The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) released a statement on June 28 reaffirming its commitment to the Honduran people’s struggle for a return to democracy one year after the coup that overthrew president Manuel Zelaya.
ALBA is an anti-imperialist alliance founded in 2004 by Cuba and Venezuela. Its members include Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda.
Under Zelaya, Honduras joined ALBA, which suspended Honduras’s membership after the coup. The regime has since withdrawn from ALBA.
ALBA reiterated its “solidarity with the Honduran people and its denunciations of massive human rights violations” committed by the coup regime.
“The member states of ALBA demand respect and guarantees for the democratic struggle of the Honduran people and that the repression and political assassinations cease”, it said.
On June 28, one year after Zelaya’s overthrow, he accused the US government of being behind the coup. Speaking from exile in the Dominican Republic. He said: “Today we know that what we suspected at the time has been confirmed. The United States was behind the coup.
“Everything points to the fact that the coup was planned from the [US-run] Palmerola military base”.
Zelaya also said the coup was in response to the progressive changes he had made during his 2006-09 presidency. This included the plan to “recover the Palmerola military base and convert it to a civil-military airport” and the fact that “in the Organisation for the American States assembly in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, we managed to revoke the expulsion of Cuba [from the OAS], that occurred in 1962”.
Since Honduras left ALBA, its people no can no longer take advantage of ALBA programs providing cheap oil, low-interest credits, eye operations from a Cuban-led program, a national literacy campaign and many other social and economic development programs.
ALBA 10th summit was held over June 24-25 in Otavalo, Ecuador. The summit ended with a declaration that proposed a new progressive economic trade agreement and a recognition of the importance of the indigenous and afro-descendant communities to the future development of the alliance.
Three hundred indigenous and Afro-Caribbean groupings attended the summit, alongside a similar number of delegates from member nations. Representatives from Paraguay and Guatemala also attended the summit as observers.
[Reprinted from Venezuela Analysis.]