On the 15 de septiembre: Fieldnotes

A Honduran colleague dismissed from his job by the de facto regime writes:

Allí en esas marchas anduve todo el día con mi familia y miles y miles de
hondureños, y muchos y muchos funcionarios expulsados de sus cargos.

Miles marcharon en la Costa Norte, en San Pedro Sula, cerca de Curruste, en
el centro del país, en el Valle de Comayagua, cerca de Yarumela, y por
supuesto en Olancho y en todas las regiones del país.

There in those marches I walked all day with my family and thousands and thousands of Hondurans, and many many government officials ousted from their positions.

Thousands marched on the North Coast, in San Pedro Sula, near Currusté, in the center of the country, in the Comayagua Valley, near Yarumela, and of course in Olancho and in all the regions of the country.

The occasion of these marches was the anniversary of Central American independence in 1821.

An editorial in El Tiempo reflects on this most solemn of Honduran historical celebrations in a time of such crisis:

The peoples of Central America celebrate today, the 15th of September, the 188th anniversary of Independence from the Spanish colonial regime, and this constitutes for the five portions of the Central American Isthmus the day of a Grand National Fiesta.



Due to circumstances known to all the world, on this occasion the Honduran people do not commemorate this date with the traditional solemnity and joy, since our Homeland suffers the most profound political crisis in its history, with the nation divided, radicalized, institutionality and the State of Law broken.



The modes of celebration that are carried out this day have a special symbolism: of repudiation and protest, for one side. Of prepotency and loftiness, for the other. The national resistance movement against the coup d'Etat massively paraded in all the country, emphasizing its insistence on the restoration of constitutional order. The de facto regime demonstrates the military fist to accentuate its dictatorial will to not listen nor give in to popular appeals.



"By the evening it is known how the fiesta will be", says the refrain, and, in the evening, the Torch of Liberty, that crosses Central America in the month of the Homeland, avoided passing over Honduran soil, signifying with that the condemnation of the sister peoples of the de facto regime that shames Honduras in front of the entire world, that observes with amazement such arrogance and thoughtlessness.



In virtue of the 15th of September being the emblematic date for antonomasia for the Central Americans, the Honduran people assigns the anniversary this year a crucial meaning in respect to the solution of the political crisis. Any ending ordained will have to be concretized in the course of this month, or, if this does not occur, the pressures to recover the constitutional thread will be transformed to be extreme, particularly the international.



The signals-- energetic, for certain-- are in view. The isolation of the de facto regime is becoming total in the political, the economic, and that which pertains to international cooperation. Beginning tomorrow, according to information received, no de facto government official nor persons involved in the golpista adventure will have access to the US, to the EU, and to the principal Latin American countries.



The electoral process projected for the coming November will remain outside international cooperation, not only in economic terms but in technical assistance and that of observers, with which it will completely lose worldwide recognition and the legality and legitimacy of its results, and therefore, the successor of the de facto regime will be born dead without remedy nor compassion.



A tragic panorama that not even the celebration of National Independence can dispel, given the intolerance and the brutality of a spurious regime conceived to perpetuate the absolute dominion of the State and of the Nation by an elitist group without the notion of Homeland and without national identity, on which without doubt can be expected very soon the vengeance of the people and the judgment of History.