{"id":3073,"date":"2020-12-20T08:52:19","date_gmt":"2020-12-20T08:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=141423"},"modified":"2020-12-20T08:52:19","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T08:52:19","slug":"the-evolution-of-u-s-backed-death-squads-in-honduras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/20\/the-evolution-of-u-s-backed-death-squads-in-honduras\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evolution of U.S.-Backed Death Squads in Honduras"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

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Photo Source Capt. Thomas Cieslak \u2013 CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

U.S. intelligence agencies and corporations have pushed back against the so-called Pink Tide<\/a>, the coming to power of socialistic governments in Central and South America. Examples include: the slow-burning attempt<\/a> to overthrow Venezuela\u2019s President; Nicol\u00e1s Maduro; the initially successful<\/a> soft coup in Bolivia against President Evo Morales; and the constitutional crises<\/a> that removed Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.<\/p>\n

In 2009, the Obama administration (2009-17) backed a coup<\/a> against President Manuel Zelaya. Since then, Honduras has endured a decline in its living standards and democratic institutions. The return of 1980s-style death squads operating against working people in the interests of U.S. corporations has contributed to the refugee-migrant flow<\/a> to the United States and to the rise of racist politics.<\/p>\n

EMPIRES: FROM THE SPANISH TO THE AMERICAN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Honduras (pop. 9.5 million) is surrounded by Guatemala and Belize in the north, El Salvador in the west, and Nicaragua in the south. It has a small western coast on the Pacific Ocean and an extensive coastline on the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic. Nine out of 10 Hondurans are Indo-European (mestizo<\/em>). GDP is <$25bn and over 60 percent<\/a> of the people live in poverty: one in five in extreme poverty.<\/p>\n

Honduras gained independence from Spain in 1821, before being annexed to the Mexican Empire. Hondurans have endured some 300 rebellions, civil wars, and\/or changes of government; more than half of which occurred in the 20th<\/sup> century. Writing in 1998, the Clinton White House acknowledged<\/a> that Honduras\u2019s \u201cagriculturally based economy came to be dominated by U.S. companies that established vast banana plantations along the north coast.\u201d<\/p>\n

The significant U.S. military presence began in the 1930s,<\/a> with the establishment of an air force and military assistance program. The Clinton White House also noted<\/a> that the founder of the National Party, Tiburcio Car\u00edas Andino (1876-1969), had \u201cties to dictators in neighboring countries and to U.S. banana companies [which] helped him maintain power until 1948.\u201d<\/p>\n

The C.I.A. notes<\/a> that dictator Car\u00edas\u2019s repression of Liberals would make those Liberals \u201cturn to conspiracy and [provoke] attempts to foment revolution, which would render them much more susceptible to Communist infiltration and control.\u201d The Agency said that in so-called emerging democracies: \u201cThe opportunities for Communist penetration of a repressed and conspiratorial organization are much greater than in a freely functioning political party.\u201d So, for certain C.I.A. analysts, \u201cliberal democracy\u201d is a buffer against dictatorships that legitimize genuinely left-wing oppositional groups. The C.I.A. cites the case of Guatemala in which \u201ca strong dictatorship prior to 1944 did not prevent Communist activity which led after the dictator\u2019s fall, to the establishment of a pro-Communist government.\u201d<\/p>\n

REDS UNDER THE BED<\/strong><\/p>\n

To understand the thinking behind the U.S.-backed death squads, it is worth looking at some partly-declassified C.I.A. material on early-Cold War planning. The paranoia was such that each plantation laborer was potentially a Soviet asset hiding in the fruit field. These subversives could be ready, at any moment, to strike against U.S. companies and the nascent American Empire.<\/p>\n

In line with some strategists\u2019 conditional preferences for \u201cliberal democracies,\u201d Honduras has the fa\u00e7ade of voter choice, with two main parties controlled by the military. After the Second World War, U.S. policy exploited Honduras as a giant military base from which left-wing or suspected \u201ccommunist\u201d movements in neighboring countries could be countered. In 1954, for instance, Honduras was used<\/a> as a base for the C.I.A.\u2019s operation PBSuccess to overthrow Guatemala\u2019s President, Jacobo \u00c1rbenz (1913-71).<\/p>\n

Writing in \u201854, the C.I.A. said<\/a> that the Liberal Party of Honduras \u201chas the support of the majority of the Honduran voters. Much of its support comes from the lower classes.\u201d The Agency also believed that the banned Communist Party of Honduras planned to infiltrate the Liberals to nudge them further left. But an Agency document notes<\/a> that \u201cthere may be fewer than 100\u201d militant Communists in Honduras and there were \u201cperhaps another 300 sympathizers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The document also notes: \u201cThe organization of a Honduran Communist Party has never been conclusively established,\u201d though the C.I.A. thought that the small Revolutionary Democratic Party of Honduras \u201cmight have been a front.\u201d The Agency also believed<\/a> that Communists were behind the Workers\u2019 Coordinating Committee that led strikes of 40,000 laborers against the U.S.-owned United Fruit and Standard Fruit Companies, which the Agency acknowledges \u201cdominate[d] the economy of the region.\u201d In the same breath, the C.I.A. also says that the Communists \u201clost control of the workers,\u201d post-strike.<\/p>\n

A PROXY AGAINST NICARAGUA<\/strong><\/p>\n

A U.S. military report states<\/a> that \u201c[c]onducting joint exercises with the Honduran military has a long history dating back to 1965.\u201d By 1975, U.S. military helicopters operating in Honduras at Catacamas, a village in the east, assisted \u201clogistical support of counterinsurgency operations,\u201d according<\/a> to the CIA. These machines aided the Honduran forces in their skirmishes against pro-Castro elements from Nicaragua operating along the Patuca River in the south of Honduras. By the mid-1990s, there were at least 30<\/a> helicopters operating in Honduras.<\/p>\n

In 1979, the National Sandinista Liberation Front (Sandinistas) came to power in Nicaragua, deposing and later assassinating the U.S.-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1925-80). For the Reagan administration (1981-89), Honduras was a proxy against the defiant Nicaragua.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Army War College wrote at the time: \u201cPresident Reagan has clearly expressed our national commitment to combating low intensity conflict in developing countries.\u201d It says that \u201cThe responsibility now falls upon the Department of State and the Department of Defense to develop plans and doctrine for meeting this requirement.\u201d The same document confirms<\/a> that the U.S. Army Special Operations Forces (SOF), the 18th<\/sup> Airborne Corps, was sent to Honduras. \u201cMobile Training Teams (MTT) were dispatched to train Honduran soldiers in small unit tactics, helicopter maintenance and air operations, and to establish the Regional Military Training Center near Trujillo and Puerto Castilla,\u201d both on the eastern coast.<\/p>\n

A SOUTHCOM document dates significant U.S. military assistance to Honduras to the 1980s. It notes<\/a> the effect of public pressure on U.S. policy, highlighting: \u201ca general lack of appetite among the American public to see U.S. forces committed in the wake of the Vietnam War [which] resulted in strict parameters that limited the scope of military involvement in Central America.\u201d<\/p>\n

According<\/a> to SOUTHCOM, the Regional Military Training Center was designed \u201cto train friendly countries in basic counterinsurgency tactics.\u201d President Reagan wanted to smash the Sandinistas, but \u201cthe executive branch\u2019s hands were tied by the 1984 passage of the Boland Amendment [to the Defense Appropriations Act], banning the use of U.S. military aid to be given to the Contras,\u201d the anti-Sandinista forces in Nicaragua. As a result, \u201cthe strong and sudden focus instead on training, and arguably by proxy, the establishment of [Joint Task Force-Bravo],\u201d an elite military unit assigned a \u201ccounter-communist mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Green Berets trained the contras<\/em> from bases in Honduras, \u201caccompanying them on missions into Nicaragua.\u201d The North American Congress on Latin America noted<\/a> at the time that \u201cMilitary planes flying out of Honduras are coordinated by a laser navigation system, and contras<\/em> operating inside Nicaragua are receiving night supply drops from C-130s using the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System,\u201d first used in Vietnam and operational only to a few personnel. \u201cThe CIA, operating out of Air Force bases in the United States, hires pilots for the hazardous sorties at $30,000 per mission.\u201d The report notes that troops from El Salvador \u201cwere undergoing U.S. training every day of the year, in Honduras, the United States and the new basic training center at La Union,\u201d in the north.<\/p>\n

SPECIAL UNITS AND ANTI-COMMUNISTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

The U.S. also launched psychological operations against domestic leftism in Honduras. This involved morphing a special police unit into a military intelligence squad guilty of kidnap, torture, and murder: Battalion 316. Inducing a climate of fear in workers, union leaders, intellectuals, and human rights lawyers is way of ensuring that progressive ideas like good healthcare, free education, and decent living standards don\u2019t take root.<\/p>\n

In 1963, the Fuerza de Seguridad P\u00fablica<\/em> (FUSEP, Public Security Force) was set up<\/a> as a branch of the military. During the early-\u201880s, FUSEP commanded the National Directorate of Investigations, regular national police units, and National Special Units, \u201cwhich provided technical support to the arms interdiction program,\u201d according<\/a> to the CIA, in which \u201cmaterial from Nicaragua passed through Honduras to guerrillas in El Salvador.\u201d The National Directorate of Investigations ran the secret Honduran Anti-Communist Liberation Army (ELACH, 1980-84), described by the C.I.A. as \u201ca rightist paramilitary organization which conducted operations against Honduran leftists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The C.I.A. repeats<\/a> allegations that \u201cELACH\u2019s operations included surveillance, kidnappings, interrogation under duress, and execution of prisoners who were Honduran revolutionaries.\u201d ELACH worked in cooperation with the Special Unit of FUSEP. \u201cThe mission of the Unit was essentially … to combat both domestic and regional subversive movements operating in and through Honduras.\u201d The C.I.A. also notes that \u201cthis included penetrating various organizations such as the Honduran Communist Party, the Central American Regional Trotskyite Party, and the Popular Revolutionary Forces-Lorenzo Zelaya (FPR-LZ) Marxist terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gustavo Adolfo \u00c1lvarez (1937-89), future head of the Honduran Armed Forces, told<\/a> U.S. President Jimmy Carter\u2019s Honduras Ambassador, Jack Binns, that their forces would use \u201cextra-legal means\u201d to destroy communists. Binns wrote<\/a> in a confidential cable: \u201cI am deeply concerned at increasing evidence of officially sponsored\/sanctioned assassinations of political and criminal targets, which clearly indicate [Government of Honduras] repression has built up a head of steam much faster than we had anticipated.\u201d But U.S. doctrine shifted under President Reagan. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Thomas O. Enders, told<\/a> Binns not to send such material to the State Department for fear of leakage. Enders himself said<\/a> of human rights in Honduras: \u201cthe Reagan administration had broader interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Reagan, John Negroponte replaced Binns at the U.S. Embassy in the capital Tegucigalpa, from where many C.I.A. agents operated. In 1981, secret briefings informed<\/a> Negroponte that \u201c[Government of Honduras] security forces have begun to resort to extralegal tactics — disappearances and, apparently, physical eliminations to control a perceived subversive threat.\u201d Rick Chidster, a junior political officer at the U.S. Embassy was ordered<\/a> by superiors in 1982 to remove references to Honduran military abuses from his annual human rights report prepared for Congress.<\/p>\n

THE MAKING OF BATTALION-316<\/strong><\/p>\n

In March 1981, Reagan authorized<\/a> the expansion of covert operations to \u201cprovide all forms of training, equipment, and related assistance to cooperating governments throughout Central America in order counter foreign-sponsored subversion and terrorism.\u201d Documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun<\/em> the reveal<\/a> that from 1981, the U.S. provided funds for Argentine counterinsurgency experts to train anti-Communists in Honduras; many of whom had, themselves, been trained by the U.S. in earlier years. At a camp in Lepaterique, in western Honduras, Argentine killers under U.S. supervision trained their Honduran counterparts.<\/p>\n

Oscar \u00c1lvarez, a former Honduran Special Forces officer and diplomat trained<\/a> by the U.S., said:<\/a> \u201cThe Argentines came in first, and they taught how to disappear people.\u201d With training and equipment, such as hidden cameras and phone bugging technology, U.S. agents \u201cmade them more efficient.\u201d The U.S.-trained<\/a> Chief of Staff, Gen. Jos\u00e9 Bueso Rosa, says:<\/a> \u201cWe were not specialists in intelligence, in gathering information, so the United States offered to help us organize a special unit.\u201d Between 1982 and 1984, the aforementioned Gen. \u00c1lvarez headed the Armed Forces. In 1983, Reagan awarded him the Legion of Merit for \u201cencouraging the success of democratic processes in Honduras.\u201d When C.I.A. Station Chief, Donald Winters, adopted a child, he asked \u00c1lvarez to be the godfather.<\/p>\n

After WWII, the U.S. Army established, in the Panama Canal Zone, a Latin American Training Center-Ground Division at Fort Amador, later renamed the U.S. Army School of the Americas and moved to Fort Benning, Georgia. Now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the C.I.A.\u2019s Phoenix Program<\/a> in Vietnam and its MK-ULTRA<\/a> mind-torture programs influenced the Honduras curriculum at the School.<\/p>\n

In 1983, the U.S. military participated in Strategic Military Seminar with the Honduran Armed Forces, at which it was decided that FUSEP would be transformed from a police force into a military intelligence unit. \u201cThe purpose of this change,\u201d says<\/a> the C.I.A., \u201cwas to improve coordination and improve control.\u201d It also aimed \u201cTo make available greater personnel, resources, and to integrate the intel production.\u201d In 1984, the Special Unit was placed under the command of the Military Intelligence Division and renamed the 316th<\/sup> Battalion, at which point \u201cit continued to provide technical support to the arms interdiction program\u201d in neighboring countries.<\/p>\n

A C.I.A. officer based in the U.S. Embassy is known<\/a> to have visited the Military Industries jail: one of Battalion 316\u2019s torture chambers in which victims were bound, beaten, electrocuted, raped, and poisoned. Battalion torturer, Jos\u00e9 Barrera, says: \u201cThey always asked to be killed … Torture is worse than death.\u201d Battalion 316 officer, Jos\u00e9 Valle, explained<\/a> surveillance methods: \u201cWe would follow a person for four to six days. See their daily routes from the moment they leave the house. What kind of transportation they use. The streets they go on.\u201d Men in black ski masks would bundle the victim into a vehicle with dark-tinted windows and no license plates.<\/p>\n

Under Lt. Col. Alonso Villeda, the Battalion was disbanded and replaced<\/a> in 1987 with a Counterintelligence Division of the Honduran Armed Forces. Led by the Chief of Staff for Intelligence (C-2), it absorbed the Battalion\u2019s personnel, units, analysis centers, and functions.<\/p>\n

In 1988, Richard Stolz, then-U.S. Deputy Director for Operations, told<\/a> the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in secret hearings that C.I.A. officers ran courses and taught psychological torture. \u201cThe course consisted of three weeks of classroom instruction followed by two weeks of practical exercises, which included the questioning of actual prisoners by the students.\u201d Former Ambassador Binns says:<\/a> \u201cI think it is an example of the pathology of foreign policy.\u201d In response to the allegations, which he denied, former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Elliott Abrams, replied:<\/a> \u201cA human rights policy is not supposed to make you feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between 1982 and 1993, the U.S. taxpayer gave half a billion dollars<\/a> in military \u201caid\u201d to Honduras. By 1990, 184 people had \u201cdisappeared,\u201d according<\/a> to President Manuel Zelaya, who in 2008 intimated that he would reopen cases of the disappeared.<\/p>\n

THE ZELAYA COUP<\/strong><\/p>\n

After centuries of struggle, Hondurans elected a President who raised living standards through wealth redistribution. Winner of the 2005 Presidential elections, Manuel Zelaya of the Liberal Party\u2019s Movimiento Esperanza Liberal<\/em> faction increased the minimum wage, provided free education to children, subsidised small farmers, and provided free electricity to the country\u2019s poorest. Zelaya countered media monopoly propaganda by imposing minimum airtime for government broadcasts and allied with America\u2019s regional enemies via the proposed ALBA trading bloc.<\/p>\n

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported<\/a> at the time that \u201canalysts\u201d reckoned Zelaya\u2019s move \u201cruns the risk of jeopardizing the traditionally close state of relations with the United States.\u201d The CRS also bemoaned Zelaya delaying the accreditation of the U.S. Ambassador, Hugo Llorens, \u201cto show solidarity with Bolivia in its diplomatic spat with the United States in which Bolivia expelled the U.S. Ambassador.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because Zeyala did not have enough Congressional representatives to agree to his plan, he attempted to expand democracy by holding a referendum on constitutional changes. Both the lower and Supreme Courts agreed to the opposition parties blocking the referendum. In defiance of the courts, Zelaya ordered the military to help with election logistics, an order refused by the head of the Armed Forces, Gen. Romeo V\u00e1squez, who later claimed that Zelaya had dismissed him, which Zelaya denies.<\/a> Using pro-Zelaya demonstrations as a pretext for taking to the streets, the military mobilized and, in June 2009, the Supreme Court authorized Zelaya\u2019s capture, after which he was exiled to Costa Rica.<\/p>\n

In the book Hard Choices<\/em>, then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton\u2019s ghostwriters, with her approval, refer to Latin America as the U.S.\u2019s \u201cbackyard\u201d and to Zelaya as \u201ca throwback to the caricature of a Central American strongman, with his white cowboy hat, dark black mustache, and fondness for Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro\u201d (p. 222). The publishers omitted<\/a> from the paperback edition Clinton\u2019s role in the coup: \u201cWe strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras\u201d (plus the usual boilerplate about democracy promotion.)<\/p>\n

Decree PCM-M-030-2009 ordered the election be held during a state of emergency. The peaceful, pro-Zelaya groups, La Resistencia<\/em> and Frente Hondure\u00f1a de Resistencia Popular<\/em>, were targeted under Anti-Terror Laws. The right-wing Porfirio Lobo was elected with over 50 percent of the vote in a fake 60 percent turnout (later revised to 49 percent). U.S. President Obama described<\/a> this as \u201ca restoration of democratic practices and a commitment to reconciliation that gives us great hope.\u201d Hope and change for Honduras came in the form of economic changes benefitting U.S. corporations:<\/p>\n

The U.S. State Department notes:<\/a> \u201cMany of the approximately 200 U.S. companies that operate in Honduras take advantage of protections available in the Central American and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement.\u201d Note the inadvertent acknowledgement that \u201cfree trade\u201d is actually protection for U.S. corporations. The State Department also notes: \u201cThe Honduran government is generally open to foreign investment. Low labor costs, proximity to the U.S. market, and the large Caribbean port of Puerto Cortes make Honduras attractive to investors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four years into Zelaya\u2019s overthrow, unemployment jumped from 35.5 percent to 56.4 percent. In 2014, Honduras signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a $189m loan. The Center for Economic and Policy Research states:<\/a> \u201cHonduran authorities agreed to implement fiscal consolidation… including privatizations, pension reforms and public sector layoffs.\u201d The Congressional Research Service states:<\/a> \u201cPresident Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez of the conservative National Party was inaugurated to a second four-year term in January 2018. He lacks legitimacy among many Hondurans, however, due to allegations that his 2017 reelection was unconstitutional and marred by fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

RETURN OF THE DEATH SQUADS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the coup, the U.S. has expanded its military bases in Honduras from 10 to 13. U.S. \u201caid\u201d funds the Honduran National Police, whose long-time Director, Juan Carlos Bonilla, was trained<\/a> at the School of the Americas. Atrocities against Hondurans increased under the U.S. favorite, President Hern\u00e1ndez, who vowed<\/a> to \u201cput a soldier on every corner.\u201d SOUTHCOM worked<\/a> under Obama\u2019s Central America Regional Security Initiative, which supported Operation Moraz\u00e1n: a program to integrate Honduras\u2019s Armed Forces with its domestic policing units. With SOUTHCOM funding, the 250-person Special Response Security Unit (TIGRES) was established<\/a> near Lepaterique. The TIGRES are trained<\/a> by the U.S. Green Berets or 7th<\/sup> Special Forces Group (Airborne) and described<\/a> by the U.S. Army War College as a \u201cparamilitary police force.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cover for setting up a military police force is countering narco- and human-traffickers, but the record shows that left-wing civilians are targeted for death and intimidation. To crush the pro-Zelaya, pro-democracy movements Operation Moraz\u00e1n, according<\/a> to the U.S. Army War College, included the creation of the Military Police of Public Order (PMOP), whose members must have served at least one year in the Armed Forces. By January 2018, the PMOP consisted<\/a> of 4,500 personnel in 10 battalions across every region of Honduras, and had murdered<\/a> at least 21 street protestors.<\/p>\n

Berta C\u00e1ceres co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. One of the Organization\u2019s missions was resisting the Desarrollos Energ\u00e9ticos<\/a> (DESA) corporation\u2019s Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River, which is sacred to the Lenca people. DESA hired a gang, later convicted of murdering C\u00e1ceres. They included the U.S.-trained<\/a> Maj. Mariano D\u00edaz Ch\u00e1vez and Lt. Douglas Geovanny Bustillo, himself head of security at DESA. The company\u2019s director, David Castillo, also a U.S.-trained<\/a> ex-military intelligence officer, is alleged to have colluded with the killers. The TIGRE forces oversaw<\/a> the dam\u2019s construction site.<\/p>\n

Between 2010 and 2016, as U.S. \u201caid\u201d and training continued to flow, over 120<\/a> environmental activists were murdered by hitmen, gangs, police, and the military for opposing illegal logging and mining. Others have been intimidated. In 2014, for instance, a year after the murder of three Matute people by gangs linked to a mining operation, the children of the indigenous Tolupan leader, Santos C\u00f3rdoba, were threatened at gunpoint<\/a> by the U.S.-trained, ex-Army General, Fil\u00e1nder Ucl\u00e9s, and his bodyguards.<\/p>\n

Home to the Regional Military Training Center, Bajo Agu\u00e1n is a low-lying region in the east, whose farmers have battled land privatization since the early-1990s. After Zelaya was deposed, crimes against the peoples of the region increased. Rights groups signed a letter to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who facilitated U.S. aid to Honduras, stating:<\/a> \u201cForty-five people associated with peasant organizations have been killed\u201d between September 2009 and February 2012. A joint military-police project, Operation Xatruch II in 2012, led to the deaths of \u201cnine peasant organization members, including two principal leaders.\u201d One 17-year-old son of a peasant organizer was kidnapped, tortured, and threatened with being burned alive. Lawfare is also used, with over 160 small farmers in the area subject to frivolous legal proceedings.<\/p>\n

\u201cBACK TO THE PAST\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the 1980s, Tom\u00e1s Nativ\u00ed, co-founder of the People\u2019s Revolutionary Union, was \u201cdisappeared\u201d by U.S.-backed death squads. Nativ\u00ed\u2019s wife, Bertha Oliva, founded of the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras to fight for justice for those murdered between 1979 and 1989. She told<\/a> The Intercept<\/em> that the recent killings and restructuring of the so-called security state is \u201clike going back to the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

The iron-fist of Empire in the service of capitalism never loosens its grip. The names and command structures of U.S.-backed military units in Honduras have changed over the last four decades, but their goal remains the same.<\/p>\n

The post The Evolution of U.S.-Backed Death Squads in Honduras<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo Source Capt. Thomas Cieslak \u2013 CC BY 2.0 U.S. intelligence agencies and corporations have pushed back against the so-called Pink Tide, the coming to power of socialistic\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,230,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3074,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073\/revisions\/3074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}