Some of us are rewriting history

To the editor:

(re: “Countries to our south have only themselves to blame,” Jan. 3)

Lou Deholczer shows chutzpah in calling my fact-based defense of immigrants a diatribe, which is a perfect description of his fact-lacking diatribe against me.

Honduran president Manuel Zelaya’s non-binding referendum on whether a constitutional assembly should take place was perfectly legal under Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran Civil Participation Act. The constitution Deholczer did not want amended was adopted in the waning days of U.S.-backed military dictator Policarpo Paz García.

We don’t know that the coup that removed Zelaya in 2009 was supported in advance by the United States. But it took place shortly after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left the country. She and President Barack Obama subsequently supported the coup and opposed all efforts to restore the democratically elected Zelaya.

U.S. banana companies had controlled Honduras going back to the 1890s. Zelaya angered them as well as the country’s economic and military elites by raising the minimum wage, providing free school lunches, milk for young children, pensions for the elderly, and additional scholarships for students.

As for Deholczer’s assertion that Latin America has been independent of the United States since 1823, in what alternate universe? The Mexican-American War was way before 1865 (between 1846 and 1848). It was opposed by many U.S. citizens, including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It resulted in Mexican land that now consists of California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, as well as parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming becoming United States territory.

That’s where Mexicans got the expression, “We didn’t come to the United States, the United States came to us.”

CIA-backed coups overthrew democratically elected presidents in Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973.

As for the taxes paid by residents of Sweden, Norway and other Scandinavian countries, for that they get complete health coverage, secure pensions, superior education, and other public services, plus more leisure time. Compare that to what our taxes get us.

Deholczer should take up writing short stories and novels, because he’s inclined to write fiction. Also, I have to wonder why The Riverdale Press no longer finds it fit to publish poetry in the letters section, but has no problem with fiction.

Calling me “comrade” does not negate the truth I write.

Richard Warren