The US Embassy was in deed the biggest “power broker” in the aftermath of the Coup
“The three (...) accepted that the coup was illegal but argued that there was no choice but to accept the current regime and wait until November elections” Llorens writes.
This, and all other information we have reviewed since the coup suggests that immediately after the coup, most “Golpistas”were perceived as a center of internal political bargaining and negotiation in the US Embassy. Indeed the US Embassy was acting like the biggest and most influential “power broker” among them, the term which the embassy used regarding these different “Golpista” actors, the US viewed itself as the one to be pleased, while in the public sphere they were at loggerheads with the elites as Llorens explained in a cable.
He posts “Virtually all political elites and personal contacts have expressed surprise and dismay at the USG response, stating that they feel abandoned by the USG”
The other cable is mostly an analysis of influential individual stakeholders in Honduras who would likely take part in the negotiation processes in the San Jose Accords that were signed in November 2009 before the elections. The actors were all rated by colors from Blood Red to Snowblind white as during the cold war. This strengthens the theory by Mark Weisbrot that the recently signed Cartagena Accords are actually antagonist to the San Jose Accords, the former evidently crafted without Washington's usual control. The latter accords negotiated a sovereignty for the region which has been widely celebrated by the Hondurans in Resistance while being criticized by H.R. defenders and organizations due to the potential influence it can have on not ending human rights abuses.
The “color cable” shows evidence that the US State Department considered it necessary to profile all stakeholders in order to intelligently craft the San Jose Accords in which Oscar Arias was presumably their strong man. This confirms the thesis held by many journalists, writers and scholars that those accords were solely crafted by the US Government as a means to solve a crisis that they eventually shamelessly hide before the very eyes of the world. This created an ideal milieu for impunity and constant violations of human rights, including the lives of 11 journalists. Scared “truth tellers” would help Washington hide one of the worst episodes in American foreign policy in recent history, easily playing and manipulating the uneducated and unskilled elite who were the actors in the Honduran coup.
Far from what one can read in the leaks, the Washington political and military establishment planned the big scheme of the Honduran coup and put its overseas staff and lobbyists to help improve the image of the coup by accommodating errors. Most remarkably, the sources of information used by the ambassador are not clear, nor what role the CIA or all the security personnel, be it private or public funded contractors, had in the coup and how they interacted with the Embassy.
Again, the cables are also addressed to the US Embassy in Caracas and Southcom in Miami.
See color cable
See Coup day cable
