Sara Avilés Tomé and Liana Funes from Feminists in Resistance speak out
The 2009 U.S.-backed coup d'etat and resistance
movement it has sparked has dramatically impacted the feminist struggle in
Honduras. Sara Avilés Tomé and Liana Funes of the Center for Women's studies in
Honduras are both members of Feminists in Resistance who outlined for the
Honduras Solidarity Network human rights observation delegation the history and
current challenges of the feminist struggle in Honduras.
Though women have been present in all struggles
throughout Honduran history, a movement of self-identified feminists emerged
from the struggle in the 50's for women’s right to vote. The movement has grown
throughout the latter part of the 20th century, taking on an
important role in educating people on women’s rights and fighting for protection
from violence against women, for sexual and reproductive rights and for
representation within state institutions and political offices.
“This earlier liberal conception of what it
meant to be feminist was interrupted when we found the government institutions
we had achieved for protecting women to be completely useless in the face of
the 2009 coup d’etat and the wave of repression that was unleashed, repression
which took a particularly harsh toll on the many women who were killed,
assaulted, raped and beaten as a result of the coup d’etat,” explains Tomé.
Feminists in the urban areas who had been
focusing on battles for representation within the state found themselves in the
streets battling an illegitimate state and their conception of feminism began
to expand.
“We found ourselves encountering other feminists
and other more diverse realities in the streets during the resistance. We began
to come together with indigenous feminists, afro-descendant feminists,
feminists from the rural areas, to articulate our struggles together. Being
together days on end in the streets allowed us to re-think what it means to be
a feminist and re-define ourselves, making connections between the struggle
against patriarchy and the struggle against capitalism and racism,” says Tomé.
Feminists in Resistance played a key part in
getting the National Front of Popular Resistance to take up an explicit
anti-patriarchy position, which they have so far been disappointed to see
lacking in the LIBRE political party, the resistance’s political arm. While
Feminists in Resistance continue to struggle alongside other sectors of the
resistance for the re-founding of Honduras, they also continue to struggle
internally to defeat patriarchy within the movement and ensure that the gains
made within the National Front of Popular Resistance are not sacrificed for the
purposes of politics as the resistance enters the electoral arena. They want to
see LIBRE and the FNRP active in the struggle against the recent outlawing of
emergency contraception and the battle against the dramatic levels of violence and
abuse faced by Honduran women.
Feminists in Resistance is part of a sector of
the resistance called the “Re-foundational Space,” which believes the
resistance’s priority should be to build the social movements and has an
understanding of the struggle for power that goes beyond anything achievable
just through electoral politics.
These debates in and of themselves show how
alive the political imagination is within Honduras right now. The debate is not
whether or not to fundamentally change Honduras but how to do so. The dreams
that were awoken in the process of resisting the coup, dreams of a country and
world based on human rights and satisfaction of social needs rather than
privatization, greed and militarization, will be difficult for the Honduran
oligarchy, the Latin American right wing and the U.S. government to stamp out,
try as they will.
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