Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
The November 2017 election-fraud, dictatorship-today, U.S.- and Canada-supported, crisis in Honduras has considerable historic precedence, elucidated by anthropologist Rosemary Joyce. Not a pretty scenario, with no easy solution to preventing Honduras from repeating past horrors and falling into a lasting period of military dictatorship that brutalizes people and ecosystems.
Despite press releases that say the State Department has harsh words regarding Congress’s decision to approve more than $50 million in aid for Honduras, they certified the corrupt government with an abysmal human rights record. They are all clearly guilty of aiding and abetting the murderous regime of Juan Orlando Hernandez.
Berta Cáceres was assassinated by Honduran government-backed death squads on March 3. She fought for indigenous peoples’ power and for control over their own territories. She was not destined to die of old age. She spoke too much truth to power.
In the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, rampant industrial destruction is being stopped by people banding together to protect their communities, and the land. The Baram Dam proposal was just put on hold in response to a two year protest. But threats, and the corruption behind them, will continue.
Military and judicial violence against the public and in post-coup Honduras leading up to the coming November elections are central components of the neoliberal economic takeover. In order to legitimate and secure the economic violence effected against Honduran citizens by multinational corporations, the judiciary criminalizes opposition to them while the military (along with other state security forces) goes after citizen-“criminals” with an iron fist.