Appeal to the World Working
Class
by the National Front Against the Coup in Honduras
[Note by Labor Standard: This appeal to workers
worldwide shows that the working class organizations of Honduras are playing a leading
role in the popular resistance to the military coup, in a solid alliance with
the impoverished masses, both urban and rural. Trade union leaders are central
to the main organization of the popular resistance, whose Spanish initials are
FNCEH. They are openly critical of the role of the Obama administration and the
U.S. State Department, headed by Hillary Clinton. Unlike the bourgeois
politician Manuel Zelaya, the FNRGH does not
accept the State Department–backed recommendations of the “mediator” Oscar
Arias—other than that Zelaya should be reinstated.]
[The original text of this appeal “Todos a organizar
el boicot contra la dictadura
militar-empresarial de Roberto Micheletti:
Llamamiento del Frente Nacional contra el Golpe de
Estado en Honduras a la Clase Obrera
Mundial” was published by the Frente Nacional contra el Golpe de
Estado on August 1, 2009. The English translation, provided by Honduras
Resists on August 3, 2009, has been edited for Labor Standard.]
On June 28 of this year, when the Honduran population was preparing to
participate in a popular opinion poll about the installation of a fourth ballot
box in which it would decide whether or not to convoke a Constitutional
Assembly, thousands of military soldiers kidnapped the Constitutional President
of the Republic, Manuel Zelaya Rosales, and they
expelled him to the neighboring country of Costa Rica; they occupied the
Presidential House, they violently closed all of the independent radio and
television stations, they persecuted all the functionaries of the Zelaya administration, and they imposed a state of siege on
the whole country.
In that way, a coup d’etat took place, which hours later was “legalized” by the
National Congress (legislative assembly), putting in the presidency Roberto Micheletti Bain, leader of President Zelaya’s
own political party, through ridiculous arguments that the deposed president
had “resigned.” That version was denied by President Zelaya
himself, in addition to the fact that the National Congress does not have the
constitutional authority to separate him from his role. At the same time, it
was argued that there was an order of arrest without the President having faced
a judge where he could defend himself from the accusations made against him.
Behind the coup is the business leadership, the four political parties
of the bourgeoisie (Liberal Party, National Party, Christian Democratic Party,
and Party of Social Democratic Innovation and Unity), the leadership of the
Catholic and Evangelical churches, and the main owners of the media. All
of them made a counterrevolutionary alliance for fear that the popular poll of
June 28 would give power to the people and especially to the working class and
poor peasantry to start the construction of a new society, where the privileges
of the bourgeois class and the landowners would be eliminated.
It is also necessary to say that behind this coup d’etat
is the hand of North American imperialism and the Latin American ultra-right,
who see it as an opportunity to stop the advance of the left in the Central
American region and the influence of the Venezuelan revolution, after the
recent electoral triumphs of the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador and the Sandinista Front in
Nicaragua.
Nonetheless, the response of
the Honduran people was not long in coming. As soon as the coup took
place, the popular masses flooded into the streets to take over the public
plazas and protest at the Presidential House (the seat of government) against
thousands of military troops, armed with tanks, helicopters, planes, and heavy
artillery. Ever since then, the popular masses have come out in the
streets EVERY DAY for a month, to protest, to exert pressure, to defeat the
usurper government, carrying out massive mobilizations, roadblocks, takeovers
of public buildings, etc., making use of Article 3 of our Political
Constitution that gives the right to Popular Insurrection in the case of the
imposition of a government by armed force. Although this struggle has cost
the lives of numerous Hondurans, assassinated by the military, the usurper
government has not been able to control the situation or defeat the masses,
thanks to this resistance, and hence it has not been able to consolidate itself
as a government.
The highest organized expression of the popular resistance is the National Front Against the Coup d’Etat, which
unites all the social and political expressions of the popular movement,
leading the national movement toward the defeat of the dictatorship. This
front is made up of workers’ organizations, peasant organizations, and popular
organizations in general, as well as the left and center parties and movements
who have declared themselves against the coup d’etat.
The international reaction was
forceful from a diplomatic point of view. Except for the Zionist regime of
Israel, no other country in the world dared to recognize the military-business
dictatorship imposed on Honduras. The Organization of American States, the
United Nations General Assembly, the Río Group, and the member countries of the
Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America (ALBA), among others,
condemned the coup d’etat, because they correctly
recognize that it is the first coup against the limited bourgeois democracies
that exist in Latin America and that, if the coup gets consolidated, it will
set a disastrous precedent to allow the undoing of the social and democratic
liberties that have been achieved by the peoples and workers and would probably
be imitated by the most reactionary forces in other countries of the region and
the world.
Nonetheless, this reaction has
not yet gone past the point of diplomatic declarations, which, though useful,
are not sufficient to strike a blow against the dictatorship economically or
militarily.
The only government that always
had an ambiguous policy toward the usurper government was the North American
government led by Barack Obama. While it declared its recognition of
President Manuel Zelaya as the sole president, it
gave visas to the emissaries of the coup leaders so that they could come into
North American territory to lobby in favor of the coup; it has not suspended
the main programs of economic and military aid to Honduras; it has not imposed
a commercial boycott, as it has done against Cuba; and it refuses to declare
that this is a coup d’etat. Instead, it has promoted
a negotiation between the legitimate President of the Hondurans, Manuel Zelaya, and the dictator Micheletti,
through a mediator, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
For the National Front Against
the Coup d’Etat, the mediation of President Arias is
a strategy of the U.S. State Department to obtain some level of international
recognition for the dictator Micheletti, to delay the
end of the conflict so that the resistance movement would be worn out, and to
subject President Zelaya to unacceptable conditions
before his inevitable reinstallation in power, with the goal of making him
abandon the political demands that have motivated the popular mobilization,
such as the struggle for a Constitutional Assembly and for the punishment of
those responsible for the coup. Consequently, the National Front Against the Coup d’Etat accepts
only the immediate, secure, and unconditional reinstatement of President Zelaya to his post.
The Honduran working class, which
from the beginning actively took part in the popular resistance, organized in
the third week a unified mobilization through its own methods of struggle: the
general strike and the takeover of workplaces, starting with a 48-hour stoppage
by the three central unions of the country (CUTH, CGT, and CTH) on the 23rd and
24th of July, which was repeated on the 30th and 31st of the same
month. In solidarity, compañeros from the
popular organizations of El Salvador and Nicaragua blocked customs facilities
on the borders to stop the entrance or exit of merchandise into or from
Honduras. Immediately, the business associations of
Honduras and Central America, who are in solidarity with the usurpers, screamed
to high heaven because the boycott implied losses of millions for their
companies. This shows that the strike and the commercial boycott
are more effective weapons to wear out the economic base of the coup leaders
than formal declarations.
Because of all this, the National Front Against the Coup d’Etat issues a call to working-class organizations
worldwide to organize and act in militant solidarity with the working class and
the people of Honduras, carrying out boycott actions of all products that enter
or exit Honduran ports, with the goal of economically asphyxiating the
dictatorship; hold protests in repudiation of the dictatorship in front of the
U.S. and Honduran embassies; take political and cultural actions in solidarity
with the struggle of the Honduran people; and in general carry out any actions
that strengthen the struggle of the Honduran people and its working class so
that we can shake off the yoke of this oppressive regime and arrive at a new
society.
ONLY THE WORLDWIDE UNITY OF THE
WORKING CLASS WILL DEFEAT THE FASCIST EXPERIMENT IN HONDURAS
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, July 31,
2009