisance or even an economic problem. It has an invisible cost that erodes the moral base of a societies already fighting widespread tax evasion, corruption and organized crime.”
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