Honduras Updates: Resistance grows as coup regime starts talks

Federico Fuentes, Caracas
Green Left Weekly
September 23,2009

The coup regime in Tegucigalpa is crumbling in the face of growing resistance from Honduran people and international condemnation.

Having seized power in a military coup June 28, the coup regime headed by “president” Robert Micheletti has faced sustained resistance in the streets for three months from the Honduran poor.

However, the situation exploded on September 21 when legitimate President Manuel Zelaya, who was kidnapped at gun point in the co0up and exiled to Costa Rica, stunned the world by announcing he had snuck back into Honduras and was inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa.

The dictatorship ordered the police and military to violently repress the thousands who protested outside the Brazilian embassy, as well as the people on the streets across the country. An unknown number of people have been killed, including an eight-year-old girl, and hundreds arrested.

Insurrection
The response of the Honduran poor, determined to see “their” president who had increased the minimum wage by 60% returned to office, was to launch an insurrection in impoverished neighbourhoods.

With street battles raging, and barricades raised, a number of working class neighbourhoods declared themselves “liberated zones”.

Tthe international isolation of the coup regime also worsened when United Nations general-secretary Ban Ki-moon said on September 23 that elections organised by the Micheletti dictatorship would not be “credible” and the UN was withdrawing all assistance (worth US$1.3 million) for a coup regime-organised November 28 poll.

Desperate, the regime has now opened dialogue with Zelaya — something it refused to do for three months.

The resistance plans once again to take to the streets of Tegucigalpa tomorrow (September 25) to demand Zelaya’s reinstatement and the calling of a constituent assembly.

The issue of organising a constituent assembly to redraft the constitution was the detonator for the June 28 coup. That day, a non-binding referendum was meant to be held, asking the people whether they were in favor of a constituent assembly to rewriting the 1982 constitution — put in place by the military dictatorship at the time.

Gilberto Rios, a leader of the National Resistance Front Against the Coup, told Green Left Weekly over the phone from Tegucigalpa: “President Zelaya has meet [today] with a few people from the right wing to see if they could start a process of dialogue.

“It possible that the level of tension will briefly come down, although tomorrow will be a climactic day of mobilisations — boosted by the support we received in the UN.”

Explaining the course of events that day (September 24), Rios said: “The National Front had called on the people to not mobilise in the center of Tegucigalpa. Instead, it was proposed that people should organise protests in their barrios and colonias [poor neighbourhoods], in order to avoid any provocations by the march of the camisas blancas [white shirts, supporters of the coup].”

Many feared the pro-coup march could be used as a trigger for street clashes and further repression. Some had warned of plans to stoke up violent confrontations near the Brazilian embassy, where Zelaya remains.

Resistance activist Ricardo Salgado told GLW that the march was further evidence that “a section of the armed forces and the coup regime are still look to carry out extreme measures” to end the anti-coup resistance.

In the end, the pro-coup march was very small and largely consisted of public servants forced to attend, Rios said.

Dialogue
Both Rios and Salgado confirmed that numerous avenues of dialogue had been opened up between Zelaya and coup representatives over the last 24 hours.

Salgado said: “Last night a representative of the de facto government arrived at the Brazilian embassy to explicitly propose to the president that he resign and that Micheletti would also resign.

“This was considered unacceptable [by Zelaya], as it would basically legitimise the coup.

“Then, this afternoon, Father Juan Jose Pineda, a bishop in Tegucigalpa who is very close to Cardinal Rodriguez, one of the coup plotters” also visited Zelaya, “we suspect to offer some kind of negotiation … on behalf of the de facto government.”

Salgado added, “later on today [Zelaya] will meet with Father Luis Alfonso Santos who is decidedly against the coup and who just released a 12 point declaration [in which he states] his support for the people, constitutional restoration and the recognition of the legitimate right to insurrection of the people have in the face of a government imposed by force”.

He said this seemed to confirm that the Catholic Church would play an important role in any negotiations.

Furthermore, the candidates that stated their intention to run in the November presidential elections met this afternoon (September 24) with Michelleti, and will met with Zelaya later tonight.

Rios said the National Resistance Front “is and has always been open to dialogue, as long as it contemplates the restitution of Zelaya and the jailing of those responsible for the coup”.

“The [plan to organise a] constituent assembly is also non-negotiable. The constitutional order was broken as a result of the coup and the constitution orders that a constitution assembly be held [in such a scenario] so that cannot be up for discussion on the negotiation table.”

He told GLWM that Zelaya “has spoken with the resistance and that we have the same position in regards to what is up for discussion and what is non-negotiable”.

He added that he didn’t think the dialogue would succeed “very easily or quickly”.

“The coup regime has its own internal contradictions”, Salgado said. “Although it has attempted to maintain the facade of a strong regime backed by repression, it is clear that the country is in a very bad state and groups of business owners have said it is necessary to negotiate with the president.

“If we take as our starting point the fact that these business owners are the financiers of the coup, then what we are talking about is sections of the coup regime recognising the need to negotiate.”

Salgado said: “My personal opinion is that while it is true that the resistance forces have not matured enough yet to be able to stage an insurrection capable of overthrowing the coup regime, it has been able to reach a high level of organisation.”

This means that Zelaya “will need to count on the leadership of the National Front for any proposed solution to the current situation, because that is where he finds his social base. His popularity is based on [including] a large range of people, from popular leaders in the barrios, to teachers to supporters of his former party.”



Repression and mobilisation
Rios said: “There continues to be a strong presence of military and police helicopters [circling Tegucigalpa] because the National Resistance Front is meeting.

“So I think that if the dialogue does not begin today, we will probably face a night where we will see a repeat of the last few nights — where there has been a lot of repression in the colonias with many people detained.”

Salgado agreed, saying “the last few nights have been very tense … the military has been carrying out a campaign of attacking the popular barrios and poor colonias. They have approached homes without any warnings and carried out extrajudicial break-ins into — taking the young men out, beating up the parents.

“The exact toll of deaths and those disappeared is difficult to be determine.

“We are expecting that [the coup regime] will announce another curfew for tonight. So what we could expect more repression .

“And no doubt the people will once again mobilise tonight, on the streets in their barrios.”

Boosted by the UN resolution and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s “educational speech [at the UN General Assembly] which reminded us of why we are involved in this resistance movement”, Rios said the resistance will be gathering at 8am tomorrow [September 25] at the Pedagogical University — “for what will be a very climactic mobilisation”.

A Time to Unite and March Together

Fidel Castro
September 6, 2009
(Translation by Socialist Voice)

“The establishment of seven U.S. military bases in Colombia poses a direct threat to the sovereignty and integrity of the other peoples of South and Central America with which our national heroes dreamed of creating the great Latin American homeland.”

U.S. Air Base at Manta, Ecuador to be eliminated when its 30 year lease expires in 2009
(Photo: Defendamerica.mil)

This Reflection is addressed not to the governments but to the fraternal peoples of Latin America.

Tomorrow, August 28, the summit of UNASUR [Union of South American Nations] will convene in Argentina, and its significance cannot be overlooked. The conference must analyze the granting of seven military bases in Colombian territory to the U.S. superpower. The two governments kept their preparatory discussions a rigorous secret, so that the accord could be presented to the world as a fait accompli.

In the early morning hours of March 1, 2008, the Colombian Armed Forces – trained and equipped by the United States – attacked with precision bombs a guerrilla group which had entered a remote area of the Ecuadorian territory. At dawn, airborne elite Colombian troops occupied the small camp, killed the wounded and carried off with them the dead body of guerrilla leader Raul Reyes.

Apparently, he had been meeting with young visitors from other countries who were interested in the experience of the guerrillas engaged in armed struggle since the death of Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán more than 50 years ago. Among the victims were college students from Mexico and Ecuador; they were not carrying weapons. It was a brutal action in Yankee style. The government of Ecuador had not received any advance notice of the attack.

This event was a humiliating action against the small and heroic South American nation engaged in a democratic political process. Suspicion is strong that the U.S. air base of Manta [in Ecuador] had supplied information and cooperated with the aggressors. President Rafael Correa made the brave decision to demand the return of the territory occupied by the Manta military base, in strict compliance with the terms of the military agreement with the United States, and recalled his ambassador from Bogotá.

photo on the left: Demostration Against the air field in Colombia

Seven U.S. bases in Colombia
The concession of territory for the establishment of seven U.S. military bases in Colombia poses a direct threat to the sovereignty and integrity of the other peoples of South and Central America with which our national heroes dreamed of creating the great Latin American homeland.

The Yankee imperialism is a hundred times more powerful than the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal, and a complete stranger to the origin, customs, and culture of our peoples.

It is not a matter of narrow chauvinism. “Homeland is humanity,” as Martí stated, but never under the domination of an empire which has imposed a bloody tyranny on the world. This is demonstrated beyond question in our own hemisphere by the hundreds of thousands of Latin American compatriots who were killed, tortured, and secretly murdered in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and other countries of Our America through the past five decades by coups d’état and other actions promoted or supported by the United States.

Cynical pretexts
As I analyze the arguments of the United States to try to justify the granting of military bases in Colombian territory, I can only characterize its pretexts as cynical. The U.S. claims that these bases are needed to aid the struggle against drug trafficking, terrorism, arms trafficking, illegal migration, the possession of weapons of mass destruction, nationalist outbursts, and natural disasters.

This powerful country is the largest drug purchaser and consumer on the planet. An analysis of the paper money circulating in the U.S. capital, Washington, has shown that 95 per cent of the bills have been in the hands of drug consumers. The U.S. is the largest market for and the main supplier of weapons to organized crime in Latin America, the same weapons that have killed tens of thousands of people every year south of its own borders.

It is the largest terrorist state that has ever existed. It dropped bombs on the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and caused the death of millions of people with such imperialist wars as those carried out against Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries located thousands of miles away. What is more, it is also the largest producer and holder of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction.

The Colombian paramilitary, many of them former members of the Armed Forces, are part of their reserves and are the drug-traffickers’ best allies and protectors.

The so-called civilian personnel that would accompany the troops in the Colombian bases are, as a rule, expertly trained former American soldiers hired by such private companies as Blackwater, widely known for its crimes in Iraq and elsewhere in the world.

A country with self-respect needs no U.S. mercenaries, troops, or military bases to fight drug trafficking, protect the people in case of natural disasters or to provide humanitarian cooperation to other peoples.

Cuba is a country that does not have a drug problem or high rates of violent deaths – in fact the rate of such deaths decreases every year.

Threat to all Latin America
The only purpose of these bases for the United States is to place Latin America within reach of its troops in a matter of hours. The top military commanders of Brazil were very upset by the unexpected news of the agreement to establish U.S. military bases in Colombia. The Palanquero base is very close to the Brazilian border.

These bases and those in the Islas Malvinas [Falkland Islands], Paraguay, Peru, Honduras, Aruba, Curacao and others leave not a single location in Brazil and the rest of South America beyond reach of the U.S. Southern Command. Using its most advanced carrier aircraft, it can be on the spot within hours with troops and sophisticated combat equipment.

The best experts on the subject have provided all necessary data to prove the military scope of the Yankee-Colombian accord. This program, including the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet, was designed by Bush and inherited by the current U.S. administration. Some South American leaders are asking due clarification of U.S. military policy in Latin America. Nuclear aircraft-carriers are not required to combat drugs.

The most immediate objective of that plan is to eliminate the Bolivarian revolutionary process and to assure U.S. control over Venezuela’s oil and other natural resources. Moreover, the empire does not accept the competition of new emerging economies in its backyard or the existence of truly independent countries in Latin America. And it counts on the reactionary oligarchy, the fascist Right, and its control over the most important media, both internally and externally. It will never grant support to anything resembling true equity and social justice.

The Latin American migration to the United States is the consequence of underdevelopment, the result of U.S. plundering of our countries and of unequal exchange with the industrialized countries.

Mexico was forcibly removed from Latin America through the Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada. Most of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the USA are Mexicans, as are most of the hundreds who perish every year along the fence separating these nations.

Amid the current international economic crisis, the rate of extreme poverty in Mexico – a country with a population of 107 million – has reached 18 per cent, while more than half of the population lives in poverty.

Martí’s insight
During the life of Marti, the apostle of our independence, his major source of concern was annexation to the United States. After 1889 he became aware that this was the greatest danger for Latin America. He always dreamed of the Grand Homeland, from the Rio Bravo to Patagonia; and he died for it and for Cuba.

On January 10, 1891 he published an essay in the New York Illustrated Review under the title “Our America,” in which he wrote the unforgettable words, “The trees must form ranks to hold back the giant with seven-league boots! It is the time to gather and to march together, as closely united as the veins of silver at the roots of the Andes.”

Four years later, after his landing at Playitas in the eastern province of Cuba, territory held by the insurrectionists, he met on May 2, 1895, with the Herald journalist George E. Bryson, who told him that, in an interview with the celebrated General Arsenio Martinez Campos, the Spanish officer had said that he would rather surrender Cuba to the United States than accept its independence.

Marti was so impressed by the news that on May 18 he sent his Mexican friend Manuel Mercado the renowned posthumous letter where he wrote of “the road that is to be blocked off, and is being blocked off by our blood – the road of annexing our American nations to the brutal and turbulent North, which despises them.”

The following day, heedless of the advice of General Máximo Gomez, who advised that he should stay with the rearguard, he asked his assistant for a revolver and charged on a well-positioned Spanish force. He died in combat.

“I have lived in the monster and I know its entrails,” he wrote in his last letter.

(published in CubaDebate,1 August 27, 2009. Socialist Voice translation based on a translation published in the Cuban newspaper Granma2.)