Responses to the Coup d'etat in Honduras on Sunday June 28, with special emphasis on producing English-language versions of commentaries by Honduran scholars and editorial writers and addressing the confusion encouraged by lack of basic knowledge about Honduras.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

We hear from Tegucigalpa again, finally...

Our colleague had not written since the morning. What he describes here is the beginning of a guerrilla civil war, not merely resistance to the regime.
It is now 7:31PM

Long day since I first posted early this dawn when the repression against the protesters began in the middle of the curfew imposed since 4PM yesterday. Human Rights organizations and others are still tallying the injured, and fatalities.

Eerie calm reigned in our privileged neighborhood, near the US ambassador's house; we have spent the day monitoring events by radio and friends communicating via phones.

There were many confrontations between police and Resistance forces in a multitude of working class and poor neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa, and similar confrontations elsewhere in Honduras. There were many moments of defiance of the curfew, despite tactical and strategic repression.

The curfew, scheduled to end today at 6PM, has been extended until 6AM tomorrow morning.

President Zelaya, and family and many followers, remains at the Brazilian Embassy, about 2 km from our house. The defacto regime announced, about and hour and half ago, that its military forces would not invade the Brazilian Embassy. Seemingly the President is safe for this evening, and hopefully we will not hear the gunshots and teargas bombs exploding as we did early this morning.

I understand that the Security Council of the UN, by request of the US and Brazilian governments, has been called into emergency session asap to address the Honduran situation.

The dispersed Resistance forces are regrouping in a strategy to focus in neighborhoods where they can better protect themselves in homes, and in spaces familiar to them.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is not an official announcement -- but given the urgency of the situation and everything that is going on, we believe it is important to begin letting people know about BALASC, a new coalition of many existing Latin American solidarity organizations based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our initial plan was to inaugurate our organization with protests in San Francisco and other places in California to support the return of President Manuel Zelaya, although our mission is much broader, in that we will work to provide support to all Latin American countries who are on a new path towards a new Latin America.

BALASC has organized numerous protests of solidarity in San Francisco -- in front of the Honduran Consulate here and in predominantly Latino communities in San Francisco.

We have also launched a website -- http://balasc.org/ -- to inform about our activities. This website has just been launched in order to provide a point of contact during the emergency solidarity actions we are taking.

Today, BALASC held a solidarity demonstration in the Mission District of San Francisco, informing the people in English & Spanish about the urgency of international support at this time to unconditionally and peacefully restore President Manuel Zelaya to power in Honduras.

On Monday, September 28th, at 4pm (Powell & Market), we will hold another solidarity demonstration -- the theme of which depends, of course, on what happens in the next few days! We hope in our hearts that we will be holding a demonstration in support of the restored Zelaya Administration on that date.

In addition, in co-operation with the San Francisco Consulate of Venezuela, we will be supporting music shows by Dame Pa Matala, one of the most popular, revolutionary musical groups in Venezuela. The dates for these appearances are:

Saturday, Sept 26, 7PM - Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St

Sunday, Sept 27, 1:30PM - Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Road in Oakland

Sunday, Sept 7, 8PM - El Rio Club, 3158 Mission St

Admission to all of these events is free.

BALASC is a new organization comprised of many groups who have been providing support to the revolution happening in Latin America for a long time. In light of the obvious right-wing reaction to this revolution, we are coming together to combine our strengths and create a broad organization that can provide immediate international support for crises (such as we've seen in Honduras) as well as on-going support for the Latin American revolution.

At this time, our website is just getting started. We are in constant contact with our associates on the ground in Tegucigalpa -- one of whom is inside the Brazilian Embassy and others who are producing media of the unfolding events in Honduras. We are becoming more organized every day and you can expect our website to offer more information.

Our hearts are overflowing with inspiration and pride with the display of Latin American solidarity that has brought President Zelaya back to Honduras and we will be working every day, in direct contact with the National Resistance Front of Honduras, to coordinate with them and do what is most effective for us to do, per their recommendations to us.