The Honduran Resistance Will Continue

In the weeks since the November election, the English language press has gone silent about the Honduran resistance. But that does not mean the Honduran resistance has disappeared. During a march in Tegucigalpa at the beginning of this month, Tiempo reported, some speakers called for the Frente to form a political movement or alternate political party. But this is not the main goal of the Resistance movement.

Inside Costa Rica reports that the National Resistance Front has called for marches on January 27 to protest the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, whose projected administration is characterized as "the continuation of the dictatorship of the oligarchy." Anyone who was hoping that the inauguration of Lobo Sosa would end Honduran dissent will obviously find themselves disappointed.

The Frente stated that the goal of demonstrations is to "insist on the demand of a national constituent assembly, popular and democratic, to restore Honduras." This demand will not go away.

As in previous demonstrations in Tegucigalpa, the beginning point for the planned march there January 27 will be the Universidad Nacional Pedagogica. Marchers will apparently face increased security according to reports in pro-coup El Heraldo:

Álvarez affirmed that there will be strong security measures, with police and military agents, in ten cities of Honduras.

This presumably includes San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras, site of a second march called for by the Resistance. Another report published by Heraldo, after describing security at the stadium where the inauguration will take place, commented that

It is planned to develop operations in the barrios and colonias of the capital, as well as in all the cities of the country. The Armed Forces have placed at the disposal more than 2700 members just for the capital. An equal number is that of the police.

Special operations will be developed beginning in the next hours on all the frontiers of the country.

In respect to the demonstrations, such as that programmed by the zelayists for the 27th of January, the police authorities reminded that, based on the Law of Co-existence, they should be notified with 24 hours of advance notice of the realization of the same and their trajectory.

(The Law referred to, for those who do not remember, was passed by the de facto regime in late October to restrict freedom of assembly that is guaranteed in the Honduran Constitution.)

What kinds of operations are planned for the barrios and colonias of Tegucigalpa-- far from the site of the ceremonial transfer of power, but the heart of the resistance that continued after the de facto regime imposed repeated curfews? what makes it necessary to deploy soldiers and anti-riot police in ten Honduran cities? If the new government were really so universally appreciated, what would be the need for continued repressive militarization?

Needless to say, confrontations with peaceful protestors by military and riot police would mar the attempt to portray the government of Lobo Sosa as the solution to the destruction of civil liberties by the de facto regime.

The decision on continued strategy, starting with the planned marches, was taken by the leaders of the Resistance last weekend. While El Heraldo would like to dismiss the Resistance marches as the work of "zelayistas", the National Resistance Front cannot be reduced to the supporters of any current political party or faction within one.

As reported by Prensa Latina, more than 80 leaders of the resistance, including Juan Barahona, Carlos H. Reyes, Rafael Alegría, Bertha Cáceres, and Carlos Eduardo Reina, conferred in Siguatepeque, a small city located on the main highway between Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. They reaffirmed the need to resist division along traditional lines of party loyalty, which have dominated Honduran politics.

While much of the English-language press has remained focused on the drama of negotiating a dignified exit for President Zelaya, and on the attempts to distance Lobo Sosa from Micheletti, it is arguable that what will ultimately be most significant for the possibility of effective political transformation in Honduras will be what happens with the Resistance.

On January 27, we will see whether the Resistance mobilizes a sufficiently visible presence to ensure that international media have to take note.

Resistance to boycott elections

With or without the restoral of President Zelaya, ADN.es reports in a story from EFE.

Quoting Juan Barahona's statement after a reunion of the Frente de Resistencia, the report specifically notes that too little time remains to ensure no fraud occurs.

[Update: see the CEPR Press Release from Thursday in which Berta Oliva, head of COFADEH, declared that elections could not be held with so little time remaining, saying "And now the U.S. government says we can have free elections in less than three weeks... That is a sick joke." Oliva is calling for pushing back elections at least three months, and giving back to President Zelaya's administration the time that has been taken away by the de facto regime.]

Barahona added that the Resistance hopes dissident candidates for congress and UD party candidate Cesar Ham will join them and Carlos Reyes in not participating.

Ham himself, however, is quoted as saying as an established party UD has not made a decision.

Credit where credit is due

Now that the exact language of what we now know is called the Tegucigalpa/San Jose Accord has been published, the English-language commentary will no doubt center on what the US did to make this happen.

But many observers who have been following the events carefully are reaching an agreement that there are two (or three) Honduran forces that should be given the credit for a framework for resolution being reached. And since it is likely that the short-attention-span English language media will lose sight of at least two of these Honduran forces, in keeping with our mission to forcefully represent Honduran voices whenever possible, we want to pause and give credit where credit is due to the people of Honduras and in particular, the Frente de Resistencia Popular.

From the very first day of the awful disruption of civil order, the unthinkable violation of a history of struggle to achieve representative democracy and, more recently, to transform that democracy into a truly participatory one, the Honduran people have not accepted the will of a small, powerful, wealthy elite that thought it could turn back the clock thirty years or more.

The cost to the people has been enormous. We will not try to enumerate the numbers of those injured, arrested, or even the dead-- acknowledged by the international community or not. The many reports by human rights groups provide a devastating chronicle of repression and its effects.

But the Honduran people fought on. And this fight united diverse groups representing workers, farmers, indigenous people, African-descendant people, women, students, crossing class, race, age, and social status lines. It went beyond those who had supported the Liberal party in the last presidential race, and incorporated people who simply would not accept a dictatorial Honduras resurrected from the past.

By July 4, a formal Frente de Resistencia Popular had formed and issued its first call to action. The mobilization of popular resistence took place without the kind of media attention that has given hope to the popular movement in Iran; indeed, as the months have unrolled, I have been struck by a different, more grim comparison: to the resistance in Myanmar, judged by political pragmatists to be hopeless, yet continuing today in conditions of more total oppression than most of us can conceive.

The Honduran Frente and the Honduran people deserve the greatest credit for continuing and improvising ever more creative forms of protest. Whether it was the artists organizing days of art and culture in resistance, the Garifuna marching to the strains of the traditional music appreciated across the country as a form of cultural patrimony beloved at one and the same time for its specificity to the history of this African-descendant group, the under-covered work by Lenca and other indigenous actors rejecting the de facto regime, or the women who called in to the radio stations that were the sole free media to report their insurgent action of walking in their own towns and neighborhoods when the regime forbade it; the Honduran people made it impossible for the international community to accept the status quo. And they now know how to organize, and they are not satisfied with the Accord, which for them simply promises to satisfy the first demand, the restoration of the elected government.

I began this post intending solely to celebrate the people, and the Frente. But then I realized that I needed to also acknowledge the ambivalent figure, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, as well. Throughout the months, English-language media have treated him as an object of ridicule. They found his frequent extravagant pronouncements of unenforceable deadlines misguided. While reporting the US State Department's unhelpful and repeated chiding of President Zelaya for being visible and vocal, the mainstream media failed to provide any real analysis of his political position or strategy. They made it seem almost inconceivable that this person ever held office, acting as if he were not, as he is, an experienced politician who, after all, won the Honduran presidential election through strategy and the deployment of local-- that is, Honduran-- knowledge. So when Zelaya managed to make his way back to the capital city, there were few among the media who gave him any credit other than for creating yet another spectacle. The media were especially impatient with what they clearly thought was a foolish move (again echoing the US State Department), getting himself trapped without an exit in the Brazilian embassy.

And yet: clearly, by being in Honduras, in Tegucigalpa, Zelaya changed the balance of events. In retrospect, the main problem with the attempt to negotiate the San Jose Accord may have been that taking place away from Honduras impeded the kind of informal contacts that clearly helped promote an agreement. Zelaya being in Tegucigalpa also increased the media presence there, which gave public demonstrations and their repression at least a chance of being witnessed. Tactically, the decision by the de facto regime to use measures against the Brazilian embassy itself, providing media angles that otherwise would not have existed, probably worked against the regime's interests-- and would not have happened had President Zelaya not taken refuge there to give an undeniable visibility to his stubborn refusal to accept the new order of things.

So, giving credit where credit is due, while my overarching appreciation goes to the people-- and the organized Frente de Resistencia-- we also need to pause and recognize that the Honduran government in exile, not just Zelaya but also all those who lost their positions on June 28 and yet continued to work to publicize the atrocity visited on their country-- made this happen. They may not be mentioned in the acknowledgments contained in Item #11, but they deserve to be.