Tempered Excitement over Obama's Budget Request

by Jess Hunter-Bowman, WFP Associate Director

Unless you live on the moon (or aren’t a political junkie like me), you probably heard that yesterday President Obama released his federal budget request for 2011. We’ve taken a peek (and studied our friend Adam Isacson’s cheat sheet) and so far we like what we’re seeing. Especially when it comes to what has been the pretext for providing military aid to brutal armies across the hemisphere since the 1990s - the Drug War.

As you well know, we’ve been pumping billions in military aid into Colombia since kicking off Plan Colombia in 2000. $5.6 billion in military aid to the worst human-rights-abusing military in the hemisphere to be exact.

The vast majority of those funds have gone to fight the Drug War, but the percentage destined to fight Colombia’s war has grown larger in recent years.

You know as well as I do what this has meant for Colombia. While coca production has remained basically unchanged since 1999, tens of thousands of farmers have watched their food crops be destroyed by Dyncorp-piloted spray planes. The untested chemical has killed livestock, native species and rainforests. People have gotten sick. Meanwhile, the brutal Colombian military has not stopped killing innocent civilians. Just during President Alvaro Uribe’s time in office, human rights groups report an estimated 2,000 innocent civilians have been killed at the hands of the Colombian security forces. Millions have been displaced since 2000, including an additional 286,389 people just in 2009.

When the Democrats took over Congress in 2007, they cut about $150 million in military aid from Plan Colombia. Now President Obama has taken another positive step. In his budget, he would further cut military aid to Colombia. In fact, his request would put military aid almost 50% under the 2007 levels (the last year of a Republican stamp on the program). Initial reports indicate we may see a significant portion of the fumigation program cut.

Now for Mexico the news may not be as heartening, but it is still positive. The Obama Administration inherited the Merida Initiative from the Bush Administration. Last year Washington sent over $700 million in military aid to Mexico in a quixotic effort to fight drug cartels.

Not surprisingly, drug-related violence is still rampant and Amnesty International has reported a six fold increase in complaints against the military since 2006.

In Obama’s budget, Merida Initiative funds to Mexico would fall by about 30% from the peak levels of the last three years. According to the Bush plan, Merida should have ended this year. So we shouldn’t have seen any Merida military aid in Obama’s budget. But you can imagine how hard the drug warriors were fighting for military aid levels similar to Bush’s plan given the continued levels of violence.

And while military funding for dangerous and useless military adventures to fight the Drug War in Latin America are slowly on the way out, the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s budget for domestic drug treatment and prevention is up $341 million. Since Plan Colombia began, we’ve called for shifting counter-narcotics funding away from military aid to Latin America and toward these under-funded domestic programs.

Yes, we are concerned about the slight increases in military aid to Central America. And the new “Caribbean Basin Security Initiative”. In a couple of months, when the funding bills start moving through Congress, we’ll be calling for more definitive reductions in military aid. You and I both know that we cannot stop working until not one dollar is going to Latin American militaries targeting farmers, organizers and human rights activists.

But for now let’s celebrate this small, but significant victory. This would never have been possible without the work of WFP members, our coalition partners and most of all, the tireless work of our partners in Mexico and Colombia. We’re on the right track. Let’s keep up the momentum!

Whitewashing the Coup

by Galen Cohee Baynes, Nicaragua International Team

Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, winner of Honduras’ controversial November 29, 2009 presidential elections, was officially sworn into office yesterday morning in Tegucigalpa. Many Latin American nations continue to withhold recognition of the elections, which were held under the auspices of Roberto Micheletti’s coup regime while democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya took haven in the Brazilian Embassy. Despite massive human rights violations on the part of the de facto government leading up to the elections – including the violent suppression of peaceful protests, the closure of independent media stations, and political assassinations – the U.S. announced that the elections were “free, fair and transparent.”

U.S. election observers pose at a party with Roberto Micheletti

In recognizing the elections the U.S. hopes to usher in a new regime that will be able to distance itself from the crisis set off in Honduras by the June 28th, 2009 military coup d’etat. However, for many Hondurans, the elections did not represent an end to the coup. They represented the beginning of a new phase of the coup in which Mr. Lobo’s government will seek legitimacy without returning the ousted leader to power or holding the coup leaders acountable for their illegal actions.

The elections were held in an atmosphere of fear, with the opposition coalition calling a "popular curfew" to boycott the elections and to keep its members safe from harm. Witness for Peace's new 10-minute video, Shot in the Back, filmed on the weekend of the elections, demonstrates some of the repressive tactics used by the Honduran police and military to suffocate popular resistance to the farcical electoral process.

After the November elections, the coup regime continued with impunity. Democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya was never returned to the presidency, due in part to U.S. spokesperson Thomas Shannon's public guarantee that the U.S. would recognize the elections even without his reinstatement. After spending 129 days holed up in the Brazilian Embassy in the capital, Zelaya was escorted out and flown to the Dominican Republic yesterday afternoon. On Tuesday, Honduras’s Supreme Court dismissed all charges against the military leadership involved in perpetuating the coup. The commanders, including General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez – a graduate of the School of the Americas – will not face penalties for sending soldiers to kidnap and remove Zelaya from the country at gunpoint. If Latin American history tells us anything, providing amnesty to those who have committed crimes against their own peoples leaves a population deeply polarized and divided.

In addition, fears abound that Mr. Lobo’s presidency will continue the coup regime’s policies. The economic agenda he sets is particularly crucial. Economics was, of course, one of the main reasons that Manuel Zelaya was ousted from power. Honduras’s recent experience with neoliberalism has been to promote an export sector based the low wages that can be paid to workers in one of the hemisphere’s most impoverished countries. Mr. Zelaya’s decision in 2009 to raise the minimum wage by approximately 60% terrified the owners of textile factories (maquilas). This policy, along with the expansion of relationships with the Latin American countries involved in ALBA (The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) and the introduction of Venezuelan oil to Honduras through the Petrocaribe program, triggered the animosity of the Honduran elite and the U.S. interests that back them. Zelaya's attempt to hold a referendum on convening an assembly to draw up a new, more inclusive and democratic constitution, led the entrenched powers to overthrow Zelaya. With that clear warning, we can expect Mr. Lobo to move away from any attempts to diversify the Honduran economy through relationships with the ALBA countries, fight to keep the minimum wage low, and ignore the growing popular call for a new constitution.

Most disturbingly, attacks and threats against opposition voices have increased since the November 29 elections. Members of the LGBT community that have protested against the coup government have been especially targeted for attacks. Respected international human rights monitoring groups have been tracking human rights abuses on the part of Honduran security forces since the coup. Be sure to see the scathing report of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and read what Amnesty International has to say about restoring human rights in Honduras post-coup. The tireless Honduran human rights organizations COFADEH and CODEH continue to receive and document reports of human rights violations.

Just last week lawyer Nectali Rodezno, who has headed the Lawyers' Front Against the Coup, contacted Witness for Peace to report death threats against his wife and young child. On January 18 unidentified callers told his family that that they would be killed if Mr. Rodezno does not stop “becoming involved with the power structures.”

Honduran activist and leader Nectali Rodezno

So, while the United States aligns itself with Mr. Lobo’s government and speaks of the elections as the “way forward,” many Hondurans that have suffered at the hands of the coup regime will not be content with this proffered solution. The social movements that have coalesced in opposition to the coup, including the National Front of Resistance to the Coup, will continue to struggle for an open, democratic system of government. And those who have been attacked or lost family members to violence on the part of the state will not cease in their search for justice. Concerned citizens of the United States must continue to work in solidarity with the people of Honduras as the country enters into a new phase of its history.

As this cycle of violence completes a military coup to protect the economic status quo we must continue to raise awareness about what is happening in Honduras. Write letters to the editor and op-eds when Honduras is mentioned in your local papers. Forward the Shot in the Back video to friends and family. See the reality for yourself on a Witness for Peace delegation to Honduras. Don’t let the world forget!

Who's Behind your Morning Cup of Coffee?

by Amy Shelton

Nicaraguan coffee farmer and cooperative leader Eddy Gutierrez just visited Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky on a very successful speaker tour. Mr. Gutierrez and International Team member Galen Cohee Baynes shared the realities that Nicaraguan farmers face in the global marketplace, challenging U.S. consumers to reflect on the people behind their morning cup of coffee. Throughout the tour they exchanged experiences with small U.S. farmers who are facing many of the same challenges and are working to build a fair and local food economy. The tour helped us connect the dots between our food, our farmers and our planet.

While in Louisville, Kentucky, Eddy Gutierrez was interviewed by the Presbyterian Hunger Program, which produced this short video presentation.