U.S. 'Democracy Promotion' in Honduras

Dawn Paley

A new
round of democracy promotion projects funded by the United States in
Honduras could prove to be a crucial reinforcement of the political
project proposed by Honduran coup backers and the country’s business
elite.

USAID, based its latest $2 million disbursement to
Honduras, announced in July 2010, on the policy goals set out in a
document called the Country Plan (Plan de País), a set of policies
adopted in January, 2010 during the de facto presidency of Roberto
Micheletti Bain.
“The Plan was developed by the Ministry of Planning, being closely
supervised by the bankers, the National Association of Industrialists
(ANDI), federations and chambers of commerce and NGOs, excluding labor
and peasant organizations,” wrote Honduran researcher David Antonio
Vivar Reyes in an email to NACLA. The Country Plan makes policy
proposals that stretch over the next seven periods of government in
Honduras, or until 2038.

“This political project, magically
approved on a single night, at the last session of a Putschist Congress,
repealed: the Honduran Council of Science and Technology (COHCIT), the
Commission Sula Valley Executive, the National Competitiveness
Commission, and the Technical Secretariat for Cooperation, [and] Citizen
Participation Act,” wrote Vivar. These repeals, together with the
Country Plan allowed the business and development elite to set the tone
of policymaking before the inauguration of President Porfirio Lobo on
January 27.

Beyond the standard proposals to reduce poverty and
corruption in Honduras are other objectives that include making the
country more economically competitive on the global market, moving
public spending from state funded programs to municipal programs, and
pushing for increased hydroelectricity and water privatization.

This
will continue the long history of U.S. funding of the Honduran elite,
the very players allegedly behind the June 2009 military coup that
ousted former president Manuel Zelaya. This elite group, which includes
many early beneficiaries of USAID programs, controls much of the
country’s maquila industry, along with other export industries, large
tourism projects, and Honduran branches of U.S. chains. What is cloaked
as funding for democracy is likely to help these elites consolidate
their power, and serve as an impetus to push through neoliberal economic
reforms that were stalled under Zelaya.

USAID has a long and
storied history in Honduras. From the 1960s onwards, the agency made
large loans to the Honduran Financing Bank (FICENSA), which was
controlled by wealthy factory owners and industrialists who funneled the
money to the country’s private sector (Euraque 1996, 84).

Though
the language around democracy promotion as an international development
priority is relatively new, U.S. foreign aid has consistently been
shaped by U.S. foreign policy. In the case of Washington’s relationship
with Honduras, aid flows since the 1960s and particularly during the
1980s have been instrumental in creating particular kinds of citizen
groups and business organizations.

William Robinson describes the
transition to democracy in Honduras during the 1980s as a time when
“millions of dollars in AID funding went to grassroots sectors in an
attempt to achieve their subordinate incorporation into the project
rather than their coercive exclusion,” (2003, 122). The “project”
Robinson refers to is the U.S.-led transformation of Honduras from a
military dictatorship to a democracy, which happened together with the
occupation of the country by the U.S. military. Robinson explains that
U.S. troops in Honduras at this time had a three part mission: crush
incipient revolutionary movements inside Honduras, provide a military
backbone of stabilization during the transition to democracy, and wage
war on revolutionary movements in neighboring countries (Robinson 2003,
123).

According to the U.S. State Department, during this period
“Honduras became host to the largest Peace Corps mission in the world
and nongovernmental and international voluntary agencies proliferated.”

In
the 1990s, AID funded the creation of almost two dozen business
associations, along with private-sector organizations like the
Foundation for Investment and Export Development (FIDE), the National
Council to Promote Exports and Investments, the National Association of
Honduran Exporters, and the Honduran American Chamber of Commerce
(Robinson 2003, 125). Robinson also points out how the Honduran Council
of Private Enterprise (COHEP) was denied funding throughout the 1990s,
until such time as it ceased to function as a national-capital
controlled organization that promoted import substitution
industrialization (which protected the country’s domestic industry), and
appointed Richard Zablah as its president (2003, 124). Zablah was a
transnationally oriented maquila owner, fully committed to an export-led
and outward-focused business model for Honduras.

The focus of
USAID’s programming in Honduras changed in 2004, when the agency began
funding “democracy and governance.” Between 2004 and 2008, the United
States spent $18 million on democracy promotion in Honduras. Over this
period, the Washington-based consulting firm Management Systems
International received contracts worth $9.3 million to “promote
transparency and citizen participation in targeted municipalities,” and
to work to reform various organizations and institutions in Honduras.
Florida International University carried out a $4.2 million contract to
implement a new criminal code and promote the rule of law and judicial
reform. The Federation of Honduran Nongovernmental Organizations
(FOPRIDEH) received over $3 million for contracts related to judicial
reform, free and fair elections, electoral pluralism, anti-corruption,
and the “facilitation and consolidation of national networks of
nongovernmental organizations involved in governance issues.”

Given
the 2009 coup, it’s obvious that these programs did little to stabilize
the country. On the contrary, one outcome was the strengthening of the
influence of the Honduran elite responsible for the coup.

The
most recent democracy promotion initiative announced by USAID is a $2
million project called “Decentralization Enabling Environment (DEE).” In
the project description, the agency states, “in theory decentralization
can ”create more transparent political institutions, inculcate stronger
citizen support for government, and improve democratic participation.”
The decentralization project aims to break down national-level services
and management so they can be managed by municipalities. In some cases,
though it may not be explicit in the USAID documents, this
decentralization can lead to the eventual privatization of locally
managed resources, including water.

David Vivar explains to NACLA
that looking at the education sector is a good way to understand the
decentralization process and why it is a priority for the United States.

“The
reference model is undoubtedly the private school,” writes Vivar. “The
central idea was that if we manage to provide public schools the same
autonomy and encourage competition between public schools through the
introduction of various mechanisms, market allocation, such as school
vouchers or financing formulas, the quality of education and the use of
resources would improve substantially.”

Even USAID can’t pretend
that their policies of promoting decentralization are popular. A recent
agency document , “Honduran authorities supporting decentralization are
met with considerable resistance from unions, central government
bureaucrats, and those who equate decentralization with privatization
and/or reduction of recipient benefits.”

There is little evidence
that decentralization and delegating performance monitoring to the
local level have led to improve the quality of education, says Vivar,
who thinks that instead of improving the quality of education,
decentralization has increased the level of control over school staff
and teachers.

“As you … know, teachers have been one of the
strongest movements throughout the last 20 years . . . The interest of
the investment is not the improvement of quality but the demobilization
of social movements and the weakening of the state,” writes Vivar.

USAID’s
contract for Honduras is now out for solicitation, with applicants
requested to apply before September 30. So far, three organizations have
expressed interest: an Illinois financial services firm, Finnera; a DC
based law firm, the Johnson Law Group International; and a Birmingham
based organization called Global Recovery Group.

While Washington
quietly continues to fund democracy-promotion activities that were
invented by the Honduran elite, Hondurans continue to risk their lives
to resist a government that they see as nothing more than the
continuation of a military coup.

Works Cited:

Euraque,
Darío. Reinterpreting the Banana Republic: Region and State in Honduras,
1870-1972. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Robinson, William I. Transnational Conflicts: Central America, Social Change and Globalization. New York: Verso, 2003.

This article was taken from NACLA