Retaliation Against Honduras' National University

Student correspondents at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras (UNAH) write, alarmed at proposals to close the university "temporarily", which they believe are a pretext to dismiss existing faculty and hire new professors, who our correspondents suspect will be selected on ideological grounds.

The threat to close the university has been widely reported in the Honduran press. While today's coverage in La Tribuna says the proposal has been discarded, it also reports the head of Congress saying that

“there has been talk of distinct options to approach this problem, we're not going to hide it, there are congress members that have advised that if this continues it might be more profitable to give a grant to a student so that he could study in a private university, the amount that a student at the autonoma [UNAH] costs the State so much that it has been said, but no decision has been taken."

Rigoberto Chang Castillo, secretary of the National Congress, reportedly proposed closing UNAH as "ungovernable". News coverage notes that Chang Castillo is a faculty member of the school of law, and cites a precedent (although unsuccessful) when in 2008, then-president of the Junta de Dirección Universitaria, Olvin Rodríguez, called for a two year closure of the university which quite obviously was not implemented.

The most recent news reports say that the heads of the three branches of government, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, Juan Orlando Hernández (on behalf of Congress), and Jorge Rivera Avilés (from the Supreme Court) met with Julieta Castellanos, rector of UNAH, and decided against closing the university.

Yet today, the university has reportedly been closed for a period of ten days, although not apparently by the National Congress: the Ministry of Health says it is closing the campus due to unhealthy conditions created by garbage accumulated when workers went on strike. The Health Ministry claims in particular that dengue (a mosquito born illness) and H1N1 (spread by contact with someone already affected) will be promoted by the trash that has built up on campus and the uncleaned bathrooms. This suggests the ministry of health has a novel view of disease processes, one that we might have hoped was not the understanding of the officials charged with improving health conditions in the country.

The current irritation to the government that is behind the proposal floated this week is the continuing strike by SITRAUNAH, the union that represents labor at UNAH. SITRAUNAH has been on strike since February 23 in a power struggle over reforms at the university. One of the keys to the controversy is the University's unwillingness to continue with the requirement to make payments of over two years of salary upon the death of an employee. As a result, SITRAUNAH has gone on strike and taken over buildings.

The union appears to have some faculty and student support, with recent reports of strikes by some faculty and students, although these also concern proposed financial policies that directly affect students. But SITRAUNAH does not have support from the administration of the university: according to today's report in La Tribuna, Julieta Castellanos requested the congress declare this strike illegal.

The Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubi, would go further: he wants to charge union members with sedition, usurpation, and coercion and has asked a judge in Tegucigalpa to issue arrest orders for the entire leadership of the union.

Sedition? Really? Sedition is an illegal action against lawful authority, directed at a government, tending towards insurrection, but which does not itself amount to treasonous conduct.

What makes the university such a target? Among other things, UNAH is full of intellectuals who have written critical analyses of the conditions that led to the coup d'etat, and of the overall system of government in the country. As we noted in a previous post, UNAH has been criticized for hiring former members of the Zelaya administration, people well-qualified for the jobs they took on.

During the months of open aggression by the Micheletti regime, UNAH students and faculty, even the rector, were subjects of violence. UNAH, and the national teaching university, the Pedagógica, were accused of being sites where bombs/Molotov cocktails were constructed and stored, despite the documented fact that the chemistry lab where the police claimed this was going on had burned years earlier, and not been repaired or replaced.

UNAH is a continuing irritation to government because it is in the nature of a university to encourage free expression of opinions and the development of critical perspectives. The fact that the national congress and public prosecutor are using a labor dispute as a pretext to discuss shutting the whole place down, and even re-directing public funding to private universities, is another indication that Honduras remains far from the ideal of reconciliation and far from conditions that would allow a real pursuit of the truth about the political events of 2009.

Trouble in Honduras' Korean Embassy

As we have been monitoring the process of setting the Lobo Sosa administration into place, we have been tracking political appointments, including those of ambassadors. As in the US, these diplomatic posts are places where you can see the strings connecting the elected government to the unelected one. Until now, while these have interested us, they have not been particularly newsworthy.

Well, that just changed. Joong Ang Daily, an English-language Korean paper, just published an article confirming what the Honduran press was reporting:

The Honduran government has withdrawn its request to the Korean government to approve Korean-born Kang Young-shin to be the next Honduran ambassador to Seoul.

Joong Ang Daily attributes the change to a conflict with basic Honduran law:

A diplomatic source here said Honduras cited “issues with local law” as the main reason to withdraw the request....

Under Honduran law, a naturalized citizen isn’t allowed to represent Honduras in his or her native country.

Honduran media, however, identify the problem as South Korean law, which does not permit a Korean citizen to represent a foreign government. These reports imply that either South Korea did not recognize the assumption of Honduran citizenship by Kang, or that she maintained her Korean citizenship in parallel with Honduran citizenship.

But another article in yesterday's El Heraldo, while burying it deep in a story purportedly about US demonstrations asking for continuation of Temporary Protected Status for Hondurans, has a slightly different take on what happened, describing it as part of a pattern:

A little more than 50 days after the Porfirio Lobo Sosa government was installed, friendly countries have not approved the ambassadors named by the new administration. On the contrary, the responses that Lobo Sosa has obtained are negative. Such is the case of South Korea, which denied its blessing on the ambassador proposed by the government of Lobo Sosa, for being a citizen born in that country, although she has Honduran nationality.

When the appointment was announced, it was characterized by the The Korea Times as a "surprise":

Incumbent Honduran Ambassador to Korea Rene Francisco Umana Chinchilla told The Korea Times Sunday the news was unexpected.... Umana Chinchilla heard the news over the weekend through a Korean media outlet, raising suspicions over a lack of communication between the embassy in Seoul and the new government in Tegucigalpa, the country's capital.

So why was this appointment ever floated? Joong Ang Daily quotes Kang as saying

“President Lobo is very knowledgeable about Korea, appreciates Koreans’ work ethic and promptness, and probably named me [as the ambassador] to build stronger ties with Korea” ...“When I told him over the phone I’d take the job, he said, ‘I trust you.’”

Another report from The Korea Times gives the widely-repeated personal background on the appointment:

Kang graduated from a teachers' university in Seoul and worked as an elementary school teacher before moving to Honduras in 1977 when her husband took a position as a professor at its military academy. She became naturalized as a Honduran citizen in 1987....Kang had previously run a private Taekwondo Institute with her husband, now deceased. Kang was asked by Honduran President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who was once her Taekwondo student, to represent Honduras to Korea.

Beyond the enlightenment this attempted appointment yields on the colorful background of Lobo Sosa, what does this tell us about Honduras today?

The Korea Times wrote that the designation of Kang "was an expression of friendship to Korea by the Honduran President, diplomats say, while it was also taken as a well-received surprise in Korea as a success story of a Korean immigrant overseas."

South Korea is an important economic partner for Honduras. In the latest year for which data are available on South Korean government websites, 2006, Korean imports from Honduras totaled $23 million and its exports to Honduras reached $139 million. At the time, the South Korean government estimated that about 470 Koreans lived in Honduras.

According to the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website, from 1991 to 2007 South Korea provided more than $11 million in aid to Honduras, $6 million in the form of loans, with another $5 million in loans then pending disbursement.

The $6 million loan reported as completed was for a major power grid expansion project, the kind of infrastructure work that has been subject to cronyism and corruption in other cases, and that even if handled entirely legally, tends to enrich the owners of Honduran construction companies and major businesses.

Approved for funding by South Korea in 1998, the project for which this loan was intended was the subject of Decreto 15-2001 published in La Gaceta on April 17, 2001, ratifying the original congressional resolution 14-99 of 1999. As is common with such loans, the contract required Honduras to purchase the necessary goods and services from South Korea (allowing up to 20% of the funds to be used for purchases from other countries). In addition, materials for the project were exempted from import duties and taxes.

The full publication of the loan agreement on August 30 of 2001 (Decreto 112-2001) includes an Annex specifying that the project would support building 611.4 km of primary and secondary electrical wiring to provide electrical service to 177 rural communities in 12 of the 18 Departments of Honduras, with work to be carried out by ENEE, the national energy company.

So there is much more at stake in diplomatic relations with South Korea than simply recognition of an immigration success story. And the most telling sentence in all the news coverage of this now canceled appointment is Kang's quotation of Lobo Sosa:

'I trust you.’

The rebellious spirit of Lempira: The Frente de Resistencia and Lenca Rhetoric

From this ancestral territory of Lenca resistance, with the rebellious spirit of Lempira:

This is the final salutation in the Manifesto that was issued by the Frente de Resistencia after the recently concluded meeting in La Esperanza, Intibuca, with the stated goal of beginning a process of "refounding" Honduras.

The salutation recalls the history of resistance by Honduras' Lenca people faced with the Spanish military colonization in the sixteenth century. Lempira was the leader of a widespread Lenca uprising in 1537. The traditional story goes that he was killed while under a flag of truce. But Lempira is a more complex figure than simply that of a noble, yet defeated, leader.

Every July 20, Honduras celebrates the Día de Lempira to commemorate this founding moment in the history of the nation five centuries ago. As Wendy Griffin described it in Honduras This Week in 1999, this celebration has traditionally been observed by having school children dress in what they imagine is Lenca clothing and elect an "india bonita" (beautiful Indian girl).

Griffin notes that in Lenca communities, and in Honduran society more broadly, this appropriation of a romanticized indigenous past is contested:

The Lencas celebrate the Day of Lempira as their day of ethnic pride. After the election of the "India Bonita," Lenca musical groups or "conjuntos" made up of a fiddle, guitars, and a base fiddle, play ranchera music so people can dance. "Recorridos", which are often protest songs, are also popular at these gatherings...

July is a time to reflect on Honduras' motto of being "Free, Sovereign and Independent." Ethnic groups and academics organize forums and write articles to reflect on whether current policies truly reflect those of a sovereign state.

The spirit of Lempira was to reflect foreign imposition and each year his day draws critiques of current attempts toward such imposition, be it against Contra bases in the 1980s or U.S. troops at Palmerola or IMF imposed conditions in the 1990s. The Lencas add to this protest their own cry, asking a country that so honors Lempira then leaves the hijos de Lempira (the sons of Lempira) in such a state of neglect.

It is this less-domesticated aspect of Lempira that resonates in the invocation by the Frente de Resistencia of Lempira: "the spirit of Lempira to reflect foreign imposition" and "whether current policies truly reflect those of a sovereign state", both made urgent by the coup d'etat of 2009. The symbolism of Lempira is not that of a valiant but unsuccessful fight against colonization, but rather, of a persistent resistance. News coverage of Lenca activism in the late 1990s recorded slogans on posters displayed in La Esperanza: ''500 years after the conquest of the Americas, Lempira is alive!'', ''Indigenous resistance is still alive, the Lenca people are present!''

It is those overtones that the Manifesto invokes, as much as the site and sponsorship of the II Encuentro itself. The gathering in La Esperanza was noted to have been hosted by COPINH, an indigenous rights organization. Positioning the Frente as like Lempira reinforces the radical and revolutionary nature of the movement being forged, whose goals are not simply to gain a little political power, but to "re-found" Honduras.

What actually happened at the Encuentro in La Esperanza? Counterpunch, in an article reviewing the position of Canada's right-wing government on Honduras (where Canadian companies are the largest external mining interest), cites a first-hand report by Claudia Korol describing

twenty simultaneous popular assemblies to discuss a variety of themes: the preservation of water, forests, land, subsoil, traditional territories, and air; the political system and popular sovereignty; culture; justice; autonomy; sexual diversity; health; communications; foreign policy and international relations; anti-patriarchal struggles; anti-racism; national security; work and workers’ rights; the economic system; indigenous and black communities; youth; fighting corruption and learning about popular accounting.

The goal: "the building of popular power from below", to "refound" Honduras, not merely reform it. As Peter Lackowski describes it in The Santiago Times,

After a serious debate the various sections of a new constitution were laid out. A committee to direct the National Constituent Assembly was nominated, and Bertha Oliva of the Committee of Families of disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH) was elected to lead this group.

While mainstream US media have ignored this event entirely, there is another narrative that has spread via reports in a variety of other news media.

This storyline suggests that at the Encuentro, the Frente decided to transform itself into a political party. According to the claim advanced on March 14 in a "news" article by the pro-coup Honduran newspaper La Tribuna,

The Frente Nacional de Resistencia declared its decision to constitute itself as a political party to gain power by means of the vote with the sole mission of refounding Honduras.

No specific document or person was cited in support of this claim. It does not in fact appear to be accurate. But comments on the online version of this story show that transforming the Frente into a political party would satisfy the imagination of readers of La Tribuna about how opposition rhetoric should fit in Honduras.

And it gained some traction in Spanish-language reporting for Radio Nederland, which on March 16 repeated the same claim, attributing it to "César Ramos, political analyst close to the Frente".

First-hand reporting on statements at the Encuentro by Giorgio Trucchi quoted Carlos H. Reyes firmly stating quite the opposite:

We have to dedicate ourselves to [organizing to get the necessary votes during the Popular Consulta of next June 28 to demonstrate being the majority in the face of the necessity to form a Constituent Assembly that will refound the country], because there are those that day that we should dedicate ourselves starting now
to forming a political party. The Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular has decided that first we have to strengthen ourselves as a Frente, to put in place the head, body, feet and finally, wings of that bird. We cannot put a roof on a house that we still have not constructed. First we have to deepen the work of consciousness-raising, organization, mobilization, and politicization.

The fundamental proposition of the Frente is that Honduran government is broken, and that only starting over with e popular Constituent Assembly can solve the dilemma. Insisting that the Frente is really about to convert into a conventional political party lessens the impact of the radical claim to speak in "the rebellious spirit of Lempira".

Manifesto of the Encuentro Nacional por la Refundación de Honduras

The original Spanish Manifesto of the II Encuentro Nacional por la Refundación de Honduras produced in the recently concluded meeting of the Frente Popular de Resistencia can be found on voselsoberano:

Manifesto

Reunited men and women, in the city of La Esperanza, under the auspices of the sign of hope, men and women of 17 departments of the country, we have gone through with another appointment with Honduras, to examine ourselves, debate, and strengthen through dialogue our knowledge, experiences, and dreams with the eagerness to re-found our native land.

This II Encuentro por la Refundación de Honduras was characterized by ancestral spirituality, creativity, the profound interchange in the diversity and the long and arduous exercise of the installation of a Popular and Democratic National Constituent Assembly that will express the proposals that are pillars of our process of refounding this country.

Before the Honduran public, we declare:

That we are continuing in resistance against the golpistas and their national and international allies, and therefore we do not recognize the fraudulent government of Porfirio Lobo.

That we continue in the construction of historic proposals of the Honduran social movement, that line up to eradicate the system of neoliberal, patriarchal, and racist domination.

That we insist on constructing, from a diversity of sectors, voices, and experiences, a just, worthy, and enjoyable way of life for all Honduran men and women that has already been expressed in the struggles for land, for justice, for the defense of natural resources and for the respect for human rights.

That we will continue making use of our legitimate and sovereign right to exercise popular power. This power of the people exceeds the representative character and therefore it can be assumed to be legitimate to delegate as well as to revoke that representation.

That we will not renounce the proposal for the installation of the Democratic and Popular National Constituent Assembly where the diversity of the thoughts and struggles of the Honduran people will be recognized.

We declare our solidarity, at this time, with the struggles of the national teachers' organizations, the union of the national university (SITRAUNAH), the towns of San Francisco de Opalaca and Nacaome against the construction of dams, and the struggle for land on the part of the Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguan; we stand in solidarity with Manuel Zelaya Rosales and with father Andrés Tamayo, and other exiled Honduran men and women, products of political persecution just as we demand that their right to enter national territory be respected. In the same way we stand actively in solidarity with the political prisoners and men and women persecuted politically.

The II Encuentro for the Refundación de Honduras is an action more in this refoundational and resistance process, that will not be exhausted here, rather it will open and convene multiple and diverse popular actions to realize the task of constructing a new Honduras.

From this ancestral territory of Lenca resistance, with the rebellious spirit of Lempira, on the 14th day of the month of March of 2010.

The Institue for Women versus Feminists in Resistance

As readers of this blog know, a week ago, on International Women's Day, there was a call for mobilization by Honduras' Feminists in Resistance. Coverage in the Honduran press of demonstrations on International Women's Day illuminates the challenge Feminists in Resistance present to the Lobo Sosa administration.

Pro-coup El Heraldo reported that there was a protest in Tegucigalpa against femicide, giving the alarming figures: 46 women killed in 2008, climbing to 59 in 2009, which is bad enough: but in January-February 2010, already there have been 60 women murdered. Indeed, as widely reported, Honduras has the second-highest rate of murder of women in Central America.

The article in Heraldo ends with the apparent non-sequitur that "Feminist groups of Honduras don't recognize the authorities of the National Institute of Women [INAM]." According to this account, "activists" from the Center for Women's Rights (CDM) attempted to enter the National Congress and were "repelled" by the police and military security. But it is not clarified who these "activists" were, nor why they or other feminists don't recognize INAM.

La Tribuna, another pro-coup paper, reported that an official ceremony had been planned to take place on International Women's Day in the National Congress building, with First Lady Rosa Elena de Lobo and the Minister of Security, Oscar Álvarez, where a formal agreement would be signed INAM and the Security Minister to reduce violent deaths of women, particularly from domestic violence.

So how did this develop into what El Heraldo called a "zipezape"-- a ruckus?

An account of the protest and its suppression translated and posted at quotha says that the police and military security evicted the women protesting on the orders of Maria Antonieta Botto, head of INAM when

the women were trying to mount several spaces to show how women have been active with the resistance against the coup... In what seemed a boycott of women’s organizations, INAM decided to have an event in the same place even though the Feminists of the Resistance had disseminated widely their peaceful event at that location.
...

“We were having our event on La Merced plaza, when they cut off the power because the INAM was going to have their event at the National Congress. We were able to get the power back on the stand and they shut down the power again. We went over to the INAM minister and told her to give us power but what they did instead was send the police after us with batons and weapons who beat some of the women and took away our signs.”

This report describes the mission of INAM as

to improve [women's] quality of life and promoting respect for human rights, in harmony with other participative and democratic social actors. We are an institution responsible for formulating, developing, promoting, coordinating and following up on the policies that guarantee and protect the rights and gender equity of women, adolescents and girls, to contribute towards the sustainable human development of the country.

The minister in charge of INAM is Maria Antonieta Botto. Immediately prior to taking up this position in the Lobo Sosa administration, Botto was mayor of the small city of Villanueva, Cortés, located south of San Pedro Sula. Villanueva is the site of one of the major concentrations of maquiladoras in northern Honduras, companies that rely on the labor of young women. From 1998 to 2002, and again from 2002 to 2006, Botto was a Nationalist party congress member from the department of Cortés. In the November election, Botto lost to the Liberal party candidate, Walter Perdomo.

The report translated at quotha notes that the order to remove the feminists from proximity to the National Congress on International Women's Day

worsened the distrust that has been generated for Boto, whose abilities to fill the post of minister have been questioned.
...
Sara Tomé, in charge of the Legal Center of Women’s Studies, CEM-H said that “before the coup we had made some important conquests, but after the coup it all came down. We lost INAM, the domestic violence courts and other entities. That work fell through.”

International coverage of the Women's Day protests by Feminists in Resistance connect the dots a bit more. As reported by EFE, these women

denounced the fact that various women that participated in the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular against the coup d'etat of last June 28 against Manuel Zelaya were assassinated and others sexually abused. The women accused the State security forces of these violations, which number 26, according to the denunciation.
...
In Tegucigalpa, the demonstrators also indicated that they do not recognize the new authorities of the National Institute of Women "because they are a product of the coup d'Etat", Niza Medina, Member of CDM, said to journalists.

As has become a pattern, the most illuminating Honduran press on this topic comes from Tiempo, in the form of an editorial by Anarella Vélez published March 16:

Women, particularly those organized as Feminists in Resistance, struggle for the Honduran State to assume with responsibility our demand to generate a new law that would regulate, place it in use, and follow through on all the social processes that would guarantee the status of women as subjects with rights and that will break the ancestral association of the power of the masculine sex... The political crisis created by the coup d'Etat of 28th June, added to the international economic instability, without any doubt has complicated the reality in which we Honduran women live and has made visible the asymmetry of gender and the consolidation of an increasingly sexist hierarchy as a product of greater political impact of religious fundamentalist sectors in the decisions of State.

The editorial ends with a call for a Constitutional Assembly to draft a new Constitution that would recognize the rights of women guaranteed by the various international conventions to which Honduras is already a signatory, but which are not enshrined in law or practice. Calling for political equity, economic equity, and reproductive control, the agenda of Honduran feminists was definitively rolled back under the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti, and no steps have been taken in the Lobo Sosa administration to win back the lost advances. Appointing a female politician who has no history of women's activism did not win Porfirio Lobo Sosa any support; fumbling the treatment of women's activists on International Women's Day simply added to the already existing consciousness on the part of women's activists that fundamental change is required for their hopes to be realized.

A Revolution by other means: "Refounding" Honduras

At quotha, Adrienne Pine has posted a translation of a transcript of a talk given by Gilberto Ríos, Secretary of Political Formation of the Political Organization “Los Necios", a member of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, now in political exile in Nicaragua. Despite his personal situation, he expresses hope that the mobilization of progressive sentiment after the coup has improved the prospects for progress toward greater economic equity, sovereignty, and less militarization.

Ríos characterizes the left in Honduras as leading a "new Latin American revolution" that departs from the path of armed struggle:

What´s happening in Honduras we consider to be a new Latin American revolution, that is new and different. It is important for people to know and to contribute. It is anti-capitalist, not part of a socialist or communist society, but a new and different society.

One of the most pernicious, yet insistent, claims of retrograde thinkers about what happened and continues to happen in Honduras has been that "Chavez" (or Castro, or both...) was stopped in a supposed campaign to extend "communism" (or 21st century socialism, or both...). These claims-- regardless of any political interests Chavez himself might actually have had in enlisting Honduras as a political ally in his own global power games-- deny the roots of Honduran struggle in the dramatic increase in economic inequality that marked the last twenty years, and the parallel decline in faith in government that in fact made possible the overthrow of an elected president whose views could be publicized in ways that made him seem alien, frightening, and dangerous.

As it happens, while Ríos spoke some time ago, as I write this, the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular of Honduras is holding its second Encuentro Nacional por la Refundación de Honduras (National Meeting for the Refounding of Honduras). As reported by Prensa Latina, more than 800 delegates are meeting in La Esperanza, in the heart of traditional Lenca
territory. The organizers are quoted as saying that they have

the enthusiastic mission of constituting an Assembly of the People where all the ideas and dreams that have waited centuries will converge.

The organizers, in the cited press release, argue that they

represent the urgent will of the people to construct true democracy and transform the system of injustice and repression installed by the oligarchy.

Spain's online Mercurio Digital gives a report that provides more details on the participants in the event, as yet unmentioned in the mainstream English language press:

defying persecution and violations of human rights of which the Honduran people and social leaders who demonstrate against the dictatorship (disguised as democracy since the assumption of Porfirio Lobo) are victims, the Movement for the Refounding of Honduras, the Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras (COPINH), the Movimiento Amplio por la Dignidad y la Justicia (MADJ) and the Feministas en Resistencia (FER), determined to continue the spirit of rebellion urging the refounding of Honduras by those who desire to construct the Constituent Assembly that remained unfinished, by the power of the people.

This is a reference to the previously announced intention to hold a popular consulta on June 28 of the present year, to complete the consultation about whether the Honduran people want to convene a Constitutional Assembly that was the immediate spark for the coup d'etat of 2009. Progressive leader Rafael Alegría is quoted as saying

We want a constitutional assembly, to create a democratic, inclusive, participatory Constitution from the Honduran people.

How is this event, or the Resistance Front in general, being covered in the English language press?

The answer to that is unfortunately, not much at all. You need to go to English-language media from Latin America to find any that even acknowledge there is an organized resistance front. Writing for Inside Costa Rica, Peter Lackowski reports on his experiences recently on a human rights delegation to Honduras. His summary of the goals of the resistance is that it

expects the struggle to go on for years, hoping to build a movement that brings in many people who have not been active in the past. Communication is a big concern, with community radio stations playing a role, especially if the anti-coup commercial radio stations that depend on advertising revenue are not able to continue providing the solid support that they have given the movement in the past. The internet will also be useful. Political education will be important, as well as a democratic organization solidly based on broad participation of all popular sectors.

The basic program of the Resistance has three elements: non-recognition of the Lobo government, no dialogue or negotiation with what is seen as an illegitimate regime, and a constituent assembly to create a new, just constitution as the only real solution to the situation. Work on a new constitution is proceeding even without official sanction. COPINH, Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares y Indigenas, was founded in 1993 to defend the interests of the Lenca people who live in the Western Highlands. COPINH has issued a call for a Peoples Assembly in the city of La Esperanza, March 12 to 14, where the ideas that would be embodied in a new constitution will be discussed.

At a recent meeting in the southern city of San Lorenzo leaders of the Resistance planned to build an organization that will be able to take power through the elections in 2013. No one knows whether the oligarchs will allow this program to proceed. The one thing that is certain is that there are many people who are willing to risk everything, including their lives, for the sake of a country that is no longer governed by fear.

Contrast this with the characterization of the Frente in New York Times coverage March 3 of a letter Human Rights Watch sent to Honduran public prosecutor, Luis Alberto Rubí (himself, of course, deeply implicated in the coup d'etat): for the paper of record, the Frente is

a coalition of labor and other social groups that protested the coup.

The past tense here, and the solely reactive role to something that current US policy insists is "the past", matters. Treating the Frente as part of the past supports the current Honduran administration ignoring its existence, underlined by the claim of the US State Department that Porfirio Lobo Sosa's government exhibits "unity" because it includes members of multiple parties, who are said to represent "the left", despite the explicit refusal by the Frente to accept these politicians as their representatives.

The issue of identifiable leadership-- a person who can be presented as running the popular resistance-- underlies some of the coverage, or lack thereof, of the Frente. In its most pernicious form, this takes the shape of insisting the resistance is nothing more than "zelayistas", personal adherents of José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. This kind of argument requires no revision of the existing narratives about Latin America, in which ignorant "masses" are understood to be under the thrall of charismatic leaders. So this storyline is much more digestable.

Conservative Spanish language media exemplify this in the extreme. Coverage by Honduras' Proceso Digital of Zelaya's trip to Venezuela claims the "resistencia zelayista" is engaged in

protests that seek to destablize the administration of Lobo, to push for a constitutional assembly and the entry of Zelaya [to Honduras] so that from the Liberal Party he will form an internal political movement, in which his wife, Xiomara Zelaya, would be the card up the sleeve for the next presidential candidacy in four years, or in the event of her failure, ex- prosecutor and Zelaya official, Edmundo Orellana.

This is a clever mixture of reality, rumor-mongering, and smearing that recalls the press run-up to the coup itself. Edmundo Orellana, a highly respected public figure who served in the Zelaya administration, as he had previously, and resigned in protest of Zelaya's decision to proceed with the June 28 encuesta, is vilified by the Honduran right wing for his editorials presenting his authoritative legal opinions against the claims that the coup and installation of Micheletti was constitutional. Zelaya's wife Xiomara gained extraordinary public approval for her courageous presence in Honduras during the de facto regime speaking out against it, and that popularity undoubtedly scares Honduran conservatives.

The insinuation that Orellana or Xiomara Castro de Zelaya would be a cat's paw under Mel Zelaya's control is a way to smuggle back in the fear of ongoing presidential office as equivalent to dictatorship that, ironically, justified the actual imposition of the Micheletti dictatorship.

The current Liberal party leadership, in the hands of unsuccessful presidential candidate Elvin Santos, shares the same kind of muddy belief that the resistance is a movement of zelayistas seeking power within the Liberal Party:

The ex-presidential candidate considers that all the forces have the right to participate in politics, including the zelayist liberal resistance.

Projecting the resistance as operating primarily as a faction within the confines of the two dominant parties helps to reduce to a personal power struggle what in fact is the most terrifying potential outcome of the coup for the existing power structure: a new political force not part of the existing structure might emerge.

What Zelaya actually said about the Frente de Resistencia while in Venezuela, even as quoted in the extremely misleading "news" story in Proceso Digital, was something quite different from claiming to lead the future Liberal party or a zelayist resistance front:

there is a revolution underway, marked by the solidarity and humanism that the popular resistance and my friends are guiding... Carlos H. Reyes, with whom I spoke a few minutes ago, Rafael Alegría, Juan Barahona, Rafael Barahona, Rodil Rivera Rodil, Carlos Eduardo Reina and other friends, are driving a totally worthy revolutionary process there, in Honduras, where they want to make of Honduras an example of change in Central America.

To return to Ríos:

Zelaya has become a theoretical problem because he’s not left or right. He can’t be accused of being a communist. He’s become a challenge now. When we’re all organized to create a new world, we have to be on the same side. ... Zelaya was the only president who listened more than he spoke, so I think he is capable of making it into a revolution. But if he can’t the Movement itself can turn it into a revolution.

Populism

In their book, Twenty -First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnel define populism as

"an ideology which pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’ who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity and voice (p.3)."

The key to populism is the opposition between the common masses, usually seen as good and virtuous, and the elite in a nation, usually seen as self serving, and therefore, bad.

The US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, doesn't like populism, which he links to weakened states. To quote his congressional testimony from today (so far only covered by the Spanish language press and not on the State Department website):

"The lack of strong institutions in Latin America feeds populism....Our commitment is institutional strengthening, which includes the rule of law and attention to the real needs of people."

This sheds some light on why the US State Department was not enthusiastic about Manuel Zelaya Rosales, who was viewed as a populist.

But it also raises the question of how this view of populism relates to support or lack of support for the Frente Popular de Resistencia and other Honduran progressive organizations arguing that existing institutions in Honduras cannot be reformed incrementally. Does that mean supporting "institutional strengthening" means ignoring or even battling against reform movements?

This question is especially urgent because Honduras' governmental system fails minimal tests for democracy. The main editorial in the March 10 edition of El Tiempo (no longer accessible online) points out that Honduras' representational system lacks the core concept of popular participation, without which there can be no democracy.

Instead, the editorial argued, today popular participation is under attack, and "all state policies reinforce authoritarianism, elitism, and autocracy":

The big problem in Honduras is the class politics of the power elite; they lack a democratic culture. They consider themselves the owner of the country and don't recognize the people as the supreme power, as the sovereign state. They look at the grassroots with suspicion and distrust and fear, as an enemy that must be kept from the most basic democratic right, that of self determination. "The village is not ready for independence," they have said from time immemorial.

Is this the populist message Valenzuela wants to eradicate by strengthening state institutions?