Honduras Newspaper Impressed that Daughter of Pinochet Backs Coup

Posted by Al Giordano - July 10, 2009 at 9:08 am

By Al Giordano

Here in the newsroom, we wondered if the website of the daily El Heraldo in Honduras (part of the same newspaper chain as La Prensa, which now enjoys the infamy of having photoshopped the blood out of the iconic photo of assassinated teenager Isis Obed Murillo) had been hacked by creative coup opponents.

But, apparently not: the newspaper (part of the Inter American Press Association) published a story yesterday titled: Pinochet's Daughter: "Zelaya Attempted a Coup."

I don't know what is weirder: that a pro-coup newspaper would think that quoting the daughter of the Chilean military general, Augusto Pinochet, somehow adds to its already bombastic portrayal of a military coup as a legal or "constitutional" action, or that Ms. Lucia Pinochet Hiriart (in the photo, above) has a constituency among the coup-defenders to the extent that she would be making public statements in praise of it, and those statements would somehow be newsworthy.

It was her father, the disgraced General Pinochet, who fomented the bloody 1973 military coup against the elected government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, which launched a dark era of similar authoritarian coups in countries throughout Latin America.

But there she is, Ms. Pinochet, instructing the Honduran people:

"The one that wanted to cause a coup was (elected Honduran President Manuel) Zelaya... Right now, he's the victim, but he is no victim...."

No, it's not parody. Rather, it's instructive of the state of mind of the coup defenders. (You can see it in repeated online comments on Twitter and elsewhere attacking Organization of American States chairman Jose Miguel Insulza because he was part of the elected Allende government before Allende was assassinated by Pinochet's forces.) They see the Pinochet coup of 36 years ago as a heroic act, and long for the bad old days when they could simply stamp out democratic will by rounding all dissenters into a stadium and assassinating more than 3,000 in a single week, which is what happened after September 11, 1973 in Santiago de Chile.

It is another proof positive that they are trying to start that ball rolling all over again throughout the hemisphere. And it demonstrates exactly why not a single government in América or in the entire world recognizes their illegitimate regime.

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Please spread widely all over the world. Al, General Joe, and jamie