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NEWS & LETTERS, October - November 2009
Eyewitness report on Honduras resistance
Editor's note: These reports, translated from Spanish by Brown Douglas, were sent to N&L by Francesca Gargallo, a Latin American writer and feminist. The first dispatch is an eyewitness report she wrote while in Honduras with the Feminist Writers Network.
Tegucigalpa, Honduras--"When the media is silent, the walls inform the people" was the message written all over the streets of Tegucigalpa, a city in its 84th day of resistance to the coup d'etat. The Resistance movement has become not only a path towards the masses' dignity, but the most participatory reclaiming of democracy on the American continent. It's a movement that posits a new relation between the political and the private with its slogan: "Against the coup d'etat, against the coup on women."
Before June 28 nobody would have thought that 10% of the Honduran population would self-organize peacefully in the streets against a takeover. On that day President Zelaya was taken from his house in his underwear by soldiers brandishing a Congressional order. He was placed on a plane and whisked off to Costa Rica. This liberal president was just beginning to come around to the people's demands to redistribute wealth, and for agrarian reform, political reform and social justice. His "sins" were having raised the minimum wage, signing on with ALBA [Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, an organization led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez promoting welfare-state policies and trade in Latin America--translator], and proposing an official inquiry into whether the Honduran people wanted to vote for constitutional reform in the November 2009 elections.
Since morning broke on June 28, people of all stripes and organizations have grouped before the presidential palace: peasants, street vendors, labor unionists, a considerable number of feminist women, teachers and indigenous people. Right then and there they founded the Bloc in Resistance to the Coup.
Meanwhile, the head of Congress declared himself the President of the Republic. This political hijacking was driven by the most conservative sectors of society: rich media magnates, sweatshop owners, huge ranch estates and the fast food industry. This set afoot daily demonstrations against the State in Crisis.
The direct mass participation in organized resistance has engendered a reflection on important questions such as what kind of democracy is necessary for Honduras, how to unmask the violence--both at work and in the home--against women, the killings of movement leaders, and what exactly to demand of the State. Finally, we took up the question of what to propose in a Constitutional Assembly. These dialogues were all organized during marches, pickets and demonstrations. They demonstrate the masses' preparation for the fight to improve their conditions, as well as the ability to take advantage of the space opened up by Zelaya in the six months prior to the coup.
Today the Honduran people are resisting the state's kidnapping by a minority of the population, the oligarchy. That's why, Monday through Friday, we've marched on the street now known as the Boulevard of the Resistance. We enter marginalized neighborhoods where gangs, drug dealers, and pimps have robbed the people of the use of public space.
Coming from all the regions of Honduras--from the sweatshops in San Pedro Sula, to the agrarian area of Olancho, to the Atlantic coast with populations of Garifunas and African descendants, to the forest regions with indigenous populations--countless marches have converged on Tegucigalpa over the last two and a half months. The diversity of participation includes the COPINH (Civil Counsel of Indigenous and People's Organizations of Honduras) and the OFRANEH (Fraternal Organization of Black Hondurans), and even clergy.
But two or more people in the Resistance movement are murdered every week. Like in the rest of Latin America, women are murdered in such a way that the violence against their bodies sends a dual message of fear and intimidation to the whole population.
On Sept. 15, Independence Day for Central America, more than 600,000 people (10% of the population) came out on the streets of every city of the country to oppose the coup. The military, on the other hand, had its own march that succeeded in gathering no more than 30,000 at most. The military march was too scared by the multitude of people declaring a "Second Independence Day" to come very far into the city.
It's worth asking, "What future does the Resistance point to?" It is obvious that the coup will not be able to govern. They haven't only been shunned by the international community (only Israel and Taiwan recognize the Micheletti government); the whole of Honduras repudiates them. The farmers have taken over the National Agrarian Institute and won't let the coup-appointed government ministers take their positions. The sweatshop workers have increased their demands for dignity, health, and good pay in the workplace (the placard that one sees in the marches reads "Work, yes. But with dignity!"). Regional commerce has collapsed.
The coup-makers seek to keep themselves in power in November elections. They hope to take advantage of their control of the media to propose two candidates, the nationalist Porfirio Lobo Sosa and the liberal Elvin Santos. In spite of all of this, the Liberal Party is divided, with one part supporting the demand for the immediate return of Manuel Zelaya. The Democratic Unification, a small Left Party that has opposed the coup in Congress, insists that the elections will only be fair after the return of Zelaya. For its part, the Resistance has already demanded a Constitutional Assembly ("Elections, no! Constitutional Assembly, yes!" is another popular slogan adorning the walls of Tegucigalpa).
Feminists, teachers, and unionists are starting to unite, while the farmers and peasants have organized themselves into three Confederations and 24 collectives and have proposals for comprehensive agrarian reform. Nonetheless, it's not clear what will draw these causes together. For instance, in a religious country like Honduras, how will the interests of farmers and Christian workers' unions jibe with the demands of women for a free and voluntary motherhood? Without women, no democracy is valid. And that is more than just a slogan written on a wall.
--September 19, 2009
Manuel Zelaya returned unannounced to Tegucigalpa on Sept. 21. The wave of mass enthusiasm triggered by his return was put down with arbitrary jailings, widespread use of tear gas in the streets and private homes with families inside, gunshots, 48-hour sustained curfews, detention of the wounded in hospitals without access to Red Cross observation, torture, mass incarceration in stadiums, and water and utility cut-offs. At least 24 people have been killed, three of them children who suffocated from the use of toxic gas. This is the most violent political repression by any Latin American regime in more than 20 years.
All of us in the Feminist Writers Network left Honduras the day before Zelaya's return. We had gone there in solidarity with the Feminist Resistance Collective. Our analysis was that the resistance to the coup would last a long time, strengthening its demands and deepening its political analysis through the dialogue brought about by the gathering of dissatisfied citizens and diverse social organizations in the public space. A day later this outlook had radically changed.
Zelaya returned to Honduras after crossing over from Guatemala on foot. From the Brazilian embassy he has asked the international community to intervene to stop the violence against the general population. He himself runs the risk of being assassinated by snipers hidden outside or being taken by soldiers.
In spite of the total lack of legality of the coup, the international media has echoed the paranoia expressed by the coup leaders that Zelaya was trying to impose a Chávez-like constitutional reform so he could be reelected. Also problematic is that a part of the Latin American Left insists that Zelaya is merely a populist, underlining the fact that he and Micheletti both belong to the Liberal Party. This attitude lets the coup off the hook too easily. The supposed people's governments of Nicaragua and El Salvador haven't condemned the coup very forcefully at all. In the end, it is the people of Honduras who are paying the consequences of the military violence let loose by Congress. But in their Resistance, the Honduran people have reclaimed the dignity they lost in the 1980s, a decade of intense repression, when they couldn't stop their country from becoming the launching ground of the United States against the Salvadoran guerrilla fighters and the revolutionary Sandinista government.
--Francesca Gargallo, September 24, 2009
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