[Peace] Mark Weisbrot: Why Honduras Matters In The 2016 Campaign

[Robert Naiman]

The Campaign for America's Future is doing a series of "video issue briefs"
on the 2016 campaign. Here's the "video issue brief" on the assassination
of Berta Cáceres and the coup in Honduras.

Burning Issues: Why Honduras Matters In The 2016 Campaign
https://ourfuture.org/20160325/burning-issues-why-honduras-matters-in-the-2016-campaign

Berta Cáceres was an indigenous and environmental activist in Honduras who
was the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize winner
<http://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/berta-caceres/> for her success in
blocking the Agua Zarca dam project, which would have decimated the
communities and livelihoods of indigenous people in the country. Earlier in
March, she was assassinated, one of at least three activists who have been
murdered in connection with their efforts to protest the construction of
this dam.

Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research has been
following the fate of social and economic justice activists in the country
since a 2009 coup deposed the democratically elected government of
President Manuel Zelaya. And as it turns out, Weisbrot explains in this
“Burning Issues” video segment, one of the 2016 presidential candidates
played a key role in the coup and in the series of events that led to
Cáceres’ assassination.

Weisbrot notes that Hillary Clinton acknowledges in her book, “Hard
Choices,” that when Zelaya was exiled to Costa Rica, she helped prevent
Zelaya from returning to the country. That, Weisbrot explains, was crucial
to allowing the forces behind the coup to consolidate their power in the
face of international condemnation. (The Huffington Post reports
<http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/hillary-clinton-honduras-coup-memoirs_us_56e34161e4b0b25c91820a08>
that
the section in the hardcover version of the book that addresses her support
of the Honduras coup has been deleted from the paperback version. )

One of the consequences of the coup has been a series of assassinations of
activists like Cáceres who have been protesting illegal or unjust actions
by the government that, like the attempted construction of the Aqua Zarca
dam, have received international condemnation.

This is an example of the kind of regime change policy on which Clinton and
her rival, Bernie Sanders, sharply disagree, Weisbrot says.
===

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1
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