June 28th of this year when the Honduran population was preparing to participate in a popular opinion poll about the installation of a fourth ballog 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 government and they implanted a State of Siege in 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 has "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 towards 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, as well as the main owners of the media. All of them made a counter-revolutionary alliance for fear that the popular poll of the 28th of June 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 are seeing 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 answer of the Honduran people did not wait even the first hour of the coup. The popular masses flooded into the streets to take over the public plazas and protest in the Presidential House (headquarter building of the government) against thousands of military troops, armed with tanks, helicopters, planes and heavy artillery. Ever since, the popular masses have come out EVERY DAY to the streets for a month, to protest, to carry out pressure to defeat the usurper government, carrying out massive mobilizations, highway takeovers, 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 various Hondurans, assassinated by the military, thanks to this resistance the usurper government has not been able to control the situation, nor to defeat the masses and hence has not been able to consolidate itself as a government.

The maximum organized expression of the popular resistance is the "National Front against the Coup d'Etat" which unites all of the social and political expressions of the popular movement and is driving the national movement towards the defeat of the dictatorship. This front is made up of worker, peasant and other peoples organizations, as well as by 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 in Honduras. Both the Organization of American States, the United Nations General Assembly, the Río Group, the countries associated with the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas, among others, condemned the coup d'etat, because they correctly recognize that it is about the first coup against the limited bourgeois democracies that exist in Latin America and that, if it consolidates, would set a disastrous precedent to allow the un-doing 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 world.

Nonetheless, this reaction has not yet gone past the point of diplomatic declarations which, if useful, are not sufficient to hurt the dictatorship economically or militarily.

The only government that always had an ambiguous policy towards the usurping government was the North American government led by Barack Obama. While it declared recognition of the Government of President Manuel Zelaya as the only president, it gave visas to the emissaries of the coup-makers 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 applied a commercial boycott like 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, with 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 achieve some level of international recognition for the dictator Micheletti, delaying the time for the end of the conflict so that the resistance movement is worn out and to submit President Zelaya to unacceptable conditions before his inevitable re-installation 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 only accepts the immediate, safe and unconditional reinstalement Por consiguiente, el Frente Nacional contra el Golpe de Estado, solo acepta una reinstalación inmediata, of President Zelaya to his post.

The Honduran working class, which since the beginning actively responded to the popular resistance, organized in the third week a unified mobilization through its own methods of struggle: la general strike and the takeover of work centers, starting with a 48 hour stoppage by the three central unions of the country (CUTH, CGT and CTH) this past 23rd and 24th of July, which was repeated again the 30th and 31st of the same month. In solidarity with them friends from the popular organizations of El Salvador and Nicaragua cut of the customs to stop the entrance of exit of merchandise from Honduras. Immediately the business associations of Honduras and Central America, who are in solidarity with the usurpers, screamed to the sky because that boycott implied losses of millions for their companies. This means that the strike and the commercial boycott are effective weapons to wear out the economic base of the coup-makers, more than formal declarations.

Because of all of this, the National Front Against the Coup d'Etat makes a call to working class organizations world wide to organize and carry out militant solidarity with the working class and the people of Honduras, carrying out boycott actions of all products that enter or come out of Honduran ports, with the goal of economically asphyxiating the dictatorship; do protests in repudiation of the dictatorship in front of the U.S. and Honduran embassys, do political and cultural actions in solidarity with the struggle of the Honduran people, and in general carry out action that strengthens the struggle of the Honduran people and its working class to get us out of this oppressive regime and reach a new society.

ONLY WORLD WIDE UNITY OF THE WORKING CLASS WILL DEFEAT THE FASCIST EXPERIMENT IN HONDURAS

Labels: American Empire, Honduras, Neoliberalism