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The Obama administration is attempting to maintain a façade of support for democracy in Honduras in part because of the political difficulties it would face were it to openly back a military coup there while conducting a propaganda war against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad based on allegations—unsubstantiated—that he stole that country’s June 12 election. Moreover, it wants to avoid a debacle for the US similar to that which the Bush administration suffered as a result of its open support for the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela.

The real attitude of US imperialism to democracy in Honduras and the rest of Latin America is revealed in the virtual silence of the US media on the events unfolding in the impoverished country. Virtually no coverage is being given to the repression being carried out by the coup regime, or the ongoing resistance of workers and other opponents of the coup.

The “interim government” has flooded Tegucigalpa and other cities with troops and police and is maintaining a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew. There are reports of at least two anti-coup demonstrators having been killed and hundreds wounded or arrested. Officials in the Zelaya government have been detained or deported, television and radio stations have been closed down, and both Honduran and foreign journalists have been arrested. CNN’s Spanish channel was shut down by the regime, without evoking any public protest by the US network.

The head of the United Workers Federation reported that soldiers fired live ammunition into a crowd of protesters. Despite this repression, there are reports of walkouts by teachers and health workers, and protests in the capital and other cities involving thousands of people.

None of this is deemed particularly newsworthy by the US media, which has conducted a massive propaganda campaign against the Iranian regime for allegedly carrying out an electoral “coup d’état.”