Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2024 22:14:12 GMT
The Rise and Fall of a Honduran Narco-Regime Is an American Story
For more than a decade, Washington enabled the ascent and corrupt rule of Juan Orlando Hernández.
www.truthdig.com/articles/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-honduran-narco-regime-is-an-american-story/
NEW YORK — On Friday, Juan Orlando Hernández, the ex-president of Honduras and a longtime U.S. ally, was convicted in a New York federal courtroom on three counts of narcotics trafficking and related weapons offenses. True to form, the mainstream American media’s coverage of the verdict was sketchy, limited to brief reports that barely mentioned his significant connections to the U.S. government. By hiding America’s long-running complicity in Hernández’s crimes, the media completely missed the most shocking element of the story.
If the U.S. media had listened to the scores of enraged Hondurans and Honduran-Americans who jammed the spectator sections of the courtroom and noisily demonstrated outside throughout the trial, they would have understood that, in the words of one protester, “the gringos were protecting JOH.” (In Honduras, Hernández is known by his initials.)
U.S. complicity in Hernández’s crimes dates to June 2009, when Hillary Clinton’s State Department recognized an illegal military coup against the elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya. In her compelling book, ”The Long Honduran Night,” the American academic Dana Frank describes that the Obama administration decided to validate “the first successful Latin American military coup in [two] decades” because doing otherwise would have legally required the U.S. “to stop almost all foreign aid to Honduras immediately.” Not only did that aid continue, but the State Department would tacitly endorse the illegal maneuvering behind the election of Hernández in 2013 and his reelection in 2017.
For more than a decade, Washington enabled the ascent and corrupt rule of Juan Orlando Hernández.
www.truthdig.com/articles/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-honduran-narco-regime-is-an-american-story/
NEW YORK — On Friday, Juan Orlando Hernández, the ex-president of Honduras and a longtime U.S. ally, was convicted in a New York federal courtroom on three counts of narcotics trafficking and related weapons offenses. True to form, the mainstream American media’s coverage of the verdict was sketchy, limited to brief reports that barely mentioned his significant connections to the U.S. government. By hiding America’s long-running complicity in Hernández’s crimes, the media completely missed the most shocking element of the story.
If the U.S. media had listened to the scores of enraged Hondurans and Honduran-Americans who jammed the spectator sections of the courtroom and noisily demonstrated outside throughout the trial, they would have understood that, in the words of one protester, “the gringos were protecting JOH.” (In Honduras, Hernández is known by his initials.)
U.S. complicity in Hernández’s crimes dates to June 2009, when Hillary Clinton’s State Department recognized an illegal military coup against the elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya. In her compelling book, ”The Long Honduran Night,” the American academic Dana Frank describes that the Obama administration decided to validate “the first successful Latin American military coup in [two] decades” because doing otherwise would have legally required the U.S. “to stop almost all foreign aid to Honduras immediately.” Not only did that aid continue, but the State Department would tacitly endorse the illegal maneuvering behind the election of Hernández in 2013 and his reelection in 2017.