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Honduras

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captainccs:
Me parecen excellentes noticias de Honduras que el gobierno no se deje amedrentar por la OEA. Hay que aguantar hasta que se celebren las elecciones y entonces hay un regreso al hilo constitucional que la OEA no va a poder negar.



Interim Honduran leader resists diplomats' pleas

By BEN FOX, Associated Press Writer – Thu Oct 8, 3:57 am ET

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Honduras' coup-installed leader resisted calls by diplomats from across the hemisphere to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya, at one point angrily telling the visitors they "don't know the truth or don't want to know it."

During sometimes confrontational talks with interim President Roberto Micheletti and his ministers, representatives from the United States, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean took turns on Wednesday urging the Micheletti camp to reconsider its position, but no breakthroughs were announced.

"Today we saw Hondurans sitting together, working on a Honduran solution," Ronald Robinson, a Jamaican representing the Caribbean Community, said during one session of talks with Honduran representatives. "For me, I thought it was a good step in the right direction."

The June 28 military-backed coup that toppled Zelaya has paralyzed this impoverished Central American nation with street protests, foreign aid cuts, diplomatic isolation and a standoff between rival claimants to the presidency. The crisis deepened when Zelaya slipped back into the country in late September and took refuge with dozens of supporters in the Brazilian Embassy.

Wednesday's negotiations began behind closed doors with representatives of Zelaya and the interim government in the Honduran capital, but exploded into the open later in the day with a televised confrontation between Micheletti and the foreign envoys in the presidential palace.

Micheletti, his voice bristling with rage, scolded the diplomats for refusing to recognize what he insisted was the lawful removal of Zelaya under the Honduran constitution and for isolating his country and suspending aid to one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

"You don't know the truth or you don't want to know it," Micheletti said. "You don't want to know what happened before June 28."

He urged them to "reflect on the damage you are doing to a country that has done nothing to you."

The diplomats sat stone-faced, a few rubbing their eyes in apparent fatigue during his outburst. Canada's minister of state for the Americas, Peter Kent, told Micheletti that the international community respects the Honduran constitution, but it oppose the military's ouster of Zelaya.

"However it happened, a mistake was made on June 28," Kent said. "A democratically elected leader, whatever his behavior in recent years, was undemocratically removed."

The delegates, brought to Honduras by the Organization of American States, were scheduled to leave Thursday.

After the talks with Micheletti, the delegation spoke with Zelaya in the Brazilian Embassy.

Tensions rose before Wednesday's meeting, with riot police firing tear gas to disperse about 200 Zelaya supporters protesting near the U.S. and Brazilian embassies.

Micheletti and his supporters say Zelaya's military-backed ouster was legal because it was sanctioned by Honduras' Supreme Court after he defied of a court order that he drop a referendum on changing the constitution. Most of the international community maintains the coup was illegal and must be reversed.

"We are not here to create a debate. We are here to find concrete solutions to a situation that cannot be prolonged," OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza said before the round of meetings started.

Insulza presented a proposal to restore Zelaya as head of a unity government until his term ends in January and offer amnesty to both the coup leaders and the deposed president, who faces abuse of power and other charges in Honduras.

The proposal, which also would require Zelaya to abandon any ambitions to change the constitution, is very similar to one proposed months ago by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, known as the San Jose Accord, and rejected by the interim government.

Zelaya gave negotiators an ultimatum, calling for the postponement of the upcoming presidential election if he is not restored to office before Oct. 15. The interim government wants to go ahead with the Nov. 29 ballot — scheduled before Zelaya's overthrow — and move past the crisis.

The Canadian minister said it was imperative for an agreement to be reached before the election, which many countries in the Americas have warned will not be recognized if Zelaya remains out of the power.

"I sense that everybody involved understands that we are nearly out of time and this crisis needs to be resolved now," Kent said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_coup

Crafty_Dog:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/world/americas/us-turns-its-focus-on-drug-smuggling-in-honduras.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120506

Crafty_Dog:
Turmoil Is Expected After Honduras's Election
A Central American democracy is in trouble thanks to Obama's foreign-policy choices.
By Mary Anastasia O'Grady
WSJ

Nov. 24, 2013 7:01 p.m. ET

President Obama has declared unilaterally that parts of the Affordable Care Act will not be enforced. But the ACA is "settled law," by his own admission. The U.S. Constitution doesn't empower him to alter it by decree.

Mr. Obama, a former law professor, knows this. But he seems to think that because the relief he decreed was broadly welcomed, expanding his powers beyond constitutional limits was justified. That kind of thinking endangers liberty, and not only in the U.S.

An early hint of the Obama administration's cavalier attitude toward the rule of law came in 2009, with its decision to back an attempted power-grab by a populist demagogue in Honduras. In the aftermath of Sunday's presidential election, further turmoil there is expected. Much of it will have been sown by the U.S.

In 2009, then-Honduran President Manuel Zelaya of the Liberal Party wanted to extend his term-limited presidency. The Honduran Constitution, written to protect the nation against dictatorship, expressly forbids the executive from even raising the issue of re-election. But Mr. Zelaya, who had been learning from other elected tyrants, such as Hugo Chávez, thought he could make an end run around the law by calling a referendum. When Mr. Zelaya met institutional resistance, he brought a violent mob into the streets.


That triggered a warrant for his arrest from the Honduran Supreme Court. The military complied and then deported Mr. Zelaya to Costa Rica on the grounds that imprisonment in Honduras would generate unrest and result in loss of life. The legality of the deportation was debatable—but his removal from office was not.

The Obama administration tried to force Honduras to violate its constitution and restore Mr. Zelaya to power. All of the country's institutions refused.

That crisis remains a rare moment in Central American history when a U.S. president joined Fidel Castro and his allies in an effort to strong-arm three legitimate branches of a friendly government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even stripped the members of the Honduras Supreme Court of their U.S. visas. Just as rare, the rule of law prevailed.

Yet the bullying by Washington took its toll. The newly elected president, Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, was keenly aware that Honduras was out of favor with the U.S. and other left-wing governments in the region. He set about to placate them. One of his most controversial decisions was to grant amnesty to Mr. Zelaya, who ought to have been tried for his high crimes and misdemeanors.

As we went to press, the result of Sunday's election was not yet known. But no matter the outcome, Honduras faces the continued threat of destabilization by pro-Zelaya forces.

There were eight presidential candidates in this race. Polls suggested a close finish among the top three.

The free-market conservative vote was expected to be split between Liberal Party candidate Mauricio Villeda and Juan Orlando Hernández, of the National Party (PN), president of the unicameral congress. The third serious contender was Xiomara Castro Zelaya, wife of the ousted former president. She is a hard-left populist who touts her husband's pro-Caracas line—and during the campaign promised to do what her husband could not: rewrite the Honduran Constitution.

The list of Mrs. Zelaya's backers is the who's who of the antidemocratic Bolivarian Revolution. This leaves little doubt that document would be designed to allow the executive to consolidate power.

Mr. Villeda is a lawyer with a solid reputation. His Liberal Party was torn apart by Mr. Zelaya and he lacked the resources of the incumbent PN. Yet he was rising in opinion polls in recent months, reflecting a widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo. After almost four years of PN government, public payrolls have gotten fat and public-sector debt is up sharply. Thanks to a lack of transparency, the public perception is that government corruption is pervasive.

Mr. Hernández's candidacy labored under that cloud and others, including skyrocketing crime statistics and credible charges of fraud in the PN primary. Departing President Lobo and the candidate did not help their party's image when they exerted their power to remove four judges from the constitutional court in December in violation of the constitution.

Honduras does not have a runoff provision, so whoever wins is likely to do so with less than 50% of the vote. No party in the National Congress is likely to have a majority either. Even if the vote count shows Mrs. Zelaya to be the winner today, she could have trouble getting congressional approval for a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution.

Hondurans fear that her supporters will take to the streets to cry fraud if she doesn't win. In case of a Zelaya victory expect her to push for the assembly by any means necessary. If her regional allies are any guide, both lead and silver will be used. All of which means the country is about where it was in 2009, adding to Mr. Obama's embarrassing legacy as the U.S. president who provided tacit approval to flaunt the rule of law.

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com

Crafty_Dog:
Highlights

    Mexico has promised the United States it will reduce the surge in migration across their shared border under threat of U.S. tariffs.
    The number of Hondurans seeking asylum or employment in the United States will likely remain stubbornly high amid persistent political and economic instability there.
    The United States will use any continued migrant surge fueled by Honduran unrest to try to extract concessions from the Mexican government, which will, in turn, try to delay making them — if it can.

Though Central Americans for years have accounted for an increasing percentage of overall migrants crossing the U.S. border illegally, their numbers grew dramatically in early 2019. In May 2019 alone, about 130,000 people were arrested trying to cross the border. The composition of migrant flows also shifted, with the number of individuals in families apprehended at the border by U.S. authorities growing from 105,000 during all of 2018 to almost 330,000 during the first five months of 2019. Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are currently the main sources of illegal immigration to the United States that pass illegally through Mexico. Honduras is the second-largest source of migrants entering the U.S. illegally.
The Big Picture

A deal in June with Mexico to reduce the number of immigrants crossing illegally into the United States caused the White House to back off from a threat to slap tariffs on imports from Mexico. Under the deal, Mexico agreed to step up its efforts to prevent migrants from crossing its territory to the U.S. border. But with swelling unrest in Honduras likely to worsen the economy and spark more migration through Mexico to the United States, Washington may well return to its tariff threat.
See Global Trends section of the 2019 Third-Quarter Forecast
A Migrant Surge Spawns a Tariff Threat

In May, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to enact tariffs of up to 25 percent on all Mexican imports within months unless Mexico took immediate steps to reduce illegal migration from Central America through its territory. Almost certainly intended as a negotiating tactic to help the Trump administration further its aims on curbing illegal immigration, the threat would have had major consequences for Mexico's economy had tariffs been enacted.
A line graph showing apprehensions at the southern U.S. border

To stave off economic damage, the Mexican government agreed in June to deploy 15,000 troops to reinforce key crossing points along the U.S.-Mexico border and to send 5,000 troops to guard the Guatemala-Mexico border, a key crossing point for Central Americans entering Mexico. The two nations agreed that if migrant apprehensions on the U.S. side of the border weren't significantly reduced by early September, then talks on additional measures to curb illegal immigration would begin.
A line graph showing people detained or turned away at the U.S.-Mexico border

Nearly a month after deferring tariffs against Mexico, the Trump administration is likely crafting its response to the new Mexican security measures. The White House demanded that Mexico reduce migrant crossings so that Customs and Border Protections arrests on the U.S. side of the border fall to around 20,000 per month. The Trump administration probably settled on this number because it would equal the record-low number of arrests seen in late 2016 and early 2017. It is unlikely, however, that this number will decline to anywhere near this amount within three months.
Unrest in Honduras Will Fuel the Migrant Surge

Honduras will become a major contributing factor complicating Mexico's ongoing negotiations over immigration with the United States. The roots of that instability are the 2009 coup against former President Manuel Zelaya and a closely contested 2017 presidential election, compounded by drought and crop failure. Throughout May and June, Honduras' left-wing public sector health and education unions and Zelaya's Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre) mounted extensive nationwide protests against President Juan Orlando Hernandez and his ruling National Party. The protesters are not trying to overthrow Hernandez, whose power bases, such as the army and police, remain loyal to him. Instead, Libre is trying to position itself as a viable contender for power in Honduras' November 2021 presidential election. Hernandez is an increasingly unpopular figure, with high-profile corruption cases and frequent blackouts in major cities such as Tegucigalpa, the capital, and San Pedro Sula diminishing his low approval rating.

Libre and its political allies are largely focused on pressuring the president and showing their strength through street demonstrations and roadblocks. The opposition can mount such protests for months at a time, though their intensity ebbs and flows. Numerous triggers for renewed left-wing protests exist, such as ongoing corruption scandals and often heavy-handed police tactics with protesters.

The White House could use rising or even steady migration driven by Honduran unrest to press Mexico to accept a "safe third country" agreement or else be slapped with tariffs.

Such demonstrations will disrupt the flow of goods, fuel and laborers between virtually all major cities in the country. Lengthy demonstrations will also hit key exports such as textiles and automotive wiring harnesses. Extensive disruptions to daily life will cause greater economic pain for the country's informal labor force, which accounts for around half of all laborers. The informal labor force depends on untaxed, largely menial labor and is largely employed in the service industry. Prolonged demonstrations will exacerbate the already-heavy incentives for informal laborers to leave the country. So as protests stifle economic activity, they will drive more migrants north.

The trend of rising migration is likely to develop in late 2019 and early 2020, just as Mexico is again trying to deflect the threat of tariffs from the United States. At their next meeting with White House officials, representatives of the Mexican government will likely tout achievements made in sealing the border and deploying a long-term security presence there, deterring more and more migrants. The White House meanwhile will likely make additional demands of Mexico, the most important of which will be that Mexico sign a "safe third country" agreement with the United States, which will designate Mexico a safe place for migrants seeking asylum and make it difficult for them to request asylum in the United States, and will likely threaten Mexico with tariffs again if it does not.

The Mexican government will try to delay agreeing to such a deal until after the November 2020 U.S. presidential election in case Trump loses and the subsequent president decouples trade policy with Mexico from the question of illegal immigration. But Mexico may not be able to delay making concessions to the United States until then if the pace of illegal border crossings swells too quickly.

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