US Military Base at the Epicenter of the Honduras Coup
July 1, 2009 by supermario
Filed under World News
Deadlinelive.info
The Venezuelan news website Telesurtv.net is suggesting that one of the reasons for the coup in Honduras was the fact that former President Zelaya was planning to close down the US Military base of Soto Cano, located at 97 kilometers from the nation’s capital, Tegucigalpa.
Furthermore, Telesurtv.net has stated that the US Embassy and the US military personnel at Soto Cano had prior knowledge of the coup. In fact, a week before the coup, US Embassador Hugo Llorens met three times with the military personnel involved in the overthrow of Zelaya.
The Soto Cano military base is home of Joint Task Force Bravo, part of SOUTHCOM. The base has been in operation since 1981, and it’s been at the center of accusations of arms and drug smuggling ever since. According to TeleSur, this military base was one of the places where the Central American death squads were trained, and where Oliver North was allegedly engaged in the operations that lead to the Iran-Contra scandal.
On May 31st of 2009, President Zelaya announced that the US Military base of Soto Cano was going to be turned into a civilian airport. The airport project was going to be financed in part by the organization known as ‘ALBA’ (Acronym for Alianza Bolivariana para las Americas or Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas), which consists of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
The Honduras constitution prohibits the presence of foreign military entities in the country. However, there was an accord established between Washington and Honduras in 1954 to allow US troops in the country for ‘humanitarian purposes’ and military aid. Since then, Washington has provided millions of Dollars of aid each year for Honduras, the third poorest country in Latin America. But one of the conditions of the 1954 accord was that Honduras could back out of the agreement any time. In other words, they could order the US troops out of the country any time they wanted.
The Honduran Air Force Commander, General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, was trained at the School of the Americas in 1996. The head of the Honduran Joint Chief of Staff office, General Romeo Vásquez, who was fired by President Zelaya on June 24th -and who later participated in the coup against Zelaya- was also trained at the School of the Americas. Both of these high ranking Honduran military officers maintain very close relations with the Pentagon and US military personnel at Soto Cano.
In January of 2009, Zelaya sent a letter to Obama, accusing the United States of intervensionism, and calling for Obama’s new government to respect the sovereignty of other nations. Zelaya, along with Nicaragua’s President Ortega, later boycotted a SICA meeting with Joe Biden. SICA is the acronym for ’Sistema de Integración de Centro America’ or ‘System for the Integration of Central America.’
