On May 28th,
Mel Zelaya, the Honduran president removed by a coup in June 2009
returned to Honduras where he was met by a massive crowd. On June 1, the
Organisation of American States voted to readmit Honduras as a member,
with only Ecuador voting against. The agreements that made this possible
have provoked a lot of discussion amongst Honduran revolutionaries in
the Resistance Front (FNRP) and throughout Latin America.
On May 28th,
Mel Zelaya, the Honduran president removed by a coup in June 2009
returned to Honduras where he was met by a massive crowd. On June 1, the
Organisation of American States voted to readmit Honduras as a member,
with only Ecuador voting against. The agreements that made this possible
have provoked a lot of discussion amongst Honduran revolutionaries in
the Resistance Front (FNRP) and throughout Latin America.
On
June 28, 2009, the Honduran military kidnapped the country’s president
Mel Zelaya and took him first to the US military base in Palmerola and
then to Costa Rica. The immediate trigger for the coup was the attempt
by Zelaya to hold a popular consultation about the calling of a
referendum about the need for a Constituent Assembly. Elected as a
president for the Liberal Party, Zelaya had progressively earned the
wrath of the country’s oligarchy (closely linked to US imperialism). In
his attempts to improve the conditions of the country’s poor he had
aligned himself with the ALBA countries (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua,
Ecuador, Bolivia and others).
His attempt to convene a
Constituent Assembly had caught the imagination of millions of the
country’s workers, peasants and poor as an opportunity to fundamentally
change their living conditions. The ruling class feared that such a move
could unleash a revolutionary movement with the participation of the
masses and decided to move against Zelaya before things went too far.
The United States knew all about the coup preparations and their only
objection was that it should be carried out “institutionally”, that it
should have some sort of “legal” cover. Obviously, the 12 families of
the oligarchy that have ruled the country for the last 200 years had
other ideas and did not care much for “legality”, and although they got
the Supreme Court to ban Zelaya’s popular consultation, they just went
ahead with an old fashioned coup. Wealthy businessman Roberto
Micheletti, from Zelaya’s own Liberal Party was appointed as the new
illegitimate president.
Far from preventing the Latin American
revolutionary wave from reaching Honduran soil, the coup unleashed a
process of mass mobilisation, resistance, organisation and development
of the political consciousness of the masses without precedent. Hundreds
of thousands participated in mass demonstrations, strikes and daily
protests and the National Front of Peoples’ Resistance was established
as an organisation coordinating the different sections involved (trade
unions, peasant organisations, the youth, etc).
It was in the
context of this massive movement of the Honduran people that the country
was expelled from the Organisation of American States at the initiative
of Venezuela and the ALBA countries. Despite all the attempts by the US
and its agents in the region to find some sort of negotiated settlement
(through the so-called San José Accords), the Honduran oligarchy
stubbornly refused to make any concessions. In these conditions it was
difficult even for Washington to recognise the legitimacy of the
Micheletti regime.
Through a combination of brutal repression and
diplomatic manoeuvres, the Micheletti regime managed to survive until
November 2009 when it called new elections. These were rigged elections
without any democratic guarantees, taking place in conditions of brutal
repression, selective assassination of Resistance activists,
intimidation of opposition media, etc. The Resistance rightly boycotted
the elections which resulted in a massive 65% rate of abstention. While
the United States and other right wing governments in Latin America
(Perú, Colombia, Panamá) recognised the new government of Porfirio Lobo
as legitimate and democratic, Venezuela and most other Latin American
countries refused to restore relations with Honduras.
The
continued struggle of the Honduran people against the Lobo regime, which
went through different phases but was never completely smashed by
repression, put the Honduran ruling class in a difficult position. The
country is heavily dependent on international finance and investment and
unless its government was fully recognised it could not get complete
access to either. Being readmitted into the Organisation of American
States was crucial from their point of view.
Mediation – who benefits?
In
April 2011, there was a meeting between the new Colombian president
Santos, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Porfirio Lobo at which they
agreed to start a “mediation” aimed at bringing Honduras back to the
OAS at its scheduled general assembly in June. The picture of the three together caused
surprise and consternation amongst the activists of the Honduran
Resistance. How was it possible for Chavez to meet with Lobo, thus
implicitly recognizing him as the legitimate president of Honduras?
The
FNRP had just celebrated its national assembly in February 2011 in
which those who favoured an electoral strategy had been defeated, and
the Front had agreed to start a process towards convening a Constituent
Assembly, for which they had collected 1.3 million signatures, in direct
confrontation with the oligarchy and the Lobo regime. The beginning of
the mediation took place as Honduran teachers were involved in a bitter
strike against Lobo, in which the regime was using brutal repression.
Clearly,
these talks had started behind the backs of the elected leadership of
the Resistance Front and not even Zelaya himself was aware of the
meeting. Zelaya came out quickly in favour of the mediation. But the
leaders of the Front had to be flown to Caracas where they met with
Zelaya and Chavez and raised four demands for the negotiations: “the
safe return of the Coordinator of the FNRP, Manuel Zelaya and of all the
exiles; respect for human rights; the convocation of a National
Constituent Assembly and the recognition of the FNRP as a political
force with the capability and legal status to participate in future
electoral processes.”
Many of the FNRP activists were extremely
unhappy both about the way in which the talks had started as well as
about the content of what was being discussed. One of the main leaders
of the resistance, former assembly member Tomás Andino published an open letter
expressing the opinion of the left wing of the Front. He correctly
pointed out that the whole negotiation and reconciliation process was a
trap which had been set in motion by Colombian president Santos, with
the sole aim of getting Honduras readmitted into the OAS. He further
criticized the fact that the four conditions that the FNRP
representatives had set in Caracas were in contradiction with the
democratically decided aims of the Front, as ratified in its National
Assembly in February. Specifically, there was no mention of punishment
for the coup plotters and all those responsible for human rights abuses
under Micheletti and Lobo. And finally he pointed out that the Front
representatives to Caracas had not been elected or appointed by anyone
and that any decisions or proposals should be put to the democratic vote
of the structures of the Front and consulted with the rank and file of
the Resistance.
The Honduran negotiations therefore are part of
the foreign policy of Hugo Chavez of rapprochement with Colombia. The
argument put forward by the reformists in Venezuela is that Santos is
somehow different from the former Colombian president Uribe, that he is
not a puppet of Washington and that in order to minimise the threat of
counter-revolutionary provocations from Colombia it is necessary to
reach a friendly understanding with the Santos government. This is then
used to justify a policy which includes security deals with Colombia,
leading to the handing over of Colombian political exile Pérez Becerra
to Bogotá and more recently the arrest of FARC leader Julian Conrado in
Venezuela in an operation carried out jointly with the Colombian
security forces.
OAS welcomes Honduras back. Photo: Juan Manuel Herrera/ OASWe
think that this policy is mistaken. The Venezuelan oligarchy,
imperialism and its puppets in Colombia are mortal enemies of the
Bolivarian revolution. The only way to prevent them from attacking it is
if the revolution ceases to be a revolution. Santos was the Defence
Minister of Uribe, who played a key role in every single
counter-revolutionary attempt against the Venezuelan revolution and the
government of Hugo Chavez. To think that he has fundamentally changed is
the same as hoping for a tiger to become vegetarian. As a matter of
fact, Wikileaks cables from the US embassy in Bogotá reveal the real
strategy which Uribe followed and that now Santos continues: to appear
to move towards friendly diplomatic relations in order to better prepare
plots to undermine the Bolivarian revolution and its influence
throughout the continent. Colombian Foreign Affairs Minister Holguín,
reassured her masters in Washington that in the newly found “friendship”
between Santos and Chavez, her country was acting “strategically”.
Revolutionaries
do not refuse to participate in negotiations as a matter of principle.
Any worker who has been involved in a strike knows that many times a
strike cannot be won and a settlement must be reached which amounts at
best to a partial victory. Sometimes a partial retreat is better than an
all out defeat. Through these experiences, the workers involved in a
struggle can learn important lessons and prepare the ground for renewed
battles in the future. But the fundamental condition is that the
leadership has to explain things as they are and be frank with the rank
and file. A partial retreat or a partial victory should not be presented
as a complete success and the boss should never be presented as a
friend with whom we need to reach reconciliation, as if he was a brother
with whom we just had a fight.
Reconciliation with the oligarchy?
And
this is perhaps the most dangerous element in this new diplomatic
strategy of the Bolivarian revolution which has now involved the
Honduran Resistance. All the speeches of Hugo Chavez and Mel Zelaya talk
about reconciliation, peace and national unity, about the peaceful
resolution of problems. This is in our opinion extremely dangerous and a
serious mistake.
We should learn from the recent experience of
the Venezuelan revolution. On April 11, 2002, the Venezuelan capitalist
class, backed by imperialism, conducted a military coup against the
democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez. On April 12 and 13,
the Venezuelan people, the workers, the peasants, the poor, the youth,
the women, came down from the cerros and the barrios and
through mass revolutionary action they defeated the coup. Dozens were
killed by the coup plotters and Chavez himself only saved his life
because of the swift action of the revolutionary people and
revolutionary sections of the Armed Forces. Then, having been returned
to power, Chavez addressed the victorious crowd from the Miraflores
palace balcony and called on the people to go back home and appealed to
national reconciliation with those who had just carried out a coup.
No-one was put on trial and to this day the main leaders of the
“opposition” are people who directly participated in carrying out that
coup.
What was the response of the oligarchy? Did they accept the
call for reconciliation? Not at all. They immediately started preparing a
new attempted coup which materialised in the insubordination of the
Plaza Altamira military officers and then the bosses lock out and
sabotage of the oil industry of December 2002, barely 7 months later.
After that they have attempted a whole series of other
counter-revolutionary provocations (the guarimba, the
infiltration of 200 Colombian paramilitaries in Venezuela, the street
riots around the non-renewal of the licence of RCTV, etc).
The
ruling class in Venezuela cannot reconcile itself with Chavez and the
Bolivarian revolution, unless they completely cease to be what they are,
revolutionary. The same is the case in Honduras.
Let’s examine the terms of the deal that has been reached:
- the return of Zelaya now that pending court cases against him have been nullified,
- respect and protection for human rights,
- the fact that a Constituent Assembly referendum can now be initiated as a result of an amendment to the Constitution
- that the FNRP should be allowed to be registered as a legal political party
In
exchange for this, Honduras is readmitted into the OAS and recognised
by the “international community”. To their credit, Ecuador voted
against, pointing out that the agreement legalised the impunity of those
who carried out the coup. They were the only one to do so. The position
of Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Nicolás Maduro, who said that
they were voting in favour but “with reservations”, was lamentable.
Venezuela has played a key role in brokering the deal, if they were not
happy with it, why did they accept it? After all, it was Nicolás Maduro
himself who signed the agreement at Cartagena de Indias, which is the
reason why Honduras is being readmitted into the OAS. One can be either
in favour or against something. But it is not logical to sign an
agreement and later on express “reservations” about it.
In effect,
the only real point which has been achieved is the return of Zelaya.
The aim of the Honduran ruling class is to try to put an end to a
situation in which it had become a pariah in the international scene
with the negative impact that this had on the country’s economy. At the
same time they want to steer the Resistance away from revolutionary
struggle and into the safer channels of bourgeois democracy and defuse
the demand for a Constituent Assembly (which for the masses means a
fundamental change in the social and economic structure of the country)
into a legally restricted exercise of constitutional reform.
Impunity remains
The
activists of the Resistance and the left wing of the Front are quite
right in being critical of this agreement. Many organisations of the
resistance have issued statements criticising the fact that the
agreement gives de facto impunity to the coup plotters and those
responsible for human rights violations in the last two years, as well
as legitimising a regime which was the result of fraudulent elections.
This is the case with the Civic Council of Peoples and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPIHN) and with a statement signed by 21 Honduran human rights organisations against the readmission of the country into the Organisation of American States.
In a sharply worded article, Tomás Andino points out that the real nature of the Lobo regime is revealed by the fact that even after signing
the Cartagena Agreement which includes “respect and protection of human
rights”, there was brutal police repression against students in
struggle at the Instituto Técnico “Luis Bográn” and further killings of
peasant activists in the Bajo Aguán region took place.
The points
they make are correct. As a matter of fact, all of those who directly
participated in the coup have been given positions of responsibility by
the Lobo administration; some of them are part of the government itself.
However, one thing is what a section of the Honduran ruling class might
want, the channelling of the revolutionary movement into controlled
bourgeois democratic channels, and a very different one is what will
happen.
It is estimated that one and a half million people (in a
country of 8 million inhabitants) turned up for the mass rally that
welcomed Mel Zelaya back into Honduras on May 28. The mood was electric
and one of victory. Finally, after nearly two years of struggle, the
president they had elected was allowed back into the country. The masses
gathered there to celebrate what they, correctly, considered to be a
victory, although this is only a partial victory. Clearly, the return of
Zelaya would not have been possible had it not been for the constant
mobilisation of the Honduran workers, peasants and the poor.
masses do not read the small print of the official agreements and
documents. For them the return of Zelaya means a Constituent Assembly,
democracy and radical change. Let us not remember that the Front has now
adopted the slogan of “towards socialism”. A comrade present at the
mass rally commented that “the people are convinced that Zelaya’s return
will solve all their problems, and that the murderers will end up in
prison”.
The key to the whole equation is that the aspirations of
the masses for education, health care, decent housing, jobs and a better
future, which are summarised in the idea of a constituent assembly,
clash head on with the interests, power and privileges of the 12
families of the oligarchy.
As we explained at the time of the coup:
“Honduras
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.” (Defeat the reactionary military coup in Honduras)
This
contradiction has not gone away, if anything it has become sharper. The
masses have gone through the experience of the coup and the brutal
repression of the last two years which has resulted in 200 activists and
leaders killed. They have gone through the experience of struggle and
their level of organization and political consciousness has advanced in
leaps and bounds.
They will now demand what is rightfully theirs
and this will provoke a renewed clash with the oligarchy and a
sharpening of the class struggle. As a matter of fact, the Honduran
ruling class is divided over the question of the agreements. There is a
powerful section of landowners, bankers and capitalists which think that
the only way to deal with the “mob” that is asking for too much is to
teach them a brutal lesson.
The right wing UCD party has denounced
the agreements and accused Lobo of “having adopted Chavez’s agenda!”.
In a conference given in Nicaragua, Roberto Micheletti, the first coup
president immediately after the removal of Zelaya, said in no uncertain
terms: “We should not be afraid of Socialism of the XXI century,
whatever happens the democrats will be ready to face any situation that
arises. The democrats we will fight against the communists and against
the socialists. We will not allow (Zelaya), a bad pupil of Chavez to
have his way in our country”. In other words, the “democrats” (read “the
coup plotters”) are ready to carry out another coup if there is any
hint of Zelaya and “the communists” coming to power.
This is the
real voice of the Honduran ruling class. Micheletti is not a lunatic
right winger, he is not on the fringes of Honduran politics. He was
after all the president of the national assembly elected by the Liberal
Party, one of the two main political parties in the country. He
faithfully reflects the views of a key section of the Honduran
oligarchy.
Their spokesperson in Washington is Roger Noriega, who
was the US permanent representative to the OAS and Assistant Secretary
of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs under Bush. In an “opinion”
article in Fox News (of all places) he talks of Lobo’s “secret pact with
Chavez” in order to install a “minority government … to push through
drastic economic and social changes.” All this, of course, in order to
use Honduras as a basis for “trafficking drugs from South America to
markets in the north” in conjunction with the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel and
terrorist organizations like Hezbollah (Honduran leader’s secret pact with Hugo Chavez). This is the twisted view of someone who was actually running US policy for Latin America until not so long ago.
The tasks of revolutionary socialists
kind of reconciliation can there be with people like this? The scenario
is open for a new confrontation amongst the classes. The danger is that
the most advanced activists in the Resistance, who can see the real
nature of the agreement and have correctly criticised it, might cut
themselves off from the masses who do not understand it in the same way.
That would be fatal.
The masses are confident, emboldened and
feel that they have achieved a victory. The task of revolutionary
socialists in Honduras is that of patiently explaining that the only
solution to the most pressing demands of the masses is through the
overthrow of capitalism and the oligarchy and the coming to power of the
ordinary working people. They have to participate and be a part of the
movement around Zelaya and the Resistance, whatever form it takes, and
within it advance demands that help raise the level of organization and
understanding of the masses.
It would be through their day-to-day
concrete struggles, for land reform, for better wages, to defend state
education, for human rights, against impunity, that the masses will
learn. Revolutionary socialists must push these struggles forward,
participate in them and help the masses draw the necessary conclusions
from them. Zelaya himself will be put to the test in the eyes of the
masses through these events.
One of the reasons why the masses
were not victorious in the mighty struggle which developed immediately
after the coup in 2009 was the vacillations of the leadership which did
not advance the necessary slogans at the right time and which allowed
itself to be confused by the fog of diplomacy and negotiations. The task
now is to build a revolutionary socialist tendency within the mass
movement of the Resistance that can point the way forward and through
concrete experience win their trust and confidence.
The Honduran
masses have set an example of courage, bravery and determination in
their struggle. A leadership worthy of them must be forged. This is a
most urgent task. The terrain has never been so fertile.
