No subject

Central American country.=20



It is unlikely that Zelaya won brownie points from the large Canadian minin=
g sector - including Breakwater Resources, Yamana Gold and Goldcorp that ar=
e active in Honduras - when he announced that no new mining concessions wou=
ld be granted.=20



Likewise, Zelaya's move earlier this year to raise the minimum wage by 60% =
could not have gone down well with the world's biggest blank T-shirt maker,=
 Montr=C3=A9al-based Gildan. Employing thousands of Hondurans at low wages =
Gildan produces about half of its garments in the country.=20



While the political instability in Honduras initially hit the company's sto=
ck price, a Desjardins Securities analyst Martin Landry noted that in the l=
ong term the coup could help Gildan if it leads to a more pro-business gove=
rnment.=20



More broadly, the Harper government opposes Zelaya's gravitation towards th=
e governments in the region leading the push towards a more united Latin Am=
erica. A year ago Honduras joined the Hugo Chavez led Alba, the Bolivarian =
Alliance for the People of Our Americas, which is a fast growing response t=
o North American capitalist domination of the region.=20



Two years ago Harper toured South America to help stunt the region's recent=
 rejection of neoliberalism and U.S dependence. =E2=80=9CTo show that Canad=
a functions and that it can be a better model than Venezuela,=E2=80=9D in t=
he words of a high-level Foreign Affairs official. During the trip, Harper =
and his entourage made a number of comments critical of the Venezuelan gove=
rnment. In a coded reference to Chavez, Harper discussed a "Latin American =
dictator."=20



Demonizing Chavez is part of Ottawa's attempt to block the leftward shift i=
n the region. Supporting the coup in Honduras is part of the same plan.=20



(Yves Engler is author of The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy)