Representation, Resistance, and Indigenous Organizations

This weekend, the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular is reportedly holding elections for regional and national directors.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the proposed election of representatives in an organization dedicated to advocating for participatory democracy.

One of the participating movements, COPINH, has gone so far as to publish a public position paper on the topic, declaring their intention to abstain from the interim organization of FNRP leadership, and asking that the Frente publish a description of the mechanisms for selecting directors.

Writing on Vos el Soberano, sociologist and activist in the Frente Ricardo Arturo Salgado voices his support for the statement by COPINH, and outlines his own concerns about the planned elections. He urges that the FNRP not forget that its "vertebral column" is in

the popular movement, whether that is feminists, writers, intellectuals, union organizers, LGBT groups, artists, politicians (not parties, individuals), professionals, campesinos, all the Honduran men and women; this should be the base of its construction of power as well.

At issue, as it has been continuously as the Frente evolves, is the relationship of the Frente to traditional forms of party politics in Honduras. Salgado asks that the Frente

demonstrate why we are different. We should stop conspiring, we should not permit an assembly in the style of a "united front" this weekend. Please publish the methodology adopted so that we militants can see clearly the process.

The Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas (COPINH) is a major partner in the FNRP, serving as the sponsor for the II Encuentro Nacional por la Refundacion de Honduras held in La Esperanza in March, which advocated a strongly participatory dialogic process to arrive at proposals for a new constitution.

The existence of COPINH as an activist group long predated the coup of June 2009.

On their official website, COPINH records their formation in March of 1993 to bring together "the popular movement in the Department of Intibucá, the battle in defense of the environment, the rescue of the Lenca culture, and to raise the conditions of life of the population in the region" of southwestern Honduras, and with a national visibility on these issues. Their statements of history, policies, and programs culminates in this description:

We are an indigenous and popular organization, anti-patriarchal, anti-imperialist, anti-neoliberal, sensitive in the face of the problems, needs, and rights of the indigenous, campesino, and urban communities of the Honduran people and the world.

As early as spring of 2009, COPINH spoke out in favor of a consulta of public opinion about a new Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution. Salvador Zuñiga of COPINH wrote

The new constituyente should not be a personalized project around a caudillo, the new constituyente should be a project of the Honduran people for the construction of a true democratic institutionality that will end the disorder of manipulation, of lies, of social inequalities, of discrimination, of violence, of impunity and of corruption in which the powerful laugh everyday at our people who each time lose more of their hopes in all men and women.

The statement enumerated that the new constitution should be a document

in which the country is declared a multilingual country and the indigenous languages, Tol, Pech, Garifuna and others, are recognized as official, in which the equitable distribution of natural resources is declared, in which therapeutic abortion or abortion in case of rape is declared legal, in which the exercise of direct democracy is expedited, in which national sovereignty is rescued by ordering the dismantling of foreign military bases, in which gender equality remains clearly established and it puts and end to discrimination and violence against women, in which the wealth of the corrupt who for years have been enjoying impunity is expropriated, a new constitutional assembly that will leave clear the functioning of the organizations that should impart justice with the aim of guaranteeing a true administration of justice, a constitution that guarantees liberty of expression through communication media that will be independent and not supernumeraries of the powerful groups that do enormous business selling publicity and their role of manipulators of consciousness.

In other words, COPINH has long-standing, consistently articulated and substantive positions on the central issue of "refounding" Honduras via a new Constitution.

In their public position statement on the planned elections of this weekend, COPINH reiterates their dedication to forming part of the Frente, but insists that the principles they espouse be honored:

it is necessary to make clear that the struggle of COPINH transcends the conjuncture of the oppressor golpismo, to project itself in a permanent manner against all forms of domination that repress the people. The communities of COPINH will continue resisting the capacity of the colonialist system that wants to put an end to the peoples and leave them without their water, their forests and their territories. Therefore the struggle will continue in the path of our martyrs of the colonialist invasion: Lempira, Mota, Iselaca, Etempica.

We are convinced, men and women, of the role that we should play in this historical crisis, in this form, we hold ourselves to reason to command obedience and to the construction of socio-political power from below, from the base itself. Power and reason should emanate from the people from below and on the left. We are inspired, in that sense, by:

• Political practices that will be democratized and not concentrating of decision-making power.
• Political practices that make decisions, resources, actions and discussions transparent.
• Political practices that include, diverge, and multiply both reasoning as well as responses to the historical urgencies of our people.
• Political practices that spring from the collective and not individualities. Principles and not slogans, actions and ideas and not pamphlets pre-designed as epitaphs. Practices that will be congruent with collective discourse and organizational reasoning.

Against these principles, COPINH warns that

Groups, persons, parties and phantom organizations, with no social base, pretend today to get shares of power and of decision within the FNRP, behind the back of the people, and that will throw away the liberatory struggles by the social organizations before, during, and after the coup d'Etat.

COPINH reiterates that they

maintain ourselves in resistance against the oligarchic oppressor's boot, but as well against all those behaviors that would lead the FNRP to positions that attempt against the interests of the people and popular dignity and against all those decisions that pretend to bargain the blood of our martyrs.

This is a strong challenge to the would-be leadership of the Frente.

As it moves from a stage of opposition to the coup and the de facto regime, to a campaign of mobilization, there will be pressure on the Frente to follow a conventional course to gain recognition and a modicum of political power.

From the point of view of COPINH, though, the stakes are higher than merely being admitted into Honduran politics: their position requires them to demand new forms of political organization, or risk being swamped as a minority in a majority-rules democratic system yet again.

The Liberal Party, the Resistance, the President and the Ambassador

A controversy is boiling in Honduras over reports that Jorge Arturo Reina, Zelaya's ambassador to the UN, is being named as "ambassador to ALBA" by the Lobo Sosa government, or has been confirmed to continue as UN ambassador for the present Honduran administration.

These reports of apparent collaboration by a former supporter of Zelaya led to critique on Vos el Soberano of Reina for his chameleon-like changes of alignment, and his network of contacts with

interests distant from the people, for example, Arturo Echenique and Olvin Rodríguez, previously members of the liberal movement of the Reinas, the democratic left and the Liberal Alliance of the People; here participated Rosenthal, Jorge Bueso Arias who declared himself "proudly golpista", Armando Aguilar Cruz one of the negotiators of the golpistas, and also the Villeda Bermúdezes [negotiators for and supporters of Roberto Micheletti].

Samuel Trigueros, a Honduran poet deeply engaged in resistance to the coup and its aftermath, responded to discussion about whether this appointment should be tolerated by the resistance and its supporters with a critique of deference toward the opinion of former President Zelaya. Trigueros indicted

the wave of recalcitrant zelayists that insist on seeing the popular struggle solely through a party lens, perhaps with the intention of capitalizing, in some probable future, on their liberal militancy in the manner in which many men and women are accustomed: achieving honors through clientism or political chamberism...

The zelayists ought to consider the possibility of not insisting on imposing (as an unwavering dogmatic assertion) our dear ex-president as the ineluctable leader of the Resistance...

If Mel were to return tomorrow to Honduras, would he try to mend the Liberal Party? If the Resistance were to decide that the person in whom it wished to deposit its leadership is not Manuel Zelaya, would the zelayists remain in a disciplined manner in the bosom of the Frente?

Trigueros' post drew a response from Oscar Amaya Armijo. Amaya Armijo describes himself as a poet and novelist born in Talanga, and a faculty member of the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, and has commemorated his kinship with the recently assassinated resistance member José Manuel Flores Armijo. In summer 2009, in the wake of the coup d'etat, he published eloquent statements about what needed to happen in Honduras to address the political breach, and continues to write about the situation in Honduras.

Amaya Armijo argues in part that

The liberals in resistance should, as well, demonstrate that they are unconditionally with the Resistance, which is the immense majority of Honduras, by quitting this old oligarchic and fascist party that Micheletti, Elvin Santos, and Romeo Vásquez lead, and organize a new type of political structure, calling this the Socialist Liberal Party, Liberal Hope, Citizen Power, with new ideology and political platform, so that they can really distinguish themselves from the shells of bipartisanship.

In the Honduran context, Amaya Armijo is reminding us, a sufficiently large defection of progressives from the Liberal Party could have the effect of unsettling the long established two party system that is only lightly masked by the participation of other parties at the margins of national elections.

His post is a kind of counterpoint to the repeated claims that the Frente de Resistencia is, or should be, forming a new political party. While the Frente itself continues to emphasize an alternative form of political deliberation and leadership, parallel transformation of existing political parties would by no means be in conflict. Amaya Armijo presents the moral authority of the Frente as the spur for "liberals in resistance" to consider forming a new party-- illustrating that the Frente has the potential to influence broader politics in Honduras without occupying the role of a standard party.

Amaya Armijo accuses members of the Liberal Party of being wary of joining the Resistance out of "petty bourgeois" fears of supposed Socialist leanings of popular leaders, reminding them that it was Zelaya who began talk of socialism, and indicting the Liberal Party for a history of adhesion to the "foreign oligarchy that has the country kidnapped". He continues:

In any case, why fear the people and their utopias, their yearnings for social, political, and economic transformation, if what we are concerned with here is to initiate a path toward justice, equity, and human solidarity, characteristics of developed and inclusive societies.

Amaya Armijo concludes by saying that for Zelaya

there remains no other way out than to unite himself with the Resistance, if not the resistance and the conjunctures [of history] will continue creating new leaders capable of surmounting him....

Of course, in Honduras, the political map has changed enormously and anyone who does not know how to interpret it will be fodder for the implacable punishment of the Honduran masses, those that now don't aim at traditional bipartisanship.

I do not know if this is radical: but whether or not the liberals in resistance, the zelayists and the reina-ists are in the Resistance; even without them... the constituyente, the new constitution and the refounding of Honduras is coming, and there is no oligarchic power that can hold it back.

In a second response, Honduran journalist Ricardo Arturo Salgado Bonilla reminds Trigueros that whether or not a politician like Reina acts like a politician, taking an appointment from the new government as easily as from the previous one, is not the most urgent question:

It seems to me that all this sterile discussion is distracting us from many more serious realities: the fiscal paquetazo; the selective political assassinations, the terrorist character of the Honduran confessional state; and other less evaluated crises such as the increase in hunger in the south; the drought, the traffic in concessions, and much more...

what is resulting will be no more nor less than the dismantling of the national state, and the conversion, finally, to Honduras Inc., without anyone saying anything... The ambassadors of the oligarchy are an immaterial topic, in the face of the challenges that we must confront.