Honduras goes to elections on Sunday, with an opposition
alliance hoping to unseat President Juan Orlando Hernandez, the first Honduran
president to ever run for re-election. The Honduran Constitution explicitly
bans re-election, and this ban was the stated justification for the 2009 coup d’état
against populist President Manuel Zelaya, who at the time was attempting to
carry out a non-binding referendum on convening a constitutional assembly. The
right-wing U.S. ally Hernandez, who was in the congress at the time of the coup
and became its president the year after in 2010, led an effort to remove four
Supreme Court justices in 2012 for the first time in Honduran history and
replace them with close allies. Since his election as
La Voz de los de Abajo is in Honduras leading an
international human rights observation delegation that is bearing witness to
the climate of fear, repression and human rights violations that have led up to
and surround the elections. All week we will be uploading interviews with key
actors in Honduran social movements providing analysis and a variety of
perspectives on the current political conjuncture. The interview that follows
is with Franklin Almendares, General Coordinator of the largest peasant
organization in Honduras, the Central Nacional de Trabajadores del Campo
(National Center for Rural Workers).
How do you define
this moment, this conjuncture facing Honduras as a country and the social
movements in particular?
We are living through a very difficult situation in the
country. This has been the most difficult of these past few years. Looking at the
national context, we have increasing costs for foods and education, the
privatization of healthcare, the lack of jobs and security, and more taxes
every day making it harder for the Honduran people to earn a living.
On the other hand, the social movements have been really hit
hard in this last period, over this last year, with the creation of new laws,
laws that are damaging to the social movements, making it impossible to
mobilize or to protest or speak out. This law is dividing the social movement. It
is a strategy of the system. This government that we currently have, we would
say it is categorically a fascist government, a dictatorial government that doesn’t
respect the law, that doesn’t respect human rights. It’s a government that
essentially wants to make the population disappear, the largest segment of the
population, meaning the 54% who are low-income.
Facing this situation is hard. And in the lead-up to the
elections on November 26th, there is an environment of fear. The
people are afraid because through the media they have carried out campaigns,
they have disparaged the candidates of the opposition, and sewn an environment
of fear. But on the other hand, we have hope that we will win, that we will
defeat the dictator, and that after the 26th we will have a new
Honduras if we, the [opposition] alliance, win.
You and I were
together the day of the last elections, when this government came to power, and
we saw with our own eyes the way that this government, this regime entered on a
wave of repression, and assassinations, with the killing of one sister inparticular. You were telling me earlier that there was another killing in the
same community later. Can you talk a little about what the people have lived
through, in that specific case but also if there have been other similar cases,
and how the people are responding in the face of the attempt to sew fear.
Well, four years ago, it was a similar environment. There
was repression, a lot of intervention from the police and people in power
trying to destabilize the elections and get the results they wanted, to win.
But this year, four years later, it is even heavier, because this regime has
gained a lot of power. Economic power, political power, accompanied by the
police and military, but also, the major powers of the state- the congress, the
supreme court, the attorney general, so they have more power. We feel that four
years later it is harder, and more dangerous, because they have more police,
more money and they have done things during these four years that are
completely illegal and that the people oppose.
So it is a complicated environment. And we have to go to
vote, conscious that a lot of things can… the repression will be there. This is
the first time in history that the city is being monitored by helicopters with
cameras, drones, machine guns. They are raiding homes. It is a terrible and
difficult situation, and we are just a few hours away from the elections.
There were people killed during the last elections and there
have continued to be deaths through these four years, to instill fear. In the last
electoral cycle our sister Ámparo was killed, then a month later Wilmer,
another brother from the same community. The community was practically left
without leaders because they were the leaders, the people driving the struggles
in that area.
And throughout these years people have continued to fall. HenryCárcamo, Berta Cáceres, many sisters and brothers, José Gonzalo Castillo Chávez,
a leader of LIBRE in La Paz was just killed, a few hours before the elections. It
is an environment where they are instilling fear so that we won’t go out to
vote and then they will declare themselves winner and say they are the
solution.
Can you tell a little
about the case of the young man they just killed in Colón?
Henry Cárcamo was a leader in the Alliance, a peasant leader
in the Aguán, part of the Movimiento
Campesino del Aguán (peasant movement of the Aguán), and an active member
of the CNTC… It’s a way of lowering people’s spirits there in that area, for
the people of the MCA movement. The Dinant Corporation’s security guards killed
him. The Dinant Corporation is the company of the now-deceased Miguel Facussé. We
feel like after he died he got even worse. It’s like he was reincarnated in his
guards, in his family and they have gone after the peasants of that area even
more viciously.
We have more than 300 youth that are in the struggle who are
called the Tumbador Martyrs, and those youth are being repressed by the Dinant
security guards in coordination with elements of the Honduran army. There are
two squadrons, Xatruch I and Xatruch II who are protecting the ranches of the
rich in the Aguán instead of protecting the people who most need protection.
In the U.S. we are fighting
for the Berta Cáceres Act for Human Rights in Honduras to cut off military and
police funding to Honduras. What do you think of that initiative and in general
what are you calling on people from the international solidarity movement to
do, especially there in the belly of the beast?
Well, it’s an excellent initiative, we can’t have financing
for these armed groups who basically have just become hit-men, the personal
guards to the rich and the businessmen of this country. For us it would be good
that they take away that financing. Here in Honduras, they increased the armed
forces budget and part of that money comes from the U.S., but they took away
from healthcare and education.
As for international solidarity, Honduras is a country that
needs international accompaniment, for people to spread the word about what is
going on here. Here they don’t respect life, they don’t respect the law, they
don’t respect the right to well-being, to a dignified life, to housing. They
criminalize our struggle, the protests, so we ask for national and especially
international organizations to help us get the word out, and to not be distant
from or unfamiliar with what is going on in Honduras.
So we reiterate the call for accompaniment for organizations
like the CNTC, and other organizations like the CNTC that are also struggling,
and to carry out actions so that the whole world knows what is going on here.
And finally, now
especially in the Trump era, in the U.S. we have seen many attacks. Attacks against
immigrants, against black people, against workers… Any words of advice,
support, or motivation for people in grassroots struggles there?
Our objective is for there to be justice and equity. One of
the messages is a call to unity, a call to organize yourselves, to carry out collective
actions, where each one of those sectors, the unions, the teachers, doctors,
black people, etc, organize and fight for your rights. Only united can we
achieve big results and I think that social struggles around the world are what
are going to allow us to confront this neoliberal system, this patriarchal
system, this capitalist system, which is worldwide. We’re not going to do it
just in Honduras alone. If we do it in the United States and other countries
around the world, we can unite a global struggle with that vision, of making
structural changes so that in our societies we can have a dignified life and wellbeing.
1 comment:
Thanks for providing coverage of the upcoming election.
Babette Grunow, Latin America Solidarity Committee-Milwaukee
Post a Comment