The coup in Honduras highlights once
again that even mild reforms within the capitalist system cannot be
tolerated by the local oligarchies in Latin America and their
imperialist masters. But Venezuela teaches that if the masses mobilise
reaction can be stopped. Now is the time to mobilise the full force of
the Honduran workers and poor.Jorge Martin analyses the events of the last few days and outlines the way forward for the workers in response.
Early
in the morning on Sunday, June 28, a group of 200 soldiers surrounded
the residence of the Hondurasn president Manuel Zelaya, and after a
20-minute gun battle with his 10-man personal guard he was arrested. He
was then taken by plane to neighbouring Costa Rica where he gave a press
conference denouncing a military coup by “right-wing oligarchs”,
calling on the people to mobilise in the streets and promising to come
back to the country.
The immediate origin of this reactionary military coup was the
conflict over plans by Zelaya to call a referendum on the need for a
Constituent Assembly, which was opposed by the right wing dominated
Congress, the high command of the Army, and the tops of the judiciary.
Zelaya, popularly known as Mel, won the presidential elections in
2005 as candidate for the Honduras Liberal Party, narrowly defeating
his main opponent from the National Party. Despite being a wealthy
landowner, the political polarisation in this small and poor Central
American country pushed him to take some measures in favour of the
poor, the peasants and the workers, adopting “Bolivarianism” as his
model. He soon lost the support of his own centre-right Liberal Party
and was forced to ally himself with the organisations of workers and
peasants. In an interview with Spain’s El País he describes his political evolution:
“Look, I thought of making changes from within the neoliberal
scheme. But the rich do not make any concessions, not even a penny. The
rich are not prepared to give up any of their money. They want to keep
everything for themselves. Then, obviously, in order to make changes
one has to bring the people on board.”
is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with over 50% of the
population living below the poverty line and with a rate of illiteracy
of over 20%. More than one million of its 7.8 million inhabitants have
had to emigrate to the US in search of jobs. In these conditions, even
the most moderate and reasonable measures in favour of the majority of
the population are bound to be met with brutal opposition on the part
of the ruling class, capitalists, landowners, the owners of the media,
the local oligarchy.
Among the measures taken by his government are a number of
progressive reforms, including a national literacy campaign modelled on
the examples of Cuba and Venezuela, an attempt to improve healthcare
for the poorer sections of society (including access to cheaper drugs,
grants for medical students to go to Cuba), a cut in interest rates for
small farmers and a significant increase of 60% of the minimum wage.
He also moved to cut some of the most glaring privileges of the
Honduran oligarchic ruling class. He broke the monopoly of the
multinational companies in the importation of fuel, through an
agreement with Venezuelan based Petrocaribe. Zelaya also took measures
against the pharmaceutical multinationals which control 80% of all
drugs sold in Honduras, all of them imported at high costs for the
national health service, by signing an agreement with Venezuela and
Cuba to import cheap generic versions of the most commonly used drugs.
The president also denounced the monopoly of the oligarchy over the
mass media and put an end to government subsidies for the big media
groups.
In the international arena Zelaya sided with the Bolivarian
Alternative of the Americas (ALBA), the regional alliance promoted by
Venezuela which Honduras has now joined.
All these actions contributed to increase his popularity and social
base amongst the poorest sections of the population and enraged the
oligarchy which has ruled the country in close alliance with US
interests for nearly 200 years. Honduras for most of the 20th
century was a classic “banana republic”, dominated by United Fruit,
which controlled the overwhelming majority of the country’s best
agricultural land and ran it like a private fiefdom with no reference
to the official government of the country. There were periodic
interventions of US marines to remove governments which attempted to
curtail the power of United Fruit. The country’s formal “independence”
was just a smokescreen, since it was firmly ruled by US imperialism for
the United Fruit Company. The US marines landed in Honduras in 1903,
1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924, and 1925. In 1911, the new “Honduran”
president was directly appointed by a US mediator. In 1930, when United
Fruit faced a solid strike in its banana plantations on the Caribbean
coast, a United States warship was dispatched to the area to quell it.
Honduras also has a long history of Liberal presidents attempting to
implement timid reforms and then being overthrown by the military and
the oligarchy with the support and direct participation of the US. This
was the case of president Vicente Mejía (1929-33), who was replaced by
the dictatorship of general Carías Andino, supported by the banana
companies which lasted until 1949. The same happened to president
Villeda Morales, who attempted a mild agrarian reform and was
overthrown by the US-sponsored coup of López Arellano, which ruled the
country between 1965 and 1974. And of course, in the 1980s, Honduras
became the main base for the operations of the US-organised contras, the counter-revolutionary thugs fighting against the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.
Faced with the firm opposition of the capitalist class and
imperialism, Zelaya thought that he could get around that by calling a
referendum for a Constituent Assembly, following the model of
Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. He proposed that on Sunday June 28 a
referendum would be organised to ask the population whether, as part of
the November general elections, a referendum would be organised to call
a Constituent Assembly. He had collected 400,000 signatures to back his
proposal. On Tuesday June 23, the oligarchy, using its majority in the
National Congress, passed a law declaring the proposed consultation
illegal. The Supreme Court and the High Command of the Army also made
similar statements. They were already preparing a military coup, in
case the “constitutional coup” should fail. On the same day, left wing
mayoral candidate for Tocoa local council suffered an attempt on his
life when four hired thugs armed with AK47 assault rifles fired on his
car.
Wednesday 24, president Zelaya met with the High Command of the Armed
Forces which refused to offer any logistical support for the
consultation. Zelaya removed general Romeo Vasquez from his position as
the head of the joint command of the Armed Forces. The other members of
the Joint Command also resigned and Zelaya accepted their resignation.
The Minister of Defence was also removed. On Thursday 25, troops were
out on the streets of Tegucigalpa and the Supreme Court reinstated
Romeo Vazquez to the high command of the Armed Forces. Zelaya made and
appeal to the people to come out on the streets and thousands of
workers and peasants gathered around the presidential palace to protect
Zelaya. The troops withdrew.
On Friday, Zelaya, with a large number of supporters went into the
military base where the ballots and the ballot boxes were being kept
and took them away with no resistance before officials from the
judiciary could seize them. Zelaya declared: “All the power of the
bourgeois state was used to prevent it [the distribution of ballot
boxes]. They used the judges, they used the military, the media groups.
They could not prevent it.” And he added:
“We are talking about the bourgeois state. The bourgeois state is
made up of the economic elite. The tops of the army, the political
parties, the judges, and that bourgeois state feels threatened when I
start to propose that the people should have a say.”
This initial resolution of the conflict in favour of the president
and the people lured Zelaya into a false sense of security. On Saturday
he declared to the Spanish El País that “I think I have
control of most of the country… I control the Army… as long as I do
not give orders which affect the rich.” He even added that he was
confident that the US had intervened to stop the coup. A few hours
later he had to jump from his bed when armed soldiers came for him.
The Honduran ruling class has lost no time. A state of emergency and
curfew has been declared, Congress has quickly appointed a new
president, Roberto Micheletti, who until now was president of the
Congress and a wave of arrests of left-wing, worker and peasant
activists was unleashed. According to some sources, Cesar Ham, the
presidential candidate of the left-wing Democratic Unification Party
was killed when he resisted arrest. Congress has ordered the arrest of
the following mass movement leaders amongst others: Juan Baraona
(Peoples’ Block leader), Carlos H Reyes (Peoples’ Block leader), Andrés
Padrón (Human Rights Movement), Luther Castillos (trade union leader),
Rafael Alegrón (Via Campesina peasant leader), César Han (Civic Council
of Peoples and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras, CCOPIH), Andrés
Pavón (CCOPIH), Marvin Ponce (CCOPIH), Salvador Zúñiga (CCOPIH) and
Berta Cáceres (CCOPIH).
Venezuelan, Cuban and Nicaraguan ambassadors were detained by masked
military men while they were visiting foreign affairs minister Patricia
Rodas. They were later released, not before having been beaten however.
The whole script of the coup follows closely that of the April 2002
coup in Venezuela against Chavez, down to the role of the media, the
taking off the air of government TV channel 8, and even details like
the appearance of a forged letter from Zelaya resigning as a president!
Obviously the same forces are involved in both countries.
It is clear and public knowledge that the US knew that a coup was
being organised. They had had conversations with the leaders of
Congress in which the coup had been discussed. The advice from the US
had been against taking the step of arresting Zelaya. Probably the US
administration, faced with the mass mobilisation on Friday and having
learnt some lessons from Venezuela, was not very confident in taking
what might be seen as an illegal step and were more in favour of
continuing with the script of the “constitutional coup”, leaving the
removal of Zelaya for another, more favourable, moment.
Obama’s statement on the coup was certainly very mild. He called on
“all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic
norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic
Charter,” and added that the situation "must be resolved peacefully
through dialogue free from any outside interference.”
We have a situation in which the democratically elected president
has been illegally arrested by military forces and taken abroad and
Obama calls on “all political and social actors” to respect
democratic norms and the rule of law. This clearly leaves the door open
to the arguments of the oligarchy that Zelaya was breaking the law by
calling the consultation. A few hours later, after strongly worded
statements by Chávez and a condemnation on the part of the Organisation
of American States, the US administration came out publicly to say that
they still recognised Zelaya as the legitimate president of Honduras.
Washington might have had some tactical disagreements with the
oligarchy in Honduras, but they both share their opposition to any
government that is seen as channelling the aspirations of the masses.
We should not forget that the main characters in the coup are all
military men trained in the infamous School of the Americas, and that
the US still has 500 troops stationed in Honduras.
The same position seems to have been adopted by the Spanish El País,
which has become the mouthpiece of Spanish multinational and
imperialist interests in Latin America, waging a vitriolic campaign
against the Venezuelan and Bolivian revolutions and against all
left-wing mass movements on the continent. In a cynical editorial today
their line is: We reject the coup, but we support its aims. (La vuelta del golpe,
El País). They say that at the end of the day, “the truth is that on
Sunday, either the president or the military, one oo the other, were
inevitable going to violate legality”! So, while formally
rejecting the coup they are blaming Zelaya for “violating legality” for
calling “a consultation which is not allowed by the Constitution and
which had been opposed by Congress, the electoral authority and the
Supreme Court.”
There are two lessons that must be clearly learnt from the events in
Honduras. One is that even the most moderate progressive reforms in
favour of the workers and peasants cannot be tolerated by the ruling
class. The struggle for healthcare, education, land reform, jobs and
houses can only be solved as part of the struggle for socialism. The
second is that one cannot carry out a genuine revolution while leaving
intact the apparatus of the bourgeois state, which will sooner or later
be used against the will of the majority of working people.
El País, from the other side of the barricade, clearly
identifies what was at stake in Honduras on Sunday: “What was being
decided, at the end of the day, was the balance of forces in Latin
America. If Zelaya got his way in the re-election consultation,
chavismo would have won terrain in Central America.” The opinion of El País is very clear. This had to be stopped; it is just that the method was not of the best.
Venezuelan president Chávez, described the situation correctly when
he denounced the military coup: "It is a brutal coup d’etat, one of
many that have taken place over 10 years in Latin America. Behind these
soldiers are the Honduran bourgeois, the rich who converted Honduras
into a Banana Republic, into a political and military base for North
American imperialism."
But, as in Venezuela in 2002, thousands of Zelaya supporters have
come out onto the streets to fight against the coup and to demand the
reinstatement of the president.
The trade union organisations, including the CGT national
confederation, have called a general strike for today Monday. This is
the way forward. Only through the mass mobilisation of the workers and
peasants can the coup be defeated. Such a mass movement must also make
an appeal to the rank and file soldiers to refuse to follow orders from
their officers. Hugo Chávez posed it thus: “Soldier, empty out your
rifle against the oligarchy and not against the people.”
We must give our full support to the workers and peasants of
Honduras in their struggle for the reinstatement of the president. We
call on the international labour movement and solidarity organisations
to demonstrate their opposition to this reactionary coup. A particular
role must be played by workers and peasant organisations in the
neighbouring countries of Central America and Mexico. Mass
demonstrations and pickets of the embassies in these countries would
serve as encouragement for the masses in Honduras.
- Down with the reactionary coup in Honduras!
- Mass mobilisation on the streets and a general strike!
- Soldiers, turn your weapons against your officers and join the side of the people!
Article first posted on www.marxist.com Monday 29th June 2009
