The Clinton-Kaine Honduran connection

Blue Virginia

On Friday, Hilary Clinton announced that Senator Tim Kaine (VA) would be her running mate in this year's presidential election. Kaine is a 1976 graduate of Rockhurst High School, an all-boys Jesuit high school in Kansas City, Missouri. However, what is interesting and perhaps uncomfortable for the pair is their connection to Honduras.

Clinton was Secretary of State when the coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras transpired in June 2009. The US failed to follow up on its condemnation of the coup and instead pressed for a negotiated resolution to the dispute before finally putting its efforts into the holding of new elections so as to make the question of Zelaya's return to power moot. Conditions in Honduras have gone downhill ever since. Cuba and Colombia might be two successful examples of the Obama administration's approach to Latin America these last eight years. However, Honduras is (by far?) its greatest failure.

That's where Senator Kaine comes in. From NPR

Kaine learned Spanish while living in Honduras in 1980. He took a year off from law school to work at a technical school with Jesuit missionaries.

In 2013, Kaine spoke in Spanish for almost 13 minutes on the floor of the Senate advocating for an immigration overhaul bill crafted by the bipartisan "Gang of Eight."

It marked the first time a senator gave an entire speech on the floor in a language that was not English, although others have spoken briefly in Spanish before.

In the speech, Kaine said he felt it was appropriate to speak in his second language because Spanish — which has been spoken in the U.S. for hundreds of years — is still "spoken by more than 40 million Americans with a huge investment in the result of this debate."

Earlier this month at a Clinton rally in California, Kaine taught the crowd how to say "Ready for Hillary" in Spanish.

Kaine met with Honduran Jesuit Fr. Melo in November 2014. In the meeting, he described his time in Honduras as the most important year of his life. He traveled to Honduras a few months later to get a firsthand look at conditions on the ground there. He has signed his name to several letters voicing concerns over events in Honduras.

I don't think that Honduras is going to be an important issue in the campaign. Republicans are far more concerned about Benghazi, ISIS, and decreasing numbers of undocumented immigrants. I can't see them getting all that worked up about Clinton's failure to back a left wing president cozy with Hugo Chavez from a right wing coup. Under normal circumstances, they might have cheered her. I can't say that I followed the battle too closely, but the Sanders campaign wasn't able to make much traction on the issue.