Canadian Geopolitics in Post-Coup Honduras

Abstract

On 28 June 2009 moderately left-of-centre Honduran president, Manuel ‘Mel’ Zelaya, was overthrown in a military coup d’etat. The coup was followed by the systematic repression of anti-coup activists and the eventual election of current president, Porfirio ‘Pepe’ Lobo, amid that repression and in the absence of constitutional democracy. While critical scholarship on the international dynamics of the Honduran coup has discussed evidence of US involvement, Canada also actively intervened politically. Canada’s intervention has been marked by the bold promotion of the interests of Canadian capital operating in Honduras, as part of a wider geopolitical concern of the Canadian state to reproduce a political environment in Latin America amenable to the interests of Canadian investors. Using interviews with Honduran activists organizing against the coup and Canadian capital, as well as Canadian government documents obtained through Access to Information, this article explores the political-economic strategies of Canada’s post-coup intervention in Honduras.

Development as Imperialism

“…Although he admitted that the 2009 elections were not monitored by international organizations (Kent 2009), Peter Kent, Canada’s Minister of State of Foreign Affairs for the Americas, lauded the Honduran people for engaging in “relatively peaceful and orderly” elections, run “freely and fairly, with a strong turnout, and with no major violence” (DFAIT 2009)—calling Lobo’s regime a “unity government” (DFAIT 2010). Moreover, Kent blamed Zelaya for being “reckless” and provoking the coup (Kent 2009), and Canada attempted to persuade the OAS to readmit Honduras immediately following the 2009 election (Gordon and Webber 2014).…”

“…The Canadian DFATD continued with its program of tying mining concessions granted to Canadian companies to official development assistance funds. Canadian businesses found the military government’s policies so inviting that their investments in Honduras grew dramatically under the military regime, from $105 million in 2007 to $750 million in 2011 (Gordon and Webber 2014). North-coast tourism development was amplified, especially in the Trujillo bay region, in the climate created by the pro-business Lobo regime, despite a drop in the actual tourist numbers (due to the coup and American financial crisis).…”

Ecosystem approaches to health and knowledge-to-action: towards a political ecology of applied health-environment knowledge

“…A notable illustration of this is provided by several ecohealth projects, focused on small-scale artisanal gold mining, which were funded by the IDRC (such as the Puyango study described above) but which largely avoided the impacts of large-scale mining. Tellingly, at the same time that Canada's foreign policy (6) was supporting the IDRC ecohealth program, it was also contributing to re-writing of national mining legislation in places such as Guyana, Honduras and Colombia (Black and McKenna 1995;Blackwood and Stewart 2012;Gordon and Webber 2014). This re-writing facilitated the entry into these countries of Canadian companies -companies that have been accused of numerous human rights and environmental violations (Bebbington and Bury 2013;Deneault et al 2008;North and Young 2013).…”