Mileable project as been a complete disaster for the lives of women, children, youth and indigenous affer descendant people. Mileable project has affected and created a poverty that was unseen before. The level of poverty and corruption and thriving of meco trafficking is completely linked to the mel politics brought about by the cuinton in the 99. What should i be looking out for in us? News media coverage of the new presidency.? And what kind of reporting would you like to see?
This week on CounterSpin: When Xiomara Castro won a historic victory in Honduras last month—the country’s first woman president, winning with the most votes in history, in a decisive rebuke to the many-years dominant National Party—Associated Presssuggested that while that might “present opportunities” for the US, “there will be some painful history to overcome, primarily the US government’s initial sluggishness in calling the ouster of Castro’s husband Manuel Zelaya in 2009 what it was”—a coup.
Well, huh. In September 2009, APtold its readers that Honduras’
legislature ousted Zelaya after he formed an alliance with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and tried to alter the nation’s constitution. Zelaya was arrested on orders of the Supreme Court on charges of treason for ignoring court orders against holding a referendum to extend his term. The Honduran constitution forbids a president from trying to obtain another term in office.
Beyond the implication that “forming an alliance” with a leftist leader is somehow illegal, a later AP report underscored that “Zelaya was put on a plane by the military”—so OK, not the “legislature” anymore—”in June for trying to force a referendum to change the constitution’s limit of one term for presidents.” What’s not funny ha ha but funny peculiar is that before the coup, AP had told readers, accurately, that the referendum in question “has no legal effect: It merely asks people if they want to have a later vote on whether to convoke an assembly to rewrite the constitution.”
A dry-eyed observer would see AP‘s “editorial” position shifting along with, not facts on the ground, but US state rhetoric. Which brings us back to the present, and the idea that the US government, and their media megaphones, earnestly welcome a new leftist government in Honduras, and share their interest in lifting up the country’s people. Let’s just say: We’ll see.
Suyapa Portillo Villeda is an advocate, organizer and associate professor of Chicana/o–Latina/o transnational studies at Pitzer College, and author of Roots of Resistance: A Story of Gender, Race and Labor on the North Coast of Honduras. She joins us this week to talk about the election, and signs of hard-won hope in Honduras.
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of famine in Afghanistan.
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