THE HONDURAN RESISTANCE: A NEW HOPE IS BORN

THE HONDURAN RESISTANCE: A NEW HOPE IS BORN


By Dr. Juan Almendares, October 2009



The military coup in Honduras of 28 June, 2009, has been stripped of its democratic facade. The watchwords of the ‘de facto regime’, that have emerged from the violence, are: "God, Law and Order".



The regime has openly adopted the methods of Stroessner, the late dictator of Paraguay, on declaring a State of Emergency - in reality a State of Siege - that aims to suppress all resistance and silence all opposition. It has closed down Radio Globo and CHOLUSAT SUR, two principal media houses that have continuously and valiantly provided news on the real situation in Honduras.



The legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya Rosales, together with his family and associates, have been subjected to physical and psychological torture; and for all practical purposes deprived of their liberty in the embassy of Brazil, in violation of international treaties.



International pressure has forced the de facto regime to dialogue with President Zelaya. But this is a solipsistic dialogue that is being prolonged cynically and endlessly, with the aim of legitimising the forthcoming [November 29th] `presidential elections´ being conducted by the illegal regime under their `democracy´.



The country is divided between the coup forces and the anti-coup forces. The two sides have completely different and antagonistic philosophies, discourses, practices and methods.



"GOD, LAW AND ORDER"



The golpista (coup) philosophy assumes that it is the owner of reality, by right, and by inheritance. This 'reality' is fixed and immutable. It is established and sanctified by the god of the powerful and the theology of armed and violent oppression; a reality in which the gilded world of the rich is in confrontation with the oppressive world of the poor and with those who have no right to justice and to love.



The golpistas´ conception of the world is based on an a-historical, ontological vision; one in which the social being has no place and the people do not exist.



It is this frame of reference which justified the military coup that aborted the holding of a non-binding poll - the "Fourth Ballot" - in which the people were to be asked their opinion on the installation of a National Constituent Assembly.



The golpista ideology holds that the "Constitution is God." It's advisors and practitioners are disciples of the Pentagon's 'School of the Americas' and of the extreme right in the United States and Latin America.



The epistemology underlying the vision of the golpistas is one that totally ignores the potential of the people as subjects, capable of understanding and changing social reality.



Knowledge and education are a function of the market and of capital accumulation. The regime´s assumptions of its own validity and political legitimacy go along with a kind of legal formalism in which the law is completely separate from social life.



This view is not only perverse but false, for it flagrantly distorts the truth. It denies that a military coup took place, falsifies records and ignores the systematic violations of human rights and corruption.



The method of the golpistas is to promote a "syndrome of attrition and of physical, mental and political exhaustion". The strategy seeks to defeat the opposition by means of irregular warfare; media, religious and military terrorism; detentions, beatings and torture. It includes assassinations of leaders, teachers, artists, youth and women - femicide has increased by 60 percent.



The economic cost of the military coup, in the first three months, has been over $800 million, implying a loss of nearly $30 million a day.



A GIANT HAS AWOKEN



But in the face of all this pain and suffering a giant has awoken; a new hope has been born. The Honduran people has rediscovered itself. Moved by its dreams of freedom, it acts in defiance of those who have hitherto sought to shut it out from the making of history.



The myths of media power have been shattered. The powerful, with their technology of manipulation, have failed to deceive the people. The walls of silence have collapsed. Charcoal burners, the colours of the earth, have served as tools for the working people and artists in the making of their own history: in writing, painting, dancing, acting, singing the poetry of freedom; confronting tanks, shrapnel, toxic gases and treacherous daggers with shouts of pain and anger: "!Golpistas! Golpistas!".



NATIONAL FRONT AGAINST THE COUP



A people have been born, a new hope, in the form of the National Front Against the Military Coup. Its objectives are organized mobilization to struggle against injustice, to build political power through genuine participation of the citizenry in the National Constituent Assembly and to profoundly transform the Constitution of the Republic.



Its principles are based on "Non-Violence". It has sustained over one hundred days of heroic marches under the sun and the rain of bullets, beatings, stabbings and the terror of noxious gases.



However, in a country still under military occupation by the United States, where the cowardly Honduran armed forces and police spend huge amounts of money at the expense of hunger and disease of children and environmental destruction by multinational corporations; they will never extinguish the courage and the voices of nonviolence shouting in every corner of Honduras: 'Long Live the Resistance!'



The martyrdom and heroism of the Honduran Resistance is a call to all peoples of the world for no more military coups and no more military bases in Latin America.



It is a call for human and world peace; for respect for the dignity of our peoples and for their history; for social and environmental justice in the heart of Mother Earth.



The path of hope and liberation, in the face of crimes against humanity, is through full consolidation of the Resistance as a nonviolent political, cultural and spiritual force that builds and leads the taking of power.



No change that is genuinely democratic can occur if it excludes the National Front Against the Coup as the largest and most significant political force in Honduras. It is the most indisputable historical fact of our present and of the future; a force with which the people dream and are constructing the dawn of a new day for our country.



Juan Almendares, Tegucigalpa, October, 2009

juan.almendares@gmail.com

http://www.movimientomadretierra.org/

www.dignidaddelospueblos.hazblog.com

http://dignidaddelospueblos.wordpress.com/

Landline: 504-237-5700; Cell-phone 504-9985-4150

(Google translation revised by Norman Girvan)