"Conversations in Washington by the Representative of Zelaya, Rodolfo Pastor F."

Vos el Soberano today posted a press release under the above title that reads as follows:

The Secretary General of the OAS, Jose Insulza, having solicited that he send his representative to talk with the OAS High Level Commission formed by the past Assembly of the organization to analyze the problem generated in Honduras by the coup d'Etat of 28-06-09, the ex-President Manuel Zelaya R. ordered me to present myself in Washington. There I attended two meetings between July 5 and 8, one meeting with the Commission as a whole and the other with the Juridical Commission of advisors, that had previously visited Honduras.

I explained our position in the meeting with the Commission of ambassadors, which is the same as the declarations of the OAS and of the authorities of almost all the governments represented in it, which is that, in Honduras on the 28th of June of 2009, there was produced a coup d'etat, underlining that, in it, there had participated in coordination the military, the Congress of that time (which accepted a falsified resignation before naming its president as Head of State), and the present Supreme Court that, in the days following the coup, generated a series of exculpatory documents for the military and a political persecution with a series of accusations against President Zelaya and against various cabinet ministers. We argued that for the present government to be able to be recognized in the assembly as the legitimate representative of our country, it would have to fulfill the demands subscribed to in the proposal of the OAS, and sustained in its democratic charter, otherwise leaving this crime unpunished as a disastrous precedent and abdication of the principles of the organization.

The conversations with Secretary Insulza coincided in

1. Arranging for the end of the judicial prosecution of ex-President Zelaya and his collaborators.

2. Commiting the present government to strengthen the Human Rights Prosecutor.

3. Proposing international accompaniment in the fight against impunity.

4. Enlargening the Truth Commission formed by the government, with a representative to be proposed by the opposition; and

5. Convening a broad National Dialogue, with genuine representation of the opposition and with an open agenda to study the right to the Constitutional Assembly process.

Secretary Insulza informed me without details that President Lobo had sent his own representative but he didn't accept that agreed to [above]. That they were additionally accusing the ex-President, of a payment for publicity and for the investment to finance the logistics of the poll about the Cuarta Urna, which had been indispensable in view of the fact that the military did not return the money they were given for that purpose, when they rebelled two days before the Coup. That is to say that the present government, elected without opposition, under a State of Emergency and without the observation of the OAS nor any official international organization demands that ex-President Zelaya should submit himself, for these accusations, to the justice of the perpetrators and sponsors of the coup that was carried out against him. That they would give him the grace to permit himself to defend himself outside the jail. Secretary Insulza did not explain what would be the proposal for international accompaniment for the struggle against the impunity that the Coup participants enjoy and explained that President Lobo wished that it would be the official Truth Commission itself that would incorporate a representative of the opposition.

It was expressed to the Secretary and the Commission our agreement that, by different procedures, the same end could be arrived at and that what worried us, above all, was the state of defenselessness of Hondurans against the everyday violations and crimes against humanity, certified by its own Commission on Human Rights, about which they were not ruling given that-- due to the complicity of the Public Prosecutor and the judiciary in the coup-- the conditions to put a brake on these abuses or deduce responsibilities did not exist. But he was reminded that the agreement was the end of persecution.

The jurists that have studied the accusations assured us that they have progressed in the discussion with the Prosecutor and the Court in Honduras, but they repeated that, for formality's sake, the President would have to present himself before this judiciary, to ask that it grant him amnesty, and submit himself to trial for the two remaining accusations. To them as well it was explained that the ex-President could submit himself to justice for any accusation made before the day of the coup or before any international judicial body that would offer the conditions of objectivity, but he would not humiliate himself before the court that had administered him the coup d'etat. Later, and at the end of our visit and in view of the fact that agreement had not advanced, we presented before the High Commission a Position Paper, prepared personally by ex-President Manuel Zelaya, today coordinator of the National Resistance Front, demanding that the OAS act in congruence with its Democratic Charter (whose substance is the right of the people), with its own reiterated declarations, and with its commitment not to recognize the government as long as the situation created by the coup is not reversed and full rights have not been restored.

Since then Secretary General Insulza has traveled throughout Latin America lobbying its governments to accept Honduras by majority vote, dismissing those that oppose it, and has lobbied recently in the meeting of SICA in El Salvador in which, despite the fact that the norms of the organization demand a total consensus, in the absence of a country and of three of the presidents, President Funes announced the reincorporation of Porfirio Lobo in the System and solicited, as had been announced many times that he would for pragmatism, the reincorporation of its representative in the OAS.

Honduras back in SICA or, what about the bylaws?

The headlines in many newspapers across Central America, like this one from El Salvador's El Mundo, pronounced Wednesday morning that Honduras was "approved to reincorporate itself into SICA" (emphasis added).

But is that really true? The Presidents of all the Central American countries except Nicaragua met in El Salvador and reportedly issued a proclamation urging the OAS to rapidly reincorporate Honduras back into the OAS. That would be news, but of course, is not the same thing as being reincorporated into SICA.

There is also a claim that Honduras was readmitted to SICA as a fully functioning member yesterday, but interestingly there is no such announcement or resolution on SICA's website. [See below for updates on this point.]

The only posted result of the most recent SICA meeting makes no mention of the reincorporation of Honduras, and lacks a signature from the representative of Nicaragua. Maybe they're just not into transparency?

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega decided last night to reprimand the other Central American presidents for their "ridiculousness" in issuing the proclamation that Honduras was reincorporated in SICA.

In a speech broadcast Tuesday evening, Ortega dismissed his Central American colleagues as "ridiculous" and as "challenging Central American integration", the NOTIMEX news service reported.

Ortega also said Nicaragua does not recognize the reintegration of Honduras in SICA, and that any such resolution passed at the extraordinary session held in El Salvador on July 20 lacks legal validity because SICA resolutions require unanimity under SICA bylaws. Nicaragua did not vote for any such resolution. Ortega said the announcement by his colleagues violates the basis of the SICA treaty. He said he considers that his colleagues "did something ridiculous" because SICA has its rules and establishes consensus as the rule, and consensus "requires unanimity"; without it, "you simply cannot make such decisions".

We first pointed out this SICA bylaw problem when SICA Secretary General Juan Daniel Alemán Gurdián (a Nicaraguan opponent of the current government of that country) unilaterally declared that no resolution was necessary to reincorporate Honduras into SICA, and that it had never been suspended, patently ignoring the SICA resolution of June 29, 2009.

There was no reaction at the time from any member government, not even President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador, who Alemán accused of just "getting it wrong" for reporting that no consensus had been reached. Which, given that President Ortega would have to be part of any consensus, shows that Funes was correct and Alemán is, lets say, playing fast and loose with the truth.

Meanwhile, Mario Canahuati, the Honduran Foreign Minister, boasted today that he had "24 or 25" votes for Honduras's readmission to the OAS. Under OAS bylaws he only needs 22 votes, a two-thirds majority.

But Boz, in a comment on an earlier post, noted that the OAS normally operates with consensus. He predicted that until the vote could be 30-0 or 28-0 with the remaining countries abstaining, the OAS is unlikely to consider a motion to readmit Honduras.

The reason that SICA coming to a consensus about reintegrating Honduras is important, is that it is the group most likely to accept Honduras back first, for pragmatic reasons: the need for economic integration, negotiation over contested territorial limits in the ocean that can otherwise lead to seizing of fishing boats, and the like.

Boz mentioned such pragmatic considerations in his post earlier today on early reports of "formal reintegration" of Honduras in SICA. There, he argued that it was unlikely that the other Central American presidents would have acted in Ortega's absence, against his expressed position:

I have a hard time believing that the region's presidents, particularly Colom and Funes, would have done this without Ortega's knowledge. I think [Ortega] chose not to attend as a way to abstain from having to either vote in favor or against. That way he can continue his opposition at the OAS and elsewhere, which only has political consequences, while having Honduras back within the Central American community, which benefits the region's economic health.

And this sounds about right to us. But when the other presidents announced that they were in favor of full reintegration of Honduras into the OAS-- assuming that report is true-- Ortega would have had every reason to be outraged. Having arranged not to stand in the way of the necessary (for the people of Honduras, and the region) economic reintegration, while maintaining opposition to the political reintegration into OAS, he finds himself bypassed and blind-sided.

Which we expect will increase, not decrease, his vocal opposition to OAS reintegration. And it is not just Nicaragua, of course (although having one's close neighbor oppose this should rhetorically count for quite a bit).

As the rabidly pro-coup Honduran online Proceso Digital put it, "Even though Central America wants it, South America confirms blockade of Honduras":

from the South they sent a jar of cold water to get across to Tegucigalpa that they will not permit the country to return to the institutional system.

As always, it was incumbent on the aggressive Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa not to fail to take advantage of a visit with the open enemy of Honduras into which the secretary general of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, has converted himself, to affirm that he will not permit the return of the country to the continental organization, unless it accedes to his desires to see imprisoned all those that removed from power his friend and partner José Manuel Zelaya.

Ecuadorian news media, while being far less colorful in their characterizations of the diplomats involved, basically confirmed that Correa told Insulza he was opposed to reintegration of Honduras in the OAS as long as those who participated in the coup enjoy impunity. The actual statement of Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño did not call for mass imprisonment, but it does call for justice:

"For Ecuador the return of Honduras to the OAS is not acceptable as long as there is no clear sanction or initiation of judgment against those responsible for the coup".

"We believe that it is a very bad precedent for democracy in the hemisphere that a country should carry out a coup d'Etat and organize elections in the next months, as if nothing had happened."

And so, if Boz is right in his assessment of the normal operating procedure of the OAS, it will be a long time before there is an agreement, because there is no indication that anyone in Honduras understands that they have to repudiate the coup, they have to take steps to rid the current government of the hangover coup appointees, and they have to do something substantive and believable about the impunity for the coup authors that was created by the passage of amnesty just before the Micheletti regime stepped down.

Dia de Lempira

Yesterday, July 20, was the Dia de Lempira in Honduras, when schoolchildren dress up as make-believe Lenca and elect an "India Bonita" in each town.

Like most such nationalist holidays incorporating imagery of an original people, there are many problematic aspects to this celebration. The image of Lempira on Honduran currency and in the statue that stands on a boulevard in San Pedro Sula draws more from ideas about generalized American Indians than any specifics of Lenca appearance or costume. But these aspects of cultural appropriation and their ironies are not the subject of this post.

In honor of this Lempira day I want to step back and remember the historical Lempira.

Lempira, or El Empira, was a Lenca war captain in the 1530s when the Spanish invaded western Honduras. We know he was a real person, one of those rarely named indigenous people who appear in Spanish Colonial documents of this time. When we began research in the country thirty years ago, the high school graduates we talked to were dubious about his historical existence, thinking he was legendary. But he was demonstrably real, and the recovery of his story is a tribute to the tenacity of Honduran scholars.

There are two contradictory stories about Lempira's death at the hands of the Spanish.

The most well known story is from the 17th century writings of Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas. In his multivolume work Historia General de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas y en tierra firme del mar océano.

This story, written long after the Spanish Conquest, was composed by interviewing the children of participants in the conquest and by examining documents in archives in Guatemala. In Herrera's story, Lempira agreed to meet with two representatives of the Spanish captain Alonso de Caceres to negotiate peace. While they were meeting under a flag of truce, a Spanish sharp-shooter shot and killed him. This is the story as it is taught in Honduran schools.

Due to the hard work of Honduran historian Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo, we actually know that earlier documentation of Lempira's campaign against the Spanish, dating to the 1560s, exists. Written less than a generation after the events, it contains first-hand witness testimony, and it tells a much different story.

The document, Patronato 69, R. 5 ("Meritos y Servicios Rodrigo Ruiz Nueva España") is in the Archivo General de Indias in Sevilla, Spain.

The document was sitting in the archives but was unknown to Honduran historians until the 1980s, when Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo, a noted Honduran historian, found and published it in Honduras in his book, Los Últimos Días de Lempira: Rodrigo Ruiz, El conquistador Español que lo venció en combate.

Rodrigo Ruiz gives us a fascinating story of infiltrating the Lenca forces during the battle with Lempira, until he arrived at the spot where Lempira was commanding his troops. He reports that Lempira was dressed in the clothing of two Spanish soldiers because Lempira felt it would make him impervious to bullets. He reports that he fought Lempira in hand to hand combat and killed him with his sword, later cutting off Lempira's head and presenting it to Montejo, the Spanish governor in 1537, as proof of Lempira's death. After Lempira was killed, Ruiz reports the Lenca withdrew for four days, then came to give obedience to the king.

The account of Rodrigo Ruiz contains elements which match the oral history preserved by the modern Lenca about Lempira, specifically that he thought he was impervious to the Spanish bullets, and that he was killed in combat, not in ambush as Herrera wrote.

The story of Lempira received from Herrera has been an important part of the creation of Honduran national identity, especially in the 1930s under the dictator Tiburcio Carias Andino. The new national currency, the Lempira, was named after him in 1931. The story of Lempira's betrayal by the Spanish, as told by Herrera, was incorporated into the new national school curriculum.

When Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo came forward with the account of Lempira based on earlier-- and therefore, likely more reliable-- documents, he was largely ignored. Lempira as an innocent victim of his nobility, doomed to defeat by the crafty (if morally flawed) Spanish, fits a standard storyline also seen in Mexico and Guatemala (where the stories are equally questionable historically). These stories underwrite ideologies of national integration, of assimilation and acculturation, of the inevitable loss of indigenous autonomy and identity.

Lempira as a successful leader who rallied a large-scale resistance to the Spanish is quite another kind of founding father. He is one of a group of alternative figures of indigenous history, who came to grips with the new historical circumstances in which they were living, and took active roles in advancing the persistence of their peoples.

It is a tribute to the work of Honduran historians that today the more complex story of Lempira is so well known that an editorial in Tiempo today by Edwin Wilfredo Rubí presented basically the same facts as we have in this post, about the rediscovery of the earlier story of Lempira and the contradictions it presents with the nationalist version. He ends his editorial

This extraordinary document...that has not been studied by any other historian [since Mario Felipe Martinez Castillo], merits a more careful analysis... It is also a stimulus for the present and future generation of Honduran historians that will give life to our colonial history, making use of documents like this...

From this text you can take two conclusions: first, that the rising of Cerquin was absolutely true, and second, that the indigenous leader who led the peoples of the province of Cerquin was named ELEMPIRA.

If this version is the truth, it also makes me feel proud, on knowing, that our Cacique Lempira died completely as a hero, preferring to die fighting, rather than on his knees

[Unfortunately, we cannot provide a link directly to the original document. But due to the policies of open access by the Spanish government, anyone with computer access can look up a scan of the original 16th century document. To do this,

1. Navigate to http://pares.mcu.es

2. Select the button for "Búsqueda Avanzada"

3. Under "Filtro por Archivo" select "Archivo General de Indias"

4. Under "Filtro por Signatura" enter "Patronato,69,R.5" and select the "Búsqueda por Signatura exacta" radio button.

5. Click on the "Buscar" button at the bottom of the page.

6. On the search results page click on "Patronato Real" underneath the "Archivo General de Indias" title.

7. Under "Titulo" click on "Meritos y Servicios Rodrigo Ruiz".

8. To view the page images, click on the "Ver Imagenes" button. ]

Refounding the Liberal Party

On July 14, Vos el Soberano published a brief note under the headline "When they expel the dictator then we can talk".

It reported the content of a message sent by ex-president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the Consejo Central Ejecutivo (Central Executive Committee) of the Liberal Party.

In it, Zelaya reportedly said he would talk with that group when it fulfills three requirements:

• when “the Central Committee announces against the Coup”

• when "They expel the dictator [Roberto Micheletti]”

• when “They demand justice for the intellectual and material authors of the 166 assassinations [by repressive organs of State on account of the Coup]. ”

Zelaya's communique was one response to a proposal by Elvin Santos Lozano, president of the Central Executive Committee (and father of the failed 2009 presidential candidate of the party), that Zelaya return to Honduras and rejoin the Liberal Party in order to unify it (and thus save it). Seems like a rough judgment on his own kid.

As an editorial by Radio Progreso, also available on Vos el Soberano, notes, Hondurans find themselves

with a situation unequalled in the political history of Honduras: a president who was overthrown by a coup d'Etat and sent into exile, and, after one year, is reclaimed by two antagonistic projects and political forces. The president that was proscribed, sent into exile and considered as the cause of the major division and polarization in the life of the country, now his return appears to be fundamental to the exit from the institutional stagnation in which we find ourselves and to make possible national reconciliation.

We have previously explained the outcome of the Tocoa Assembly of the Frente, in which Liberals in resistance were unable to seat additional delegates and withdrew from the provisional governance, explicitly without withdrawing from the Frente itself. This led to a curious sequence of actions by the Liberal Party itself.

Leadership of the Liberal Party came out shortly after the end of the Tocoa assembly of the Frente with an open invitation to the Liberals in resistance to reintegrate in the party. This explicitly included an invitation to Zelaya to return and organize a political "movement" within the party.

First, Marlon Lara, ex-campaign director for the party, currently second vice president of Congress, said the Tocoa meeting showed that the Liberals in Resistance should return to the party and contribute to its unification. Lara

exhorted them to collaborate with the initiative of the Consejo Central Ejecutivo to procure granitic unity of the party for which a commission will travel to the Dominican Republic to negotiate with the overthrown president Manuel Zelaya.

At about the same time, members of the Liberal Party held what was reported variously as a unity forum or a gathering of Zelaya supporters, the latter the way El Heraldo headlined their article. It was said to bring together "a part of the directorship of the Liberal resistance, ex-officials of the deposed president Zelaya, and presidential aspirants", implying that these are all categories of Liberal Party members with reasons to oppose the current governance of the party.

At this forum, Eduardo Maldonado, ex presidential contender, said that "the unity of his party passes by the return without conditions of ex president Manuel Zelaya." Esteban Handal Pérez, another "pre-candidate" for president, called for a special party convention to vote in new leadership.

Edmundo Orellana, who reportedly also participated,

insisted on the need for the authorities of his party to convene, as quickly as possible, internal elections (not primaries) to change all the authorities: central, departmental, and municipal.

As the article notes, the majority of those who would be removed from office belong to one of three major movements within the Liberal Party: those headed by Elvin Santos, Roberto Micheletti and Eduardo Maldonado. Maldonado volunteered to have the occupants of the two seats his movement controls on the Central Executive resign. No one from the Santos or Micheletti camp attended.

Also present and speaking at the forum: Jaime Rosenthal, perennial presidential aspirant and owner of El Tiempo.

According to La Tribuna, all the speakers called for the immediate and unconditional return of Zelaya, hoping he will take a place as a "standard-bearer" in the party, and most of the speakers at the forum endorsed a national constitutional assembly as a the only way to institute social and economic changes. The exceptions to the latter call: Jaime Rosenthal and Esteban Handal

As we write, the Central Executive Committee is reportedly writing a letter to ask whether Zelaya would receive a delegation to talk things over in the Dominican Republic. As reported by El Heraldo, "some political sectors" speculate that Zelaya will receive a delegation if the Central Executive Committee calls the "events of June 28" a coup:

The Central Executive [Committee] has not said if what occurred the 28th of June was or was not a coup d'Etat nor has it condemned nor applauded the situation of which Zelaya, member of the Liberal Party, was victim.

Elvin Santos Lozano ducked the question, saying that the Truth Commission will decide what happened. Not too promising in terms of meeting Zelaya's stated condition. And of course, no reference to the requirement that Roberto Micheletti, honored senior Liberal Party member, be expelled.

Tiempo, in its reporting on the forum by dissident Liberal Party members, underlined that members of the present Central Executive Committee "do not enjoy the sympathy and backing of the majority of the Liberals".

That was inadvertently underlined when presidential hopeful Handal helpfully predicted that the proposed commission to Zelaya would be a fiasco.

Victor Sierra, a director of the Liberal Party movement M-Lider (Movimiento Liberal Democrático Revolucionario), probably had the single most evocative comment.

As reported in Tiempo, he proposed to "refundar el Partido Liberal": refound the Liberal Party.

Now, where have we heard something like that before?

Edmundo Orellana: Return

On July 12, La Tribuna published a commentary by Edmundo Orellana on the topic of the possibility José Manuel Zelaya Rosales could return to Honduras.

Since that has now been framed as the first goal of the Frente de Resistencia, it is worth reviewing what this legal scholar reminds us about: the difficulties that stand in the way of this return.

Contrary to assertions that it is just a matter of buying a plane ticket, the events of the coup and de facto regime are substantial obstacles to resolution: Orellana notes that the Public Prosecutor insists on maintaining a legal case open that should have been covered by the amnesty passed by the National Congress. He notes that the judicial branch and much of the Legislature is still filled with coup participants. He reviews the aggression that Zelaya was personally subjected to, and suggests that without guarantees of security from the government, returning is not feasible.

Return

Edmundo Orellana

The return of ex-President Zelaya Rosales is the news of the moment. But the return to the homeland will not be easy.

He was expelled from his country after his home had been outraged with a raid outside the hours that the Constitution permits, accompanied by machine gun bursts, while his young son listened, hidden in fear of being victim of the bestial action, everything they did to reduce his father to impotence. All this operation, worthy of an episode of a formal war, was designed against a single man that barely three and a half years before had been voted by the Honduran people as their new President.

Later it was made known that the Public Prosecutor had filed an action against the President and that a judge named by the Supreme Court of Justice from among its members, after declaring the secrecy of the process, had issued an order of capture against him and to put it into effect ordered, against the Constitution of the Republic, that the Armed Forces carry it out, alleging that the police could be inclined toward the President, so that they would not be trustworthy. Nonetheless, they, immediately, displayed a persecution against those who protested in favor of the President with a cruelty that the population understood had been in the 80s. The accusations against the police for the violation of human rights of those who protested against the coup d'Etat came from the organizations that make up the inter-American system of Human Rights and surely our country will be newly condemned to the payment of large amounts of money in compensation to the victims, and those truly responsible will enjoy impunity.

The tortures to which President Zelaya, his family and those accompanying him in the Brazilian Embassy were subjected, using high-end technology, putting at risk the life of all those encountered there, stripped before the world the hatred that the conspirators had for Zelaya and the savagery of which the dictatorship and its accomplices was capable.

The National Congress, the system of justice and the organizations responsible for the national defense and public security participated directly in what today is an undeniable fact: a Coup d'Etat. Even the same Chief of State Lobo Sosa has admitted this and more than one functionary of his government has asked pardon for this crime against democracy, the Republic, and history.

The bias of the system is placed in evidence when it leaked out that of the prosecutions launched against the President only one, apparently, is still pending, and, despite the fact that it treats evidently of an act that, in any case, will end up benefited by the amnesty, they insist stubbornly on maintaining it in effect.

Very little has changed institutionally in the country since the President was overthrown. Only the Executive Power and part of the Legislative has been renewed. So that his return in these conditions does not offer any guarantee for his personal security and the tranquility of his family.

Nonetheless, his return is essential to commence national reconciliation. The very political stability of the country depends on the return to the country of Zelaya. It is, then, a question of State. It should guarantee, in consequence, that he will enjoy the protection that his situation so special demands. How to accomplish this, is the responsibility and priority of the first order of the present government.

The Resistance Front presents its Executive Committee

[On the road, so without comment, extracts from the recent post announcing the outcome of the National Assembly in Tocoa; please see the official website www.resistenciahonduras.net for more]:

....

This Assembly was composed of 56 delegates, men and women, from all the national territory who were present in the heart of the Valle de Aguan to show the unconditional support to the campesino movements that are confronted with the violence of the army and the businessmen, and at the same time to achieve a historic date in the struggle of the Honduran people.

With this Assembly there was installed the Provisional National Coordination as a first step in the consolidation of the FNRP as a political platform toward the refounding of the country. This space of direction is made up of the representatives elected in the distinct Departmental Assemblies that have been carried out in the last weeks across Honduras, creating in this way a new Democracy that is born and is developed from the base.

The Provisional National Coordination named an Executive Committee that will direct the destinies of this struggle against golpismo, the military regime, barbarity and injustice. The first office selected in a unanimous manner was that of Manuel Zelaya Rosales as Coordinator, recognizing in this way his leadership and putting him at the head of this project that seeks to leave behind the old political practices in which small groups were set above the interests of the impoverished majority.

There will accompany Zelaya in this Executive Committee recognized figures of the popular struggle: Juan Barahona and Carlos H. Reyes (Tegucigalpa), Will Paz (Colón), Leonel Amaya (Olancho), Lucía Granados (San Pedro Sula), Lilí Aguilar (Lempira), María Antonia Martínez (of the movement Feministas en Resistencia), Porfirio Amador (Choluteca), Jaime Rodríguez and Edgardo Casaña (of the Federación de Organizaciones Magistrados de Honduras FOMH), Juan Chinchilla (Juventud Bajo Aguan), Víctor Petit (Comayagua), Teresa Reyes (Organización Fraternal Negra de Honduras Ofraneh), José Luis Baquedano (Confederación Unitaria de Trabajadores de Honduras CUTH). There only remains pending the man or woman representing the indigenous Lenca population.

...

The immediate objectives expressed by the Assembly are the return of Manuel Zelaya to the country together with all the persons obliged to go into exile, the development of the work of organization and political formation in all the country, the strengthening of our means of communication to defeat the lies elaborated by the golpistas and collaborators, and to initiate the collective construction of what will be the National Constituent Assembly that for the first time in our history will be Participatory, Popular, and truly Democratic.

Reactions to the National Assembly of the FNRP: From Mel on down

There are so many statements now reflecting, from different perspectives, on the Tocoa Assembly that it would be overwhelming to translate them all.

But one deserves a full translation:

From the desk of the Constitutional President (2006-2010) Jose Manuel Zelaya.

People and Comrades:

I am verifying the contents of the communique and of the first resolutions of the Assembly of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, that was carried out in Colón this weekend. On first impression it seems good to me that the force to advance was encountered in its own decisions. I have asked Xiomara, my wife, that she present herself tomorrow to the Directorship of the FNRP to speak with Carlos H. Reyes, Juan Barahona, Rafael Alegría and the rest of the comrades, to know the scope of the proposal and so tomorrow itself it will be possible to communicate my acceptance as Liberal-Pro Socialista to integrate in the General Coordination of the Executive Committee of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular.

MEL Z RD 11 de julio de 2010.

In this brief note, Manuel Zelaya effectively supports the actions of the FNRP and the leadership of the sectors that resisted pressure to seat a larger than agreed on number of Liberal Party delegates.

Statements like that of Ollantay Itzamna reiterate that this was a critical achievement in the quest to change the fundamental system, that confirmed "the extreme unction of the moribund 'dedocrátic' system of bipartisanship in Honduras".

The first image is of the administration of the Last Rites of Roman Catholicism, given here to the hand-picking of delegates misrepresented as "democratic" (dedo= finger, which substitutes for hand in the Spanish equivalent to the English figure of speech; so "dedocratic" is approximately "handpickedocrat").

Ollantay Itzamna adds that the naming of Manuel Zelaya Rosales as National Coordinator of the Frente is

also another strategic ratification of popular sentiment. In the Honduran conjuncture, Zelaya is an undeniable national/popular leader. But, this nomination is a sociopolitical strategy. The FNRP needs to articulate to all the cells of the resistance dispersed across the country, and so to construct a sociopolitical hegemony on a national level. And this difficult task, against time, only can be done with a strong and evident national leader. Here we have the strategic reason for the nomination of Compañero Zelaya, but this is not to say that the FNRP is completed in Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

In some ways, the statement by Zelaya negates a curious side comment in the report of the withdrawal of the Liberals in Resistance, when Carlos Reina said

before withdrawing, that in taking this decision he had the endorsement of the deposed Honduran president, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, who had been consulted by [the Liberals in Resistance] by telephone from the Dominican Republic, where he remains exiled since the past 27th of January.

In context, that seemed almost as a claim of patronage, a reclaiming of Mel from the Frente in general.

That some such claim was perceived is made explicit in the response to the assembly by Luis Mendez, described as a "poet in resistance". After rehearsing the details of the attempt to swell the ranks of the delegates with extra appointees recommended by Liberals in resistance, Mendez says that

It is lamentable but the thing is that Carlos Eduardo Reina and the rest that don't add up to ten have the economic resources to move bars, and money to bring a national commission of Liberals in Resistance to the Dominican Republic (as they proposed at the Assembly of Tocoa), and expound to our ex-president Manuel Zelaya Rosales the developments for which they withdrew from the national conduct of the FNRP... well, if they have the economic resources that would be very much their own affair, but we, we do not go to Santo Domingo, but, we go to the villages, to the hamlets, to form the collectives, to accompany to the town fronts, there is where the construction of popular power will be given.

And, without doubt, we expect comrade Manuel Zelaya will personally join the Executive Committee of the FNRP as one of the principal leaders of the movement and it is certain that we can invite the Apparition, there, to where Saint Thomas was the one to say to us: TODAY IS NOT AS BEFORE COMRADES, today we have new visions.

The religious nature of this imagery, again, is somewhat startling, but like the metaphor of extreme unction, it shifts the register from mere politics as usual to redemption, to revelation, and to fervor.

Zelaya, by accepting his appointed role in the FNRP, affirms the new movement as something more than the politics of the past.