Ricardo Arturo Salgado Bonilla
It is no secret that the governments of the United States have used drug trafficking to their own country as a means of carrying out their imperial policies. From the Iran-Contras case to the uncontrolled growth of poppy production in Afghanistan, the US military and intelligence used this deadly business as a source of financing and as a weapon of expansion and domination.
The CIA and the DEA have maintained contacts and business with the drug cartels, and have served to organize important asset laundering networks that reach as far as Wall Street and involve the sacrosanct global banking system. Drug money flows like “blood” into the circulatory system of world capitalism. There is no movement of narcotics, human trafficking or arms trafficking that these gentlemen ignore, nor money from them that is outside the global financial structure.
And if money is marked by trafficking, so is politics. Because the United States, just as they did with human rights, has appointed itself a universal judge, over who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in the drug market. That is why it is not surprising that Colombia is their biggest ally in the region, just as it will not come as a surprise to anyone that the Zionist government of Israel is involved in drug trafficking in many parts of the world.
In Honduras, there was a military coup d’état on June 28, 2009, which we have not investigated enough, but we are right in thinking that it was the result of a conspiracy from the United States against Latin American integration, and especially against the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America. But that is not all, the narco-trafficking factor is omnipresent in the post-coup stage.
Yesterday, the initial plea document of the Attorney General’s Office for the Southern District of New York came to light, in his case against Juan Antonio Hernández, in which the head of the Honduran regime, Juan Orlando Hernández, is singled out as a key figure in a broad drug trafficking operation, which also resulted, among other things, in an increase in violence and the brutality of the coup plotters in Honduras. In addition, it involves former President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, with a similar rank, as well as ministers, deputies, public officials, and high military and police officials.
According to the document, Lobo would have reached the point of ordering the mobilization of regular Honduran troops to the border with Guatemala, with the purpose of preserving the interests of a specific cartel. At the time, Juan Orlando Hernandez served as president of the National Congress, and, following the plot, his entire National Party used drug trafficking funds (also funds from the looting of state institutions such as Social Security) for the 2013 election campaign which they ended up “winning” by the first of two frauds perpetrated to date.
According to reliable sources, this allegation by the New York prosecutor was long delayed by pressure from Mike Pompeo’s State Department, whose mission so far has been to sustain the weakened regime of Juan Orlando Hernandez, in order to guarantee his position in the open war against Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. In fact, the State Department itself and the Southern Command have taken it upon themselves to warn Hernandez about the movements of his Justice Department. Moreover, it is on their initiative that campaigns have been organized to lighten the burden of the storm unleashed by the revelations of the New York prosecutor.
In a crude attempt, incidentally, to alleviate the gale, a local right-wing extremist newspaper, closely linked to the 2009 coup d’état, published an article this week about an alleged bribe made by a Capo to Manuel Zelaya Rosales, former ousted president. Reading the document of the prosecutor’s office, the same representative of the gringo state, argued that “the capo says that he did NOT pay the bribe, because he did not believe that this candidate would win the elections in 2005”. Even with the clear statement of the accused, the prosecutor chose in his plea to state that he did not believe him.
In examining the 32-page document, the same prosecutor rants against members of the Bolivarian government of Venezuela and against the FARC, in a clearly political construction engineered against the Latin American left. This is a prelude to the “hell” that would theoretically be unleashed by the most forceful accusations against the Honduran bipartisan system.
The United States is the largest sponsor of drug trafficking in the world, its biggest beneficiary, and at the same time it is directing the ideological network to set itself up as a world judge against drug traffickers who are not its friends (or worse, to accuse whoever they want of their own crimes).
A few weeks after the coup d’état in July 2009, Juan Antonio Hernández, Juan Orlando’s brother and prisoner in New York, met with a future defense minister, and commented that “the coup ostensibly improved the chances of winning the elections and obtaining the protection of his National Party, and its leaders (Porfirio Lobo Sosa and Juan Orlando Hernández), to continue their business successfully. This was affirmed in the same document of the New York Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Basically, then, the United States plotted the coup d’état against José Manuel Zelaya as the starting point of the continental counteroffensive known as “conservative restoration,” and installed drug traffickers in the country’s leadership. From then on, Honduras became the “little brother” of Colombia and Israel. From that, the triangle was formed that has served as a spearhead for the reactionary aggression of this entire decade in the continent. In addition, they created an ideological scheme that equates corruption, with drug trafficking, as alleged sources of our misfortunes, and omits the intense presence of dirty money in the international financial system, as well as the catastrophic effects of neoliberalism in an unproductive economy. It is no coincidence that, in Honduras, the only business that progressed after the coup was financial capital (on a par with hired killings, extortion, human trafficking).
Regarding Honduras’ internal politics, the press has dedicated itself to generating the idea that the “last three presidents” are stained by drug trafficking, in order to conjure the imminent rise of the left to power, in the face of the debacle of the two-party coup. It is unlikely that the United States will attempt to remove Hernandez, at least as long as they do not have a reliable substitute, and, above all, when they have eliminated the possibility of an independent, sovereign and Latin American Honduras.
On the other hand, in Honduras, the tactic of creating scandals that “normalize” over time has been put into practice. They can expect this disclosure to become just another layer of defense for the already warped picture of Hernandez and the oligarchic dictatorship that sustains him. Of course, all these arguments work under the assumption that the masses have ZERO value.
However, the Honduran social movement has matured a great deal, and has accumulated considerable experience with confrontation, which will surely have a definitive impact on the outcome of this dark stage of our history, begun a decade ago. It is easy to anticipate the increase in social instability in the coming days, along with an intense popular mobilization.
The weight of drug trafficking in the imperial geostrategy, in politics and in the capitalist system is undeniable, and, as a subject, it must be addressed by our peoples in order to confront this systemic enemy, whose corruption knows neither scruples nor principles.
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 