Category Archives: Honduras

Elections this weekend in British Columbia and Brazil: Who gets thrown under the bus for the sake of development?

by Jim Hodgson

I write today from northwest Chiapas, part of the traditional territory of the Zoque Indigenous people in southeastern Mexico. But I am thinking of friends and family in the Canadian province of British Columbia, who will elect a new provincial government today, and of the people of Brazil who will choose a president Sunday.

In all of these places, politics have become sharply polarized. The right attacks even the concept of Indigenous rights as an impediment to private property and to their notions of development – usually tied to ecologically-destructive resource extraction. They also attack 2SLGBTQIA+ people, especially trans people. And the left, rather tepidly in my opinion, defends the rights of Indigenous people, ecological protection and the rights of queer and trans people.

Today, let’s look at my home province, so-called British Columba, a land where virtually no treaties were signed during colonization.

Orange Shirt Day, Penticton, Oct. 30

In the B.C. provincial election, two acronyms have been bandied about. DRIPA and SOGI. Conservative politicians say they’re bad: threats to your property on the one hand and to your family on the other. And the relatively progressive government has not shown much courage in defending these policies.

What are they?

In this piece by Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), DRIPA is explained.

In times like these, First Nations and our rights are often the first to be thrown under the bus. In the territory known as British Columbia (B.C.), this has resulted in politicians placing a target squarely on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). Lost in all the related bluster and rhetoric is what UNDRIP and DRIPA actually are and are meant to do, and what those who seek to weaken or do away with them are asking British Columbians to give up.

Understanding UNDRIP and DRIPA

UNDRIP is an international human rights instrument. Developed through a series of forums beginning in 1982 and ending with the UN General Assembly voting to adopt UNDRIP in 2007, it is the product of more than 20 years of international deliberations, diplomacy, and compromise between UN member States and Indigenous Peoples’ representatives.

UNDRIP does not create new rights, nor does it extend any unique privileges or entitlements to Indigenous Peoples. Rather, it expresses long-standing international human rights norms in the specific context of the world’s Indigenous Peoples. Grounded fundamentally in the inherent right to self-determination enjoyed by all peoples, it is intended to protect the collective human rights of the more than 470 million Indigenous People worldwide that may not be adequately addressed in other human rights instruments that emphasize individual rights, and it also further elaborates on specific individual human rights with particular emphasis on the rights of Indigenous women and children.

Stated simply: UNDRIP recognizes and is meant to protect broadly accepted, basic human rights. Indigenous rights are human rights.

DRIPA, on the other hand, is a provincial statute which the B.C. legislature passed unanimously in 2019. The purpose of DRIPA is to advance the domestic implementation of these rights in B.C. DRIPA made B.C. the first jurisdiction in Canada to formally adopt UNDRIP as its framework for reconciliation, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada explicitly called for. Since then, DRIPA has played a key role in enabling First Nations to take our rightful place at the decision-making table while facilitating economic growth and prosperity. …

There are legitimate questions about how DRIPA should operate, how its obligations should interact with existing law, and what role courts should play when conflicts arise. But those questions should not be allowed to obscure the fundamental question at the heart of this debate: whether the rights of First Nations will be treated as enduring human rights or as political concessions that can be suspended whenever they become politically inconvenient.

Summerland’s first Pride March, June 18.

And SOGI – sexual orientation and gender identity – is explained here by Wilbur Turner, president and executive director of Advocacy Canada (a Kelowna-based 2SLGBTQIA+ advocacy organization).

SOGI 123 was introduced in BC schools in 2016, ten years ago. It is a set of resources to help schools be safe for every student, and it was never a stand-alone curriculum. Researchers at UBC’s Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, led by Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, evaluated it using BC Adolescent Health Survey data from more than 98,000 students in grades 7 to 12 across 482 schools. They found that SOGI 123 reduced bullying and sexual orientation discrimination for students in the rainbow community and for their heterosexual classmates too. “We’ve now got 10-year evidence that it works,” Saewyc said.

Thousands of students have now graduated after spending most of their school years with these resources in their classrooms. The sky hasn’t fallen. What has happened is that more kids feel safe at school.

British Columbians face real problems this fall, from housing and health care to the cost of groceries. Let’s get serious about those, and leave the kids out of this culture war.

I’ll write about Brazil’s election in days to come. In the meantime, for excellent updates check out posts from Panamerican Dispatch.

The Monroe Doctrine never went away

by Jim Hodgson

Beyond the constant babbling of That Man Next Door is a real plan for U.S. domination of the Americas. 

The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) says it will discourage Latin America and Caribbean nations from working with each other and with countries from outside the hemisphere. Overtly racist and nationalist, it also presses European countries to take “primary responsibility” for their own defence.

New York Times headlines in recent days.

The document was released Thursday night (Dec. 4) and neatly summarized Friday night (Dec. 5) by U.S. historian Heather Cox Richardson:

In place of the post–World War II rules-based international order, the Trump administration’s NSS commits the U.S. to a world divided into spheres of interest by dominant countries. It calls for the U.S. to dominate the Western Hemisphere through what it calls “commercial diplomacy,” using “tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements as powerful tools” and discouraging Latin American nations from working with other nations. 

“The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity,” it says, “a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region.” …

It went on to make clear that this policy is a plan to help U.S. businesses take over Latin America and, perhaps, Canada. “The U.S. Government will identify strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region and present these opportunities for assessment by every U.S. Government financing program,” it said, “including but not limited to those within the Departments of State, War, and Energy; the Small Business Administration; the International Development Finance Corporation; the Export-Import Bank; and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.”

Should countries oppose such U.S. initiatives, it said, “[t]he United States must also resist and reverse measures such as targeted taxation, unfair regulation, and expropriation that disadvantage U.S. businesses.”

Think of it. The tariff fights with Canada, Mexico and Brazil. The stepped-up sanctions against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. The mass murders of alleged “drug-traffickers” by exploding their boats in the open sea. Overt threats of “land strikes” in Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. Trump’s interventions in national elections in Argentina and, most recently, Honduras. These are all part of the same strategy for renewed U.S. dominance.

Resistance grows and is not futile.

I take my title today from the headline over La Jornada’s lead editorial Sunday, Dec. 7:  Monroe nunca se fue. Trump’s policy (“Donroe”) rejects the polite notion of a “good neighbour policy” towards Latin America and the Caribbean promoted after 1933 by Franklin D. Roosevelt and others. But that approach was betrayed repeatedly by presidents from both parties who involved themselves in coups in Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Honduras and elsewhere, along with invasions of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Grenada and Panama – and the wars in Central America in the 1980s and U.S. support for paramilitary death squads in Colombia.

The people of Honduras went to the polls Sunday, Nov. 30. Before the vote, Trump did two things: he pardoned former President Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted last year in the United States for trafficking cocaine; and he endorsed the candidate of Hernández’s National Party, Nasry Asfura (known as “Tito” or “Papi”). A week after the vote, Asfura is in what election officials called a “technical tie” with a slightly more centrist candidate, Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party. Those two parties represent different factions of Honduran family oligarchs. 

Whichever of them is ultimately declared the victor (a process that could take until Dec. 30), the ruling Libre party has been pushed aside. President Xiomara Castro had led the country for the past four years; her party’s candidate, Rixi Moncada, has only about 20 per cent of the official count – although many aspects of the election remain in dispute – including U.S. interference.

Key here is the coup On June 28, 2009, that ousted the elected government of Mel Zelaya, not quite a half-year into the administration of Barack Obama and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Their machinations brought about more than 12 years of rule that facilitated drug-traffickers, mining, corrupt land sales and human rights abuse – only partly subdued after the election of Castro four years ago.

“The abuse of force,” concludes La Jornada’s editorial, “is not, as [Trump] pretends, a sign of strength, but the recourse of one who cannot attract his neighbours with technological innovation, productive investment, exemplary institutions or a viable model of civilization.” 

Summit of the Americas: U.S. can’t break old habits

That the White House announced Canada’s planned response to the flow of refugees in Central America said a lot to me about the way the Biden administration mishandled the Summit of the Americas, held in Los Angeles last week.

Canada will welcome 4,000 additional migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, the White House announced on June 10. That number is insignificant compared to the size of the challenge: 

  • Mexico reported apprehending 307,679 undocumented migrants in 2021. About one-third were deported; another third sought asylum in Mexico. The main countries of origin of those apprehended were Honduras (41%), Guatemala (26%), El Salvador (8%), Haiti (6%), Brazil (5%), Nicaragua (5%), Cuba (2%), and Venezuela (1%). None of the leaders of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador chose to attend the summit – and Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela were told by Biden not to come. It’s hard to solve problems when you’re not talking to people who can do something about them.
  • As of February in the United States, about 164,000 (Reuters) or “just under 179,000” (Axios) migrants are currently in alternatives-to-detention programs managed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement  (ICE). This is “roughly double the total on Sept. 30, 2020, before Biden took office,” Reuters reported, and doesn’t include dependents – or the people actually held in detention.

The White House announcement of Canada’s support included commitments from other countries on migration issues, and was reported by Canadian Press in an article widely shared in Canadian media (CBC, CTV, the Globe and Mail, among others).

“The agreement also includes a pre-existing Canadian commitment to bring in an additional 50,000 agricultural workers this year from Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean.” (Those are temporary workers whose rights are limited.)

To its credit, the government (via the Prime Minister’s Office, not Global Affairs Canada) also announced an additional $118 million for “progressive initiatives” aimed at improving the lives of people where they already live in Latin America and the Caribbean. That includes $67.9 million to promote gender equality; $31.5 million in health and pandemic response spending; $17.3 million on democratic governance and $1.6 million for digital access and anti-disinformation measures. It will also spend $26.9 million to address “irregular migration and forced displacement” in the hemisphere.

Washington “still trying to dictate” to neighbours

But it was the exclusions and boycotts that drew most attention. Because Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were excluded by the host country, Mexico, Honduras, Bolivia and some Caribbean leaders chose to stay away. Leaders of Guatemala and El Salvador did not attend because of issues with U.S. treatment of allegations of corruption and abuses of human rights in their countries. In the end only about 20 of potentially 35 heads of state or government attended.

Apparently modelling the art of understatement, Reuters reported: “Hosting the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, Biden sought to assure the assembled leaders about his administration’s commitment to the region despite nagging concerns that Washington, at times, is still trying to dictate to its poorer southern neighbours.”

The presence of the unelected prime minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry, drew fire. During a panel discussion on “journalistic freedom,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had the good grace to seem embarrassed when challenged over Henry’s presence. As Alterpresse pointed out, “not only does Henry govern without a mandate in violation of the Haitian Constitution, he is also implicated in serious crimes, including the death of a Haitian journalist in February 2022 by Haitian police.” (Two other journalists had been killed in January in a gang attack.)

In the tradition of each Summit of the Americas (including the teargas summit in Quebec City in 2001), a People’s Summit was held, gathering more than 250 community organizations, social movements, trade unions and other progressive groups. “In the ‘richest country in the world,’ 140 million live in or near poverty. The US government is addicted to militarism and war and will spend over $800 billion in 2022, on death and destruction,” said the final declaration. “Instead of preparing for war, society must be organized to meet human needs. We want a future without evictions, police violence and mass incarceration, deportations, sanctions, and blockades. We say: no more!”