The June 28th coup d'etat in Honduras against the government of President Manuel Zelaya (who emerged from the Liberal Party but formed independent positions rejecting impositions such as the Free Trade Agreement, joining the Latin American integration project ALBA and forming alliances with popular organizations) is and forever will be one of the biggest exercises of media terrorism, among other destabilization models. But behind the coup there are many important messages that require analysis.  

The Organization of American States (OAS) was slow to act. Representatives of the OAS should have been in Honduras on June 26th as President Zelaya had requested. It is true that, in light of Latin American insistence, the organization opposed the coup on strong terms, terms that even involved the General Secretary Jose Miguel Insulza personally handing over the text of an ultimatum to the usurper government. Some sectors, however, express doubts as to the OAS' commitment to this position due to the sluggish pace of action.

Analyzing the coup itself, except for a few additional twists, there is hardly anything to differentiate it from all the other US actions of intervention in Latin America during the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century.

Openly, CNN has done everything possible to legitimize the coup. The attempt to do so has been blatant and clumsy. During the first day of the coup, which began with the extremely violent kidnapping of the President who was subsequently expelled to Costa Rica as part of the illegal operation, one self-evidently monitored by the US military bases in Honduras, CNN tried all day to blame President Zelaya for events with the presentation of a series of interviews.

The question, in general terms, was "don't you think that President Zelaya is to blame for having tried to carry out this consultation that was rejected by so many?" Most of the people who were asked this type of question responded in support of Zelaya and against the coup. As a result, the first action failed. But the propaganda continued in other forms.  

The supposed "objectivity" with which messages from viewers are received and read out - the majority of which always favour the positions of the hegemonic discourse of the company - is false. For a start messages opposed to CNN's position are discarded, while the fact that the majority of Hondurans do not have access to Internet and that thousands of others, in the face of the repression imposed by the usurper government, are fleeing or are already in clandestinity, is not mentioned. 

What is more, CNN contradicts itself. Zelaya had proposed a non-binding consultation for June 28th in which the electorate could express whether or not they supported the inclusion of a fourth ballot in the general elections in November in order to vote for or against the installation of a Constituent Assembly. 

If the coup leaders thought, like CNN argued on July 4th, that Zelaya only had 30% of the vote, then why didn't they allow the vote to take place and Zelaya's proposal to be rejected? Was a brutal coup necessary to impede the consultation if the outcome, according to CNN, would not favour the president, and if a new opportunity for these matters to be discussed (the November general elections) would present itself shortly?

If the president had only minimum support, why not wait a few hours to witness his defeat at the ballot box? Why carry out a pre-dawn raid of his house, kidnap him and impose a coup that inevitably implies State terrorism?

As part of this attempt at the application of simple reasoning, it is apt to mention another part of the equation concealed by CNN: the region's history, which is not offered as context. The colonial occupation of the region by the US during the 20th century, from which the terrible term "Banana Republic" emerged in reference to the Central American nations, is not mentioned.

The people of Central America have a long history of resistence to US colonialism. The total number of victims of the resistence to dictatorships imposed by Washington during most of the 20th century is nearly 400,000. Considering that in Guatemala alone 90,000 people were "disappeared" and over 100,000 were killed, add to that the disappearences and murders during the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and the millitary dictatorship in El Salvdaor and those that resulted from the under cover US war against the people of Nicaragua in the 80s and there is no exageration in this figure.

If the coup in Honduras is not evaluated within the terms of this reality, it is impossible to understand the danger that the current situation signifies for Latin America and why the only solution is the restitution of President Zelaya. 

Democratically elected presidents were frequently overthrown as a result of invasions and interventions between the 1950s and the 1980s. At the end of the 1990s, and even more so during the first few years of the 21st century, the emergence of new leaders free of the ideological straightjacket imposed by the Cold War, provoked other failed coup attempts like the one in Venezuela in April 2002 against President Hugo Chavez and the supposedly "civic" attempts (with paramilitary support behind them) like the one that aimed to overthrow Evo Morales in September 2008. 

The coup d'etats and velvet revolutions feed off each other in the imperative task of destabilizing governments. These destabilization attempts rely on the support of the National Endowment Foundation (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) - in other words the CIA which was also responsible for the war against Nicaragua and the invasion of Panama in 1989 among other "memorable" operations in the Central American region.

In 1983 the Argentinian journalist and investigator, Gregorio Selser, wrote the book "Honduras: rented out Republic" published in Mexico the same year. In the book Selser denounced the complicity of Honduran political leaders with the long term occupation by the fruit companies and other multinationals and the US military intervention.  

Marking his respect for the people of Honduras, a people subjected to the infamy of dictatorships and congressional powers that constantly betray them, Selser demonstrates, citing documents in evidence, that Honduras is a country that has been used by Washington as a platform for regional agression since the time when the fruit companies imposed one government after another. 

For this reason it is impossible to have a truthful discussion about what is happening in Honduras today without mentioning the presence of US millitary bases. The concealment of this factor is part of the coup.

The fact that the antecedents of everything that happened in the region when US millitary aid propped up Central American dictators are not mentioned is not an act of common "forgetfulness." It is a well documented fact that the invasion that overthrew the legitimate President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, in 1954 and the millitary operations against El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s were coordinated from US military bases in Honduras.  

During those years some of the most powerful radar systems available were installed in the millitary bases in Honduras. One of the most established is Pamerola where the US has the strategic runway measuring over 2.6km long which facilitates the entrance into the country of equipment for attack and as many troops as are required.

But Palmerola is not the only millitary site in Honduras where the US can locate troops for "rapid response" actions against any country in the region. With its high technology equipment, the US can monitor an extensive territory, including the Caribbean, from its bases in Honduras.

During the fateful decade of the 80s, in a secret session behind the backs of the Honduran people 44 Liberal Party deputies and 34 National Party deputies agreed to move ahead with the creation of the Regional Training Centre (CREM). It was in this centre that Salvadoran soldiers, who went on to murder and "dissappear" the populations of entire towns, were trained. Soldiers from other countries ruled by dictators were also trained at this centre. 

In recent years, US soldiers trained mercenaries for the Iraq war in and around Palmerola, just a few kilometres from the border with Nicaragua. 

The Honduran people has been imprisoned in the spider's web of Cold War counterinsurgencies, with US millitary installations that were and are used to attack other nations.

The Honduran Supreme Court of Justice is an institution that was introduced by the country's former "viceroy" John Dimitri Negroponte, who never lost touch with his millitary, business and political subordinates after his time as US Ambassador in the 1980s. During this period, Negroponte was effectively a government in the shadows. 

The lead up to the current situation in Honduras was instigated as a result of Negroponte's trip to the Central American nation a year ago when he was deputy secretary of State for George W. Bush's administration. It was after a number of meetings Negroponte held with the current presidente de facto, Roberto Micheletti and with members of the Supreme Court that preparations for the coup were intensified under the supervision of the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa (which evidently acted alongside the coup leaders all along). It is essential also to point out the participation of Israeli intelligence (which accompanies similar actions in other countries in the region) as an important partner in the Honduran coup preparations.  
 
For Honduran social organizations, and for the majority of nations in the world, the only possible solution to the crisis is the restitution of Manuel Zelaya as President of Honduras. This, of course, has generated internal contradictions in the US.

But there is another essential point: in this coup in Honduras (which is supported by the Catholic Church hierarchy and as part of which media outlets are being closed down, thousands of people are being murdered, persecuted and repressed, including journalists, while blatant acts of State terrorism are taking place) new methods are being tested out. 

Indeed, the brutality demonstrated by the military was destined to provoke the shock and condemnation of all of Latin America. The disrespect and disregard with which coup leaders have treated international institutions like the OAS and the UN indicates that they have assumed the disparaging attitude with which former president Bush treated the same institutions.  

One of the most callous effects of Bush's time in the White House is the extent to which international institutions were discredited and debilitated when he invaded Iraq imposing extremely grave violations of human rights on the world. The frightful symbols of this grave episode were and are Guantanamo and the secret jails located across the globe.  

There is another aspect of the Honduran coup about which little has been said. This coup is not just a repetition of old coup models with the active participation of the oligarchical power (models so old that this 2009 version is almost inconceivable). This model has involved extremely provocative ingredients, as if it was designed in order to present President Barack Obama with a fait accompli. This makes going back to the pre-coup situation very difficult without activating what is already being proposed inside the country: the fulfillment of certain demands by the hawks.

The coup leaders and their supporters are alluding to the new president's "weaknesses." One is reminded of the hawks treatment of former president James Carter during the period in which he had disagreements with Central American dictators. This strategy is a well known mafia trick.

In this case certain figures, spokesmen for the hawks, are wheeled out. One of them is no less than former deputy secretary Roger Noriega himself, an active participant of the UnoAmerica Foundation, the new Frankenstein of the NED and USAID.

This "foundation" was created in Colombia at the end of 2008, although "militants" were carrying out actions in different countries before that. Among the recuits of the foundation's leaders are former millitary officials of the old dictatorships and representatives of the most extreme right wing and neo nazist sectors of Latin America. The millitants commit themselves to supporting actions throughout Latin America, beyond the borders of their own nations, in the same way dictators used to coordinate actions in the counterinsurgent Operation Condor.

This makes it clear that there is a lot more behind the Honduran coup. It is an extraordinary trial-run and the corporate framework of the Honduran coup leaders, who say that they are "ready to resist," works because there is plenty of money behind them. Just like there was plenty of money behind the failed corporate oil lock-out coup in Venezuela, and behind the transport bosses in Chile all those years ago, and the Bolivia coup leaders.
 
This coup has grave implications in so many different directions. So Latin America has to act as a retaining wall. Any door left ajar will be seen as a "weakness" by the hawks - the ones who never went away -  who ignore and defy all international regulations.

The coup in Honduras, a nation under military occupation, is a harsh test for the continent. But the message spoken by a renewed Latin America is solid and precise, and the world has given its verdict.

For Europe this is a throwback to the times of the Monroe Doctrine. They are saying that America is for the Americans (North Americans) just a few days before the old continent signs a treaty with the Central American sub-region. 

Tortilla con Sal